Tag: Envirostatism

Environmental Equity

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It’s not enough that everyone benefits. Everyone has to benefit by exactly the same amount.

From The Babbling Beaver, an MIT focused satire site: MIT environmental scientists despair over inability to prevent windmill racism

Unsurprisingly, these woke MIT ’scientists’ have little imagination, and less literary knowledge.

The solution is found in Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron.

Applied to this new social justice outrage, it would simply require forcing the oppressors to install pollution generators in their houses, and add small bypass valves in their cars to leak exhaust fumes into the cabin. If they have an EV, make them carry a small, lit coal burner. That coal thing is a good equity idea anyway, until we get more nukes.

On the other hand, we’ll need to have speakers placed in the homes in ‘communities of color’ to make the sound of wind turbines, and quite a few pigeons (however many it takes to be equivalent to the Bald Eagles, Condors, etc. which fly into windmills) will have to be put into blenders in the ‘disadvantaged communities.’

Then everyone will be more equal.

Implicit in the actual article is an increased cost for electricity. The pollution discrepancy might persist no matter what, but at least we can raise the price for everyone. Then we can complain about electricity affordability for the poor. The MIT gurus didn’t mention this, it’s one of those Bastiat* ‘unseens.’

*Dead, white male. Son of a successful capitalist. Member of the French National Assembly… I.e., a prominent oppressor.

National Strategery

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Elizabeth Nickson’s post on Substack generated this post. Read first:
Net Zero is Predator Class Policy
Using it, they will monetize air, land and water for themselves, in perpetuity

After reading it, I jumped sideways to a previous wondering: Why has Bill Gates become the largest farmland owner in the United States. What will he do with a quarter million acres? Is he thinking about establishing a competitor to Archer Daniels Midland? Is he going to build solar panel deserts over the grazing lands, or vast windmill excrescences where ethanol precursors once grew (that precursor is corn, if it wasn’t obvious)?

Could he be thinking about taking hundreds of thousands of acres of American farmland out of production simply to reduce cow farts and fertilizer use?

If that last seems like an insane idea, first consider that Bill Gates is not like you. The cost of this farmland is not going to affect his lifestyle. He can indulge an expensive, virtuous whim.

Second, there is the fact that there is a well established model for strategically buying lots of land for environmental purposes. For example, The Nature Conservancy.

My uncle was the driving force behind The Nature Conservancy, and I trusted it because he was a consummate and dedicated outdoorsman. He would unquestionably preserve human use of the land for fishing and hunting – for people who could hike to the sites.

Possibly “ableist” problematic today.

And Federal cash wasn’t showering upon him; limiting any vast ambitions to, mostly, the ultra-wealthy private citizens he could convince to donate.

Of course, trusting man for long term institutional probity is a fundamental mistake.

The Nature Conservancy PR is up to that challenge. One of their goals by 2030:

We will partner with communities around the globe to conserve 650 million hectares (about 1.6 billion acres) of land. Together we will restore and improve management of working lands, support the leadership of Indigenous Peoples as land stewards, and conserve critical forests, grasslands and other habitats rich in carbon and biodiversity.

The Nature Conservancy is a non-profit, giving them instant credibility with people who don’t know that ‘non-profit’ does not mean noble. Everyone wants to preserve natural beauty, no one wants pollution. This mission sounds wonderful, though that interpretation does depend on exactly what restrictions they decide to apply to the particular real estate they manage to control.

Balanced human well being is not a concept ecostatist organizations readily acknowledge. Spotted owls and snail darters are more important. We need people who argue this position to keep us conscientious. We definitely do not need them in control.

Less charitable interpretations can be applied depending on the definitions of “steward,” critical,” and especially “conserve.” All those things can be read to mean “the benefits of removing the land entirely from human use.” Could The Nature Conservancy be motivated by that idea? Well, they have arguably gone there in the past.

Third, consider efforts by the Federal government to prevent human activity on 30% of American land and water by 2030. The Nature Conservancy is onboard with the 30×30 project, to conserve 30% of US land and water by 2030. ‘Conserve’ here is reasonably read to mean excluding human activity. No crops, no livestock, no vehicles, no windmills, no solar panels, no resource extraction, etc..

An example:

While Congress was passing the Inflation Reduction Act (Inflation Act) last month that included $20 Billion for the climate crisis conservation programs, the radical left was rolling out the next targeted phase of their attack to achieve 30×30 (permanently protect 30 percent of our lands and oceans by 2030). This one is focused on the western federal lands.

