“The politicians have a choice: make greenery consumer-friendly, harnessing technology to preserve the public’s quality of life, or face a calamitous democratic uprising.”
For some time I have wondered how bad it has to get, in terms of power cuts, misery and problems to build up for the general public to turn against the net zero cult. Lockdowns depressed me because of their wide public support and the ability of policymakers and various opinion formers to frighten the public. I hope that the evidence of the disasters that lockdowns caused and their costs, all too obvious to ignore, might make it harder for the Green cult to gain such wide support. Remember, lockdowns were justified by slogans such as “two weeks to flatten the curve”. Those advocating for net zero and doing so by calling for more expensive, less reliable energy, as well as demanding things such as small families, far less travel, austerity and the rest are demanding something that stretches into infinity. And all the while they do so when the track record of doom predictions has been spotty, to be polite about it.
I don’t know how soon a public revolt against this will come. Far too much of the corporate world feels obliged to buy into the whole ESG agenda, for example. But from my admittedly anecdotal experience I sense a weariness creeping in. (Here is an example of pushback against “woke” corporate activity, which often overlaps with the Green agenda.) There is more discussion about the cant of it all.
Sooner or later the poor are going to demand the toys the West has (phones and computers, high speed rail, clean water and abundant food) and then the wheels will finally come off the whole Green-friendly scheme. At that point either the people in the West are going to have to give all those things up or accept that going green is a nice ideal, but it’s just not going to work to fill everyone’s material needs and bellies.
Then, and only then, will the people in charge be able to roll out the endgame: there are simply too many people on Earth and so most of us not only won’t be allowed to make babies but some of us are going to need to be taken out of the equation entirely. Not the people in charge, naturally, but the unimportant people who don’t have good enough Social Credit Scores or what have you.
It’s not Mass Sterilization and Genocide, it’s doing your part to save the Earth, and who doesn’t want that? So keep eating your insect paste and Soylent Green while watching your 100in plasma screen TV in your tiny, cramped apartment and trust your betters. Sure they eat real meat and live in palaces and enjoy their large families, but it is because they have to.
The left changed the order of “Diversity, Inclusion and Equity” when they noticed it spelled out “DIE” – that was bit obvious (even though the intention has always been to kill the West) so the order was changed to “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” – DEI which is indeed part of the ESG (Environmental and Social Governance) agenda (Agenda 2030 has a “cultural aspect” and that is covered by DEI).
Modern mega corporations are indifferent, if not actually hostile, to vulgar things such as “customers” – as the vast corporations are controlled by “educated” managers – who either believe in the doctrines they push, or have to pretend to believe in them. Have to pretend to believe in them – of be “cancelled” as a “racist”, “transphobe”, “climate denier” or whatever. There is no debate – such publications as the Guardian (a socialist newspaper funded by William “Bill” Gates) or the Washington Post (a socialist “liberal” newspaper funded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon) do not believe that debate should be allowed – “racists”, “climate deniers” and so on, are fit only to be destroyed. And as the corporations are funded by fiat money and the Credit Bubble financial system – this enables such things as the DEI and ESG agendas to continue, it is (to use Marxist language) the “economic base” for the “cultural and political superstructure” of DEI and ESG (Agenda 2030 and so on).
“But as the system collapses into terrible poverty will not the “Woke” political and cultural system fall?”
Well I certainly hope so – but nothing is automatic.
Without a “counter narrative” the population may assume that their poverty (starvation?) is due to insufficient Collectivism – the Corporate Media will certainly tell them that, reinforcing the doctrines taught by both government and private schools (oh yes – most private schools are also “Woke”).
And if elections one day become important again, with some candidates (candidates with real party backing – so they have a chance to win) actually standing against “Net Zero”, “Diversity” and so on, what is to stop the establishment just rigging elections – as they do in some States of the United States.
Still – let us hope for the best. It is certainly possible that a true landslide of votes can overcome any election fraud at the margin.
