Censored by Facebook for calling climate criminals out

Allow my to have a rant. I don’t appreciate being censored. It hasn’t often happen – the only two times I recall were when I wrote something about the – in my view unpleasantly close – financial relationship between an association of patients suffering from a chronic disease and the medical industry which provided medicine and tools to this same group of patients.

So my experience with being censored happened when I submitted a piece – about an alternative dietary solution to the disease, which had showed amazing results – first to the association’s magazine, then on its Facebook page, in the naive conviction that I was able to contribute with some new knowledge this group of patients would benefit from. Whoever was in charge there did not want that message to come out to the associations’ members.

Before I continue with that story, I’d like if you would take a look at this report by ABC Media Watch above, if you haven’t seen it already, because it will give you some context to what is happening in the media landscape and maybe a bit of understanding of why the act of being censored in social media over raising my voice against the oil and gas industry, calling their act of destroying our previously stable and safe climate a criminal act, can feel somehow unfair and frustrating.


Now to the uncensored version of what it takes to violate Facebook’s so-called ‘Community Standards’:


Today I was censored again by Facebook, as the photo below shows. My commenting on a newspaper article in a Danish newspaper where I accused the people which the article talked about of being climate criminals was apparently a violation of Facebook’s Community Standards. The post was blocked, and Facebook provided me only with one option: “Delete This Post.”

“These are the people destroying your future, kids, while they laugh all the way to the bank. Take a good look at them.

One of the companies present at this meeting in Denmark, Total, has an annual turnover of 171 billion US dollars, and reportedly expect this to continue and even to grow in the decades ahead.

Total obviously aren’t expecting that people will soon stop buying Total’s climate-wrecking oil and gas entirely – at least those of us who’ve read and understood the warnings from the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which just has released a scary and detailed report about the damage our carbon pollution is doing to the planet we live on, and which everyone at that meeting, including the Danish minister for climate change, choose to ignore (probably because many of them have reached that age where they know they’ll be dead and gone before the dramatic climate breakdown and sea level rise really kicks in).

The attitude of the fossil industry reminds me of the music industry’s CEOs who would have huge party-like annual gatherings in the late 1990s, at at time when everyone knew what an mp3-file was, but refused to believe that their dynasty based on CD sales could crumble within just a few years. As we know today, that party of theirs came to an abrupt halt, while new enterprises such as iTunes and Spotify, who had understood what people wanted, took over that business.

I personally hope these selfish climate-criminals – and not just those who met at this meeting in Copenhagen, but everyone of them world-wide – will be punished for their destructive acts one day. If not by criminal courts, then at least economically.

More and more of us have come to that point of realisation where we say enough with the greed and destruction: #TheTimeHasCome for an #EnergyRevolution – a #YouthRevolution – a #CommunityRebellion where we #GetOffFossilFuels 100% and as quickly as possible.

Everyone of us has a role to play here. So get involved. And get off it.

The younger you are, the more you stand to lose in this intergenerational battle over how long the old, immoral, unsustainable and genocidal practices of the industrialised world will be allowed to continue.

www.climatesafety.info/getinvolved

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Translation of the top of the article, which was published in the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information:

  . . .

Climate minister: “We must pull up all oil and gas from the North Sea in order to finance the green transition.”

The sixth summit of the oil and gas industry, held in DR’s Concert Hall on Wednesday, was used to reassure the industry’s CEOs and others that it is for environmental reasons and to support the green transition that all available oil and gas in the Danish part of the North Sea should be pumped up.

The message from the climate minister to the delegates from the oil and gas industry was firm: “The world will be needing oil and gas for a long time to come.”

  . . .

Curious to read more of the article? Here’s a Google translation of it:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=da&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl…

#ClimateStrike

[FACEBOOK POST ENDS]



A link to the same newspaper article was posted on the Danish Facebook page for The Climate Movement – Klimabevægelsen – where a number of people commented on it. One person said she couldn’t find words for how angry she felt when reading this article.

Per Henriksen commented that, “It is no wonder that [Danish climate minister] Lars Chr. Lilleholt talks like he does. All parties in the Parliament have signed the Energy Agreement of 29 June 2018 which states:

“ENERGY AGREEMENT

Continued utilisation of oil-gas resources in the North Sea

The green transition will require large investments over a number of years, which requires public finances in good health. Investments in oil and gas extraction in the North Sea provide revenue to the government and activities that support the Danish economy, thus creating the basis for investments in the green transition.

