Still the Only Thing We Have to Fear

On March 4, 1933 newly elected President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt made this famous declaration during his inaugural address: “…let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself; nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” FDR had his faults, as all leaders do, but uttering those words to a nation terrified by hopelessness and dread was a shining moment in his career.

On February 20, 2023 The Pipeline's editor Michael Walsh wrote this: “…democracy does not "die in darkness." It dies in chaos, brought on by fear, engendered by uncertainty and birthed of instability…” While I’m not willing to suggest that Walsh's eloquence should move him to seek elected office, or to be regularly photographed grinning with a fancy cigarette holder clenched in his teeth, I do believe that his declaration is every bit as profound as Roosevelt’s was ninety years prior.

In 1933 Americans were terrified by enormous economic upheaval few citizens understood. The disaster seemed unsolvable to most. In 2023 Americans are terrified by rapid advances in technologies and the sciences that – to many – seem to create problems as equally dangerous and apparently unsolvable as the Great Depression did in 1933.

FDR: Fear itself.

This writer is not an expert on all technologies and all of science. We’ve advanced way to far for anyone to lay claim to being a modern-day Da Vinci. That said, this writer is an expert on the complex intersection of chemistry, environmental protection, risk evaluation, and public policy. In that world Walsh’s description holds true: all rational parts of that equation are dying in chaos, brought on by fear, engendered by uncertainty, and birthed of instability. Moreover, I firmly believe that is the case in many, likely most, other areas of scientific discipline when they intersect with public policy or popular trends. In this era of mass, instantaneous communication, nothing is guaranteed to attract more attention than communicating fear.

Consider how many people routinely purchase indoor “air purifiers” that are designed to remove air contaminants from indoor air by generating the most widely regulated air pollutant in America: ozone. Ozone is basically oxygen on steroids; three oxygen atoms bonded together rather than the usual two. The extra atom gives ozone some unique properties, among which is its ability to react with a variety of air contaminants and remove them from the air we breathe. So far so good, except for the fact that ozone is itself a highly regulated air contaminant. Reducing ozone in the air we breathe has been the focus of EPA and environmental group efforts for over fifty years.

The EPA has reduced the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone three times since the original Clean Air Act was promulgated. Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama all reduced the ozone standard, largely in response to environmental group claims that the preceding standard was not sufficiently protective of human health. There are mountains of regulations designed to reduced ozone formation. Vehicles have catalytic convertors largely to reduce ozone formation. If you live in an urban area, you pay for low vapor pressure gasoline in the summer months to reduce ozone formation. The push to reduce ozone formation affects the price we pay for electricity, natural gas, consumer goods, and a host of other areas.

Liberals have toyed with the ludicrous idea of banning natural gas-fired appliances, but none seems moved to grab this incredibly low-hanging fruit: Americans are routinely purchasing air-pollution generators in the name of improving air quality! It’s the sort of exploitation of fear and ignorance that would have amazed even Orwell.

Beware the O-Zone.

Ozone-generating air purifiers are just one example of the ignorance and hypocrisy that infects issues involving science and technology. Fire up your favorite search engine and try out the following queries: “manganese pollution,” “lead toxicity,” and “poly-aromatic hydrocarbons cancer risk.” You’ll find some dry, technically-accurate but boring as hell to read discussions involving those keywords published by government agencies and academics, and you’ll also find articles in which “experts” warn readers about the extreme danger associated with exposure to those compounds.

But how significant are these supposed dangers? Let’s start with manganese. Do you or a loved one take a multi-vitamin on a regular basis? Take a look at the ingredient list. Chances are you’ll find manganese listed among the minerals included.

This may give you pause. There are plenty of stories out there that describe manganese as a dangerous neuro-toxin. There are plenty of community leaders, political types, and environmental activists wringing their hands about the fate of the poor, innocent children exposed to this poison. So what the heck is it doing in your vitamins?

The answer is that manganese is an important and necessary micro-nutrient. Your body doesn’t need a lot of it, but it needs some of it. Chemicals are neither inherently toxic or non-toxic. The dose makes the poison, so it’s the amount one is exposed to and the route of exposure that ultimately matter. Good luck finding any member of the modern intelligentsia who understands, much less can explain, that simple fact.

Most everyone is aware of the dangers associated with ingesting lead. Less well known is that virtually every kitchen in the United States contains bowls and utensils that contain lead. For lead is a minor, but measurable, component of many grades of stainless steel—and whose kitchen doesn’t have a stainless item in it?

Does the amount of lead contained in stainless steel or how it is held within the lattice structure of the metal present any concerns about lead exposure? Not really, but don’t expect the fear-mongers to figure that out, even if they cared to do so.

Safety first.

And Poly Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH)? There’s plenty of literature talking about how these potentially toxic and/or carcinogenic compounds can be formed during the combustion of coal, oil or natural gas. True, so far as that goes, but in very tiny amounts that will expose the average citizen to concentrations so low they are hardly of concern.

On the other hand, the smoke from your campfire, the cloud coming from your charcoal grill and any smoked food you consume will contain much more PAH compounds than anything a power plant will expose you to. That doesn’t keep me from enjoying smoked and barbecue foods, but then I’m not a hypocrite.

If you’re reading this piece, most experts agree that you are probably alive. Other experts tell us that sometime in the future you will cease to be alive. In between then and now, do yourself a favor: enjoy life. One of the ways you can enjoy it best is by tuning out the sad, ignorant masters of exploitation and propaganda who dream up ways to try to control your behavior by exploiting your natural tendency to exercise extreme caution when facing fear itself.

Reality Bites as 'Greens' Embrace Nukes

It's beyond doubt that without nuclear power a nation cannot meet the current and foreseeable energy needs of its people without increasing CO2. If you listen to the environmentalist crowd either nuclear will kill you or CO2 will. It’s amusing in a way, since neither poses a significant risk to your health, and "green energy" — which is both unreliable and requires fossil fuel backups — do cause significant social and economic harm in the same way our Covid responses created real damage far in excess of their actual benefits.

Personally, I believe that we will ultimately get our energy from whichever sources can provide them reliably and at the lowest cost. In this respect it is amusing here on the sidelines to see one faction (the anti-nuclear power crowd) facing up to the other ("climate change" cultists). And the cause of the conflict is exacerbated by experience: Green energy sources, as predicted, proved insufficient to meet needs and were, as well, intermittent, which can be economically catastrophic. You simply cannot turn off countries in summer when the wind doesn’t blow or in winter when the wind blows so hard that turbines lose functionality. You cannot gather electricity from the sun when it isn’t shining.

