Chandra, you don't seem to understand the difference between emergencies and normal life. Yes, people will often make greater sacrifices if they think that there is an urgent issue and their behaviour will benefit those less fortunate. If the country started having blackouts because of a shortfall in supply, then some, perhaps many would do things to cut energy use but mostly they would be short term measures.

Those who do those things all the time, do so because they want to save money, not the planet or the energy supply. People and businesses either financially or physically can't make their properties or actions truly efficient. There are things that are worthwhile and things that aren't. already over 65% of properties have loft insulation and of those with cavity walls, 68% have had them done. Most of those still to be done will have reasons why not. It might be the money, the property might be rented and the owner might not see the value, the property might be difficult/expensive to improve. Where a lack of funds and a dire need to reduce energy bills clash, then people suffer.

They do not suffer willingly or silently and if people suffer for long enough then their complaints can mobilise governments. See flooding. At that point the public don't want to hear excuses about long term plans to preserve the planet/water voles they want to know when the crisis will be fixed. Each repeat of the same crisis makes the public more angry and less co-operative.

This article contains the usual bit of emotional blackmail but at it's core is the reality of having green energy when the rest of the world doesn't bother. Real jobs are at risk and real people will suffer in the UK if we unilaterally follow green plans for energy, irrespective of whether they have any effect on global CO2 at all (and since the work goes abroad it actually increases CO2). It was never in the manifesto of left wing parties to make British workers suffer so elites could feel good about themselves.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2563431/Factories-shut-save-bills-Staff-key-industrial-plants-having-sit-cold-doing-firms-switch-power.html

Director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, Jeremy Nicholson, said: ‘How are we supposed to expect investment to continue into this country if we are in danger of moving toward having Third World levels of reliability for power?’

> I will evn entertain his ideas that universal healthcare
can be a bad thing as it encourages people to be
irresponsible knowing that someone else (society) picks up
the tab.

Entertain it, perhaps, but would you let it move in? Imagine you lost your job and the insurance that went with it and then you or one of your family became serisouly ill. How long would it be before you kicked your new house guest out of the door?

The issue of why the political left is overwhelmingly supportive of the climate change alarmist ideology/faith, and hence there are relatively few left wing sceptics, is quite complex and would take more space and time than I intend to impose on you here. But may I, as a lifelong Labour supporter, offer a couple of broad observations. They are by.no means comprehensive and omit many nuances. But they are major general factors which I have observed in the party for 61 years, and in Parliament for almost 30 years.
First is that most leftish British people get politically involved because they genuinely believe they wish to contribute to the common good in our society. (They tend to believe , rightly or wrongly, that the right wing wishes to contribute to their own individual or class good). At first this drew many to sympathise with Marxist ideology, until the Soviets discredited that. More sympathised and many still do with the social democratic ideals of equality and civil liberty, though that position lacks the ideological certainties and claimed scientific basis of old Marxism. With the collapse of Marxism, there was created a vacuum on the left. Those seeking an ideological faith to cling on to for moral certainty, felt bereft. They also wanted a faith which again gave them a feeling of still pursuing the common good of society, especially the new global society, and even more a feeling of moral superiority, which is a characteristic of many middle and professional types on the left. Climate change and the moral common good of saving the planet , with its claimed scientific certainties, offered to fill the vacuum. It may or may not be a coincidence that the climate change faith gained momentum in the 1990s immediately after Marxism collapsed with the Berlin Wall.
I notice that my Labour colleagues who are troubled by the cost of the war on climate change, and especially when I point out that its costs fall heavily on the poorer classes, while it's financial benefits go to rich landowners and individuals on the Climate Change Committee, still won't face those facts because they want to cling on to the new climate faith because they want to believe it is in the common good. They are not bad or stupid people. Many are better and cleverer than me..But they have a need for a faith which they believe is for the global good. They don't want a moral vacuum. And the current leaders of the social democratic parties in Britain and Europe are not offering them much else.. For Ed Miliband, who is not a bad or stupid man, but coming from a Marxist heritage, when asked for more vision, he grasps climate change like a drowning man clasping a lifebelt.
While this need persists and there persists the misconception that the Green faith is somehow leftish and in pursuit of the common good, then most on the political left will stay with it. To shake them it will be necessary to show them that the costs of implementing climate alarmism will actually destroy the economic hopes of the poor and is often a cynical device
to enrich the wealthy. That it enables self righteous middle class posturers to parade their assumed moral superiority at the expense of the poor. And that it's so-called scientific certainties are very uncertain indeed. It is also necessary for the sceptical and realistic side to show more publicly that they accept the proven aspects of climate change (which every sceptic I know does) and care about the genuine concerns of the environment (which the Greens ignore by littering our landscapes with inefficient and costly windmills.)
My second point concerns the Stalinist tactics of the Green activists in trying to suppress any questioning of their dogmatic faith and to damage the lives and careers of any professional person who attempts to examine this subject in an honest way which might undermine their dogmatic claims. Their use of Holocaust language such as 'Denier', implying their target is akin to a neo Nazi, is but one example of the Stalinist mentality. In that political context, where any questioner is so derided, it is no surprise that most Labour supporters choose not to take the risk - especially when it immediately throws them into confrontation with their embattled leader.
Sorry to go on so long. But they are my observational conclusions on why it is not easy for the sceptical side to make progress on the political left. Interestingly, polls suggest it is among Labour working classes, always more practical than our Hampstead/Guardian types, that there is the biggest dissent from the Green religion - and some of them are already slipping off to UKIPP, which shows more concern for their suffering under the Green taxes.
This battle to bring understanding to Labour that its climate policies punish its core supporters, will take a while to win, partly for the two reasons I offer above.
Bernard Donoughue, trustee of GWPF

