Day 6 – COP23 Bonn – Shit gets real and I get out

My flight left on Saturday afternoon, so it was basically packing, planning and video-recording until I left for the airport.

All in all, it was a very busy, stressful and pleasurable week. Some other things I might have left unmentioned is the several possibilities of having Climate Gamble translated to several more languages, which is super exciting.

Eric trying to make sense on why we should not stop climate change effectively.

Of course the soon as I had checked in for my flight, stuff started happening. Iida and Eric participated in an anti-nuclear demonstration, with Eric singing opera and them both trying to have a civil, fact-based discussion on how we could mitigate climate change with nuclear as one of the tools. (Yeah, I, too, keep wondering what the heck anti-nuclear protesters are doing at a climate meeting in the first place, but there you are…)

They ended up being censored, shouted at, physically threatened by the activists and even bullied by the police.

’You should be really thankful you are not being beaten’.

Let’s take a small pause here. Go read Iida’s story of what happened.

I mean, I have read and heard that extreme right-wing/nationalist people (often called neo-Nazis) do this sort of thing if you try to have discussions with them or interfere them in any way while they are having their way. In Finland there was even violence that led to a death recently at one such event.

But now it seems that anti-nuclear activism in Europe has gone so deep into its rabbit-hole that any arguments, facts or even an art-performance will be met with hostility and physical threats, with the police there to support the harrasment. What the hell is happening here!?

These people have, for decades, exercised their freedom of speech. They have used it for very effective fear-mongering, spreading their half-truths, waving their cherry-picked and non-peer reviewed “studies” and outright lies about nuclear energy throughout our society. They have been doing their best to land us in a situation where (arguably) our most effective tool for climate mitigation and energy decarbonization is so unpopular that even the United Nations Environmental Program refuses to even hear or discuss about it. And now, it seems, they would very much like to take that freedom of speech from us, simply for disagreeing with them.

I have been giving shit to the nuclear industry for shutting up and not making their case every chance I get for the last few years. And now they, along with a handful of independent environmental activists, are finally finding their voice and speaking up. And they are being bullied and suffocated by both anti-nuclear activists, government officials and even some United Nations ”sustainability” leaders.

This is about to get real, and interesting. We will try to stop climate change and bring about a better future for both humans and the environment with all the tools at our disposal. We won’t be bullied, nor will we shut up. Our kids deserve better than what these people are offering.