Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Neckering

You know how some mornings you wake up with your mind empty—and not a care in the world? It’s absolute paradise. But that wasn’t today. And despite waking up in actual paradise (Necker Island), thoughts of work had scissored in and out of my dreams until finally I opened my eyes in defeat. 

Still… defeat in paradise was not so bad. On my side of the island, I was given a standalone room which is even more secluded than the stunning Great House Rooms. But the tween-agers in residence avoided waking their parents by coming to my side and conducting themselves as absolute savages. If only I’d smuggled a plastic straw into my luggage it could have served as a makeshift blowgun.

I’m not generally so unkind but the bad parents of the world are pressing on my last nerve. And if you’re in airports you see them—prodding those pajama-clad imps who will never become pursers, or pilots, or software salesmen, or any of the other professions whose travel they obstruct.

Ready to rock for the planet.

Ironically it is for future generations that I am saving the planet. A generation that includes one Seattle schoolboy, who has taken it upon himself to attack the carbon footprint of the private jet set… (aka my clients), and the very people who are actively engaged in saving our planet. Thankfully topping the list of eco-offenders were the Kardashians, but two of my clients were also in the top ten, and unhappy doesn’t even begin to cover it. The difference obviously, is my clients are in service of the planet; and this kid just wants to fault us for trying to do our jobs.

It was nearly 11:00 before I’d made any headway and hoped that people would think I was intermittent fasting rather than sleeping or watching Netflix, especially since I’m not here entirely for the holibobs.

With the pre-teen terrorists out of my 180° view, I stepped onto my veranda and witnessed the storied flock of 500+ flamingoes that have been bio-engineered back into inhabitance. Never before had I seen anything so breathtaking. I was mesmerised, and wanted to bathe my eyes in their shocking-coral beauty as long as I could. Lunch and clients would have to wait.

Eventually I made my way down and embedded my mobile in the bottom of my raffia tote. The tween-agers were now swarming around the sushi and fresh crab claws—well of course they were, and ordering specialty slushies and french fries, and the adults were hitting golf balls into the Caribbean , which suits me just fine as my game is limited to one decent big swing anyway. Despite the target being a vast azure sea… two men were debating a Golf Digest article on why the flagstick should be pulled out 99% of the time. I took this as a sign to fish out my phone.  

I was craving a Bloody Mary but coming into focus was that dreadful man from Beef Island Airport. I’d assumed we were headed to different places as he boarded a boat and I arrived by helicopter but alas, he was here. I plunged my hand into my bag and fished out my sunglasses but to no avail. He’d seen me and so I put my phone to my ear and began an entirely imaginary conversation. Just my luck, the phone rang while I was talking and I had to do the whole how weird that we got disconnected routine. 

Still hasn't got the memo.

It was daddy alerting me to the fact that Al Gore might be booted from the board at Apple. ‘Yes, we are on top of that’, I said in a voice that told my father I clearly was not.

‘Yeahhh… I didn’t think you’d seen it’, he said picking up on my tone. ‘It was done by exempt solicitation, which is likely why you missed it.  Or maybe you got sunscreen in your eyes at the office…’

Typical Daddy. ‘Indeed’ I said, and thanked him profusely for ringing me.

Lunch was over—I had work to do.  I took two steps toward returning to my room and ran smack into the annoying man, who was somehow even more off-putting in less clothing. ‘What brings you here?’ he asked.

‘Helicopter!’ I said, and made my exit.

Back in the paradise that is my room I opened my laptop. It was bad. ‘Gore’s political activism not worth his limited skill set’... ‘Was never qualified to serve on Apple’s board in the first place’... ‘Playing “Chicken Little” for global warming…’  OMG! Global warming?? We’d dropped that term ages ago! Like I said—bad.  

The sky is falling! It's the end of the world!

I scanned the internet for anything linking Richard Branson to Al Gore and found Mr Branson putting forth a prize for anyone who could extract carbon from the atmosphere. Crikey! The interview was decades old but there they were—side by side for all the world to see. When asked if this carbon trap was a gimmick Gore replied, ‘I don’t think so’. You don’t think so? Ugh! It was a blood bath… with Gore preening like someone who clearly doesn’t know he’s going to be proven wrong in the years to come. I couldn’t save him and also save the planet. It was crunch time.

Four hours later I sent time codes and a press release to my assistant and dressed for dinner. What a day it had been! Joining the other guests, the chatter was light and lyrical under a canopy of perfect sky, and not a mobile in sight. With the exception of our host that is. I could see him nervously checking on Gore’s possible ouster. He needn’t have worried though, as I’d successfully partitioned him and eventually telegraphed a smile and a thumbs up.

The finished press packet was brilliant. It ended with a clip of that fated interview wherein the host asks, ‘Is Al Gore a prophet?’  And Richard quips, ‘How do you spell profit?’

Now I can relax. 

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.

Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Gloving

Ten a.m. is not generally the time I find myself at a bar but I’m being photographed at The Kensington for having won the World Economic Forum’s New Champions Award. I’m actually quite happy about being featured… anything to take the focus off the disastrous United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop27). It was bad enough that the media made a big deal out of the 100 private jets, but beyond that it showed that we did not progress commitments, or show evidence of improvement. So when they suggested shooting me in Stella McCartney, Armani, and Fendi, I was all in.