An article entitled “Rewilding the American West,” (Rewild) was strategically released in several progressive publications, and then quickly reprinted and cited by others around the time the Inflation Act was passed. The Oxford Academia Journal Bio-Science was first, followed by recreational publications such as Outside Magazine, and then the international World Economic Forum.

The plan is to remove livestock grazing, mining, oil and gas, timber production and eventually recreation, from the western federal lands, and prioritize these areas for wolves and beavers. They have identified 11, 5000 square-kilometer reserves that total approximately 13.5 million acres. These reserves are to be connected, with additional federal land acquisitions and conservation easements on private lands, to create continuous wildlife corridors from Mexico to Canada…

We can thank Bill Gates for saving the green agenda. He is taking credit for convincing Senator Manchin (D-WV) to pass the lighter version. It should be no surprise then, that livestock grazing is first on the chopping block. After all, Gates has significant investments in plant-based meat companies and funds efforts to convince people to stop eating beef. Just like the Robber Barons of the Industrial Age, Bill Gates is bankrolling the environmental movement to drive out the competition.

And the Biden Administration is upping the ante with an executive order it calls a ‘New National Strategy’. As Nickson points out this is monetizing the air and water:
A New National Strategy to Reflect Natural Assets on America’s Balance Sheet

Fourth, the mention of the World Economic Forum in that quote is intriguing. This group has inspired a number of conspiracy theories with its “Great Reset” proposal. Dire and hazy speculations abound, but we need not consider those fever dreams given what the WEF has to say about themselves.

The magic words are ‘stakeholder capitalism’, a concept that WEF chairman Klaus Schwab has been hammering for decades and which occupies pride of place in the WEF’s Great Reset plan from June 2020. The idea is that global capitalism should be transformed so that corporations no longer focus solely on serving shareholders but become custodians of society by creating value for customers, suppliers, employees, communities and other ‘stakeholders’. The way the WEF sees stakeholder capitalism being carried out is through a range of ‘multi-stakeholder partnerships’ bringing together the private sector, governments and civil society across all areas of global governance.

The idea of stakeholder capitalism and multi-stakeholder partnerships might sound warm and fuzzy, until we dig deeper and realise that this actually means giving corporations more power over society, and democratic institutions less.

The plan from which the Great Reset originated was called the Global Redesign Initiative. Drafted by the WEF after the 2008 economic crisis, the initiative contains a 600-page report on transforming global governance. In the WEF’s vision, “the government voice would be one among many, without always being the final arbiter.” Governments would be just one stakeholder in a multi-stakeholder model of global governance. Harris Gleckman, senior fellow at the University of Massachusetts, describes the report as “the most comprehensive proposal for re-designing global governance since the formulation of the United Nations during World War II.”

Stakeholder capitalism is just a way to give equal weight to the opinions of those who have no skin in the game. It’s the origin of ESG. If you don’t like the TV show, change the channel. If you don’t think the company is virtuous enough, don’t invest.

The WEF is also the author of this little gem. Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better

One implication is that you won’t be happy if you don’t move to a city. WEF doesn’t much like rural attitudes, which tend toward self reliance.

We could, of course, have a national strategy called laissez faire, and it would not involve redistribution of assets according to the distilled expertise of our betters.

A National Strategy does not have to be a government plan to seize assets. But it always is. Without that, how would our legislators manipluate insider information into profitable trades? From whence would come the extra-legal regulatory creep keeping unelected, faceless bureaucrats employed?

Erewhon

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Forcible modification of basic human behavior is the Utopian’s dream and necessity. It’s what the attack on free speech is about. If you can’t say something without fear of punishment, self censorship will eventually disable your ability to even think about it.

In a debate with a Utopian, you might cite the failure of previous attempts to establish heaven on earth – in WWII Germany, China during Mao’s “Cultural Revolution,” Cambodia under Pol Pot, Venezuela under Maduro, Cuba under Castro, Ukraine under Stalin, etc. etc..

It will avail you not. The fall back response is that the right people weren’t in charge. Utopia’s never really been tried.

The people currently volunteering to try their hand at being the right people run the World Economic Forum.

The WEF is an NGO apparently operating under the delusion that ‘the problem’ can be solved by instituting tyranny in multiple countries simultaneously:

World Economic Forum (WEF) head Klaus Schwab wrote back in June, “the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

John Kerry’s on board, if you were wondering how stupidly bad this idea is.

