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The political climate is turning against climate change activists. Citizens of the world have been hearing for the past decade warnings about catastrophic irreversible climate change that will see our standard of living collapse and lead to over a million species becoming extinct.

But thirteen years on from Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth Documentary all citizens know about the consequences of climate change is the costs to them of mitigating it. In Australia with our renewable energy targets we now have some of the highest electricity prices in the western world, deal with rolling blackouts during summer and our heavy industries are leaving for other nations.

As a result in Australia not one federal government has been elected on a pro-climate action platform since Kevin Rudd in 2007, Gillard lied about a carbon tax in 2010 so should not be included. In Canada both at federal and provincial elections Canadians have rejected carbon taxes and renewable energy targets. In United States Trump was elected promising to re industrialize the nation’s Rustbelt states.

As a result of climate change action dropping down the list of voters priorities climate activists have had to even further exaggerate the consequences of climate change and become more aggressive, louder and demanding in their activism.

A feature of their activism this year has been cooping children into their protests. Schools and teachers in Australia encouraged students to take the day off school in November last year in May this year to demand climate action.

The rationale for involving children is climate activism is because they are the ones who are going to bear the consequences of supposed climate change. This strategy has not just been unique to Australia with 16 year old Swedish school girl Greta Thunberg being promoted worldwide as the new face of climate activism.

The left in Australia decided to make the recent federal election a climate change election. Former Greens leader Bob Brown led a convoy to Central Queensland to oppose the Adani coal mine and Labor had a platform of a 50% renewable energy target and a 45% emissions reduction target.

But they lost and like with recent election losses elsewhere the left don’t take it very well and have a hard time accepting the outcome and that their ideas have been rejected.

In Melbourne on the Friday after the election climate activist group Extinction Rebellion staged a “die in” climate protest attended by 1000 people blocking the corner of Bourke and Swanston streets in the CBD. They demanded governments convene a “Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice”.

Last Saturday Extinction Rebellion held another rally in Melbourne, this time only attended by 100 people where they staged “primal roar for the climate” outside Victoria’s Parliament House in the hope that politicians take more notice of them.

Extinction Rebellion is a worldwide climate activist group which has been particularly disruptive in the United Kingdom where in April they encouraged activists in London to block major roads to cause maximum disruption. Over 1,000 protestors are wanted by the London Met Police over the chaos caused.

Now seemingly undeterred by legal consequence the Extinction Rebellion are planning to fly drones over London’s busy Heathrow Airport to oppose the construction of extra terminals which they claim will led to a climate disaster.

Extremist environmental groups feel empowered and enabled by sections of the media who are also doing their bit to inflate the dangers posed by climate change. Actually it should now be called a “climate crisis” or “climate emergency”. Global warming as a term is out, it should now be referred to as “global heating”. These terms are now the officially adopted editorial language of the Guardian.

Like the extreme vegan protestors we have seen in Australia, this new breed of extremist climate protestors, shouting a new message of doom (since the previous one didn’t come to fruition) and doing their upmost to be as disruptive as possible to the ordinary citizen will not win them any new converts.

The pubic are continuing to vote for governments that are prioritize energy affordability, security and economic growth. These latest forms of climate protest just shows how much more desperate climate activists have become to be heard.

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