London Letter: It’s a plane. It’s a bird. It’s Twitterman!

A fascinating British Government report has just come out which, in a nutshell, accuses the people who say they care most about climate change of being the ones least likely to do anything about it.

This is interesting, because any official findings on global warming default to the ‘we’re killing the world’ option, mainly because you can raise more carbon credits that way.

Yet here we have a report stating emphatically that people who claim they are concerned about all of us frying, actually use more greenhouse gas than those who say maybe we’re not.

The reason given for this is hilarious, but in my view weirdly true: many climate change sceptics are people who were brought up by parents who had fought in a war and are today much more frugal because they’re hardwired that way.

They cut electricity bills to save money, even if they’re not convinced about the planet steaming.

While the report has shocked green activists, it hasn’t shocked most other people. The first thing to grasp in the real world is that many trendy themes such as Goddess Gaia sizzling are actually social pressures.

To be a ‘good person’ today, you have to manifestly show you care about issues. In other words, you’re supposed to nod with furrowed brow and say you’re worried about climate change.

If you say’ ‘hey I’m not that convinced’, people will think you’re not a good person, even if you do switch the lights off more than anyone else.

I suspect most of us have always known this. For example, I had a friend who by most urbane definitions would be called a racist. But whenever he came across a motorist of any race stranded, he would be the first to get out and help.

I never saw my more liberal friends do this, even before the days of serial hijacking. Thus in my view this alleged racist fostered more genuine goodwill than any platitudes from the bang-on luvvies ever will.

But as an outdoorsman, eco-hypocrites I can live with as I’m glad they’re around. They may still be right. However, the new wave of faux-activism sweeping across Twitter and Facebook is something that seriously worries me. It’s not going to end well.

Pathetic response

Consider, for example, the West’s pathetic response to the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by the terrorist group Boko Haram. This provoked the world’s largest-ever Twitter campaign, #bringbackourgirls, orchestrated by privileged people in leafy suburbia.

The almost religious belief that being exposed on Twitter is a fate worse than death is endemic among the metro elite. Somehow they cannot get it into their sophisticated skulls that being told you’re naughty on a tiny cellphone screen doesn’t cut much ice with a bunch of AK-47 toting thugs.

Even Michelle Obama righteously retweeted #bringbackourgirls (and, surprise, had her photograph taken while doing it). The result? Her husband didn’t send troops; he sent tweets. To his astonishment, the girls are still missing – whereas we all know that a bunch of kick-butt Special Forces would clean out Boko Haram in a couple of weeks.

If I was a kidnapped Christian girl, I know what I would want done.

This starkly shows the wider problem that many people now think nice words actually mean action. So by sending out a tweet, you don’t need to do much else because you have already ‘done something’.

For world leaders, the gap between glib clichés and brave deeds is a canyon. President Obama said (probably on Twitter) that if the Syrian government used chemical weapons, it would be a ‘red line’. They used chemical weapons. The red line is now sort of pinkish.

Even more bizarrely, Obama is supporting the rebels in the Syrian conflict, while Iran is supporting the Assad regime. But the rebels he’s supporting are also the ISIS jihadis currently invading Iraq and massacring Christians for fun. Obama is now asking Iran to help the Iraqi Government. So we have a crazy situation where you’re arch-enemies in one conflict, but new best friends in another.

Today, for the ruling elite in the West, talk is not only cheap – it’s policy.