Is M Courtney this M Courtney? *Dr Mark Courtney was formerly Deputy Director and Head of Economics in the Regulatory Impact Unit, Cabinet Office. He previously worked as an Economic Adviser in HM Treasury and as Senior Lecturer in Economics at Rhodes University. He was nominated by the Royal Statistical Society in 2011 to serve on the technical advisory group to the Office of National Statistics on clothing inflation, and has published a critique of UK consumer price indices in the Statistical Journal of the International Association of Official Statisticians.

According to some, the left ain't left at all, and greens are actually much closer to some sort of crypto-fascist mindset.
https://c21stleft.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/fascism-and-the-left-from-red-eureka-movement-november-1980/
NOTE: I am *not* invoking Godwin's law in this. I am posting a link by a thoguht proviing Marxist blogger.

When you have a political split most followers just accept the list of stances the respective parties on all topics.
There is nothing particularly left or right wing about the climate.

Indeed communists were once (and still might be) strong advocates of rapid industrialisation.
Five year plans and so on.
The mining communities (well known for left politics) have been detrimentally affected by green politics.

Indeed there is very little difference now between the economic programs of the Labour and Conservative parties.

The deficit must be cut they say and each have their way of doing it.
Can you spot the difference?

occasional reminder to Guardian-reading friends that their image of climate deniers as scientifically illiterate UKIP-voting creationists might not be entirely correct

My bold.

Yeah OK but how would some bod' who purchases and reads the Graun - how would he/she recognize a person whose literate in any science, let alone the pure sciences?

I would have to say.

The green bubble, needs to be pierced and burst.

All across the developed world [but not in China and Russia] most people recognize that, lies and myths can be rearranged as salient facts and all facilitating a preferred life. And particularly. if you move within the corporate world, politics, local government, quangoshire, the UN, EU and Lord knows how many institutions ranging from green NGOs to bloody FIFA! EVERYMAN and his dog - pays a certain amount of lip service to the great scam. I salute and continue to admire Tony Abbot, Stephen Harper they have gone against the grain but for it to occur in Britain - now that would truly be something which would bring the pin ever nearer to popping a swollen boil which is long past its lancing date.

UKIP, in 2015 - may do enough damage to bring it [bursting the warming myth] reality closer, for quite plainly; the consensus politics here in the UK - liblavCON [whatever rosette you pick you get the same, the green agenda and Cultural Marxism] renders a discussion of left v right - to be a debate of almost infinite irrelevance.

Stewgreen

I went - nice enough lecturer - all very shallow - (quite small attendance)

may have persuaded a senior person at Invesco (hatted to from audience) - about some of the dodgier stuff about climate science - or more importantly psychology of climate denial ;-)

Mike Post, no I am not the illustrious gentleman.

I am a nobody who contributes "opinion" at WUWT and the Guardian - as allowed. That is why I was not on the list.

I am also a life-long labour supporter (so far, but more than halfway through my 3 score and 10) .

In addition, my interest stems from being the son of Richard S Courtney - the first sceptic. He was head of research for the Coal research Establishment back in the 1980s and identified AGW as the next big scare that would come whe,n at the time, Acid Rain was first being hyped.