Shrinkage.

And then there’s the Ukraine war which hammered home the foolishness of Europe's policy of relying on so-called renewables backed up by Russian oil and natural gas. It's left them with, at best, spiking gas and electricity prices, and at worst with actual energy shortages and general volatility.

It may be overly optimistic, but there are signs that the nuclear crowd are beginning to win out, something which Leftists like Ralph Nader (who nearly killed nuclear energy in the United States with his Critical Mass Energy Project), must have a hard time accepting. Indeed, it seems as if the rising cost of energy has forced people to reevaluate nuclear energy worldwide. Jenny Ping at Citi Research has demonstrated how significant and rapid has been this new attitude. Since the Ukraine conflict began a year ago, a survey of 100,000 voting-age citizens of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the U.K. showed that two-thirds of them are in favor of nuclear power. Germany’s government may be reluctant to revisit its decision to shut down its nuclear plants (though even there 41 percent of those surveyed favored changing course) but in France, Britain, Poland, and even Belgium, there was significant uptick in support for building new nuclear generating plants.

It's an ill wind that blows no good, and, in this case the war in Ukraine seems to have injected a bit of reality into the fantastical green dream. According to a recent article in Der Spiegel:

The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has now accelerated this shift, calling into question many old certainties, or overturning them completely. Formerly staunch pacifists now support weapons deliveries. A Green Party economics minister is going on a gas-shopping spree to Qatar. The energy security that people took for granted for decades in Germany has been shaken ever since Russia cut gas deliveries and costs rose.

The result being that an old German dogma now seems to be crumbling: the rejection of nuclear energy. Concerns are either being put on the backburner or are evaporating. Radiation from nuclear waste? Safety risks? Danger of large-scale disasters? Who cares. Those are things you worry about when you have working heat. Electricity first, then ethics.

The dizzying change has the Greens fighting to keep from total rejection by voters and a majority are now taking the window dressing baby-step of agreeing to extending the life of those plants still in operation. At a minimum it’s likely that Germany will redo its laws to permit the continued operation of its three remaining nuclear facilities, of agreeing to extend the operating span of those plants not already shutdown. Let’s see, however, if this shift is enough to persuade the German government to refurbish and re-commission the three nuclear plants it forced to shut down in 2021. Its neighbors in Eastern Europe seem to be pressuring them to do just that.

Germany is not alone in suddenly noticing that there’s an uncomfortable conflict between wanting to reduce CO2 in energy production and opposing nuclear power. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom is seeking to extend its nuclear-generating plant in Diablo Canyon past 2025, when it is supposed to be decommissioned. That’s because his state has been energy starved by Green diktat. And three other states that followed California onto the anti-nuclear bandwagon — Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania — have all seen their CO2 output rise after shifting away from nuclear power. Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, leader of the left-wing Squad of Congressional Harpies seems to be now ambivalent about nuclear energy. That is, of course, after supporting the shutdown of Indian Point in 2021, a plant that supplied New York City with 25 percent of its power.

Look who's changing her tune.

Still, even if we finally reached critical mass on voters wanting nuclear power there are some real obstacles after all these years of demonizing it. For one thing there’s now a real shortage of nuclear engineers and people who have the knowledge to construct and operate these plants. You surely can’t expect people to choose to become expert in an industry that's being killed off.

Worse, there’s the lengthy and absurd regulatory process for constructing nuclear plants, designed and exploited by America's environmentalist Marxist crowd. If you care to see how this works, here's a blow-by-blow from a plant in Georgia, the first American nuclear plant planned in decades. It first applied for permission in 2006. It bankrupted Westinghouse, cost 23 billion dollars and, largely as a result of regulatory actions, 14 years later it still has not gone into commercial production.

Still, whenever voters come to grips with reality, there’s some cause for celebration: thirteen EU member states have entered into a nuclear power pact to support construction of new plants and Japan is returning to service idled nuclear plants, extending the service time of existing ones and planning development of new generation ones.

Who's Afraid of a Gigaton?

The Global Carbon Project, a cohort of self-anointed “experts” intent on proving that the Klimate Kult fiction through which they generate their funding is real, tracks carbon output across nations and creates a carbon “budget” of what they feel is allowable for humanity. When tracked against economic output, the report, "CO2 emissions have been flat for a decade,” is fascinating. It proves that what our elites are doing is exactly the opposite of what they’d be doing if they believed the green agenda were needed, let alone critical. How dare they?

Using gigatons of CO2, by nation, the GCP provides a metric of this “pollution” by country with the obvious intent of shaming the miscreants other than not-Green China and not-Green India into reducing their output of the CO2 that is a fundamental requirement for life on earth. Red China is allowed by those preening themselves over greenhouse gasses (GHG) to skip the entire Paris “agreement” and just not worry about CO2 output. The same CO2 measurements are the primary focus of the Green Inquisition to bash the U.S.A. for ours. Let’s look at the numbers:

Not-green China, a command economy under communist rule, the economic model preferred by our elites and to which our ruling class has been shipping all our jobs and prosperity for decades, generated in 2021, per this report, 11.5 gigatons of CO2, while creating an economic output of $17,734,000,000,000, or emitting 1.3 pounds of CO2 per dollar of economic output. America, a (semi-)free market, capitalist economy under ostensibly democratic governance, generated in 2021, 5.0 GTon of CO2, while creating an economic output of $22,196,000,000,000, emitting 0.45 pounds of CO2 per dollar of economic output.

In other words, America generates 288 percent of the economic output of China while emitting 43 percent of China’s CO2. Six times the economic output per Gton of CO2. If the political establishment pushing green actually were pushing green and de-carbonization, they’d recognize that a higher standard of living at a lower CO2 cost (i.e. a more efficient and productive use of energy) is being attained under our political-economic model than under that of Red China.

 

If our self-proclaimed “green” elites actually believed in “Climate Change” and were concerned about CO2 emissions, not only would we not be offshoring our manufacturing and prosperity and future, our elites would be making the pitch to all the world to move their manufacturing to America, and to move the entire planet to a capitalist free-market economy as this model provably provides more economic output per GTon of CO2 than any other, higher living standards than any other model in human history, and reduces carbonization along the way.

How to do this is not to sign-on to a global minimum tax, but to allow all countries to compete for industry – and jobs and living standards – using tax and market policies anathema to our rulers but liberty-generating for the global middle classes the WEF/Davos crowd is trying to annihilate, while reducing CO2 impact for all.

