Dear (Claire Meadows, Mariella Brown and others at the SoE)....
The resignation of Ian Murray, your Executive Director, may make it difficult for you to handle the points raised in this letter but I feel I must write to you now. We can return to the issues raised here in a few weeks if necessary
Since 2017 I have worked with a loosely aligned group of people to get the media to report the truth about climate breakdown. The primary focus of our work was on the BBC, but we also exerted pressure on other broadcasters and the national daily papers.
With so many newspapers and broadcasters lying to the public about the science and threats associated with climate breakdown, we believed that the editors you represent were undermining democracy. By suppressing the facts editors were distorting public opinion, influencing the demands the public make of politicians and the way people vote. We only live in a democracy if the people are allowed access to factual information upon which they can base their opinions and voting decisions.
The Society of Editors prides itself upon ‘Protecting the freedom of the news media’ but ‘Tell The Truth’ campaigners, of which I am one, argue that the distortion of the truth and suppression of crucial news, undertaken by your members, has stolen freedom and liberty from the whole of society.
There is a crucial point I make at the public talks I give on the media’s role in reporting climate breakdown. I argue that “the media has stolen from the young the one thing they needed to defend themselves – information”.
When the young hear what is planned for them and the utter horror of what is going to happen to them, they are furious. We are seeing signs of that fury in the ‘Fridays for Future’ demonstrations and at the recent MockCOP26 gathering of young activists from around the world, who adopted a Treaty that called for a scale of criminal penalties that reflect the scale of harm inflicted.
All editors and owners of media outlets need to consider carefully the legal implications of what is coming – a generation of young people growing up into a world where climate is rapidly breaking down and where they enact legislation that brings powerful/wealthy media interests to account for their behaviour in courts of law.
Is the Society of Editors willing to make the implications of MockCOP 26 and the FFF movement clear to your members? Or will you withhold the information in this letter from editors?
A reaction I am seeing more frequently from journalists is that ‘you’ve won’. Some journalists argue that the media has agreed to stop lying about climate change, acknowledging that it is real and dangerous, and many outlets are now campaigning on climate related issues.
My answer is that, while climate denialism is in full retreat, the ‘Tell The Truth’ campaigners haven’t won because the most frightening and embarrassing facts are still being withheld from the people. It remains true that the young still cannot properly defend themselves because your editors remain determined that the full horror of what is coming is to be suppressed.
In the talks I give I am at pains to emphasise to climate activists that bodies like the BBC have come a long way since 2017. In 2018 the BBC changed its instructions to editors that had previously required that an anti-science climate change denier must be allowed airtime when the issue of climate change was discussed; and the BBC is now reporting more on climate change than it has ever done before. ITV, Channel 4 and Sky have all introduced or strengthened news segments on climate, but many plans were derailed by the global pandemic.
Despite Covid, there has still been some progress over the last year, with a number of national daily papers changing their editorial stance. The most recent being The Express, that has shifted from being a denialist paper to actively campaigning for reform of the tax system to encourage the transition to a low carbon economy. But there remain vicious pockets of cruelty, with The Telegraph waging what can only be described as a ‘Hate Campaign Against the Young’. I have written to the two editors and other Telegraph staff asking the daily & Sunday papers end the Hate.
In the annex to this letter I set out the core Truths that editors must tell. They must stop suppressing the most alarming news, so that the young can defend themselves and all members of society are given the information they need to defend the youngest members of their families.
As we head into COP26 it is essential that editors allow audiences to know what is at stake. Given that billions of people are probably going to be murdered, COP26 should feature as headline news every day, with extensive factual items explaining the science. I appeal to you to do everything you can to ensure editors change direction and stop suppressing the facts on the gravest national security threat we have ever faced.
Yours sincerely
Jon Fuller
I run ‘BBC: Tell The Truth’, am on the steering group of the ‘Climate Genocide Act Now’ group, provide media monitoring services to a number of NGOs, was part of the Extinction Rebellion delegations to the BBC and ITN and regularly meet senior editorial staff and journalists within the national press.
ANNEX: TELL THE TRUTH DEMANDS
1. BLACK LIVES MATTER: PEOPLE ARE DYING NOW
The ‘DARA International’ research commissioned for the UN in 2012 showed that 400,000 people were being killed by climate breakdown every year, with 360,000 infants killed by the increased spread of disease in our 1.2C hotter world.
No MSM (Mainstream Media) outlet has so far been willing to raise the issue of killing so many infants when discussing the expansion of polluting industries like aviation. The cover up of the torture to death of so many infants must end immediately.
2. SEVERE CLIMATE BREAKDOWN IS ALREADY LOCKED IN
Even if we turn off the CO2 tap today, we have already committed future generations to at least 2C of additional heating.
The last time CO2 concentrations reached 415ppm was in the Pliocene Era, 3 million years ago. During that era temperatures were between 2-3C hotter and sea levels were around 50 – 60 feet higher.
If we turn off the CO2 tap now, the pace of global heating may slow down significantly, but we have now locked in significant heating.
