The Lobbyists Behind the Climate and Nature Bill
On Monday, Paul Homewood, my fellow columnist for the Daily Sceptic, excellently laid out the problems with the Climate and Nature Bill (CAN), a Private Members’ Bill currently making its way through Parliament. This Bill, as Homewood notes, “threatens to wreck the U.K. economy, damage lives and undermine democracy” by calling for U.K. emissions to be slashed “in line with the 1.5°C target” – effectively cutting emissions by about 90% in the next 10 years. Alarmingly, 192 MPs have already expressed support for it.
I have been monitoring this Bill for some time, albeit from a somewhat different angle. Most of my articles focus not on the details of bills, as Homewood’s article so helpfully delves into, but the personalities behind them. In both cases we show how shoddy this Bill is, as can be partly gleaned from those endorsing it.
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Climate & Nature Bill Means Destruction
Can the CAN.
Drugs test the lot of them!
‘The study includes register data from more than six million Danes and its findings indicate that cannabis use disorder increases the risk of both psychotic and non-psychotic depression and bipolar disorder.’
https://health.au.dk/en/display/artikel/stor-undersoegelse-viser-sammenhaeng-mellem-cannabismisbrug-og-psykiske-lidelser
All sorts of things are risky for all sorts of people. I used to be vaguely OK with some recreational drugs being illegal but I find it increasingly hard to justify unless you use “public health” arguments and I have funnily enough gone off those in recent years. For the record, I am a drinker not a drugger, to quote the late, great Philip Larkin.
Cannabis use is disastrous for the young….and there does seem to be a large increase in mental illness about the place. Between 2017 and 2022, rates of probable mental disorder increased from around 1 in 8 young people aged 7-16 to more than 1 in 6. For those aged 17-19, rates increased from 1 in 10 to 1 in 4. ‘A Columbia University study has found that teens who use cannabis recreationally are two to four times as likely to develop psychiatric disorders, such as depression and suicidality, than teens who don’t use cannabis at all. The research, published in JAMA Open Network(link is external and opens in a new window) May 3, also finds that casual cannabis use puts teens at risk for problem behaviors, including poor grades, truancy, and trouble with the law, which can have long-term negative consequences that may keep youth from developing their full potential in adulthood. “Perceptions exist among youth, parents, and educators that casual cannabis use is benign,” said lead study author Ryan Sultan, MD, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia, and a pediatric and adult psychiatrist, NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. “We were surprised to see that cannabis use had such… Read more »
I’ve no doubt that it’s bad for some, just like alcohol, sugar and doing nothing. I just don’t want to be part of deciding what other people do with their lives unless they are trying to rob or assault me or my family
I am biased. One good friend committed suicide, another ended up dead under a bridge in London, another was treated with ECT, all in their early twenties, all as a consequence of ingesting harmful chemicals.
‘Considering that cannabis is the most commonly consumed illicit drug and with increasing legalization of cannabis throughout the world, it is important to understand its effects on violence and its consequences for public health and safety. The findings from this review suggest that, on the basis of the current literature, frequent cannabis use is a potential risk factor for violence and aggression, particularly in individuals who may have a unique susceptibility for engaging in violent behavior.’
https://jaapl.org/content/early/2021/12/10/JAAPL.210034-21
I am sorry to hear about your friends and your bias is understandable. I am just very wary of the state poking its nose into our lives.
This story is most likely invented and comes from someone who has really no clue about the very ugly below-the-radar part of the drug scene (I’m thankfully only very superficially familiar with myself). Eg, let’s depict a pretty typical teenage dope chain smoker whose parents have long given up on telling him off about it. He’ll usually sit in a darkened room with the tele running all day, the room being incredibly filthy and full up rubbish and smell accordingly. Somewhere in the room, there will be a dirty bong filled with smelly, brown water and a residue encrusted chillum standing on a wooden board. Next to that, a larger or smaller heap of a mix of powdered hash and tobacco. Two to four other people will be in the room, usually either bringing more dope with them and seeking to buy some. Alternatingly, they’ll fill the bong with a small bit of the mixture, smoke it and pass it on to the next guy. The bong always moves in circles until all the mixture has been consumed. Then, a new heap is created by all the people who still have dope contributing something to it. Some times, some people… Read more »
Addition: This the nice story. Things get much more ugly deeper in. But I don’t want to talk about that.
