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SOME PROPOSED TRANSLATIONS OF EXTINCTION REBELLION LANGUAGE

1. QUESTION: What’s the scientific basis for the claim that billions of people are going to die? ANSWER:  We don’t have a scientific basis nor do we need a scientific basis. Just take my word word for it. People are going to die. Exactly how many doesn’t matter.
2. QUESTION: I looked through the IPCC AR5 and SR15 and I see no reference to billions of people are going to die or that children are going to die in under 20 years. ANSWER: We don’t like the IPCC AR5 or the SR15.
3. QUESTION: Then where does the scientific validity of that claim come from? The billions of people that will die, how will they die?  ANSWER: Validity derives from how scary it is and the alarmist media provides plenty of that as for example mass migrations, drought, and wildfires all over the world from Indonesia to the Amazon and even Siberia and the Arctic.
4. QUESTION: These are all really important problems and they can cause fatalities but they don’t cause billions of deaths. They don’t imply that our young people will all be dead in 20 years, as your co-founder Roger Hallam claims. ANSWER: OK so maybe it isn’t exactly 20 years but they will die. Trust me on this. Humans are mortal after all.
5. QUESTION: You talk about weather related disasters, and people die from them but a hundred years ago, weather related disasters killed 500,000 people a year on average. Today that figure is 20,000 a year, a reduction of 96%. These numbers don’t support the Extinction Rebellion claim about the death of billions of people by climate change. ANSWER: You’re hung up on scientific validity and whether what we say is factually correct and ignoring the bigger picture of what we need to say to get people to take climate change seriously when they are not taking it seriously enough. It is a desperate situation and we must do what it takes instead of getting all hung up on scientific validity and whether things are factual. The truth is that scaring people works.
6. QUESTION: It doesn’t work. I have seen school strike young girls on TV crying because they think they are going to die in 5 or 6 years. Crying because they don’t think they will ever see adulthood. And yet there is no scientific basis for the claims your organization is making. ANSWER: You’re dead wrong. The school strike children don’t worry that they will die 5 or 6 years from now. They worry about coastal regions going under water, entire countries, island nations going under water, the Maldives going under water, the mass displacement that is happening, the weather extremes.
7. QUESTION: The IPCC says that its median projection is for sea level rise of half a meter by the year 2100. Half a meter of sea level rise will not result in the apocalyptic predictions your organization claims. ANSWER: These are very conservative numbers because IPCC projections are from pre-industrial data. They are looking only at carbon emissions but nor factoring in feedback loops. The IPCC does not understand climate science as well as alarmists like Michael Mann and James Hansen do. We are not using alarmist language.
8. QUESTION: You ARE using alarmist language. A person from your organization has said that nearly everybody could be dead within several decades. 97% was the figure she put on it. The IPCC wants emissions to be cut in half by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. But your organization wants net zero emissions by 2025, only six years away. What would that require? ANSWER: I have no idea.
9. QUESTION: And yet you went to Westminster to preach and demand climate policy???  ANSWER: Well, the experts DO have an idea and we are saying, listen to the experts. Policy makers are not listening to the experts. We know what the experts are saying although, as I said previously, I have no idea what if anything they are saying about what it would take to get to zero net emissions by 2025.
10. QUESTION: The experts have consensus on getting to net zero emissions by 2050. But you’re saying 2025. That doesn’t sound like you are “listening to the experts”. ANSWER: Our expert is Professor Michael Mann, He says that the 2050 figure relies on unreliable carbon capture by gas energy storage. I have no idea what that means but Michael Mann doesn’t like that so we protest against it.
11. QUESTION: One scenario of your 2025 plan is that it will require the confiscation of all petrol cars, state rationing of meat, and limiting families to one flight every 5 years. Do you agree with that? ANSWER: We need to do whatever it takes to bring emissions down. Whether the action needed is practical or doable is not the issue.
12. QUESTION: I am not arguing about the consequences of climate change at all. But to reach your target you would have to stop all flights. Aviation will come to an end. ANSWER:  If aviation needs to go it must go. We must look at all aspects of the economy and whatever needs to go for the climate has to go.
13. QUESTION: If we stopped all flights it would global temperature by 0.03C. And you would stop all flights for that?  ANSWER: That’s just a number. The 99% consensus science says that if we don’t bring emissions down we will descend into climate hell.
14. QUESTION: Most homes are heated by gas. Most people cook with gas. All of that would have to go in 6 years for a 2025 target.  ANSWER:  It may sound impossible but for us humans, nothing is impossible and the proof of that is that we put a man on the moon and built the space station.