Those still about will see in 2024 – that, the American elections of that year, is, mostly likely, the final chance for the West to save itself.
The West can not survive without the United States – and American can not take much more of the DEI and SEG (sexual mutilation of children, fiat money, Credit Bubble finance, and all the rest of it) 2024 is the last chance to change course.
“And the United Kingdom?” – I think it is best not to discuss the United Kingdom, there is no good reason to upset people with things that can not, now, be averted.
However, I will say this to Alastair Heath – as someone who has worked in elections since 1979.
It takes a lot of local work to win elections (it is almost a tribal conflict – with generations of people in political parties) – and the major parties in the United Kingdom are, at the top, committed to the international agendas (DEI and ESG) that he deplores.
One only need listen to the Prime Minister in the House of Commons – the Covid injections are “safe and effective” (he said so only yesterday), “Net Zero” is for the good of us all, “Diversity” (DEI) is wonderful, abortions galore in Northern Ireland (brought in by ministers who endlessly tell people how Christian they are), and-so-on. The economic and cultural (societal) policies of this country are set – and Labour would do the same, indeed more (much more) so. The officials and “experts” are agreed on everything – and the politicians follow along behind, the political parties are NOT the same – but there is a lot of common ground, and it is not good common ground. As the saying has it “when all parties agree on something – it is wrong”.
So, I say again, it is best not to discuss what all this will lead to. Let us hope that things will be better than many of us fear.
Prophets of doom like Matt Hancock and Karl Marx were able to get people to follow them because both of them – for all their wrong-headedness and probably evil intentions – at least offered a hope – a specious one, a bribe no doubt, but something – that better outcomes would follow their prescriptions. Whether the diagnosis or the prescription were correct is immaterial: people did as they were told because they were led to believe that an outcome they liked would follow.
Prophets of climate doom though are on a whole other level. They offer nothing. Take this medicine, they say. We don’t say it will make you better; we say you will die, and take all of us with you, if you don’t. There’s no promise of salvation at all. A nihilism even Jim Jones didn’t aspire to.
If the climate doomsters – to use a Johnsonism – have ever described, or even contemplated, what a beneficial outcome to heir hateful prescription might look like, I must have missed it. “Save The Planet” is all they can offer: maddeningly, the third rock from the sun spins on, indifferent to their childish tantrums.
Well at least we are going to have a new coal mine – it is not much, but it is better than nothing.
Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka’s 1986 novel, ‘Nature’s End’, is beginning to look uncomfortably prescient…
“It is 2025 and the planet is rapidly approaching environmental death. Dr. Gupta Singh, a Hindu guru with a Jim Jones-like following, has proposed the suicide, by lottery, of one-third of the world’s population. His followers have elected a Depopulationist majority in Congress. Led by journalist John Sinclair, a small group hopes to prove that Singh is a fraud. Singh is a formidable enemy: he cancels the medical-cosmetological treatment that the 72-year-old Sinclair (who looks 46 due to the treatment) receives, causing Sinclair to age rapidly. Singh sets the feared tax police after Sinclair, alters his records, and wipes out his wealth….”
You will, of course, book your appointment and take your one-chance-in-three dose when the time comes, on pain of being rendered an unperson in the all-powerful databases, unable to work, trade, travel, attend school or college, shop for food, access medical treatment, etc.
The brain-washed supporters of nett zero would seem to be spread across the age groups. However, only us oldies have ever had to stare down adversity. Anyone under 50 years old has never experienced real pain in life. And I mean by this such things as: food rationing; petrol rationing; power cuts; strikes (winter of discontent, 1979?); high mortgage interest rates …… I could go on. But anyone over 50 (or 75 in my case) will have faced all sorts of sh*t in their lives. So when the real consequences of nett zero start to bite, the children and grandchildren of my generation are going to squeal and take to the streets. Power cuts will be a shock, especially when they can’t charge their iPhones. And the currently influential ‘laptop class’ will be beside themselves when they can’t log on because of power cuts.