I’m sure you’re right. I do know people who do various illegal drugs who are relatively on top of their lives and certainly no more in difficulty than the rest of us with the various self medications (chemical or otherwise) that we indulge in, but I’ve always thought that the costs and risks outweigh the benefits.
Considering that so-called illegal drugs are really ubiquitous, a real lot of people do that, especially with the common ‘party’ powder drugs, ie speed, cocaine and meth (relatively new). But these are essentially tourists who hover about on the outskirts of the actual scene and usually get ripped off when dealing with the insiders.
The image/ description is really from the outermost circle of hell, ie, the first one that’s actually inside of the scene but still largely dominated by better hobbyists. Thinks get more ugly, more dangerous and more criminal from there quickly. It’s best to avoid ever stepping onto this path.
Yes I am glad I didn’t
The use of illegal drugs is fueling an epidemic of violence and criminality, destroying people’s lives and wreaking havoc in our communities.
Statistics show that around 1 in 11 adults aged 16-59 have taken a drug in the last year and over half of all homicides and acquisitive crimes are believed to be drugs related.
The figures are frightening, and the picture is bleak.”
APCC
I’m sure there is some truth in this. Violence and other criminality such as theft should be punished appropriately.
Because this stuff is illegal, the supply chain is obviously in the hands of so-called organized crime and professional criminals – unsurprisingly – also commit other crimes than just supplying others with illegal drugs. Eg, it’s a safe bet that a lot of what passes as knife crime nowadays is really people having ‘discussions’ about drug bills which have remained unpaid for too long.
In short: You’re accurately describing the outcome of about half of century of the so-called war on drugs.
Doesn’t sound particularly successful, does it?
Would the war on drugs have been more successful had drug use been a habit/addiction predominantly of the lower income groups?
I can attest to how paranoid and abusive people can become through regular smoking of hash. My mam’s husband was not only hooked on the stuff, he used to grow and deal it. When most normal kids were coming home to the smell of something nice being cooked in the oven, like cake or chicken, I frequently came home to the smell of ‘grass’ being dried out in the oven. He’d grow it in the greenhouse and in the loft and sell it as grass or ‘soapy bar’, where it’s formed into a solid block and you cut it to the desired weight. Long story short, he was a horrible domestic abuser of my mam ( involving me sometimes, because he wasn’t my real father ) who was so paranoid He’d gradually isolate my mother so she wasn’t allowed to work, wasn’t allowed to have friends, he chose what she wore every day and her only escape was to be allowed to go visit her parents once per week without him, but He’d ring my grandparents to check she was there. He’d sometimes be violent but it was the psychological abuse which did the most damage in the long term… Read more »
Dismal parenting shit schools and a concerted attempt to keep the young in a permanent state of anxiety about everything combined with useless policing lead to cannabis use.
Agreed it may make their psychoses worse, but the basic problem isn’t cannabis, it is a broken society.
A good starting point but not a good ending one. We know regular long term cannabis use is the cause if schizophrenia. Sufferers commit many assaults and murder a of complete strangers because if the chaos in their riddled brains.
The only thing habitual dope smokers commit is smoke more of it. Anything else is just something which distracts from that.
You are probably right but as I said many other things are harmful but legal – booze and sugar being the two that spring to mind.
Correlation is not causation, it could very well be that the underlying mental health problems contribute to the cannabis use much as some people drink to cope with a stressful life.
The fact is that life for us all nowadays is horrendously stressfull as govt seemingly does all it can to disrupt and upset, as well as impoverish and control.
