'Climate' and Capitalism: a Match Made in Hell

For the last several weeks I have been swimming off a rocky beach and wondering where all the people were. Admittedly, it’s a hike in, but it’s gorgeous and while sparsely used, I usually meet a dozen or so people even in winter. Then I realized they were watching the news which was full-on weather catastrophe and DON’T GO OUT IN IT. The broadsheet located in the nearby capital city runs four or five "climate catastrophe" pieces every single day. So the muggles, which is my name for those who still "believe in" the propaganda press, are now terrified by the sun.

Yes, it’s true our weather is glorious, and it didn’t used to be so in the 70’s and 80’s which is the weather most people remember, so that’s why they are affrighted. But my father, who grew up here, as did his father, said all through his childhood, 90-day Pacific Highs would come in and park for three months of heaven. That this is part of the historical (ignored) record hardly needs saying. Every graph the climate alarmists publish is cherry-picked as to date (and increments of change). And never mind the geological record which proves over and over that CO2 has been much higher for hundreds of thousands of years.

Is Rhodes burning?

In Rhodes, Greece, this week, a resident published his video of fires being set at night, all at the same time across a ridge of trees. This is an almost perfect climate psy-op. Fires, and then film the misery of tourists sleeping in the airport waiting to leave.

In Canada we have arrested dozens of fire-setters, and dozens are still being sought. Fires and fear promote the idea that “nothing has been done,” but in fact, behind the scenes, everywhere, the Iron Triangle of the movement has installed palettes of regulation on every town and county, every rangeland, parkland, wilderness, forest and mountain. Wherever you go, metaphorically or not, there is a sign that says: Do Not Enter. It is killing all productive activity, it is killing the economy of every nation.

"Climate change" is now eating capitalism. It is a profit center for both government and business. In 2002 Goldman Sachs built a division that sold “climate solutions” by way of tax and carbon credits. This zero-sum game is trading in the misery of hundreds of millions. It says to plutocrats: you can build that airplane factory, and get an enormous tax break, but only if you conserve or eliminate activity in another part of the world, usually Africa, or indeed anyplace vulnerable.

It always means productive activity is shut down, whether via resource set-asides, (necessary resources) or in western democracies, human activity. There "climate mitigation" literally trades on the misery of the young, who pay increased rents, compliance fees, new requirements, engineers say; and it attaches an entire battalion of green compliance officers who cruise the region for infractions. In my area, "green-development" requirements add $1,000 to the monthly rent of a one-bedroom apartment and despite the province only being 6 percent developed, opening up land for new housing is greeted by lawfare and protests.

Don't even think about it.

Bjorn Lomborg recently gave a speech at Hillsdale College, during which he repeatedly said, without offering proof, that "climate change" is real and dangerous. But not catastrophic. Lomborg is using the heavily promoted "consensus" model which is weaponized against finding truth. Lomborg then points out that after the Copenhagen Accord, for every $1 spent by the EU on climate, the reduction in “carbon” was $.03. If everyone signed onto the Paris Climate Accords did as they promised (unlikely according to Lomborg), every dollar spent would deliver $.11 of mitigation. Lomborg goes on to praise carbon taxes, but Canada’s are so high, people need food subsidies, and the cost is severe in productive activity not being undertaken.

Lomborg argues for “technological innovation.” Ok, if this was a real problem. One suspects Lomborg is having a flush time as a “climate realist” and does not want to visit first principles. Equally RFK Jr. is another waffler on climate. “Climate change is being used to control us through fear,” he says. “freedom and free markets are a much better was to stop pollution.”

Fine. But carbon dioxide is not “pollution.” Ireland is about to kill 200,000 cows to stop “pollution.” There is a nice carbon credit for someone. It only immiserates thousands of farmers. A dairy farm can invigorate an entire county, the job and wealth multipliers are large, as many as four to seven. One mining job for instance, creates seven local jobs, which in turn generate another two, and so forth. This means a region is suddenly a going concern. Further, Canada’s oil sands were so assaulted by the environmental movement, engineers came up with processes that mitigate all harm to even the most toxic of oil extraction processes. Carbon trading creates deserts of human activity whatever Goldman etc., decide to “save.”

For two decades, scientists have been calling for a full-on public inquiry about whether "climate change" is dangerous. This is ignored and grifters like John Kerry refuse to debate its existence, recently calling one Congressman’s sharp questions, “not serious.” Meanwhile, in the Middle East, we see a possible future. The Line, a 170-kilometer linear city is being built as two parallel, 500 meter high linear skyscrapers clad with mirrored facades, hanging gardens everywhere. Oxagon is another planned octagon-shaped port city on the Red Sea, which will be the “world’s largest floating structure."

Instead, all our innovation, future abundance and creativity have been sacrificed to the fraudulent Climate Gods. Cui bono?