I also didn’t mind the early hour as the Kensington is just three miles from my childhood home in St John’s Wood, where I’ve been staying off-and-on since lockdowns. 

We’re on a short break because I guess it’s what one does post-Covid and the wardrobe mistress needed to explain to the photographer why my gloves don’t fit and why she can’t get another pair. So I made a call to my assistant—no answer. Then I rang my father who told me perfection is the enemy of good but agreed to fetch a pair of gloves from mummy’s wardrobe.

Stella, saving the world one glove at a time.

‘Are you sure?’ Daddy asked.

‘Yes of course I’m sure!’ I said. ‘The ones they gave me could fit The Hulk’.

‘No, I just meant are you sure, because my coming to you adds to the carbon footprint of your eco-award’.

UGH! ‘See you soon,’ I said, and rang off. 

Just then my assistant strolled in, latte in hand and apologising for not being available all day yesterday. I hadn’t even known she was out-of-pocket yesterday too, but now that I think about it she was supposed to prepare some climate numbers for my interview. Instead she wanted me to go over some appropriate gifts for my Christmas swag bag. ‘Socks that Plant Trees' was the first suggestion. I nixed it because they actually don’t plant trees — though purportedly someone somewhere, is more likely to be able to plant trees since he bought these socks. Hard pass.

Next up Bees Wrap Food Wrap—it's waxed paper that I have to wash (without soap) and re-use—no thanks. Next up ‘Grow Cocktails’. How could that be bad? Except it's just an egg carton that grows herbs. And not even juniper berries. Then there were robes made from repurposed saris. Double hard pass. First I don’t accept there are that many saris waiting to be repurposed and when I look back to a week in the life of a sari—no thank you. This wasn’t working, but just then Daddy had arrived with several of Judith’s gloves—and they fit—just like a glove.

The 19-something male model they hired to pose behind me had just arrived in London and all but admitted he was working without a visa. Maybe he thought I’d see this as a reason to help him along but I needed to think about the upcoming interview. This was, after all, about recognising my contribution to the planet. Daddy stuck around to run questions with me…

‘So…The Africa Cop…’ He began. 

‘Well, technically it was slated as “Cop27” but yes, the focus was Africa…’ I said.

‘Right, so Africa… to highlight innovation? Progress?’

‘NO Daddy, because Africa needs $2.4 trillion due to its vulnerability to climate change’.

‘…And they are more vulnerable because they lack resources and manpower?’

‘No…okay, admittedly they are a mess, and they don’t do anything well, but if we want them to be better caretakers of the planet we have to pay for it’.

What "white savior" complex?

‘OK so we have to pay. And in order to find this $2.4 trillion we have to be more productive—but somehow productive in a way that doesn’t also use more energy or resources? Did I get that right?’ he asked.

‘Well, yes’. I said, ‘But otherwise we can just give our extra money—money we already have!’ 

‘I see. Our extra money. The money we don't really need. So your plan is we make ourselves poorer so that the most resource-abundant continent on earth can manage their resources the way we tell them to’.

UGH! ’Yes, if you have to put it that way… YES!’

Daddy got up, gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, ‘Well, you look lovely, kitten, and I’ve brought you three pair from which to choose… kidskin, silk, and poly-satin. This way you can choose whom to offend’.

That’s Daddy. But I was grateful for the delivery, and honestly the silk ones were divine. I doubted I could find these in any store today.

My assistant was back with another set of options. Reusable paper towels? No on every level. Plant your pencil? A pencil that when finished is pushed into the ground and actually contains seeds. No. Reusable make-up remover pads… I could just see me leaving them in every hotel bin… NO.

‘What about a counter-top trash composter?’ she asked.

‘NO! And NO!’ I said. ‘I’ve had very bad luck with composters as gifts’. I told her the story, briefly reliving my previous embarrassment.

‘But this one is a living composter…you put in food scraps, and worms and…’

‘WORMS? Worms on a kitchen counter?' I shrieked. ‘NO!’

Readily available!

I sent her to chat with junior James Bond and opened my laptop to look for gifts. I landed on the Citizen Eco Watch. PERFECTION! I quickly sent a link to my father and rang to ask his opinion.

‘Well?? It’s eco. Right?’ I asked.

‘It uses FEWER batteries, Jennifer, it runs on light sources, but a back-up battery will still need to be changed about every ten years’.

‘But less is more, right? I asked. 

‘But why not a self-winding watch? No battery at all?’

‘Cause it doen’t SAY eco-watch. This one is named "The Citizen Eco Watch"—perception is everything!’

He had no argument. And as he very well knows… perfection is the enemy of good.

The ESG Counter-Revolution Has Arrived

With this week’s announcement by the asset management giant Vanguard that it is exiting the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, a sub-unit of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, it is clear that the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) movement is no longer in unfettered ascension. Although we're still far from being able to claim that U.S. investors are free of the talons of ESG, it is clear that the voice of investors and industry leaders who have been the target of these evangelists can no longer be ignored.

Created to repair the purported damage caused by capitalism, the ESG construct is in reality, far more sinister. The scheme was created as a mechanism to reorient capital flows toward political and social objectives that its progenitors from the World Economic Forum deem important. With help from its less attractive, though equally mischievous step-brother, the United Nations, they together seek to coerce political and social change that many investors do not want.