Like a lot of people of my age, I’ve seen it all before. The fads, the in-thing. I’m on my fifth recession, and I’ve paid my dues with fifteen per cent interest rates, and I still have my post war ration card (thanks mum) and my petrol coupons from whenever (senior moment!). My experience is that in the end, and given enough pain, governments are pragmatic. Ministers think about their own ar*es
.
Power cuts, thanks to nett zero stupidity and blowing up coal power stations, are likely to be the hill upon which nett zero dies. Ninety per cent of the UK hasn’t experienced power cuts. But out here in the sticks where I live, it’s not unusual. We’ve had three this year and the one last February lasted 48 hours. No matter, we have a multi-fuel stove, a generator and three camping stoves. I can’t see most of the population, especially those in apartments, being enamoured with even the predicted three-hour power cuts, especially when they decamp to Starbucks and find it’s out too and they can’t get their soy latte!
Summary: it has to get a lot worse before it gets better. The sh*t has to hit the fan.
Yet Another Chris
One thing that has become very obvious is that no one, for or against the NetZero death cult, has actually read the original Budyko, Seller et al, papers from the 1960 and 1970’s that set the whole CO2 is evil ball rolling. The Energy Balance Model papers. It was the lack of discussion of the first principals in the academic “global warming” textbooks that made me track down the original papers. And Budykos book from the early 1980’s.
I had to reread them a whole bunch of times because the basic model errors are so egregious, so fundamental, that it took a while to convince myself that no, I am not missing something. My background is the type of math and theoretical physics that makes the typical PhD in the areas run away screaming.
The Budyko/Sellers models assumes that the surface of the earth has no temperature (I am not making this up), has no non-external energy source equilibrium temp (I am not making this up), and that the sun and only the sun is the only energy input into the system, (I am not making this up).
So in Budyko/Sellers world they ignore the temp of the physical surface of the earth (11C give or take) take the average surface air temp (16C) and then calculate the theoretical apparent temp of the sun at the surface of the earth (the black body temp -17C) and, ta-da, you have 33C missing. So the “missing” 33C must come some mystery effect in earths atmosphere. (I am not making this up).
These model assumption would only valid on somewhere like the surface of the moon. Which having no atmosphere, and a surface temp difference of zero, of course has no “Atmospheric Forcing” effect.
So the 33C Atmospheric Forcing effect supposedly caused by CO2 becomes maybe 5C. Which is well inside margin of error territory of all models. Every last one. Now where this gets even funnier is that the oceans have their own very high temp heat source. Mid ocean ridges geo-thermal vents. And papers published more than a decade ago shows that the volume of water circulated through these high temp (400C+) geothermal vents is equivalent to the volume of all the world oceans every 10^8 years. Say 10 million years.
And as the average temp of the worlds oceans is around 16C and the average temp of the surface atmosphere is 16C then the temp deficit may actually be zero. Or close enough to zero to be within the natural inter-glacial temp variations. (I am not making this up).
So Global Warming will prove to be the biggest scientific fraud since Lysenkoism. And eugenics. There is literally no valid science there. None whatsoever. This is before you even get to the “Global Warming climate models”. Which are junk math. Anyone who ever had to write PDE numerical solution software from scratch will know exactly why.
Which is really a shame, because at my Minnesota home we already have 6-foot snowbanks around the parking areas. Was looking forward to some temperate days ahead.
@yet another chris
Indeed (greetings from a 62 year old whipper snapper).
We are in the middle of a spell of hardly abnormal December weather with clear skies and a bit of night frost. There will be a bit of snow in a few places (unlikely here on the south coast though).
However “day after tomorrow” if the general hysteria is anything to go by.
The only “nett zero” I see is intestinal fortitude.
@X trapnel
If I may, the nett zero whores visualise a golden future (I think many of them do truly believe this shite – they must really).
For themselves.
One if the most fascinating aspects of this whole cult is the way so many people can believe that these two parallel universes can occupy the same space: your universe (“denier”, “heritic”, ” brexit moron”, “trump nazi”….) will be eat bugs, no travel, suck up your pronouns and pay reparations white (male) cancer. After all it’s your fault.
