Saving Mother Nature by Killing Industry

Mother Nature is breathing a sigh of relief. Senile Joe Biden is coming to her rescue. He is going to save Nature from patriarchal capitalism. Rest assured, he has boned up on the issue. And if he has questions he can ask his wife, the doctor, or an idiot bartendress from Queens. Better yet, he can receive guidance from the man who sold out American interests to Iran, a man whose name will go down next to that of Neville Chamberlain as the master of appeasement.

Anyway, people who hate capitalism and who hate prosperity even more are ready to damage the American energy business and even the American economy. It’s just what America needed, more rolling blackouts. More jobs leaving California and ultimately leaving America. 

Biden and his merry wokesters have no idea whatever of how to create jobs, but when it comes to deconstructing American industry, they are ready, willing and able. After all, they honed their skills burning down neighborhoods, looting businesses and harassing the police.

Now, Francis Menton, of the Manhattan Contrarian blog (via Maggie’s Farm) explains the truth behind the illusion.

Let's understand that it has nothing to do with science. Yet, climate change hysterics insist that theirs is settled science. They ignore the fact that there is no such thing as settled science. Tomorrow’s weather is not a fact-- it’s a hypothesis.

Menton passes along a story from Forbes Magazine, written by one Tilak Doshi. You will note throughout that the issue is not whether we can save Mother Nature but how well we can compete with our rivals in the Far East, beginning with China.

Say what you will, proponents of the Green agenda are not willing or able to compete in the civilizational clash with China. Perhaps they do not understand competition. Perhaps they are just too stupid to understand much of anything, but they want America to disarm unilaterally. China, whose policies are not constructed by a bartendress from Queens, is sitting back and enjoying the Western surrender.

Menton begins with this:

 Tilak Doshi at Forbes on December 5 summarizes the grand ambitions of our new progressive leaders:

If we are slated for a Biden presidency, we will get the most climate change-conscious administrations in US history. The climate agenda has been elevated to a “whole of government” approach, straddling the key portfolios of national security, foreign policy, and economy and finance. From January 20th 2021, “fighting global warming” will be elevated to a primary concern of the vast US government bureaucracies ranging from the EPA and the Federal Reserve to the Pentagon and the State Department.

And then, Menton offers a few facts, especially concerning how China has played America and the West in the Paris Agreement. As you know, Trump walked away from it. Biden insists that he wants to rejoin it, perhaps because it seriously disadvantages America:

The simple fact is that China is four times the size of the U.S. by population, and they aren’t going along with the “emissions reduction” thing even a little. Instead, China is in the process of increasing its own emissions by far more than any modest reductions the U.S. or for that matter Europe may ever be able to achieve. Start with the Paris Agreement, from which Trump extricated the U.S., but which Biden intends to rejoin:

The celebrated Paris Agreement was only so much of smoke and mirrors as far as China’s practitioners of strategic statecraft were concerned. For Obama’s end of the bargain, his administration unleashed such punitive measures on US’s own economic interests as the Clean Power Plan and the Waters Of The US Rule by Executive Orders (since the Paris Agreement was conveniently not a “treaty” requiring an impossible Senate approval). At Xi’s end, China promised [only] to peak its emissions by 2030 at a level and a rate of subsequent decline that were not specified.

Menton offers a few words about Chinese energy development, which includes building more coal-fueled power plants and more nuclear plants. One thing the Chinese government is not going to do, is to subject its people to blackouts and energy deprivation. It is not going to shut down the country to save Mother Nature:

And meanwhile, what is China doing with its own energy development? Doshi refers us to the Global Energy Monitor for June 2020. A few statistics:

After years of putting the brakes on the amount of coal plants newly proposed and permitted for construction, China is again stepping on the gas. . . . China currently has 249.6 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired capacity under development (97.8 GW under construction and 151.8 GW in planning), a 21% increase over end-2019 (205.9 GW). The amount of capacity under development (249.6 GW) is larger than the [entire] coal fleets of the United States (246.2 GW) or India (229.0 GW).

China recognizes stupid when it sees it. And in the green energy wokesters it sees full-blown stupid. So, why not exploit it:

Doshi points out (in language more delicate than I would have used) that China is being completely cynical in taking advantage of stupid U.S. green religion to hobble the U.S. economy even as China develops fossil fuel resources at full tilt:

China’s state planners are likely to have a keener appreciation for the laws of physics and economics in their assessments of decarbonization than their counterparts in the West who are busy pursuing a quixotic Green Industrial Revolution.

Even big business, as in Black Rock Corp, and big international institutions, as in the International Monetary Fund, are devoting themselves to the ultimate task-- saving Mother Nature from the Industrial Revolution and patriarchal capitalism:

And while we’re all in the crazy world of make believe, let’s check in on the IMF. From Real Clear Energy December 6, “The IMF’s Net-Zero Fairy Tale,” by Rupert Darwall:

With Britain, France, the European Union, and now America (soon to be under Joe Biden’s leadership) piling onto the net-zero bandwagon, you’d think that some objectivity about the economic costs and consequences about such absolutist carbon-emission policies would be in order. 

Traditionally, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) could be relied upon as a source of sound economic advice. No longer. Under its previous managing director, Christine Lagarde, and now its current one, Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF has traded economic integrity for green wokery – thus giving governments license to push radical green policies in the false belief that there are few or no downsides.

It’s going to be a long cold winter.