Vanguard’s announcement came about a week after Consumers’ Research and 13 state attorneys general asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to review Vanguard’s request to own energy company stocks, and sought to intervene in Vanguard's blanket authorization renewal request that was pending before the commission. Their brief pointed out that collectively, Vanguard, State Street and BlackRock hold the largest voting blocs for most of the S&P 500, and are the largest investors in public oil, gas, and coal companies, having a combined $300 billion fossil-fuel investment portfolio.

Fools and their money, etc.

But their membership in the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, created an intrinsic conflict of interest: support the decarbonization of the industries in which you invest, or do what is legally required and represent the best interest of their investors by maximizing returns. The decision was binary. For Vanguard, reason and legal obligation have won out over activism and social bullying.

Until now, asset-management firms have been happy to oblige the vision of these globalists because they believed they would benefit financially. Working in contravention of the sole interest rule and in defiance of legally mandated fiduciary obligations, the largest asset management firms have been attempting to force ESG adoption upon the boardrooms of publicly traded companies so as to transition them to the envisioned New World Order. Seeking power, wealth, and control, they have ordained themselves the arbiters of the acceptable, attempting to define which industries and companies should be permitted to participate in the capital markets and which should be relegated to a world they and their globalist masters unilaterally have decided should no longer exist.  

But now, with Vanguard’s withdrawal from the Net Zero Alliance and BlackRock’s recent market thrashing, asset management meddling may have reached its apex. Beginning earlier this year, investors and states attorneys general and treasurers, like those involved in the Consumers' Research filing, began to assert that investors’ interests were not being fiduciarily represented. These asset management giants have until now believed that their sheer economic heft would allow them to coerce companies and investors into using the ESG yardstick while diverting capital into companies that would help shape the new world they and the global activists envision. With a combined portfolio of $15 trillion under management, they unequivocally represent economic heft. But economic scale aside, market returns and the legal protections conveyed to investors and codified in U.S. law remain an unforgiving reminder of reality.

This week Vanguard was reminded by business leaders and investors of its core business and related legal obligations. Its very existence was threatened by its ESG promises to impede returns. Likewise, BlackRock pension fund clients have reminded CEO Larry Fink that his annual pronouncements of the value of stakeholder capitalism and ESG are falling flat. In the face of abysmal returns and market conditions created by poor economic and monetary policy, investors are demanding an abandonment of the ESG eco-system.

The states beg to differ, Mr. Fink.

BlackRock’s unprecedented $1.7 trillion losses in the first six months of the year has caused an exodus of pension fund clients worth nearly $4 billion. Arizona’s treasurer last February quietly pulled $543 million from BlackRock. Then in early August, 19 state attorneys general sent a joint letter to them expressing concerns that the company’s ESG agenda is impeding its ability to deliver a maximum return on investment for its shareholders. They wrote:

Rather than being a spectator betting on the game, BlackRock appears to have put on a quarterback jersey and actively taken the field. As a firm, BlackRock has committed to implementing an ESG engagement and voting strategy across all assets under management, and held over 2,300 company engagements on climate, the most of any category of engagement.

Then last month, Missouri Attorney General Scott Fitzpatrick divested $500 million in assets managed by BlackRock on behalf of the Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System. Louisiana’s treasurer, John Schroder told the Financial Times that he will divest $794 million. Utah and Arkansas likewise committed to pull $100 million and $125 million, respectively. Meanwhile, South Carolina’s state treasurer will remove $200 million of state retirement funds from BlackRock. And most recently, Florida announced it will pull $600 million of short-term investments, while freezing $1.43 billion of long-term securities, with an eye on reallocating the capital to other money managers by the start of 2023.

These state attorneys general and treasurers understand leverage. BlackRock assets under management dropped 16 percent year-on-year to $7.96 trillion, decreasing its net income by 17 percent. Meanwhile, shares in BlackRock are down roughly 30 percent this year ----underperforming the benchmark S&P 500 Index.

Vanguard has taken notice of BlackRock’s plight and correctly understands that the horizon looks stormy for those in the financial sector who choose to ignore their legal obligations to investors. Still, the ESG counter-revolution has only just begun. Whatever ESG ground that might be lost by private-sector asset management firms, one should assume that a doubling down by the Biden administration is already in motion. Whether through executive orders or regulatory mandates, ESG is the mechanism for governments and globalists to create the dystopic world they yearn for. Investors and states must maintain the pressure. 

Garbage In, Garbage Out

On Tuesdays the garbage is collected in my neighborhood. Local apartment buildings make sure to put out their trash early. So when I walk my dog, we often pass large masses of see-through plastic trash bags, with their neatly sorted plastic contents, washed and bundled to be recycled. My neighbors are quite fastidious, as are their building superintendents. The effort to recycle takes significant time and effort, and no one skimps on it.

Different trucks pick up different types of trash, and take it to different places, naturally. This is expensive. But New York City has mandated recycling, to be environmentally correct, and help save the planet by re-using juice containers, water bottles, and all the rest of the plastic that holds stuff we want. But what if it turned out that this effort is entirely in vain? That it is a charade? A religious ritual to expiate the sin of consuming things in a wealthy, modern society?

