A Lecture on Climate Change

Imagine that you have a few free hours this afternoon. You jump in your time machine and travel forward to a future where society has become a dystopia.

If, perchance, you are suffering from a medical condition, you decide to go see a physician. Naturally, the service is free, because this is a true dystopia.

You might have a sore throat. You might have pneumonia or the flu. You might have a headache or a toothache or even a belly ache.

Your state-sponsored physician might very well examine you. He might even prescribe a treatment. But then, to ice the cake, he will happily offer you a lecture on climate change.

No kidding. 

You will think that this is a fiction concocted by an overheated brain. In truth, it’s the new procedure, set down by the Royal College of Physicians in Once-Great Britain. 

Dare we mention that the highly estimable Julie Burchill is on the case. She finds it all rather ridiculous, in an article on Spiked:

… pontificating about something you’re not an expert in – just because you have a more elevated station than the people you’re preaching to – totally negates this democratic dream. It simply sets the stage for a silly symphony of busybodies.

Burchill explains:

This came to mind on reading that the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has this week issued new guidance instructing doctors, as ‘trusted members of the community’, to lecture their poor patients about the dangers of climate change. This is troubling enough given the average duration of a face-to-face appointment with a GP in England – when you finally get one – is just 10 minutes. Furthermore, this 11-page document also suggests that doctors should cause even more anxiety to patients by ‘working from home’ and cutting backs on tests and prescriptions – in the name of saving the planet, of course.

If you are looking for a reason to feel discouraged, catch that last sentence. Fewer tests, fewer prescriptions-- we are saving the planet, don’t you know?

Apparently, Justin Trudeau’s Canada has been leading the way to this dystopia:

When a society is as single-minded about scaring itself as the Kool-Aid-quaffing Canadians have been for some time, there’s no telling what rabbit holes we’ll race each other to the bottom of. It’s telling that the RCP document showcases such condescending gems from the World Health Organisation as ‘don’t debate the science’ and ‘talk about the health benefits of climate action’. I wonder what health benefits the people inside the ambulances blocked by Just Stop Oil over the past few years have gained from climate-change action?

Anyway, the Brits seem to have nothing much else to do so they are going to force hospitals to buy electric ambulances:

A rather chilling report published earlier this year in the Telegraph revealed that the NHS plans to introduce electric ambulances in order to reach green targets. Paramedics have already expressed concern about the dangerous effect this will have on patients, as ambulances spend hours recharging instead of collecting the sick. Former chancellor Nigel Lawson once famously said that the NHS is the closest thing that the English have to a religion, which makes doctors the priests. When the NHS itself follows the new false gods of everything from climate change to trans rights, the stage is set for the mayhem of unbridled magical thinking.

Let’s see. Are British medical practitioners healthier than you and I? Do they have better habits than we do? Apparently, they do not.

They’re hardly paragons of virtue. According to a 2021 study, around a quarter of medical students and GPs smoke. Their levels of alcohol and drug abuse are higher than that of the population generally. At my local hospital, the Royal Sussex County, dozens of patients have allegedly been killed by malpractice and alleged whistleblowers have been sacked. An alarming report in the Daily Mail this week claims that there are around 33 rapes and sexual assaults every week in hospitals in England and Wales. If the NHS really is our religion, it’s turned from being a benign Christian one into a rather savage paganism.

Savage paganism, a nice turn of a phrase. Cue Tara Isabella Burton’s book, Strange Rites. It is another pagan religious practice, the ones that include mutilating children.

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