Winning over the over 50's.

I’ve just come back from speaking to a Transport and General Workers Union retired members meeting on the subject of the Campaign Against Climate Change. There were about 40-50 people at the meeting and it was great to see the level of political discussion going on in the small community centre in East Oxford at three o clock on the Thursday afternoon. The chair did his best to put me at ease and talked about how they give local MP Andrew Smith a hard time when he pops in from time to time. When I came into the room they were discussing the issue of Yunush Baksh, a Unison health activist being victimised by his management. So apart from the age difference and the working men’s club seating arrangements I thought I had a fair shot at the getting some of the message over.

However, although it seemed to be going well (and they were an extremely polite audience), it was clear from the discussion that there was widespread scepticism about the science of gobal warming and a general feeling that nature will sort itself out. There was a lively discussion from the floor which would put most TU branches to shame. I felt a bit deflated at the end at the lack of interest, but then when you’ve been fighting all your life and your still on the streets protesting for a decent pension, some relative youngster telling you that the climate is the key battle hardly sounds very attractive. I had to agree that yes we are technically still in an ice age and that at some point in the far distant future we could be under a mile of ice anyway, so it really is a question of perspective.

I had an entertaining debate will a gentlemen who had obviously bought into the whole 'Great Global Warming Swindle' argument, in fact that program had far more resonance than Gore's Inconvenient Truth film which no one seemed to have heard of. Getting that film out into groups like this would be an extremely valuable exercise. It is easy to forget that we still haven't won the argument amongst large parts of the population.