No one wants to decrease their living standards. This is why immigrants are flocking to America rather than to China or Mexico. If the world wants to decrease GHG and “Global Warming,” and to not reduce living standards, we need to move industry to the country and economic system with the highest GDP per ton of CO2: the United States, and to return to a free-market economy so derided by globalist elites.

The upsides of moving industry back to, or to, America are two. If, against all current and historical data, the earth is being heated by human-emitted GHG, we can reduce the CO2 output while simultaneously increasing global economic production - and so global standards of living. If, as the data actually show, the earth is entering a cooling period, then we will have the necessary industry here to at least keep us warm.

Plus, the working class grows wealthier, which history shows leads to a higher level of concern about the environment.

The point here isn’t that CO2 is increasing or decreasing, that the planet is warming, cooling or in stasis. The point is that the elites, the same ones telling us we must reduce our energy usage to pre-industrial levels, are acting against – not just ignoring, but acting against – what they insist be done. Which means they don't believe it, either.

What they insist on is contributing to the increase of GHG and, per their models, to the global warming about which they only pretend to care as a control device over our liberty and prosperity, the destruction of which is their actual goal.

We aren’t talking about private jets or big houses or multiple houses or extravagances those of us working and providing them their wealth cannot afford due to the policies of these same rulers. We’re talking about the facts on the ground: moving industry to a command economy increases rather than decreases GHG emission per economic unit of measure. Reducing GHG while keeping or increasing global living standards means moving jobs and industry back to a free-market economy and away from command economies.

More than any other report, this GCP report ought to convince everyone paying attention that the U.N. is not kidding in its statement of their goal for the entire climate change hoax. As noted by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change in Brussels, in 2015, the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

“Changing the economic model” that has done more than any other in history to reduce poverty and improve global standards of living and, not coincidentally, to reduce greenhouse gasses better than any other, is the goal of our elites.

Their goal with “Climate Change” has nothing to do with saving the planet. Adding this report to the actions of our greenies proves that they are intent on adding to the global carbon output and increasing climate change while reducing our prosperity; as noted here early and often, to destroy the global Middle Classes.

These are the facts as presented by the GCP, an instrument of the Klimate Kult seemingly oblivious as to what its data show.

This has nothing to do with climate. It never has. It never will.

Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Hunting

There’s nothing like a weekend in the country especially when all of London is going to be there! I’m speaking, of course, of going for a shooting holiday, and honestly I can’t wait. I’ve three days to pack, get a manicure, some new frocks, and a coiff from Daniel at Jo Hansford. 

Judith (mummy) is so glad I’m preserving tradition but she forgets ‘tradition’ used to come with a small staff. She should have stayed home to help me but as usual—poof—the ever-vanishing Judith. And a shooting holiday always requires shooting clothes. Lots. So where are mine? I rifled through the wardrobe in the spare room, the crawl space in my childhood room, the trunk under the stairs—nothing. I’d hoped to take my things straightaway to Jeeves for freshening but I was going to have to wait for Judith. With little chance of success, I started poking through the hall closet when daddy became aware of my frustration.

‘Looking for something? Plastic straws perhaps? Because we’re all out—been feeding them to dolphins’, Daddy said. 

‘Ha. Not funny’ I replied, ‘and anyway it’s sea turtles’. I was not in the mood. ‘I’m looking for my sporting clothes’. I said. 

‘Maybe in California?’

‘Oh my god, NO!’ I shouted back. He knows they aren’t there but he can’t resist a chance to bug me about my house in LA.

‘Maybe at the country house?’ he said. 

‘Why would they be at the country house?’ I asked. 

‘Because it’s — the country?’

The way we were.

UGH! Of course that’s where they were. And now I had to decide whether to drive to the country or pop over to James Purdey. ‘Tradition’ doesn’t make it easy to be an environmentalist. The risk of buying new was that only Americans show up to a hunt with spanking-new clothes. It’s just not the done thing. What a mess!

I thought of calling Isabella Lloyd Webber whom I know from so many eventing weekends but I knew she’d sooner pay someone to break in her clothes than show up looking naff. I bit the bullet and immediately felt better upon arrival at Purdey’s. The salesman was quite chatty and said I’d just missed Gemma Owen who left with three bags (new!), that they’d shipped loads to Delphi and Marina Primrose (new and new), and they’d earlier served Lord William Gordon Lennox, though one expects to see him in new everything—I’d never seen him out of his signature cream suit.

When I reached home I saw my broker had called twice. WHY?? I’m not some high-flying trader with margin calls. I’m not even sure I know what a margin call is but seems he wanted me to sell all interests in rechargeable e-scooters. I’d taken a rather large position owing to the benefit to the environment. Plus we expect them to be wildly popular once they become permanently legal. But it seems London had 130 e-bike blazes in the last year alone. 

‘But it’s the trial period…’ I protested, and he told me e-bikes had caused more than 200 fires in New York, including a quite-bad high-rise fire. He went on about impending lawsuits, poor-quality parts, and an entire e-scooter maintenance facility had gone up in smoke.

It's all fun and games until somebody bursts into flames.

‘But that’s China’s fault—they are giving us poorly-designed batteries, we just need more regulation’ I insisted. I heard my father snicker in the background and I realised just how futile my protest sounded. ‘Fine then sell!’ I said. ‘Sell it all’. It was a blow and felt I was letting the planet down. All except for the black smoke and lithium solvent contamination.

I put my new clothes in the solarium to air out and headed up to my room. It had been a trying day but all of my hard work paid off when two days later our helicopter loomed over Inveraray—the first of several spectacular locations. I hadn’t been here since their now-defunct horse trials.

The estate was now focused on winning a Purdey Award for Game Conservation and even before the hunting ball we had to sign a declaration that we, and all connected with the shoot, were conversant and in compliance with the Code of Good Shooting Practice. Inveraray’s entry this year was habitat improvements and species biodiversity.

When I got to my room and opened my bags the unmistakable smell of 'new' filled my air… it was a mix of plastic, and wool sizing. Where’s a good moth ball when you need one?

I took my place at dinner, escorted by the future Duke of Argyll and his good friend Max, a known Jack-the-Lad swept in. ‘Oooh! I know you! I’m sure I do’ he insisted. But I only knew him from his reputation: a brash, cocky university dropout who was making a career of his fast friendship and love of shooting.