Theirs will be endless “green” energy, “diverse” creativity and peace. Justice for all and free stuff (after all, said white cancer is an unlimited resource) for evermore.
The thing about getting older is that you do develop a sense of perspective.
I do know a few people who are “green” (rather fewer miles on the clock than I) and I’m actually starting to feel a bit sorry for them as they’re not bad people, just woefully misled (one even has a milk float)
That said, I am only human (honest!) and a titter will be difficult to suppress.
Paul Marks: The left changed the order of “Diversity, Inclusion and Equity” when they noticed it spelled out “DIE”
Joyous.
Without a “counter narrative” the population may assume that their poverty (starvation?) is due to insufficient Collectivism – the Corporate Media will certainly tell them that, reinforcing the doctrines taught by both government and private schools (oh yes – most private schools are also “Woke”).
This is why continuing to bang away about better ideas, to form that “counter narrative” wherever possible, is so important. The fertile soil of better things must be prepared. In the 1940s and 50s, writers such as Ayn Rand, FA Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Isabel Paterson, George Orwell, Karl Popper, and others, pushed against the seemingly unstoppable collectivism of the time. And in time, that “counter narrative” gained ground.
Anyone wanting more insight into the holes and hollows of climate alarmism should read the booklet ‘Climate at a Glance’. It looks at 30 topics often used to scare us about climate, and shows how each one is not at all alarming.
The alliance between the Frankfurt School Marxists and the Credit Bubble bankers (and general corrupt Corporate types) continues – and not just on “Net Zero”.
The fake Pastor Raphael Warnock (who was just given a seat in the United States Senate – sorry “elected”) is correctly quoted in the Economist magazine as saying that “poverty is violence” – standard Marxist rhetoric, poverty is violence (which it is not) so violence (even killing babies) is not violence – but the Economist magazine does not denounce this Marxism, certainly not. The whole “Lexington” column this week is puff piece for the Marxist Warnock.
I was once accused on this site of not knowing what side I am on – in reality it is not difficult to decide. If the corporations are on the side of the Marxist Warnock, and they are (see the house journal of the Corporate State – the Economist magazine) then I am against the corporations – and everyone else should be against the fiat money, Credit Bubble finance, supported “Woke” corporations as well.
Not just on “Net Zero” – on everything.
Oh by the way – the policies “Reverent” Warnock and “Lexington” support will not reduce poverty – they are designed (yes designed) to INCREASE poverty.
“Yes Paul – but one day the Marxists and the Corporate Statists will turn on each other”.
Perhaps – but they are certainly in alliance at the moment.
As for the poverty their “Progressive” policies produce – just look in the streets of Atlanta.
“But it is not their intention to produce poverty” – yes it is. The more poverty there is the more vicious parasites (such as the “Reverent” Warnock) can use it – to gain more power, and crush what is left of independent life.
This is the aim that the Marxists and the Corporate Statists share – which is why they support Net Zero and all the rest of it.
“…And all the while they do so when the track record of doom predictions has been spotty, to be polite about it.”
Maybe we can hope that this is what will be the undoing of the doom merchants. What used to be known as global warming has now been around for several decades. After all those years of continuous warming I’m scraping ice off my windscreen in December 2022 just as I was in December 1982. The ice at the North Pole is still there despite predictions that it would be all gone by 2005. Surely it must eventually dawn on even the slowest among us that climate “scientist” are consistently wrong.
I learned on a Podcast, The History of Rome that the life of the average Roman citizen, a valuable status to be buy or be born into for a very long time – Paul the Apostle used the citizenship his father had bought for his family to duck out of being flogged and later have his case transferred to under a Roman magistrate -, mostly consisted of going to going to one Patron after another to beg for some cash and to wherever the Bread (“Corn” was the word for “Grain” to them, not a variant of Maize, and it could be very rough stuff, resulting in anyone over the age of 40 who was not wealthy having molars ground down to the nub – with bread like that who needs British Dentistry?) was distributed.