It's great to feel great!

As a matter of fact, it does turn out that all this effort and expense amounts to nothing, environmentally. In a widely circulated paper released on October 24th, no less an authority on environmentalism than radical Greenpeace announced that recycling plastic is a total sham, of tiny value. There is no such thing as recycling most of that plastic.

U.S. households generated an estimated 51 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, only 2.4 million tons of which was recycled. The report also finds that no type of plastic packaging in the U.S. meets the definition of recyclable used by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastic Economy (EMF NPE) Initiative. Plastic recycling was estimated to have declined to about 5–6% in 2021, down from a high of 9.5% in 2014 and 8.7% in 2018. At that time, the U.S. exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled even though much of it was burned or dumped.

The report finds that actual plastic recycling is down from a 2014 high of 9.5 percent to a 2021 low of 5-6 percent. Most of that plastic is “recycled” in China, and other poor Asian countries, to which we export it, at great cost. We pay them to recycle it, and we have no idea what they actually do with it. In fact, Greenpeace reports, most of it is dumped, though it is “counted” as recycled. For a lot less taxpayer money we could put it in landfills right here.

This long overdue, honest discussion of just what happens to this expensive garbage notes that the reason for these realities, is that most plastic is simply not recyclable. Lisa Ramsden, Greenpeace’s head of plastics, writes, “But the data is clear: practically speaking, most plastic is just not recyclable.” More specifically, the report tells us: “Mechanical and chemical recycling of plastic waste has largely failed and will always fail because plastic waste is: (1) extremely difficult to collect, (2) virtually impossible to sort for recycling, (3) environmentally harmful to reprocess, (4) often made of and contaminated by toxic materials, and (5) not economical to recycle.”

One wonders how long it will take the environmental consortium of do-gooders and politicians to fess up to this reality? When will school children cease being indoctrinated about the magic of plastic recycling? When will homeowners be absolved of having to separate their trash?

Get 'em while they're young.

Of course, Greenpeace wants us to switch to some other approach. But the point is, we have been lied to, and snookered into washing throwaway bottles that end up in third world dumps, for going on three decades now. This exercise has literally cost us hundreds of billions of dollars for pure virtue signaling. Knowing this, how seriously can you take the next demand?

The next demand, as it happens, is to give up using plastic. Ms. Ramsden exhorts us, “We are at a decision point on plastic pollution. It is time for corporations to turn off the plastic tap. Instead of continuing to greenwash and mislead the American public, industry should stand on the right side of history this November and support an ambitious Global Plastics Treaty that will finally end the age of plastic by significantly decreasing production and increasing refill and reuse.”

In the world that normal people inhabit, plastic containers and wrapping are valuable because they're so very useful. Being able to grab a plastic bottle of water—and to throw it out when you’ve finished with it—is a major convenience. Having grocery stores wrap vegetables and meat in cellophane allows consumers to see what they’re buying, and to transport and store them without leakage. These are not small benefits.

When New Yorkers were forced to give up plastic bags for paper or cloth at stores, the cost was steep. Both paper and cloth, it turns out, are more expensive to manufacture, and leave a larger “carbon footprint,” than the thin plastic formerly in use. Cloth bags, which are theoretically reusable, become vectors for bacteria because no one ever washes them. The plastic bottles that our drugstore items come in—what will replace that? Glass? For better or worse, we depend on plastic for many things.

Meanwhile, we await the next round of truth telling from enviros, about what else they’re making us do that is meaningless. Covid masks, anyone? 

America 2022: Threat Level, Critical

When threats reach a scale that cannot readily be processed, lethargy sets in. People begin to reject investigating calamities so big they cannot understand them, problems so large and so broad that even admitting their existence collapses the senses, and with them any idea, plan, or nascent strategy of dealing with the threat. It is far easier to just accept whatever it is the "experts" are saying and go along with the crowd.

People give up and accept whatever they are told by those holding the threat over their heads. They pretend it will all be over soon, and jump on the collectivist virtue bandwagon, the bandwagon that crushed 100,000,000 human beings last century. Because these issues are so big, and our reliance on experts so complete, we wind up in messes like the ones in which we find ourselves today. When individual status is based on getting along, critical thinking vanishes and society goes along, regardless of the consequences.

Hi! My name's Herbert.

We have at least three of these threats hanging over our heads across the West today as the Baby Boomer “Summer of Love” Marcusian cohort of 1967 ages off history’s stage. Having as their life’s goal the destruction of America, the evil half of the Boomers will not go gently into that good night. Their aging explains the acceleration of the attacks on our freedom and our families of the past several years, and why these attacks on what we and millennia of our common forebears see as fundamental rights will continue to accelerate.

The three principal threats we face now are: the hoax of "climate change"; the manmade bioweapon of Covid-19 and its accompanying, perhaps even more lethal "vaccine"; and virulent, Democrat racism being used to attack both private and public sectors of society, our education, and the military. All are existential threats to freedoms and liberties that only exist in the West, and against which these threats have been created to extinguish.

