The outbreak of Chris Packham, Hugh Jackman and other Net Zero Celebrities...

Stick to the scripts.

Has anyone seen Wolverine recently? You know Logan, the DC comics mutant with a powerful regenerative ability which comes in handy to repair his knuckles from retractable forearm claws. The character that made Hugh Jackman famous, with butcher’s chop whiskers and ever-present cigar, is based upon the solitary and muscular carnivore that likes to live in dens. It’s often hard to distinguish an actor from their defining role, but a gormless Hugh Jackman gushing over Bill Gates’ book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need made it easy, sounding like someone recently introduced to enthusiasm without being told how to apply it effectively. His sycophantic advert could not have been further from the brooding menace of his alter-ego; any wolverines present would have retracted into their dens in shame. The world’s greatest showman isn’t the greatest salesman.

It’s unclear how Jackman has ignored the book’s climate computer modelling that has invariably not transpired. And that if the modelling got it wrong before, why are we now to believe it’s correct? As ever with celebrities, they seem to think that their presence alone is enough to persuade us of their brilliance. It’s the perfect demonstration of how even a lifetime of favourable camera angles, CGI and high salaries fails to develop critical thinking. Gates evidently has not studied climate science, and simply promotes that the IPCC reports and models are correct. The book’s title alone so strongly promotes the idea that climate science is ‘settled’ that it has done its job before you’ve even opened it.

Hugh Jackman meanwhile has the look of a man seeing his kids at gunpoint behind the camera, with a performance that wouldn’t get applause at a goodwill conference. He displays the critical acumen of a car manufacturer’s brochure, not that we should mention cars, they’re evil and to be eventually banned. But, praising a book is the next best thing to writing it, only without all the agony of choosing a flattering author picture, the font and actually writing 120,000 words; if indeed Gates found time to write it while promoting Covid jabs, bankrolling the Guardian newspaper, buying up US farmland, promoting reduced meat consumption while fuming at Italy banning his lab-grown fake meat and purchasing jumpers to best emphasise his moobs.

What’s particularly revealing is that if Jackman actually cared about the climate, rather than behaving like Bill Gates has dirt on him, he’d be posting on the socials about his delight at recent evidence from peer-reviewed scientific literature that Co2 does not cause global warming (Kubicki et al., 2024, 2022, 2020). As would Gates. This is great news, it means we don’t need to inflict the disabling Net Zero upon an unwitting population, yet there is silence. At the end of Gates’ book, it says, “It might seem ironic that I’m calling for more government intervention.” Jackman’s view on more collective State interference in our lives might be something else his maverick, non-conformist and frankly far more interesting alter ego is likely to disagree with.

What is is with celebrities telling us what to do and how we should live? It’s an unwelcome departure from Noel Coward’s view that ‘the job of an actor is to learn the lines and don't bump into the furniture'. Preaching to other people only reveals the necessity of their lines being written for them, while hoping they might not see the Warning. Dangerous Drop sign.

We have millionaire Socialist Mark Ruffalo telling us that fossil fuels need to be phased out. When I say us, he means the West. On China and India’s commitment to dependable fossil fuels, leaving the West to unreliable renewables, he’s lamentably silent; as most people wish his Hulk would be rather than gormlessly yelling ‘hulk smash,’ at (presumably) petrol cars.

Then there’s Chris Packham, the cuddly communist from BBC Spring Watch, who prioritises butterflies and badgers over the need to productively farm our land. He might even be an ‘expert’ on wolverines. A cynic might find it convenient that Chris Packham, a BBC climate catastrophiser, revealed his autism a few years ago, before turning up his megaphone on how we need to reduce Co2 emissions. After all, who wants to be accused of attacking someone with autism? Perhaps he learnt more from the cross-dressing love cheat cuttlefish in his series ‘World's Sneakiest Animals' than first meets the eye.

Packham was recently making false accusations on BBC that went predictably unchallenged. He was recently with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC’s On Sunday where he explained the recent Dubai downpour and wildfires (obviously elsewhere) were evidence of global warming. When asked for the evidence from an unusually sceptical guest on the BBC, Packham replied that ‘it comes from something called science.’ Despite the condescending reply coming from the same drawer as the answer to ‘why is the sky blue?’ as ‘because it is’, Packham considered his vacuous reply as the fatal blow, despite the umpire being on his side. None of these celebrities have interest in open discussion. They know that misplaced fury at the apparent thoughtfulness of mankind makes them appear as thoughtful and caring.

Packham accused the Net Zero challenging Daily Sceptic website as being funded by the oil industry. This is patently untrue, and the inaction of the BBC’s multi-million-pound disinformation department to ‘address the growing threat of disinformation’ rather exposes its bias. What they really mean is the threat of counter information challenging their glaringly obvious narrative; it’s like having foxes on henhouse guard duty. In an admission of guilt this has since been removed by the BBC.

With celebs exposed to the same media often fed pre-written climate catastrophising stories from billionaire-backed Covering Climate Now (CC Now), it’s little wonder they’re incensed, they’re supposed to be, they’ve been purposefully triggered into action; it’s just they have more people to tell. And what an easy job.

No one asks these celebrities why the world needs a great reset by unelected supranational organisations. There’s no searching questions such as why their much promoted cozy-sounding stakeholder capitalism and multi-stakeholder partnerships actually appear to give corporations more power over society, and democratic institutions less, while disabling competitiveness of western nations. Meanwhile China and India spin petrol hot-hatch donuts over Net Zero by building more coal powered power stations that you can shake an Extinction Rebellion placard at. Perhaps most importantly there’s no sense of shame at flying people like Idris Elba into the annual WEF summit to promote the importance of global organisation intervention.

These are actors, entirely dependent upon Directors and screen writers to ply their trade. They generally don’t question anything beyond asking crew not to lean on their trailer, having make-up dept. on speed dial and enquiring how they should best walk into a room. These days perhaps they ideally should concentrate on how to best walk out of them.