If you weren’t wondering, maybe Milton Friedman can help you overcome Schwab and Kerry’s assumption that if things aren’t perfect, we can only fix them by forcibly changing human behavior to accord with the utopian visions of elite collectivists.

Take that as a 2 minute introduction to the longer conversation below. That conversation examines the results of WEF policy implementation.

Objections to the WEF agenda are often described as “conspiracy theories.” My understanding of conspiracy theories is that they describe secret plans of which only the theorists are aware.

The WEF makes no secret of its plans. Fortunately, discussions of these plans are not yet banned by YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Such a ban would also be an open conspiracy. And not a theory.

Jordan Peterson and Micheal Yon are still allowed to discuss Dutch farmer’s protests against WEF inspired ideas which would destroy farming in the Netherlands. This is an hour and 20+. It is not going to enhance your optimism. It is quite worth watching.

I leave you with one takeaway in case you do not spend the time on the video: Tiny Netherlands is the world’s second largest exporter of food. Dutch farmers arguably constitute the most efficient agricultural system in the world. Even as they are distracted by keeping their fingers in the dikes.

The WEF hegemony places them in its crosshairs. The WEF premise: Nitrogen in fertilizer is a catastrophic global warming threat. Dutch farmers use too much nitrogen. It must stop.

The Dutch government agrees. It intends to destroy its agricultural supremacy. In favor of what ecological improvement, exactly? Who will replace the world’s second largest food exporter with less environmental impact? Somalia? Bangladesh?

It won’t be Sri Lanka. Because Sri Lanka already tried implementing the same plan the Netherlands government is contemplating. It didn’t work out well. Sri Lankans are starving because food crops have been triple decimated. Fuel is not scarce, though. It is unavailable. Food exports were the major source of foreign currency to buy gasoline and diesel fuel.

This attack on farmers is not limited to the Netherlands. Canada is on the same track. Despite the horrific results in Sri Lanka.

And Canada’s plan to ruin farming is just one of their problems. If you’re up for more Peterson, this is a devastating look at Canada’s Sorry State. But, I digress.

The goal of The Great Reset is a drastic reduction in the human population through immiseration, starvation, and chaos. In Germany, for example, it’s manifesting as an energy shortage. The Germans closed down perfectly viable nuclear plants in favor of windmills, and solar panels, and Russian natural gas. They were burning more CO2 intensive coal to make up for energy shortfalls even before the Russians turned Nordstream off. Now Germans are gathering wood to burn for heat this winter.

“What did environmentalists use for lighting before candles? …Electricity.”

Warmth is marginally before food in the hierarchy of needs. You die more quickly from hypothermia than from starvation. Not a whole lot faster, but rioting warms you at least until you collapse from malnutrition.

It will get worse for the Germans when they can’t import food from the Netherlands and have lessened ability to grow their own because of fertilizer shortages. The major process for making fertilizer involves natural gas. Germany is already restricting hot water, and is very unlikely to have sufficient gas for home heating this winter, much less for fertilizer production going into next spring.

Malinformation

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Hunter Biden’s laptop turns out to be exactly what the New York Post reported it to be. Exactly what presidential candidate Biden denied it to be.

Accurate, well researched reporting got the NYP blocked on Twitter and Facebook.

But that’s just one recent Prog conspiracy identified. Let us not forget these longer running scams:
Wage gap.
Recycling.
Males Pretending to be Females.

A review:

‘Equal Pay Day’ this year is March 15 — the next ‘Equal Occupational Fatality Day’ won’t be until April 23, 2032

America Finally Admits Recycling Doesn’t Work

Aannd… Progs argue that this biological male competing athletically with biological females is the only “fair” thing to do. “Lia” has no advantage from having gone through puberty as a male…

You gonna believe us or your lying eyes?

This is a human with male chomosomes and male genitalia who insists on showering with women. Women he forces to use his anti-scientific pronouns. We used to know this by the term “abuse.”

We should regard the “wage gap” canard, all the Green Ordeal virtue signaling, and the chromosome denialists in the same light as Hunter’s laptop.

Green Ordeal

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Don’t pretend that high prices and American suffering are a ‘bug’ for the establishment — it’s a historic feature

Yes, the record of those establishment hacks seems pretty bad. Of course, that assumes they want cheap gas, cheap food, energy independence and to promote America’s interests. There’s every reason to think the opposite: We’re not getting cheap gas, cheap food, energy independence, etc. because that’s not what the establishment wants. What we’re getting is what the establishment does want; if we don’t like it, tough.