These made-up crises have one goal, a goal that is a threat so big most seem unable or unwilling to process it: the destruction of the Western middle class: our liberty, freedom, prosperity and the futures of our children, Covid was a bad flu to older people and a minor flu to younger, there is no “anthro” in "climate change," and America is the least-racist society in history. Marxism is the goal of Western elites; they have neither time nor interest in those of us making the world go. We are today's Kulaks. Our mere presence is anathema to them, mucking-up their plans and authoritarian demands.

Each of these crises is based on a lie. Take "climate change." Even the U.N. is honest about its goal:

We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore.

The middle class wants freedom, liberty, law and to live our lives with the fruit of our own labor. The rulers cannot have this, just as they cannot have us point out that Dr. Fauci and Dr. Brix have no clothes and that their “vaccine” for a pathogen that escaped from their labs is increasing infection rates wherever it goes, or that not one single un-corrupted global temperature data set supports the fantasy of “Climate Change.”

We are not going to agree that 2+2=5. Ever. They cannot allow this. Getting us to say “five” is behind these crises, as it is behind the most-expensive-and-under-prosecuted riots in our history, behind the idiocy of the unnecessary war in Ukraine, and behind the coming Ukraine-war-driven destruction of global food supplies and of the dollar as the global reserve currency. Think inflation is bad now?

The Netherlands and Canada seem intent on replicating the Holodomor, and it's coming next to America. Predictably millions will die at the hands of collectivist leadership, just as the last time. Leftists never learn; more accurately, they learn to kill better next time. Stalin only murdered 34-49 million people in the 1930s; 30 years later, Mao murdered 80,000,000. What will be the Reaper’s toll from Davos Man?

Against the Great Reset

Read it and prepare for the worst.

As for Covid? Requiring a “vaccine” that, somehow, was patented ten days after the Covid genome was sequenced for the first time, a “vaccine” that prevents neither infection nor transmission, but that global data show reduces natural immunity across-the-board, that may be killing in huge numbers, and that destroys fertility, would seem to normal people to be counterproductive: 2+2=4, always and forever.

Those not starved to-death in the Third World by our rulers via ineffective and "more harm than good" Covid lockdowns and by the destruction of global food supplies for "climate change" amelioration will be far more docile than those of us in the West who, uniquely among global cultures, outlawed forced labor centuries ago. Which is why they are vaxxing us, and not them.

A fourth crisis, in fact, exists. Yet another threat so big that just conceptualizing it is problematic. And that is the fact of these elites, rulers and governments, themselves.

We will never give them their “5.” In America, we will not give them trucker strikes and manure sprays. Perhaps America’s destroyers will not give us our very own Holodomor because, we, alone among nations, have the ability, the means and the temperament to fight back.

In the face of the largest communist empire in history—so far—an empire dedicated to destroying family, religion, freedom, liberty, law, prosperity – sound familiar? – one man stood firm. He wrote:

I dare hope that all the peoples who have lived through communism will understand that communism is to blame for the bitter pages of their history.

And:

When one is already on the edge of the grave, why not resist?

That man was Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who knew a thing or two or four about communism.

What does 2+2 equal in your calculations?

 

 

The Utter Folly of European 'Climate Policy'

Europeans will starve, go hungry and be jobless in large numbers unless the European Union and national politicians do an about-face on climate policy. The United States is not far behind, although has more tools to displace failed leaders than do people under the thumb of the European Union. This winter is but a taste of things to come.

An extensive analysis—50 points—of the folly of "climate policy" is found at wattsupwiththat.com; in sum it evinces there is no “climate emergency,” the goal of Net-Zero by 2050 is “delusional,” neither warranted, feasible, nor politically possible and would be so costly it would “drive a 33 percent average reduction in all government spending on health, housing, education, social welfare, police, climate adaptation, defense, social justice, etc.” As the measurable big decrease in global economic output during the pandemic lockdowns established, slashing living standards will not result in a “measurable decrease atmospheric CO2.” The only feasible means to phase out fossil fuels are technological advances, which means the shift cannot be mandated by government and of necessity the shift will be slow.

In any event, nothing the West can do changes the fact that during the next quarter century “over 80 percent of all increased global emissions” will occur in Asia. Moreover, for decades to come, “Asia, South America, and Africa “will represent over 90 percent of future increases in energy consumption.” Any effort must be global, not nation-by-nation. It’s simply not a first-world issue, and it’s irrational to pretend otherwise.

Women's work.

Also irrational is the pretense that we can limit energy use. We need it for everything and the demand is growing. It may be a surprise to learn that “Global smart phone production uses 15 percent more energy as the automotive industry.... the Cloud uses twice a much electricity worldwide as all of Japan.” This would surely set back on their heels the anti-fossil fuel crowd gathered everywhere in clothes manufactured from petroleum-based materials and coordinating their activities by iPhones, if only someone told them. 

In the meantime, this winter Europeans are getting to see first hand the folly of the "climate change" cult thinking of the European Union and its national leaders. They are already seeing food and energy shortages and the beginning of deindustrialization. In a series of tweets Alexander Stahel, CIO of a Swiss investment management firm, sets out a number of developments in various European countries, to flesh out what news summaries do not—the desperate near- and long-term consequences of Europe’s “gigantic structural” problem. Here are a few examples.