Our dinner was served… this year’s winning recipe entry to the Fieldsports competition: ‘Snipe Jacket Potatoes’. It was a whole snipe, complete with head, and long legs crossed almost comically and encased in a potato cocoon. It was so much more disgusting than any bug I’d ever served and I started gagging. ‘That’s it… you’re her… that bug hostess!’ Max exclaimed as I continued to gag and fled the table. 

I decided to stay away at least until the next course. My mobile lit up with a text from my broker… ‘ALL OUT’ he wrote. I tapped back to him… ‘just out of curiosity what was the exact stock symbol of the shares we just sold? I may wish to recommend it to a new friend’.

Your Papers Please, Comrade

We are seeing the beginning of the end - or is it the end of the beginning? – of the CCP (the Climate Covid Party) "emergencies." For those who may have doubted these were linked, I give you the G20 summit. It seems the G have decided that Covid digital passports are to be required to move freely about the planet. For those who wondered what Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab were doing speaking this week to a meeting of national leadership: now we know.

Because the G20, with the exception of China, are at least putative democracies, an objective observer would assume this is the result of what the people wanted. One would be wrong. No one voted for or against this; it's never been presented for the approval of the representative governments, or citizens or subjects of the G20, or the people of any other nations.

We know these passports have nothing to do with the spread of this manufactured virus. Just last month BigPharma testified to the European Parliament that these injections were never tested for their ability to repress or stop the transmission of Covid-19. If an injection won't stop transmission, which has been the stance of the CDC for months, the purpose of getting a "vaccine" to travel, would be... what, exactly?

Yup.

At the same time as G20 is COP27, the annual boondoggle of those so worried about the climate that they all take private jets from around the planet (spewing millions of tons of "greenhouse gasses" along the way) to consume vast quantities of exotic foods (flown in from around the planet) cooked (with GHG) and served to them as they meet in air-conditioned ballrooms to discuss how we, the workers and families of the world—the productive classes—are destroying the planet with our transportation, stoves, and HVAC.

As we've discussed here before, this virus was most likely man-made. No trace has been found of it or a progenitor in nature in well over two years of investigation or the testing of over 50,000 animal subjects. Once Dr. Fauci admitted the “possibility” of its creation in a lab and covering emails began showing up, that jig was up. The "vaccine" was created and patented ten days after the first sequence of the Covid genome. This simply is not possible unless both were concurrently designed and manufactured. And, yes, the "vaccine" was designed; it is not from an inactivated virus, as all other,genuine vaccines have been in medical history. It's an artificially-created DNA map.

Various studies based on governmental databases of adverse events show that these "vaccines" may have killed as many as 600,000 Americans, and perhaps, millions, worldwide. While these numbers may or may not be high, the numbers of adverse events are so high that many countries are recommending against vaccinating people under 30, and Big Pharma, belatedly, has decided to investigate whether their injections are causing myocarditis, a term in common use today of which few of us were aware in the Before Times.

Which brings us to Klaus Schwab. Herr Schwab, of course, leads his WEF creation, a cohort believing that the global population must be reduced to under one billion souls from the current eight-plus billion. “We just don’t need the vast majority of the population,” in the words of WEF Advisor/Historian Yuval Noah Harari, because most of us, evidently, are “useless eaters.” An invented virus that kills millions, an injection killing millions more and inducing infertility to reduce future populations are but two steps on the road to the goal of our elites, those running the Covid & Climate scams.

[The accuracy of the documentary linked above, which has been of course banned by YouTube, has been questioned by the usual suspects in academe, the medical establishment, and the media. A sample:

Members of the anti-vaccination movement and of its media arm excel at portraying themselves as “those who care.” The rest of us—scientists, doctors, politicians, journalists—are represented as either apathetic or simply evil. The latest “documentary” to emerge from this movement, Died Suddenly, is an exercise in reframing compassion. It also represents the apogee of conspiritualist ideas, where grand conspiracy theories surrounding vaccines are painted on a canvas so large, they involve a Biblical war between the forces of absolute good and those of pure evil.

Who are portrayed as ringing the alarm for Armageddon in Died Suddenly? Embalmers... The problem is that embalmers and funeral directors are not medical professionals. Don’t take it from me, but from the National Funeral Directors Association in the United States, whose representative told me as much, and from Ben Schmidt, a funeral director and embalmer with a bachelor’s degree in natural science. Schmidt wrote a detailed explanation of what is happening here. Clots can easily form after death, as the liquid and solid parts of blood separate and as formaldehyde and calcium-containing water used in the embalming process catalyze clotting. Refrigeration can also be to blame, especially when a rapid influx of bodies due to COVID necessitates longer stays in the cooler as embalmers make their way through their backlog.

[Watch it and decide for yourself.]

Another step down the road to perdition is digital "money." If I must have a digital passport to travel, why not just digitize my money as an added convenience? And since Schwab has told us we "all" will be chipped one day, coding "our" money and vaccine passport into an injected chip that automatically access “our” “money” at the Fed (banks will be useless and so closed; think of the taxing advantages!) and provides our "vaccination" status to a digital reader, perhaps even as we just walk past a sensor entering a store or airport or transit station, would be convenient, no? Hello, Bill Gates.

President Biden has decreed via executive order, without presentation to representative government or to the citizens of the United States (perhaps it is now "subjects") for our approval, that the Federal Reserve explore the creation of a “Central Bank Digital Currency,” “CBDC,” or digital “dollar,” and MIT is working it out.

President Biden will sign an Executive Order outlining the first ever, whole-of-government approach to addressing the risks and harnessing the potential benefits of digital assets and their underlying technology. The Order lays out a national policy for digital assets across six key priorities: consumer and investor protection; financial stability; illicit finance; U.S. leadership in the global financial system and economic competitiveness; financial inclusion; and responsible innovation. Specifically, the Executive Order calls for measures to:

