If you are a climate denier like me you wonder how long the Net Zero madness can go on. Starting with the idea that CO2 is a problem: a gas that represents 0.04 percent of the atmosphere? Really! 400 parts per million is 0.04 percent. You do the math. Then there is methane, the problem with cows. Methane in the atmosphere is 2 parts per million, or 0.0002 percent. That’s a problem? I gotta bridge…
Yet the fact is that almost all national politicians are, at least notionally, on board with the Net Zero narrative and that global warming is a problem and “fossil fuels” are the cause.
The fight against climate change is both a religion, a fight against the Devil, and a war, a fight against the enemy.
I would say that, even if global warming is a problem, the chances are 400 parts per million that national gubmint programs, or global UN programs or WEF “Great Reset” programs are going to make a blind bit of difference. In fact, I would say that the chances are 97.2 percent that, whatever the great and the good propose, it will turn out to be the wrong thing.
Whatever the great and the good propose, it will Make Things Worse.
I read today at Steve Sailer’s blog a Tablet piece on the problem. Tablet looks at the educated-class Narratives: “intersectionality, decolonization studies, the Iran nuclear deal, Russiagate, Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, critical race theory, COVID lockdowns” that all good people agree on.
[All their ideas] [fall] apart at the seams within seconds of contact with reality, and yet [the] defenders got more sure of themselves, more performatively boastful, more passionate and gleeful about smearing anyone who dared to question them.
And we see all the university-approved student activist groups issuing lefty-screed statements on the Hamas atrocities. These people really have No Clue, but boy, can they spew out Lefty Narrative at warp speed.
So, the lefty screeds are part religion, that Israel is evil, and part war propaganda, that the Israelis are the enemy.
Do you remember, dear lefty friends, how various advanced thinkers, back in the 20th century, proposed that the combination of religion and politics be called ”totalitarianism?” And that this combination was a Bad Thing, especially in the hands of chaps like Stalin and Mao? I am thinking of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Francois Revel.
Then there was Michael Novak’s book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism where he proposed that there should be what I call a Greater Separation of Powers between the political sector, the economic sector, and the moral/cultural sector.
Now, I believe that it is morally, economically, and politically sensible to separate the three sectors.
Not to mention practical. Know what, lefty? It really works to separate the political from the economic from the moral/cultural. Scientists agree that the social and political experiments of the 20th century conducted by social-scientists Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong conclusively proved this.
But I also believe that a corollary is true. If you do not separate the political from the economic from the moral/cultural you will loose the Hounds of Hell upon the human race.
You can see why Revel titled his book The Totalitarian Temptation. Every intellectual or political leader is eternally tempted to clothe his power project in the holy raiment of the fight against Satan. Why? Because it often works. Because it often rallies the people into a sacred unity and mobilizes them to become the useful idiots of the politician’s power project.
And hey, it’s not as if the political leader will die in the effort to save humanity. The leader of Hamas is presently sheltering in Qatar.
And I believe this notion particularly applies to the economy and the market. Yes, there are plenty of reasons to suggest that the workers can get hammered by the market. And that business managers are less than thoughtful about the lives of their employees. Not to mention monopolies and pollution and Jewish financiers. And OMG credit crises! And cheap foreign labor, and I know not what.
In my view, most economic disruptions are the fault of government wars and government programs to loot the economy for its supporters. But by all means set the lawyers to work on mitigating the effect of monopolies, pollution, and greedy moneylenders.
Meanwhile, the end of the Net Zero madness can’t come soon enough.