England v. France

Don't let the headline fool you -- this isn't a post about the Super Bowl of Soccer which the powers-that-be are so eager to make Americans pay attention to. Its about the differing methods of handling obnoxious and disruptive climate protestors.

As Just Stop Oil and other groups have stepped up their anti-civilization tactics, like attacking priceless works of art and laying in traffic throughout Europe, England's police have been criticized for being overly-chummy with them. In London their protests seem to have as many cops standing around the mob (and even chatting and laughing with them) as their are actual protestors. And this for a group that Home Secretary Suella Braverman has labelled  “extremists” whose protests are “out of control.” She's even demanded that police employ harsher measures to bring the protests to an end, but the Bobbies have not complied.

Of course, when the police aren't present, ordinary Brits feel compelled to do the necessary work themselves.

Meanwhile in France the cops just drag them out of the road, even if they've been stupid enough to glue themselves to the asphalt.

These videos depict a conflict which is at the heart of our politics today. On one side is an affluent, privileged activist class and on the other are regular people, just trying to work hard and get on with their lives. The French response demonstrates that its possible to side with the latter, but the Brits are scared of the bad p.r. that would accompany angering the former. Quelle surprise.

A Royal With Some Sense

In response to the death of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, The Global Warming Policy Forum reposted a piece from a few years ago by the (now deceased) British climate skeptic Christopher Booker, entitled "The time Prince Philip wrote to me in praise of my views on global warming."

Written on the occasion of the prince's retirement from public life in 2017, Booker mentioned that he'd been very touched to receive a "long, thoughtful and sympathetic letter" from Philip after the publication of his best-selling book The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with 'Climate Change' Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History? The prince had wanted to correct one minor error in the book which pertained to himself;

I had said he was still a supporter of the World Wildlife Fund, which he co-founded in 1961. In fact, he said, he had withdrawn from the WWF after it switched from its original focus on saving endangered species to relentless campaigning against global warming.

Booker didn't spell out Philip's position on global warming any further than that -- to do so would likely have been to betray a confidence -- but that anecdote, along with a few others (several obituaries have mentioned his recently describing the wind farms popping up all over England as “disgraceful” and “absolutely useless”) paint a pretty clear picture.

Unfortunately, Prince Philp's progeny don't seem to have inherited his good sense. The green enthusiasms of the Prince of Wales are well known. Booker even mentioned that Charles was rather disturbed by his "views on global warming," and that he'd been immediately cut from the heir apparent's Christmas Card list after the publication of his book. We've previously had occasion to comment on the vacuity of Prince Charles's younger son, Harry, and his American bride, la Markle. And his elder son, William, is in on the act as well, recently tacitly endorsing Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset in a recent speech, saying:

All of us, across all sectors of society, and in every corner of the globe must come together to fundamentally reset our relationship with nature and our trajectory as a species.

This generation of royals are clearly grasping at celebrity, which is why they've embraced the self-righteous environmentalism so common among the glitterati. What they seem to have missed is that celebrity and royalty are diametrically opposed concepts, the one obsessed with self-assertion, with proclaiming "my truth," and the other  concerned with duty, honor, and self-abnegation. You don't have to be a monarchist -- I am not -- to appreciate that Philip was a man who embodied these latter qualities.

Britain would be better off if his children and grandchildren took after him.

Is There Anything Global Warming Can't Do?

Global warming -- is there anything it can't do? Item No. 1:

England is in danger of experiencing droughts within 20 years unless action is taken to combat the impact of the climate crisis on water availability, the public spending watchdog says. The National Audit Office (NAO), in a report published on Wednesday, says some parts of England, especially the south-east, are at risk of running out of water owing to decreased rainfall and a need to cut the amount taken from natural waterways.

Water companies will have to reduce the quantity of water they take out of rivers, lakes and the ground by more than 1bn litres a day, creating huge shortfalls in the coming decades, the NAO warned. Parliament’s auditor predicted that 4bn litres of additional water supply would be needed each day by 2050 to counter the growing risk of drought from the climate emergency. The total supply is forecast to drop by 7% by 2045 because of the climate crisis and the need to scale back the amount of water taken out of England’s waterways and soils.

The one thing the British Isles will never run short of is water, since it falls from the sky every day in buckets, but hey...

Have you ever noticed that all such "predictions" as this one only run in one direction: utter calamity. Never mind that doomsayers have been at this since time immemorial, and that in the modern era some form of Malthusianism has interbred with the environmentalist watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) to produced the current media-fueled obsession with imminent doom if... we don't immediately enact their policy preferences. That those preferences include channeling vast amounts of public monies to the very folks making the predictions is entirely coincidental.

Funny how they never predicted the global rise in life expectancy, the improvements in farming that allows the planet to support 7.5 billion people, and surging living standards that all have occurred during our lifetimes. Why, it's almost like this is the best time ever to be alive.

Item No. 2:

After failing to grow wheat in Canada’s subarctic Yukon territory 15 years ago, farmer Steve Mackenzie-Grieve gave it another shot in 2017. Thanks to longer summers, he has reaped three straight harvests. This spring he plans to sow canola on his family’s 450-acre farm near Whitehorse, a city not much further from the North Pole than the heart of Canada’s crop belt Saskatchewan.

“If you asked me five years ago if I would be growing wheat, I’d have laughed,” said Mackenzie-Grieve, 62, who harvested some 100 acres last year.

Canada’s average temperature over land has warmed by 1.7 degrees C (3 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1948, with the north warming by 2.3 degrees C, the government said in 2019. More promising for Canada, one of the world’s top grain exporters, is that its frost-free season expanded by more than 20 days on average from 1948-2016, according to a 2018 paper by Environment Canada scientists.

So... good news, right?

Large-scale farming with quality harvests remains an elusive challenge in the far north, due to short summers and lack of infrastructure to store and transport commodities. But a warming climate makes crops possible in far-flung, isolated places. Newfoundland and Labrador, with a tiny fraction of Canada’s arable land, plan to add farm area the size of Toronto, the nation’s largest city...

“Climate change will have a very negative climatic, social and economic impact on the province but there still may be some small offset gains by producing food,” said Newfoundland and Labrador Fisheries and Land Resources Minister Gerry Byrne in an interview.

For environmentalists, there's a speculative cloud surrounding every silver lining. But no matter what trivial good, like feeding people, may come from "climate change" be not afraid -- the European Union is on the case, in the best way it knows how: with more bureaucracy and a spanking-new Action Plan!

Today, the European Commission and the High Representative set out the priorities and way ahead on Human rights and Democracy, adopting a Joint Communication and the EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy for 2020-2024. Further, they put forward a joint proposal to the Council to act by qualified majority voting on issues falling under the Action Plan, reflecting the strategic importance of the Action Plan. It aims at fostering faster and more efficient decision-making on human rights and democracy.

Changing geopolitics, transition to the digital age, environmental degradation and climate change pose important challenges, but they are also opportunities to foster positive transformation towards more democratic and inclusive societies. Today's proposal sets out steps for the EU and its Member States to embrace new realities and act together in line with the EU's founding values.

Well, that ought to do it.