Obama, Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, AOC, et. al., want energy usage curtailed. They’ve repeatedly told us they will make this happen by dramatically increasing the cost of energy.

Now they are experiencing success. So, they must deny high prices have anything to do with their policies. This is because the human immiseration from high energy prices quickly becomes experientially and intuitively obvious to everyone. Acknowledging your success in the endeavor is saying the quiet part out loud.

Michael Moore did a masterful job of implying that quiet part, without going full Extinction Rebellion, in his 2019 film Planet of the Humans. He caused a stir because he severely ruffled some envirostatist feathers by pointing out the magnitude of the Green Energy public/pirate partnership fraud.

Moore nails the fraud part. But his real message was subtle: We face an existential, ecological dilemma. We can escape it only by drastic reductions in human population and impoverishment of (most of) those who remain.

My review is here: Planet Without Humans. There’s a link to Moore’s film there, and it is worth watching. The skewering of the green fraudsters is amusing, and the barely submerged lamentation about humans as a cancer on the planet is a “know your enemies” education.

Following are some practical insights, in three parts, about the policy effects arising from Envirostatist population control goals.

Together, these are a primer on the domestic oil industry: The mechanics of leases/permits/financing/production under the Biden Administration. Written by David Middleton, who describes himself as “a geologist/geophysicist in the “climate wrecking industry” since 1981 at Watts Up With That?.

Democrat Senators Demand That Oil Companies Increase Production

Do they really think we can just “dial up the volume” on oil wells? Competent operators produce oil wells at the rate that maximizes the volume of recoverable oil. We don’t dial the volume up and down in an effort to control uncontrollable oil prices. When prices rise, we have more cash flow to spend on additional drilling. This increases oil production, which eventually lowers prices. Production will increase in response to higher prices, but it’s not an instantaneous thing.

Jen Psaki: “There are 9,000 approved oil leases that the oil companies are not tapping into currently”…

“Oil leases” are the mineral rights to geographical tracts of land/seafloor. They don’t have oil because the government designates them as “oil leases.” In the Central GOM, on the shelf, a standard “oil lease” is a 3 mile by 3 mile square tract, covering 5,000 acres. Standard deepwater leases are a bit larger, covering 5,760 acres… However, they’re all just square tracts of acreage. Well, not all… Some leases along the edges of the protraction areas are smaller polygons. The geology of the Gulf of Mexico and the oil that migrated into its geological traps didn’t pay attention to the future leasing plans of the US government.

Jen, Joe… Is it 9,000 leases or 9,000 permits that oil companies are allegedly sitting on?

Since, Brandon seemed serious about “banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters”, oil companies with large lease positions on Federal lands in places like New Mexico and Wyoming began stockpiling drilling permits to ensure that they had sufficient inventory to continue drilling through at least the next 4 years…

These companies stockpiled four years worth of drilling permits. They may “have 9,000 permits.” However, they’re not “to drill now.” They applied for sufficient permits to maintain their drilling programs from 2021 through 2024… Because Brandon promised to shut down permitting…

The concern was so great that we were advised to file Suspension of Operations (SOO) applications for all of our leases in the Gulf of Mexico…

“Biden’s first actions as president included re-entering the Paris Climate Accord, canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline, halting a leasing program in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), issuing a 60-day halt on new oil and gas leases and drilling permits on federal lands and waters (which account for nearly 25% of U.S. production), directing federal agencies to eliminate fossil fuel “subsidies,” imposing tougher regulations on oil and gas methane emissions (which were first promulgated under President Barack Obama and had been eased under President Donald Trump), and hiring SEC regulators to prepare climate and ESG disclosure mandates.”

But don’t worry, Fauxcahontas has a solution:
Elizabeth Warren Says the Solution to High Gas Prices Is Higher Taxes on Oil Companies

She’s just lucky Ellis Wyatt isn’t in charge of the oil companies.

Asking for it

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“Because, as we all know, elections matter. And when folks vote, they order what they want. And in this case, they got what they asked for.”
– VPOTUS Kamala Harris

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
– H. L. Mencken

Twelve seconds:

March 15, 2020 – Debate with Bernie Sanders

The Biden campaign was quick to say that Biden’s statement was misinformation. Haha, they actually didn’t say that. They did explain “what information he really meant to convey.”