Then some of them would go to their jobs in the, often in service industry.
The citizens of Rome were dependent on Benefits, and later on the formal transition to Serfdom was facilitated by high taxes and bad coinage policies that turned bronze washed with silver into tiny bronze coins (numismatists call them Type 4 Post-Constantine coins – they are often smaller than my pinky nail).
According to this podcast, a minority of Roman citizens, seeking the status that Tony Hillerman, describing some subjects of the Spanish Empire in the Santa Cruces Mountains of New Mexico who grew beans in a town with a meager stream and scant rainfall call “Poor but their own masters.”, signed up for the Legions. They could expect to be killed before they had a chance of retiring and payed only sporadically in nearly worthless coins, but they had a chance of retiring to a little land to raise a family on in the provinces.
This podcaster also mentioned when the Gracchi Brothers’ Bread Dole, as self-destructive to Rome and its citizens as the NHS or Social Security was finally abandoned:
In the West with the loss of the North African (Carthage thrived because it was in a setting that was agriculturally rich) and Sicily to the Germanic tribes, and in the East with the loss of Egypt to the the Sassanids (who were soon overtaken by Mohammed and the successor Caliphates).
Will losses as disastrous as the Romans and the Byzantines had to go through before ending a centuries old open wound of a policy have to happen before Great Britain learns its lesson?
There is no comfort in the knowledge that there is a lot of rot in an empire.
The reason I do not address the question in the OP is that it is a dead horse that has been beaten so much and for so long no one has to dig a grave for it. It has been beaten 6 feet into the ground.
I want to with everyone at Samizdata a Merry Christmas and an Intellectually and Actually Productive New Year.
Fam of Slackwire Clowns.
Yes – the Corn dole (subsidised, rather than free, at first) undermined the Roman Republic. Although the vast slave tilled farms that developed also undermined the citizen-farmers the Republic depended on – as did the conscription of these citizen farmers to fight Carthage in the Punic Wars. The wars went on for years – and when they finally returned their farms were ruined. Although one can exaggerate that – even in Italy most people were either small farmers or craftsmen (not slave owners or members of the Roman city mob).
As for serfdom, both farming and industrial, it was not technology of “forces of production” as the Marxists falsely claim – it was indeed imposed by the Emperor Diocletian.
It was a simple as that – Diocletian set up government weapons and equipment factories, and passed laws saying that if you worked at them your children had to work at them to (industrial serfdom). And he also passed laws saying that if you worked on the land (as the vast majority of Roman citizens did) then you could not leave the land – to try and avoid the crushing taxes that Diocletian imposed.
It was a political “top-down” thing – nothing to do with “new technology” “forces of production – leading to a change in the relations of production” as the Marxists falsely claim.
How far back does the de facto alliance between the Corporate State and the Marxists go back?
I do not know – but I can make a few informed guesses.
2004 John Kerry (not the Net Zero person for the Biden Administration) was more of a Fellow Traveller than a Marxist – yes he worked for the Marxists during the Vietnam War (lying before Congress, he even gave his false testimony in uniform – and he worked for the Marxists at the Paris “peace conference”), but there is no evidence that John Kerry actually is a Marxist – or even that he understood Marxism.
However, the keynote speaker at the Kerry Democrat Convention in 2004 did understand Marxism – he had Marxists on both sides of his family (he was a “Red Diaper baby” as the saying goes) and had undertaken Marxist activity for many years – that keynote speaker was Barack Obama.
In 2008 Barack Obama ran for the Presidency – and many people alerted the mainstream media, including the Economist magazine, to the family background and personal activities of Barack Obama. After all such a person, if they became President, could undermine Freedom of Speech in the schools and universities – with the Herbert Marcuse trick that freedom of speech was “repressive tolerance” which “harmed disadvantaged groups”, and they could undermine the private ownership of LAND – by using the EPA and other government bodies to regulate “private” land out of real existence.
