UN Human Rights Council Demands Criminalisation of Climate Skepticism Worldwide

The censorship-industrial complex ramps up

There can be no doubt that the global green movement is getting nervous. Its signs of desperation are not owed to the 'fact' of a warming planet signalling our imminent doom, but much more to the actual facts that despite any warming, humanity is thriving, and that worse – far worse – people are discussing it. The claims of ideological orthodoxies of all kinds championed by the United Nations, not just climate, are now being challenged by people on social media, and even in mainstream news media. And in response, the global 'censorship industrial complex', as it has been dubbed, is mobilising to shut down those conversations. The problem is that, the more they shift towards draconian interventions, the more they unwittingly signal their inability to understand the debates they wish to proscribe.

At the end of June, the UN Human Rights Council published a report by the agency’s “Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change”, Elisa Morgera. After moving through the long preamble and its obligatory recitation of the climate litany – unimpeachable science… worst year ever… urgent necessity of climate action… blah blah blah – Morgera eventually arrives at her paradox. In order to protect human rights, human rights must be curtailed.

Morgera proclaims that “all states should immediately start inclusive processes to co-develop defossilisation plans” in order “to prevent mass human rights violations arising from climate change”. This includes the demand that states “defossilise information systems, to protect human rights in the formation of public opinion and democratic debate from undue commercial influence”.