As prices increase, along with scarce food, limited transport options, and winter heating, it’s easy to see why unrest in Europe is growing. The Yellow Vests in France have been demonstrating against, inter alia, rising fuel costs and austerity measures for almost four years. (The most recent French complaint about the emissions mandates involve the E.U.’s ban on an insecticide needed to deal with a beetle that devastates mustard plants.)

In the Netherlands, farmers have been protesting and blocking roads with their tractors for almost three years because of proposals to limit industrial fodder and livestock production to lower emissions from the nitrogen cycle. More recently, protests have against energy shortages have cropped up in Belgium where thousands of people have been protesting against the huge rise in the cost of living, driving “rising food prices, startling energy bills and frustration with politicians and employers.”

And then there’s Italy, where conservative firebrand Giorgia Meloni is poised to occupy the prime minister’s office after the recent elections saw her Brothers of Italy party surge to power. Meloni is more concerned with battling Europe's coming energy crisis than she is with "climate change," and has called for the EU. member states to work together to solve the problem before the problem solves them: "We need a common solution at the European level to help firms and families," she said in a statement. "No member state can offer effective and long term solutions on its own." Meloni's position on "climate change" already has the Left terrified, and its slander machine going full blast:

Giorgia Meloni, leader of the neo-fascist, right-wing populist Brothers of Italy party, is poised to become Italy’s first woman prime minister. This is as much a victory for feminism as Margaret Thatcher’s premiership in the UK, which is to say that it is no victory at all. Meloni boasts the familiar spate of ultra-conservative views with a few terrifying twists: not only has she called Mussolini a “good politician,” she also aligns herself with the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. While her fascist leanings and the threats her ascent poses to human rights have been widely discussed, Meloni’s stance on environmental issues has been left relatively uninterrogated... it seems that Italy’s next government will be pursuing the promise of nuclear power and leaning into domestic natural gas extraction. Renewable energy forms, like solar and wind, are decidedly absent from the agenda. Meloni’s party has also criticised the EU’s ban on combustion engine cars by 2035 as “a sensational own-goal” and is likely to support junior coalition partner Matteo Salvini’s call for an Italian referendum to overturn the decision.

Also women's work.

Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, threatened the Meloni coalition with "consequences" if it “veers from democracy,” which is rather ironic as there’s nothing particularly democratic about the Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, both of which are self-perpetuating sclerotic bureaucracies. Her threat reminds that the Commission has called upon the Union’s council to suspend 7.5 billion Euros from Hungary for “corruption.” Poland has said it will oppose such sanctions and criticized Von der Leyen’s not so veiled threats as did several Italian political leaders.

I don’t know if the present energy crisis will be enough to lead more countries to exit the European Union, which has, as we saw with Brexit, lots of tools to rein in unwilling members from so doing, but it just might if the winter is cold enough and the E.U. continues its suicidal foolishness and arrogance.

'Green' Belgium Nukes Itself

On Friday, September 23rd, at precisely 9:31 p.m., Belgium's Doel 3 nuclear reactor was disconnected from the nation's power grid, beginning the process of its complete decommissioning. It should be noted, there is nothing wrong with this reactor. It's just that the Belgian government, intoxicated by environmentalist platitudes, passed a law in 2003 which stipulated that all nuclear power plants must cease producing electricity 40 years after they went online.

This is madness.

As we've discussed before, Europe is in the midst of an energy crisis, with various countries throughout the continent preparing for oil and natural gas shortages this winter, and related blackouts. Meanwhile, according to The Brussels Times, "keeping the reactor open would safeguard over 50 percent of Belgium's yearly electricity needs."

That's a pretty big carrot, while the threat of energy shortages in freezing temperatures should serve as the stick. Consequently, the current government (whose prime minister, Alexander De Croo, has been sounding increasingly pessimistic about Europe's energy situation over the next decade) has belatedly seen the light on nuclear power -- on September 14th Interior minister Annelies Verlinden called for the plants closure to be delayed, only to be told by the company which operates Doel 3, Engie, that "[t]o change plans at such short notice is just not feasible."

Other than the logistical challenges that renewing the reactor would bring, there are also legal barriers that would need to be overcome: "It is legally prohibited for the reactor to produce any more electricity after 1 October 2022," [Engie spokesperson Nele] Scheerlinck stated. This is written into Engie's operating license. Furthermore, the power plant's director Peter Moens told Belga News Agency that delaying the shutdown was "neither wise nor advisable," not least given that most of the staff working on the reactor have already planned to work elsewhere.

Maybe they shouldn't have waited to ask until nine days prior to the shut-down. Or, even better, maybe they shouldn't have passed that inane regulation in 2003 in the first place. No doubt at the time Belgian Greens imagined that this was a risk-free move, because, surely, the world would have long-since developed a magical energy source which could satisfy their exacting (re: unrealistic and irrational) standards before it would matter. Yet here we are, twenty years later, and the energy sources they hate most -- nuclear, natural gas, etc. -- are still on top, and have even contributed more to worldwide carbon emission reductions than their animal-slaughtering windfarms and strip-mined rare earth mineral-requiring solar panels. Meanwhile, worldwide economies have been thrown for a loop by the WuFlu (and our absured governmental responses to it), and the energy markets have gone to hell thanks to Russia's invasion of Ukraine (and our absurd governmental responses to that).

Perhaps these things were unforeseeable in 2003, but it is any competent government's job to keep the country as ready as possible for such disasters. Semper paratus, as they say.