  • Protect U.S. Consumers, Investors, and Businesses by directing the Department of the Treasury and other agency partners to assess and develop policy recommendations to address the implications of the growing digital asset sector and changes in financial markets for consumers, investors, businesses, and equitable economic growth. The Order also encourages regulators to ensure sufficient oversight and safeguard against any systemic financial risks posed by digital assets.
  • Protect U.S. and Global Financial Stability and Mitigate Systemic Risk by encouraging the Financial Stability Oversight Council to identify and mitigate economy-wide (i.e., systemic) financial risks posed by digital assets and to develop appropriate policy recommendations to address any regulatory gaps.
  • Mitigate the Illicit Finance and National Security Risks Posed by the Illicit Use of Digital Assets by directing an unprecedented focus of coordinated action across all relevant U.S. Government agencies to mitigate these risks. It also directs agencies to work with our allies and partners to ensure international frameworks, capabilities, and partnerships are aligned and responsive to risks.
  • Promote U.S. Leadership in Technology and Economic Competitiveness to Reinforce U.S. Leadership in the Global Financial System by directing the Department of Commerce to work across the U.S. Government in establishing a framework to drive U.S. competitiveness and leadership in, and leveraging of digital asset technologies. This framework will serve as a foundation for agencies and integrate this as a priority into their policy, research and development, and operational approaches to digital assets.
  • Promote Equitable Access to Safe and Affordable Financial Services by affirming the critical need for safe, affordable, and accessible financial services as a U.S. national interest that must inform our approach to digital asset innovation, including disparate impact risk. Such safe access is especially important for communities that have long had insufficient access to financial services.  The Secretary of the Treasury, working with all relevant agencies, will produce a report on the future of money and payment systems, to include implications for economic growth, financial growth and inclusion, national security, and the extent to which technological innovation may influence that future.
  • Support Technological Advances and Ensure Responsible Development and Use of Digital Assets by directing the U.S. Government to take concrete steps to study and support technological advances in the responsible development, design, and implementation of digital asset systems while prioritizing privacy, security, combating illicit exploitation, and reducing negative climate impacts.
  • Explore a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) by placing urgency on research and development of a potential United States CBDC, should issuance be deemed in the national interest. The Order directs the U.S. Government to assess the technological infrastructure and capacity needs for a potential U.S. CBDC in a manner that protects Americans’ interests. The Order also encourages the Federal Reserve to continue its research, development, and assessment efforts for a U.S. CBDC, including development of a plan for broader U.S. Government action in support of their work. This effort prioritizes U.S. participation in multi-country experimentation, and ensures U.S. leadership internationally to promote CBDC development that is consistent with U.S. priorities and democratic values.

Which now brings the climate scam into the discussion. What has digital money to do with climate? Lots.

If I've consumed my "climate allotment" of gasoline this month I could be prevented from using “my” digital “money,” to fill my tank. You didn't think a "climate lockdown" would be voluntary, did you? The jet set wouldn't trust us to stay home, even after so many millions of us voluntarily did so for "two weeks to flatten the curve," wore one mask or two, and agitated against, and sometimes attacked, our fellow human beings for not going along with the crowd.

So you were on your way to Yellowstone and now neither can continue nor return home with the kids? Sorry! Buy a steak for supper tonight? But you had one two weeks ago! Your commute uses so much gasoline you'll need to move to an apartment near a mass transit station in the inner city? It's for the common good. You run a feedlot and can't buy feed for your hundreds of heads of cattle? Oh, well. You need to restock your ammunition? LOL.

They're coming for us, too. Once we all are chipped and our travel and spending controlled, the “emergencies” will be over. None of this has ever been about a virus or the weather. It's always been about destroying the middle class, our representative governments, and the liberty have convinced ourselves we have. We don't.

"Papers, please!" to travel our world, and needing the government's permission to spend our own money—the fruits of our own labor—are but the end of the beginning of global totalitarianism. These are why we are, and why you should be, Against the Great Reset.

The Coming Struggle to Stay Warm

One of the first columns I wrote for The Pipeline almost three years ago employed the metaphor of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object to forecast the likely consequences of Green politics. The irresistible force was the imposition of a policy of Net-Zero carbon emissions upon the populations of the West, in particular those of Anglosphere, and the immovable object was the democratic electorates of these countries.

It might take time, I argued, but when the voters found that Green Deals and such meant higher energy prices, higher taxes, immiseration of the less well-off, and harshly puritan lifestyles for the rest of us, an almighty smash-up would ensue.

And so it has. Indeed, the smash-up has come sooner than I expected, namely this year, and it will almost certainly be harsher because the negative impact of Net-Zero has been aggravated by the Russo-Ukraine war and sanctions adopted by the U.S. and the E.U. in response to it.

To stop train, pull handle. But think first.

What I didn’t expect, however, is that the smash-up would take place in slow-motion. But that is what’s happening.

Almost wherever you look, there’s some not-very-important story that tips you off to a subterranean explosion whose full impact won’t be properly felt for a while. The effect is something like the delayed impact of depth charges or deadpan jokes.

Here, for instance, is the London Daily Telegraph telling us that the Brits will be wearing new styles of underwear this winter—and not because they’re hoping for a more exotic sex-life:

Households are stockpiling thermal underwear to avoid turning on the heating this winter as energy bills spiral. John Lewis, Britain’s biggest department store chain, said shoppers had rushed to buy warmer clothes in recent weeks, with sales of winter thermals having doubled last week compared to a week earlier. Sales of dressing gowns are up 76pc compared to last year.

That’s the precautionary principle reduced to the bare essentials. Like everyone else in the northern hemisphere, ordinary Brits are expecting a chilly winter this year because of the following factors (which didn't start with Mr. Putin’s war); Like most Western governments, the U.K. powers-that-be have neglected to invest enough in energy security because they quite consciously preferred to invest in transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy. That is the orthodoxy of Net-Zero (sometimes enforced by treaties) in E.U. countries such as Germany, non-E.U. countries like Britain, and the U.S.

It’s a massive enterprise because until recently fossil fuels provided more than 85 percent of total energy to even the most technically advanced economies. In pursuit of this vision of a future of all-renewable energy, Germany has shut down almost all its nuclear power stations, keeps equivocating over whether the shut down the few remaining ones, and ends up relying on “dirty coal” now that cheap Russian energy is as unreliable as "renewables."

California, dreaming...

Over the Pond the Biden administration has been refusing to license oil-and-gas explorations on federal land with the embarrassing result that it has to import oil from Venezuela. And the U.K. government too has banned “fracking” that would exploit the nation's plentiful reserves of natural gas. As a result almost all of these countries are facing the risk of energy shortfalls to the point at which energy “blackouts” and rationing are seriously entertained by utilities and regulators if the winter is severe. California too.

Moreover, the costs of transitioning to renewables are not only high, they are rising. The International Energy Agency has just revised its estimate of the investment needed to limit global temperatures to meet the Net-Zero target under the Paris Accords upwards. That will now rise from the 390 billion dollars annually today to 1.3 trillion dollars a year between now and 2030. If met, those targets would eliminate emissions from the energy sector by 2035 in the advanced world and by 2040 in developing countries. But they are unlikely to be met. On present trends Net-Zero won’t be achieved until 2060—and present trends look too optimistic in the light of the present energy crisis.