Most genuine drug related problems are a result of the insane “war on drugs” which like all wars nowadays is a hopeless expensive and calamitous lost cause fought under false prospectus, fuelled by greed and/or stupidity probably a bit of both.
Lots of people with lots of stories on this point. My younger brother, now 54, lived on cannabis, the stronger the better as far as he was concerned, from the day he arrived at University.
He is now on permanent disability benefit, and will never work again. He is deeply paranoid, experiences very regular auditory illusions, and thinks he hears people plotting to kill him everywhere he goes. He drinks heavily to cope, which has left him almost crippled, as his legs barely work now. He struggles to speak, having developed a very pronounced stutter.
This is down to the cannabis, which has scrambled his brain. A very intelligent man reduced to a wreck.
I’m not advocating prohibition, in fact I believe the opposite. But, anyone who tells me that cannabis isn’t harmful is going to get a mouthful from me for their ignorance.
I’m sorry to hear your story. I certainly would not claim cannabis is never harmful.
No worries. The comment was a reply to you, but not aimed at you 👍🏻
No worries from me either. I believe offence is taken, not given.
Scrambling someone’s brain will certainly kill the person treated in this way.
Apart from that, this story is as hackneyed as it is harmful. It’s harmful because it’s so obviously wrong (it’s the usual LSD story, just exaggerated a bit and even that is already obviously wrong) and will thus blind people to real dangers of persistent, high cannabis consumption, namely, that it has a tendency to become a person’s whole focus in life which is helped by the fact that withdrawal symptoms are seriously unpleasant (judging from descriptions and experience, a lighter variant of delirium tremens) and last for long enough¹ that people usually succumb to the urge of continuing the habit because they need cannabis to function normally in their everyday lives.
X caused Y means X will always be followed by Y and Y will never happen without X preceding it. If either one or the other isn’t the case, X doesn’t cause Y.
¹ Two to three weeks to vanish completely.
The population of Denmark is less than 6 million (current estimate: 5,982,117 and not all of these people are Danes). That said, 6 million is 0.075% of the population of the earth and some correlation between opinion-diagnosed mental disorders and cannabis consume noted in 0.075% of the population of earth is most likely entirely accidental. Rate of cannabis consume is higher among people with depression that among people without, even when leaving all the uncertainties in that alone, also rather suggests the depression causes cannabis consume than cannabis consume depression. But that’s a speculation some people might find sensible and some others not so much. In reality, this is just the evidence base of face masks to combat viral infection, puberty blockers to prevent suicide and reduction of CO₂ emissions to save the planet: People with a pre-existing conviction looking for statistical correlations in a vanishingly small (compared to the total population size) body of anecdotic evidence to enable them to claim that their pre-existing opinions must be true. The literal meaning of the term assassin is hashish smoker and it goes back to a legendary society of murderers-for-hire in the middle east reportedly led by someone called the old… Read more »
‘The researchers found that more than 2.5 million U.S. teens—or about 1 in 10 –were casual cannabis users. More than 600,000 teens—roughly 1 in 40—met the criteria for cannabis addiction. To be considered to have cannabis use disorder, an individual must meet at least two of 11 criteria, which include an inability to reduce consumption, constant cravings, and relationship and social problems.’
https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/news/recreational-cannabis-use-among-u-s-adolescents-poses-risk-adverse-mental-health-and-life-outcomes
‘The lower people are fond of raising their spirits to a state of intoxication. As they have no strong drink, they, for this purpose, smoke Haschisch, which is the dried leaves of a sort of hemp. This smoke exalts their courage, and throws them into a state in which delightful visions dance before the imagination. One of our Arabian servants, after smoking Haschisch, met with four soldiers in the street, and attacked the whole party. One of the soldiers gave him a sound beating, and brought him home to us. Notwithstanding his mishap, he would not make himself easy, but still imagined, such was the effect of his intoxication, that he was match for any four men.’
Niebuhr’s Travels Through Arabia, and Other Countries in the East 1792
‘Hundreds of Albanian migrants who reached Britain on small boats across the Channel are now believed to have taken control of the country’s cannabis trade.