That’s just Joe, he said the quiet part out loud.

The approved meaning was there will be no more drilling on Federal land. A plausible explanation for what he meant to say. Not so plausible for his real meaning.

If fossil fuel extraction in your own country is an existential threat, why would you – POTUS – stop with Federal land? You can wield the full weight of the regulatory state against all US producers everywhere.

Joe’s error does not rise to Kinsley gaffe level (a slip of the tongue revealing some truth that a politician did not intend to admit), because a real Kinsley gaffe has a minimum bar: A history of public speech hinting that bewildered incognizance is not your standard method of dealing with reality.

If you have to decimate domestic oil production to finesse a campaign promise… If that implies pretending oil from Iran and/or Venezuela is preferable to United States production… If you refuse to accept oil from an ally by keeping Keystone XL closed when shutting down Russian oil…

Then it is not a gaffe. It’s a plan.

When any POTUS declares his intent to destroy an industry it has a tendency to affect capital markets.

U.S. oil drillers ‘dying on the vine’ as private equity flight prompts funding drought

…and to encourage overreach from Federal agencies predisposed to assist in the destruction. The Feds, with subsidies to investors like Warren Buffet, makers like Elon Musk, and scams like Solyndra have encouraged activist investors to lobby for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) purity. That’s probably more accurately described as DIE (diversity, inclusion, equity) investment.

ESG Watch: Heat turned up under banks for role in financing fossil fuels

The SEC is getting ready to make ESG reporting mandatory.

What will SEC’s climate disclosure rules mean for U.S. companies?

And do not forget legal obstructionism. Here’s an example – an arbitrary guesstimate made by biased bureaucrats called the “social cost of carbon.”

Biden Administration Halts New Drilling in Legal Fight Over Climate Costs

Gaslighting

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Gaslighting is an emotionally-abusive strategy that causes someone to question their feelings, thoughts, and sanity. Someone who employs gaslighting tries to convince the other that their own perception of reality is wrong. The purpose of this is to convince the person being gaslit that they can’t trust their own instincts or thoughts. A gaslighter may try to convince you that your memories are incorrect, that you overreact to situations, or that something is “all in your head.” They may then try to convince you that their version of events is the truth.

In 2008, future Obama administration Secretary of Energy Steven Chu shared his vision for American energy policy:

“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

In the month before the Obama administration assumed office, the average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $1.59. This week, [April 1, 2012] the price of gasoline has climbed to $3.79.

The Biden administration resumed Obama’s sabotage of our domestic oil and gas producers on day one. The average price for gasoline at the end of Biden’s first week of office was $2.39 a gallon. Prices have now hit above $4.

The Democrats, having pummeled investment in oil and gas extraction, pretend that production can be flipped like a light switch. Jen Psaki tells us there are “9,000 leases not being exercised.” This may be true, but it is entirely unrelated to the fact the United States is no longer energy independent. How does that even happen in under 12 months?

Leases not in use is a factoid servicing a Big Lie.

A friend wrote:

“A lease is but one element necessary to overcome to get oil to market: “Copious permitting paperwork over a period of months or years, financing from banks and investors being pressured to disinvest, means of getting the crude to refineries, refining capacity, taxes that threaten return on capital, and legal challenges.”

That’s a great summary of this must read article:
In-depth analysis debunks Biden admin blaming oil companies for not developing 9000 leases – Feds ‘spent over a year making it more difficult’ to drill & environmentalists ‘constantly sue to stop any development’

With Putin’s invasion of Ukraine the plot has gotten out of hand for the President. So, he complains that the oil and gas producers aren’t doing enough. Putin provides Democrats more cover for the real Green Ordeal objective, described masterfully in this excerpt from a book review by Peter W. Wood of Bewilderment, a novel by Richard Powers: RTWT.

[T]he real endgame is a remnant human population on a vegan diet perhaps supplemented with insects; the restoration of Earth’s landmass to animal-friendly wilderness; and small-scale cooperative (socialist) societies living in harmony with nature. Less utopian versions of this vision are available, but properly understood, all of them rule out modern life as we know it. People like Biden don’t take any of that seriously. Their interest is in the political game, not the endgame, but it is important to understand the premises and the motives of the activists who are driving the politics. They may never get their utopia, but they can cause profound misery in their attempts to reach it. And we are seeing some of that now.