The upshot of which is that almost all the West’s governments face slightly different versions of two serious problems: uncertain energy supplies, and existing high indebtedness.

Take energy supplies first. Germany is facing a serious crisis of its fundamental economic model in the post-Ukraine world, Its two foundations were exporting cars to China and importing cheap energy from Russia. For the foreseeable future, neither now looks like a reliable prospect or even a possible one. Berlin must now struggle to replace the Russian energy half-forbidden by the sanctions it supports diplomatically.

Artifacts of an ancient civilization, if Greens get their way.

Similarly, because Britain neglected nuclear investment—its target of 25 percent of energy from nuclear power stations will be reached in 2050!—the country is heavily dependent on imported natural gas which it needs to solve the renewables’ “intermittency problem”: there are days when the wind doesn’t blow nor the sun shine. As Andrew Stuttaford points out, that makes the earlier decision of the U.K. government to close down its biggest natural gas storage capacity an especially shortsighted one. Even the French, who sensibly went nuclear in a big way in the 1970s, now have to spend on repairs and modernization.

What of the second aspect of the crisis: overspending? Two sorts of spending need to be financed here—that for Net-Zero, and that to finance the energy security national governments have neglected. Unfortunately, however necessary they are, they come on top of the massive sums of money that the same governments have already spent during the Covid-19 pandemic on locking down their economies and paying their people to stay at home. That backlog of indebtedness explains why the financial markets are becoming nervous of lending money to governments that don’t make financial responsibility their top priority. Interest rates are rising again in response to rising inflation, and that's a problem for governments that want to borrow money.

We saw that very recently when the British government fell because the markets thought it was adopting a cavalier attitude to debt. That impression was both exaggerated--the U.K.’s national debt as a percentage of GDP is one of the lowest in Europe--and largely the result of rash but trivial political misjudgments by ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. All the same, the market brought them down because they were planning to add to an already high total of government spending.

Long johns, here we come.

When that happens, every spending program becomes the enemy of every other program. If restoring energy security becomes a priority for governments, then spending on Net-Zero will—and should—come under pressure. After all, Britain's short financial crisis became a political one in part because it was leading to a rise in mortgage payments. Like rising sales of warm thermal underwear, rising mortgage payments are another symptom of the price that the Brits will be paying for ill-judged energy policies. Voters' shoes are beginning to pinch; the immovable object is beginning to stiffen.

Of course, the irresistible force (in the form of support for Net-Zero from an alliance of the establishment and radical Green anarchists) has neither vanished nor much diminished. At almost every stage it has objected to policies that looked likely to prioritize energy security over the transition to renewables. With the arrival of a new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, it has been flexing its muscles to warn him that it will tolerate no lifting of the ban on fracking that the doomed Liz Truss tried to bring about. Net-Zero is an obstruction to restoring the energy security that it undermined in the first place. The circle closes.

My impression is that Sunak is taking his time to assess what Leonid Brezhnev used to call “the correlation of forces.” On the one hand, he has said that he will keep the ban on fracking unless evidence appears that suggests it is not dangerous to the environment; on the other, he has decided not to attend the U.N.’s COP 27 Climate Summit on the grounds that, in effect, he’s got more important things to do in London. My translation: he doesn’t want to attend and be trapped into making commitments on Net-Zero that might later be inconvenient to his overall energy and budgetary policies.

He may also think that Winter when the snow falls and Britain’s bedrooms freeze will be time also when the irresistible force of Net-Zero becomes much less irresistible and the immovable object of voter resistance much more resistant. And irremovable.

The Greens' Cloud Cuckoo Land

And so into their fantasy world they go. Demolishing reliable coal-power stations and subsidizing intermittent sources of power. Bad enough that Western governments have swallowed the line that climate Armageddon is on the horizon. Worse, much worse, is what they’re doing about it. They seem unable to distinguish between dreams and reality. Two recent developments in Australia add to the overwhelming evidence that Western governments are living their deluisions. Of course, there are many more than two such developments. I’ve just picked two of them at random. The first concerns the Liddell coal power station in the Hunter region in the state of New South Wales (NSW).

Liddell is being closed down prematurely in April next year. Incidentally, Eraring, the largest power station in Australia (at 2.3GW), also in NSW, will close prematurely in 2025. The Australian Energy Market Operator expects more early closures. On cue, it’s been announced that the closure of Loy Yang, supplying 30 percent of the state of Victoria’s power, will be brought forward ten years to 2035. No odds are being offered on bets it will close earlier than that. It’s all part of the continuing shutdown of coal power stations in Australia. Meanwhile, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, et al, are still building them, and using heaps of Australian coal to power them. What to do? Weep.

Back to Liddell. It is to be replaced—for no good reason—by intermittent wind and solar. Intermittency; there’s the rub. Firming required. And, for the continuing avoidance of any doubt, to the extent of 100 percent. Envisaged to fill part of the gap is Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro. It’s way behind schedule, way above budget, and not nearly as effective as claimed.

Liddell on the chopping block: icky old energy.

Then, risibly, there are batteries. To illustrate, it’s claimed that the largest battery in Australia, the 450MWh Big Battery in Victoria, can power over one million dwellings for half an hour. There are 2.5 million dwellings in Victoria and, of course, commerce and industry besides. Powering the whole state would leave the Big Battery flat after about 5 minutes. And then, from somewhere, it has to be charged up again. Enough said. Finally, there is the effective, if partial, firming coming via a new 600MWh gas-powered plant to be built by Snowy Hydro Limited, near and named after the small town of Kurri Kurri in the Hunter region of NSW. Sense and realism at last you might think. Think again.

Initially, the Labor Party was against Kurri Kurri. Fossil fuel and all that. But now in government, with responsibility to keep the lights on, it’s come around. But not without the dreaming in tow. It insists that the gas plant must run on 30 percent green hydrogen from the outset, scheduled for December 2023, and on 100 percent by 2030 or sooner. Enter Paul Broad, the (now ex-) CEO of Snowy Hydro Limited. Let him tell it: "While hydrogen is a wonderful opportunity, it is many, many years away from being commercial."

Not what the Government wanted to hear. Green dream interrupted. Broad resigned in August. Wanted: new CEO willing to suspend reality, live in dreamland, and conjure up commercial quantities of green hydrogen.