Many have been snapped up to work on illegal cannabis ‘farms’ – with contacts shared via a secret channel on messaging service Telegram, it has been reported.’
And it is the brain fried listed in the article above who fund this trade as customers.
The large sums of money transacted then encourage more illegal migrants.
Well done everyone….or not really.
Having read through all of the comments, one important point to consider is that the level of THC has been increased massively – compared to the 80’s and 90’s – and this has lead to severe mental health problems. This – the THC levels – has been purposefully raised and introduced into the green stuff they smoke nowadays.
Many thanks to the author and to the DS team.
If you’re living alone (like I do), the 25th is the most miserable day of the year because it’s basically a voluntary one-day-lockdown where all people who are sufficiently socially connected are having house parties and anybody who isn’t can take solitary walks. Or not. Doesn’t matter to important people. Hence, thanks for the article. I didn’t expect anything noteworthy today.
You can look at 25/12 as a one-day-lockdown …. or you can look at it as a day for giving yourself some quiet time to reflect, relax and make plans for the coming year.
Sometimes it’s better to be on your own than in the company of people you don’t like; having nothing much in common with or (sadly) now actively hate 🙂
My social life consists of spending 1 – 1½ hours in a pub every day, drinking exactly two pints and most remaining on my own. I sometimes talk to people, but usually, only briefly and certainly not every day. I find being robbed of the opportunity to be among other people (preferably not too many of them) rather depressing. All of my remaining life, I’m alone.
If what I have read about this Bill is correct, in that it will wipe out farming of animals and end the importation of food, due to the destruction of cargo shipping, how are we going to support all of the populations of our off shore islands, many of which rely on farming and need food delivered to them? I know the mainland will struggle, but the islands will become instant death camps. We don’t have the housing and infrastructure to bring them ashore. The supporters of this bill are murderers laying out their plans in public.
They firmly believe (or at least claim to do so) in reality being socially constructed and hence, malleable in arbitrary ways. In saner times, this would have been called insanity and treated as such. Nowadays, it’s called “having a grand vision” and qualifies people to become politicians.
The Climate and Nature Bill basically means turning the clock back to pre-Industrial times …. when “the peasants” were kept cold, hungry, impoverished …. and worked to an early death so “the Elite” could profit.
That’s why so many “Elite” support the nonsense.
Fortunately, Reform UK’s membership tracker is now approaching 129,000 (up 20,000 in just a couple of weeks) and there’s only 2,500 to go to overtake the Treacherous Tories.
Winter is Coming for the Treacherous Tories; and then it will be Labour’s turn.
Let us hope so!
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I used to have some respect for this man and believed he was genuinely a supporter of nature in a good way. Little did I realise that he had become seriously infected by the woke virus.
What a sad end to a career.
Agreed.
Likewise. I really enjoyed his River Cottage series and have a few of his books. His campaign on throwing back of fish due to EU regs was a positive thing but he has since gone woke as you say. He has joined the misguided campaign against the use of plastics that blames their existence as opposed to those that do not dispose of them properly.
He appears to be publicly ticking the boxes now necessary to qualify for TV work and book publishing.
A sort of Who’s Who of green scum especially the runt Packham.
“Runt” – I’ve never seen it spelled like that before, especially since r and c are on opposite sides of the keyboard.
😀😀😀
If labour care about climate and nature, why do they want to build any houses and also bring migrants from warm countries to a cold country that then need heating?
Sorry confused with comments, the article is about destroying the UK even further, and not about illegal drugs?.
The climate change insanity will not stop until all the free money stops. What a scam. People are sleepwalking towards their destruction just like they willingly got on the trains. Britain leads the world. Another great exposure by Charlotte!
I naturally oppose anything supported by Chris Packham.
Anyone who doesn’t know that for decades energy and emissions have been weaponized and will be used with technology to control human activity doesn’t want to know. Climate emergency prophets will be buried by the system too and it will serve them right. Maybe it’s not too late for a fightback….