The only way to stop that is to both stop emitting greenhouse gases incredibly quickly and begin the vast task of climate repair – removing everything we have dumped into the atmosphere since around the year 1980, getting CO2 concentrations back below 350ppm.
Currently the MSM will not Tell The Truth about that because it means confronting the extreme cruelty of continuing to dump more CO2 into the atmosphere.
3. COP21 IS THE GREATEST ACT OF INTERGENERATIONAL THEFT
The Paris COP21 agreement stipulates that temperatures by 2100 should be “well below 2C” of heating and adds another ambition - to stabilise temperatures at the 1.5C threshold.
The COP21 plan is to develop carbon removal technologies and deploy these at vast scale in the second half of this century. The politicians who negotiated COP21 were damn certain they weren’t going to pay for carbon removal and damn certain they wanted their lifestyles to remain unchanged, so they stipulated in COP21 that the young must pay for carbon removal over the 50 year period from 2050 to 2100.
Most people are probably aware that we are not on track to hit the target. But, what most people do not know is that COP21 puts the financial burden of stabilising climate on the young. One estimate (peer reviewed) says the cost of carbon removal after the year 2050 could be $350 trillion.
If the media Told The Truth the young would know what is planned for them and be given the one tool that is essential to defend themselves – information.
4. RUNAWAY CLIMATE CHANGE MAY ALREADY HAVE BEGUN
Several climate feedbacks and tipping points have now been activated; for example, Arctic Ocean sea ice is retreating so quickly we are likely to see the ‘blue ocean event’ in the early 2030s. The Amazon is within perhaps just 15 years of tipping from rainforest to savanna and the Greenland icesheet has almost certainly past a tipping point that will eventually result in the loss of virtually all ice. Worse still, the various carbon sinks are in trouble, flipping from sequestering carbon to emitting carbon (forests, peat, oceans, etc.)
There is a terrifying risk that the various climate feedbacks, such as methane being released from melting permafrost will carry our planet all the way through to a climate equivalent to the Eocene Era 250 million years ago. In the Eocene the planet was 12C to 16C hotter and sea levels were around 240 feet higher than today.
If the media Told The Truth, people would know the staggering risk that we could very suddenly be overwhelmed by climate breakdown.
5. WE IN THE UK COULD SUDDENLY FACE FOOD SHORTAGES.
UK food security is poor, we import around 50% of our food. The risk of very abrupt climate change is our greatest national security threat so we need to change the way we feed people now.
At the gathering of the global elite, at Davos in 2018, world leaders were warned of the risk of a very sudden collapse in the global trade in food. If severe weather impacted two or more of the main grain suppliers, exporters would keep food for their own nation and international trade would cease. The global elite were warned of this risk but none of the main media UK outlets allowed audiences to hear of the threat.
If the media Told The Truth the public would know of this threat and be able to demand the changes that could lessen the scale of the suffering ahead.
6. COP26 IS ON TRACK TO FAIL US.
The media should explain to people that the COP process of ‘Nationally Determined Contributions’ (NDCs) do not currently meet the targets of “well below 2C” and 1.5C. This means disaster for most countries around the world. The media should explain to the people that the NDCs put us on track for at least 3.2C of global heating, with near certainty that this level of heating will initiate the runaway process that could take us to an Eocene equivalent climate.
7. TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE IMPACTS
The MSM has an absolute duty to explain to audiences in detail what a 3.2C or 4C hotter world will look like. This outcome is likely to occur in the lifetime of our youngest citizens and they need to prepare, for example, perhaps by choosing not to have children.
The public deserve to know that Prof Sir David King has warned that billions of people could be killed in a 4C hotter world, with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research warning the human population could be halved.
The MSM has no right to hide these facts from the British people.
8. ERA OF THE CLIMATE REFUGEE
The MSM must regularly provide analysis on the impacts on various countries. For example, the public deserve to know how many low lying island states will be annihilated by sea level rise and storm surges. Regular reports should be provided showing how many people will be displaced and where they are likely to move to.
An associated series of reports should explain the impact on agricultural production in Africa, Asia and Central America, showing those nations where food production will have ceased and hundreds of millions of people forced to flee.
The public deserve to know what the political response will be to hundreds of millions of climate refugees and the likely plans to murder refugees on the major migration routes. For example, killing by drowning in the Mediterranean Sea.
9. The 2050 NET-ZERO TARGET IS FAR TOO LATE
The 2050 target adopted by wealthy nations like the UK is far too late to avoid severe global heating. The public deserve to know that only emergency action to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions/concentrations can save the young and those on the front line of climate breakdown from complete disaster.
10. CRIMINAL SANCTIONS AGAINST KEY CLIMATE CRIMINALS
The MSM has a duty to report on the allegations of ‘Climate Genocide’ being made by the primary victim nations and allow a voice to be given to those who are seeking retribution against the key climate criminals. The MSM occasionally reports on legal actions taken by campaigning lawyers against polluting activities, but the MockCOP26 young activists show the direction of travel – criminal prosecutions and the seizing of the proceeds of climate crime will ensue. Investors and others who may be subject to criminal and civil redress need to be warned what is coming so they can modify their behaviour.
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