The second development comes out of the state of Queensland. The Labor Party is the governing party in Queensland. It runs a green-obsessed government. No surprise there. Governments of all six Australian states and its two territories and the nation itself are green-obsessed; including those (in NSW and Tasmania) run by the pretend-center-right Liberal Party. In fact, there’s no difference to speak of. We don’t have the grand variety that Ron DeSantis and some of his fellow Republican governors (and Republican legislators) bring to the United States. And they say size doesn’t matter.

The Premier of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk (locally pronounced as Pala-shay), announced her green dream under the heading of the “world’s biggest pumped hydro for Queensland,” on September 28. Some of its elements:

On the drawing board: clean green power!

Apropos coal. Snapshot, October 7, 6.15pm, coal power is supplying 78 percent of Queensland’s electricity; 5,588MW out of 7,201MW (natural gas 14 percent, hydro 4 percent, wind and solar 2.6 percent). In case she’s missed it, someone might remind the Premier that 2035 is only thirteen short years away. Rome wasn’t built in thirteen years. And neither are new dams, pumped hydro stations, green hydrogen plants, many square miles of wind and solar farms, and the accompanying transmission infrastructure. But she won’t listen. Her reality is in her head and her head is in the clouds:

This plan is about cheaper, cleaner and secure energy for Queenslanders…It is about turbo-charging new investment in new minerals, batteries and manufacturing…Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy…This plan makes Queensland the renewable energy capital of the world.

Queensland is only the third largest Australian state. Population 5.3 million. Yet, destined to become the renewable energy capital of the world? If you say so Ms. Palaszczuk. Clearly her (world domination) plan is delusional. Something the climate activists in the bureaucracy thought up. It’s a reverie with no practical possibility of being realized; at least the building part. It’s quick and easy to blow things up; like, say, coal power stations. And what then, I wonder?

Time to panic. Leap for the lifeboats. But where to head?  Maybe you speak Chinese. No green dreams there; just the realistic ambition of world domination, this one backed up by a two-million-man army and gunboats. Nothing green about that.

Upper-Class Twit of the Year Goes Green

The British member of parliament Jacob Rees-Mogg is a hero to a certain type of Anglosphere conservative for his Wodehousian mien, an anachronistic and aristocratic style which has led to his being nicknamed “the honourable member for the early 20th century.”

But Rees-Mogg's fan base will be sorry to see his recent Op-Ed in Britain's Leftist broadsheet The Guardian, of all places, embracing both green energy and "intelligent net-zero in which green energy will play the biggest role."

I’m proud to belong to a country that has cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent since 1990, while growing the economy by over 70% in that time. It is in this light that we can achieve our commitments to net zero by 2050, as dark satanic mills are replaced by onshore and offshore windfarms.

Rees-Mogg goes on to tout government plans "to support low-cost finance to help householders with the upfront costs of solar installation" and "align onshore wind planning policy with other infrastructure to allow it to be deployed more easily in England." He claims the government "understand the strength of feeling that some people have about the impact of wind turbines in England" (one imagines that many Brits probably feel about them as William Blake's did of those "dark satanic mills" Rees-Mogg had referenced earlier) and claims their plans "will maintain local communities’ ability to contribute to proposals." "Contribute to" but not "block." It sounds like a lot of rural Brits will soon be railroaded.

Take a deep breath, Tories.

One can't help but wonder if this piece is at all connected to recent reports that Rees-Mogg's own mother is set to make a pretty penny on the development of a massive solar farm in the politician's own constituency? Perhaps he was trying to get ahead of accusations of hypocrisy on green matters, or maybe signaling his disagreement with the Truss government's stated intention of making such developments more difficult, potentially endangering his family's cash out. This is the theory of the politics site Guido Fawkes, which broke the story. Rees-Mogg is currently secretary of state for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy in that government, so he would have a real say in the implementation of such a proposal.

In any event, this is a disappointing endorsement for Rees-Mogg, and a foolish one at that. His jumping on the net-zero band-wagon will hurt Britain and make life worse for his constituents. No amount of archaic affectations are going to change that. Net-Zero insanity is part of what brought Boris Johnson low, and with Liz Truss stumbling badly right out of the gate, the Tories need all the help they can get not to get thoroughly annihilated in the next election.

But having triumphed beyond the expectations in 2019, winning seats in constituencies that hadn't voted for a Tory since the Norman invasion. Taking the bras off the debutantes indeed: expect them to give it all back and more no later than January 2025 or whenever the ultra-diverse Truss government collapses, whichever comes first.

Dumb and Dumber, To

Must be the passing years. More things irritate me. For example, the chap at my club’s gym the other day who spent some ninety percent of his time poring over his smart phone. People still wearing masks outside. Then there was the (retired) bishop at my church who had the straightforward job of delivering the sermon at a memorial service for the late Queen Elizabeth. On the throne for seventy years, she had kept her views on political matters to herself. The bishop couldn’t manage it for fifteen minutes. Unmistakably congratulating the new King Charles for his former princely far-sighted views on the environment (go figure), and then clearly signaling his own support for the monarchy, about which there is a lively debate within Australia.

Now I happen to think that Prince Charles’s views on the environment were inane, while agreeing with the bishop that the monarchy has served Australia well. However, whether I agree or disagree is beside the point. The pulpit is for preaching the gospel; and, in this special case, to honour the Queen’s life. It is not for political posturing. Unfortunately, unlike the late Queen, many churchmen are incapable of keeping fittingly shtum. And climate change, in particular, excites their appetites to be heard and seen being virtuous (apropos Matthew 6:5) at whatever cost to Christian good fellowship.

No gas emitted!

From discordance to discourse. I was to be at lunch recently with someone who works within the renewable energy industry (everyone has to earn a living) and yet retains a balanced outlook. We discussed hydrogen harmoniously. Why not. He made the logical point that while blue hydrogen made of natural gas, with CO2 sequestrated, must by definition result in more expensive power than using natural gas directly, green hydrogen faces no such inherent limitation. Thus, conceivably, the price per kilowatt hour of electricity generated using green hydrogen could eventually fall below the corresponding price using natural gas. At the same time, he acknowledged the size of the task and the possibility that it might prove to be infeasible. Indeed, it might.

Cheap green hydrogen. That’s the goal of mining billionaire Andrew Forest in Australia. He’s not alone. He’s part of a global pursuit for a stash of loot; akin to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, if you want to strike a movie parallel. In the movie, if you recall, there was the possibility of only one winner, such was the level of avarice among the competitors. There could be more than one winner in the green-hydrogen stakes. But pointedly not all nations can be the leading exporter of green hydrogen and surely only very few can be among leading exporters. I suspect that a fallacy of composition is afoot. The world isn’t big enough. Be that as it may, notwithstanding the geographical limitations of the world, Australia, according to its governing powers, is on track to be a leader, if not the leader.