Yet the mainstream media, including the Economist magazine, SUPPORTED Barack Obama – it was not that they “did not know” – the evidence was sent to them multiple times.
So even in 2008 the de facto alliance between the Corporate State (such as the Economist magazine) and the Marxists, had already come into existence.
“Ah, but Paul – it is Frankfurt School Marxism, not Classical Marxism”.
It is still totalitarianism.
I know the case against John Kerry, now the “Climate Czar” pushing “Net Zero” in the West – whilst the People’s Republic of China (and other powers) laugh at him.
Yes Senator Kerry, as he then was, had the most leftist voting record in the United States Senate in 2004 (Barack Obama not yet being elected), and yes his work to aid and comfort the enemies of the United States during the Vietnam War was treason, he even gave lying testimony to the Congress in-uniform, as well as actively helping the Marxist enemy at the Paris “peace conference”.
However, I do not think John Kerry is a Marxist – unlike Barack Obama who was certainly a Marxist for many years – and when did he stop being a Marxist?).
John Kerry has always struck me as a rather stupid man – a rich kid, playing at being a far leftist, without really understanding what a far leftist is (indeed without really understanding much of anything).
Barack Obama is not a good man – indeed he is a deeply malevolent (yes malevolent) man, but he is not stupid. On the contrary he is highly intelligent.
And it is Barack Obama, and his associates, who are in control of the United States government today.
How did such people take over the Democratic Party? Well it has long been far to the left of where outsiders think it is.
It is well known that Hillary Clinton was a follower of Saul Alinsky (“Rules for Radicals”) – but even Bill Clinton was not the moderate he presented himself as being.
Bill Clinton, even in his youth, hero-worshipped the late Huey Long of Louisiana.
Yes Mr Long was NOT a Marxist – but he was no moderate either, Huey Long was (for example) far to the left of Franklin Roosevelt.
Essentially Huey Long was what the Romans would have called a “Populari” – someone who wanted to plunder the rich and share out the proceeds of robbery among his followers (after taking his own cut).
The corruption of the Clintons was, in a weird way, a matter of PRINCIPLE – like Huey Long before him, President Clinton believed that everything should-be corrupt, that this was the nature of things.
The institutional corruption of the FBI and the “Justice” Department dates from this time – as the Clintons (Bill as much as Hillary) worked very hard to make everything corrupt.
Remind you of anything? It should.
The institutional corruption of CHIGAGO.
The Chicago Machine was famous for its corruption – and young idealists (and in their, utterly sick way, they were idealists) such as Barack and Michelle witnessed that corruption – and understood that people like them (Collectivists) could take over that corrupt “Machine”.
If one looks at Chicago today it did not get this way by accident – it was made to be this way.
And they wish to make the whole of the United States as Hellish as Chicago now is. And even Chicago has yet, a long way to fall.
Although he is not, in my opinion, a Marxist (being more of a “Fellow Traveller” to use the old term) John Kerry was always certainly deeply Collectivist – for example he had (as I have mentioned) the worst record of anyone in the United States Senate in 2004.
The fact that the Economist magazine endorsed Senator Kerry to be President of the United States in 2004 should have shown anyone that the Economist is most certainly NOT a “free market”, “Classical Liberal”, “roll back the state” publication – it was, even in 2004, a Corporate State publication, dishonestly pretending to be a free market publication.
So later developments, such as the Economist magazine supporting the bank bailouts of 2008, and it supporting “Net Zero” today, should not have come as a surprise.
It was “three weeks to flatten the curve” in the UK and “fifteen days” in the US. Dr Birx did the latter and is known to have been lying at the time, fully intending it from the first to be much longer, just a bait and switch, happy to put that fact on record.
Related, re woke scams possibly unravelling, Gov DeSantis recently announced that Florida will be holding accountable those responsible for mRNA side effects (my words, not a quote).
We’ll see…but as others (Jeff Childers, author of “C&C News”) have noted, it will at least put such prosecutions on the national stage.