What Price Covid Conformity?

For most of us, the worst part of the current social environment created by the Covid-Climate-Party (CCP) government regarding the Covid vaccine regimen is what it is doing to families. Siblings no longer talk to one another. Parents and their children no longer are on speaking terms. Families are preventing themselves from getting together. Even though the government has been forced to back-off their mandates (due to lacking any authority to enact them) people still act as though these "vaccines" are necessary.

The CDC has stated, many times now, that the vaccine does not prevent transmission, infection, or reinfection. Hence, no medical reason for vaccine mandates, or even voluntary vaccine administration, exists, with the possible exception that a vaccine may reduce one’s own reaction to the virus, if infected. They’ve stated that masks are not useful in combatting a virus. They’ve let us know that no medical or scientific reason for the six-foot social distancing rule ever existed. The former White House coronavirus response coordinator even has let us in on her little secret that “[She] knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection," while mandating them anyway, at the cost of jobs, careers, families, prosperity, education, futures, and lives.

For those who have been subscribing to every pronouncement of the CDC since “two weeks to flatten the curve,” this ought to be enough. But, somehow, it is not. Families, children, parents, siblings are still suffering from separation and lack of human interaction based on nothing more than what, realistically, only can be called “superstition.” As above and per the CDC, the science of this vaccine… is that it does not protect others.

The blessed Rochelle.

What is happening is that the higher the vaccination rate, the higher the infection rate. Insurance companies across the nation and in Europe are reporting huge, unprecedented numbers of “excess deaths,” a term and a category none of us knew existed two years ago. Per the FDA: “The clinical trials of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine found that the all-cause mortality rate of the vaccinated group was higher than that of the control group.” This is the opposite of what is expected due to the increased tendency of people concerned about their health to get vaccinated.

Why are people acting this way? If one wants to get the vaccine – get it. If not, don’t. But as no medical reason exists for it insofar as protecting others, mandates – even personal, family “mandates” have zero medical purpose for those around you.

We talk nowadays about “virtue signaling” as though these are just childish efforts to let others know how wonderful the signalers are, as if these bumper stickers, yard signs, masks, etc., do not affect the family, community, or country. In fact, these seemingly innocuous and, to thinking adults, childishly silly, efforts are splitting apart families, communities, nations. Which, of course, is the goal of the same left demanding public and forceful acceptance of all kinds of idiocy today.

But the vaccines are not just a “virtue signal.” Pfizer’s own documentation to the CDC showed that the first 89 days of their vaccine resulted in 42,000 adverse events, including 1,223 deaths. Current surveys by professional polling firms (and here) paint a picture of tens of thousands of deaths from these experimental,  medically unnecessary, and dangerous vaccines.  In September, 2022, a healthy woman who was injected after waiting in a pharmacy line dropped dead 15 minutes after her injection; “dead before she hit the floor” per a doctor; yet people remained in the line at the pharmacy to get THEIR injections. Daily we see reports of young men and women “unexpectedly” dropping dead – while making a speech, doing standup comedy, playing professional soccer, broadcasting the news, or just taking a nap.

Why submit to it? Knowing that the vaccines can have serious and sometimes fatal consequences and that they serve no medical purpose, people are nonetheless accepting these injections as the result of societal pressure to conform. The flip side of a yard sign is acting on its message yourself.

Most people desire status and seek it among their peers; status-seeking is what virtue-signaling is about. This is why the Overton Window continually moves left – as society drifts leftward due to pressure from media, academia and government bureaucracies, people concerned about their status take actions for no other reason than to increase their status amongst the elites. It is a collectivist response to a societal need or demand.

The argument of the pro-vaccine crowd is that all vaccines cause some deaths. True. When confronted with the fact that the swine flu vaccine was pulled from nine States after only three deaths, their response often is to look at the numbers, the percentages: so many more people have been vaccinated against Covid-19 it is logical that more people have died, that nothing is out of the ordinary. We should accept that medical progress happens in fits and starts and, yes, some will die.

But this looks only at one side of a many-sided equation. The swine flu killed healthy people, starting with a 19-yr-old private in Army basic training. Covid kills the old, the infirm, those with significant comorbidities. “Myocarditis” was a word with which nearly none of us were familiar in 2020; today we all know it. Many European nations have pulled the mRNA vaccines entirely for those below 30 years of age due to the post-injection instances of myocarditis.  Young, healthy people, aged 5-25, are so unlikely to have a serious reaction to a Covid-19 infection that their Infection-Fatality-Rate (IFR) is recorded in thousandths of a percent: 0.0051. The comparison to swine flu is inapt.

Our Lady of the Scarves.

If one has no children, for example, saying that healthy young males with a vanishingly low probability of serious infection or death ought to be vaccinated – when they may die or get a prion disease from it – is  one thing. If that child is yours, asking or demanding that they accept a vaccine that may destroy, or end, their lives, is an entirely different story: no thinking person would do so.