Yet, unaccountably, when that esteemed body, the World Economic Forum identified six likely leading candidates for producing green hydrogen, Australia was missing. There was China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea and the United States. Come on guys. Where’s Australia? A mere afterthought, as it happens. Appended among Chile, Namibia and Morocco, et al.

But surely, that can’t be right? It was only in September this year that an international conference on green hydrogen was held in Australia’s so-called Sunshine State. Plenty of sun and wide-open spaces in Queensland to plant solar and wind farms in order to power electrolysis; lots of water up north too. Also, I misspoke, pardon my slip. It wasn’t a mere “conference” but a “summit” no less. Hydrogen Connect Summit, it was called. Henry Kissinger comes to mind. There you have it. Australia is surely at the epicentre of the green hydrogen revolution.

Suitable for a "green energy" summit.

Not so fast. I searched. Quickly found summits everywhere; not a conference in sight. The FT [Financial Times] Hydrogen Summit in London in June; the World Hydrogen Energy Summit in India, coming in October; the World Hydrogen Summit in the Netherlands in May; the Asia-Pacific Hydrogen Summit in December 2021; the Hydrogen Shot Summit, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy in August/September 2021. No doubt there’s more.

All appear to be part of a chronological series of summits; more planned for 2023. "Summit," as presently defined in the dictionary, is clearly inadequate to encompass the modern-day renewable-energy world. Need a new twist. Let’s say, meetings of government apparatchiks and rent-seekers; particularly in the cause of obtaining taxpayer handouts to fund a fanciful green-hydrogen future.

It's hard to get reliable evidence on relative costs and prices of different hues of hydrogen. There is much noise and vested interest. I prefer to rely on those with a current stake in the game. Santos is Australia’s largest producer of natural gas. Here is its CEO Kevin Gallagher at a conference in June:

If we look at current prices in Australia, hydrogen made in Moomba from natural gas with carbon capture and storage would be about $14 per gigajoule before transport. Green hydrogen made at Port Kembla would be at least $38 per gigajoule before transport – a price Australian manufacturers could not pay.

This price differential quoted by Gallagher is in line with other estimates (e.g., an EIA estimate) which suggest that green hydrogen costs about three times that of blue hydrogen. Now those favouring green hydrogen claim that its cost will fall steeply over time as a result of technological breakthroughs and scale. The first is nothing more than wishful thinking. The second, debatable; when producing green hydrogen at scale is the essence of its predicament. But we’re missing something. We’re comparing dumb with dumberer.

In the ten years from 2011-12 to 2020-21, thus leaving aside this year’s artificial spike, wholesale natural gas prices in Sydney averaged a little over A$6 per gigajoule. Why pay $14 for blue, never mind $38 for green, when you can have it au naturel for single-digit dollars; and especially so, if drilling and fracking were undemonized? That’s the question lost to your average bishop and prince who are gung-ho for green and damn the cost to the hoi polloi.

Charles' Choice: 'Climate Change' or the Crown

Within hours of of her passing, Politico published a lengthy obituary of Queen Elizabeth II entitled "The Short, Unhappy Life of Elizabeth Windsor." That title is meant to surprise -- Queen Elizabeth was 96 years old when she died. She lived to see the births of several of her great-grandchildren. We should, all of us, be grateful to live for such a "short" time.

But the point is that, while her life as Queen was long, her own, personal life lasted for just a few of those years. She was only 10 when her uncle Edward VIII abdicated, leaving her father king and her the heir apparent. After her 1947 wedding, Elizabeth was able to live as herself again for a few short years in Malta, where her husband Philip served as a naval officer. But her father's early death in 1952 changed all that -- for the next 70 years, Elizabeth II took center stage and Elizabeth Windsor, a woman with interests, opinions, preferences, had hardly any public existence at all.

The triumph of Gloriana, 1953.

Of course, this was the key to her success as a monarch. While those who knew her well describe the Queen as a close follower of politics and world events, and she had clear favorites in the political realm—she was quite close to the Labour leaders Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, while her relationship to the Conservative Margaret Thatcher was reportedly frosty—Elizabeth was conscious of the supra-political nature of her role.

And in the world we live in, where every movie we watch, magazine we read, and friendship we attempt to maintain is sucked down into the morass of politics, that is a rare and precious thing. The Queen's success at remaining above the fray is precisely why, in our acrimonious age, her subjects continued to love her.

Which is why there is reason for concern about her son, King Charles III. We all know of his green enthusiasms, the environmentalist causes he's championed as the heir apparent, from solar panels, to electric cars, to biomass. We all laughed when he gushed about his Aston Martin running on wine and cheese. We were a bit more perturbed on the numerous occasions when he broke into his Henry V-meets-Klaus Schwab imitation, saying things like, "We need a vast military-style campaign to marshal the strength of the global private sector, with trillions at its disposal. We have to put ourselves on... a warlike footing,” and when he sympathized with the extremists from Extinction Rebellion. But many of his countrymen—certainly most of this author's British and Canadian friends—held out hope that, when the time came, he would follow his mother's example and disappear beneath the crown.

For those people, now his subjects, recent reports have been disappointing. Details are hard to come by—the focus in Britain remains on the departed Queen—but the BBC has reported that Charles's confidants say he has no intention of backing down on "climate change." And the politics website Guido Fawkes has heard that the King made it a point to emphasize his dedication to "the protection of the climate and the planet" on a phone call with French president Emmanuel Macron.

Queen Elizabeth, 1926-2022.

In his first address as king, Charles reflected upon the life of his mother, and said "I, too, now solemnly pledge myself, throughout the remaining time God grants me, to uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation." But, as the Queen well understood, the "constitutional principles" to which he refers include the apolitical nature of the monarchy. Those principles were, of course, established on the blood of Englishmen over the course of the English Civil War, a conflict which saw the present king's predecessor, Charles I, executed for his refusal to accept the primacy of parliament in the political affairs of the nation. After the original Charles's death, the monarchy was dissolved and British Commonwealth was ruled by the murderous Puritan dictator, Oliver Cromwell.

Those events should serve as a warning to the new King Charles. The institution he now presides over finds itself in a tenuous position. If he isn't careful, as his mother was, it could all come tumbling down.