An agreement has been reached with DUC regarding a full reconstruction of the Tyra plants in the North Sea.

The agreement continues to ensure great economic activity in the area for many years ahead and ensures that we can continue to acquire large resources that contribute as a stabilising factor in our energy system.

The parties note that a North Sea Development Agreement of March 2017 has been signed with the purpose of providing greater assurance that the remaining resources in the North Sea will be extracted.”

https://efkm.dk/ministeriet/aftaler-og-politiske-udspil/energiaftalen/


I then commented on Per Henriksen’s comment:

“The new IPCC report is not just ‘another report’ from the United Nations. This is the first time that world-leading climate scientists with such sincerity warn the planet’s governments that we are on a completely wrong course. And you say, Per Henriksen, that it’s no wonder that everyone just chooses to ignore these warnings and continue with business as usual as long as it is possible, meaning until the oil pots have been emptied?

You’re right that it’s no wonder because it is exactly what our politicians have been doing ever since the 1980s where the dangers caused by our air pollution were thoroughly explained by scientists, and the world’s richest countries met in Toronto and stated that “action must be taken now …” – after which of course, as we have seen, the world’s CO2 emissions have been allowed to rise year after year over the following three decades.

But does it make it less radical and hair-raisingly irresponsible when politicians and industry CEOs in this way choose to once again override a IPCC report – pretend it does not exist and maybe secretly hoping that there will be some other countries that will proceed and do the heavy lifting with decarbonising their societies, while the Danish government can then take a free ride towards the climate disaster together with the other ‘fossil-heads’ around the world.

What REALLY is make you wonder, I think, is that the Danish government does not see a huge business opportunity and job creation opportunity in building on the clean and green reputation that Vestas and other Danish companies have created for the country far beyond its borders. We will not have to look all that many years ahead before that clean and green brand will be worth so many more export dollars than that climate-destructive oil and gas from the North Sea.

That possibility is being ‘thrown out with the bathing water’ by the Danish government when they exhibit their hypocrisy and greed as we see it happen here.”


…to which Per Henriksen replied:

“I do not understand that there aren’t any more people who understand that the real challenge is to get the demand for oil to fall year by year (PS: the Danish government’s current policy actually increases oil consumption).

Norway is probably one of the few countries which has succeeded in this.

You can of course argue that if the oil shortage (and consequently sky-high oil prices) gets increasingly worse, then that will be another way to solve the problem. I’m pretty sure this assumption is wrong – it will probably mean that liquid fuels will be extracted from even more destructive sources: tar sands, fracking, even coal + much more biodiesel. WHY? Because if oil prices rise through the ceiling, it triggers a global recession, mass unemployment, etc.

Please get it: WE MUST GET THE DEMAND DOWN.”


Airing dangerous lies

Overall, the new IPCC report which was published in beginning of October 2018, marked a welcome shift where we to some extent saw mainstream news beginning to dig into climate emergency. It also shows there’s much more work to be done.

“Reporters need to educate themselves not only on facts of climate science — in particular the percentage of scientists who attribute climate breakdown to human activity — but also on climate deniers’ rhetorical techniques, so that they will be ready to refute climate denial when they encounter it,” said Genevieve Guenther, a lecturer at the New School and founder of EndClimateSilence.org.

“Even more importantly, they must be willing to refute climate denial, lest they unwittingly turn their news programs into platforms for airing dangerous lies.”

» Gizmodo Australia – 16 October 2018:
As The World Burns, Politicians Remind Us Climate Change Denial Is Alive And Well

EndClimateSilence.org is a New York-based volunteer organisation dedicated to helping the media link stories about climate change impacts to climate change itself.

Mobilising through digital activism, the group is present on all media platforms­­­—from television networks to print outlets to online content providers to radio programs, motivated by the awareness that climate change poses a grave danger to humanity. “We must transition from fossil fuels to safe energy immediately, in order to preserve a planet that supports civilisation. We see that climate change has begun to hurt people, and it’s the media’s job to report on that fact.”

Here’s what you can do – add your voice and say it loud!
Follow @EndClimtSilence on Twitter and retweet
Check the #EndClimateSilence stream on Facebook and Youtube.

» Find out more at: endclimatesilence.org