But it gets worse. Young adults just making their way in their careers still are prevented from joining their peers in the offices or conferences of some major companies. Working from home is great if you are mid-career, or past. When you are an energetic kid desiring interaction with peers and seniors in your business, climbing your way up the ladder, when you want to learn from, meet with, and present your work to others – and cannot because of an anti-science demand to take the risk of killing yourself or developing a palsy – you might just check out, depriving your company, yourself, your future all the positives that you, and they, had hoped your career would bring. It might end your career as you just decide to remove yourself from the corporate idiocy that may – literally – kill you while protecting no one.

What is the cost, then, to society of this loss of human capital, this deprivation to a young man or woman of their career and the dreams and hopes it once held for them? Answer: Inestimable. Yet this is what we are doing as a society to ourselves, to our families, to our future. To our nation. It is both inexcusable and inexplicable. Unless they want it that way...

'We Stand by the Modeling'

The Australian Labor Government, in office since May 23, is pinning its hopes and our very future on its plan: “Powering Australia.” Worried? Don’t be. It’s backed by modelling:

A Labor Government will close the yawning gap between our current Federal Government and our business community, agricultural sector and state governments when it comes to investing in the renewables that will power our future. Our plan will create 604,000 jobs, with 5 out of 6 new jobs to be created in the regions. It will spur $76 billion of investment. It will cut power bills for families and businesses by $275 a year for homes by 2025, compared to today.

Read all about it:

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Recently, Chris Bowen, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy; or, as I like to put it, the minister for a contradiction in terms, was asked about the predicted $275 reduction in power bills for families. What did “today” mean he was asked. Is it literally today, which successive tomorrows will soon enough become, or is it when the plan was published before the election. A good question. Since the election power bills have risen by about 15 to 20 percent; by, roughly speaking, $275.

Eventually, after much pressing, Bowen and the government stuck to the prediction. Apparently, the prediction fell out of modelling and there is no gainsaying modelling. Here’s Anthony Albanese (Albo), the Prime Minister, in Parliament on 6 September. Overlook the tortured syntax.

I've said absolutely consistently from this dispatch box… that we stand by the modelling that we did… And what the modelling showed was that with our plan, which includes Rewiring the Nation, making sure that you make the grid 21st-century ready, if you actually enable renewables to fit into the energy grid through the integrated systems plan that's been developed by the Australian Energy Market Operator then what you will do is promote investment in renewables, which are the cheapest form of energy.

Ah, “we stand by the modelling.” Statistical modelling of the future. Something for which failure is endemic. Psychics do better. Thus, no economics model predicted the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008 and its aftermath. Hysterical morbidity modelling of the virus armed authoritarians. Kept people locked away, masked, forcibly injected with experimental substances. And, as everyone should know but doesn’t, climate models have performed abjectly; e.g., in falsely predicting increases in extreme weather events. (See, for confirmation, this recent study in The European Physical Journal Plus.)

Some Australians prefer other models.

Models and complex reality occupy different universes. So why Albo’s touching faith in modelling renewables? To be clear. It’s not informed faith. It’s blind faith.

Once you set out your stall to achieve net-zero and announce the steps along the way, including an untenable promise to deliver 82 percent of electricity by renewables by 2030, realism is defenestrated. The imperative becomes how to make the infeasible feasible. Saviour required. Namely, modelling which says it can be done. Better still modelling which says it can be done more cheaply. What a turnup! Show me the wanted outcome (cheap and abundant green energy) and I’ll show you the model.

Mind you, the modelling itself might be logically sound. Assume nine times the current number of wind and solar farms are built on time. Assume rooftop solar grows by five times. Assume 10,000 kilometres of new transmission lines are built. Assume, sufficient recharging points are installed and that electric vehicles wholly replace gasoline-powered vehicles. Assume adequate ‘firming’ can be achieved via batteries, pumped hydro and green hydrogen. Assume a specific growth in energy efficiency. Assume carbon dioxide abatement makes up for greenhouse gas emissions which can’t be eliminated.

Basically, you have the integrated systems plan issued in June by the Australian Energy Market Operator. I reckon if these assumptions were plugged into any purpose-built model, the right answer, net-zero by 2050, would pop out. Any problem; fiddle with the assumptions. Plug in more wind farms for example. Assume greater energy efficiency. Pump up the average wind speed a little. Reduce future demand for power. Remember, in the end result, unless net zero pops out, you ain’t got nothing politically sellable.

Okay, but how do you make power cheaper? I admit, that part has me completely flummoxed; though not the prime minister, as I note below. Battery costs are rising. Materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel are getting progressively more expensive to extract. The costs of building Snowy 2, the only major pumped hydro project afoot in Australia, have sky rocketed by five times and counting. The costs of building transmission lines, still at a preliminary stage, have soared. To boot, no one wants wind and solar farms and transmission lines in their backyards. Maybe they can be paid off? Then there’s the dream of green hydrogen. Desalination plants to produce sufficient pure water; multiple electrolysis plants driven by huge wind and solar farms; plants to convert volatile hydrogen into ammonia for safe transport, and to change it back. At a guess, might cost a dollar or two.

Just pump up the average windspeed a little.

However, Australia’s prime minister occupies an uncomplicated world. As he says: “if you have a shift in the energy mix towards cheaper energy [renewables], as opposed to more expensive energy, then you lower energy prices.” Compelling modelling logic. To reiterate, cheaper energy is cheaper than more expensive energy. No wonder he became PM.

Alas, Australia’s make-believe modelling world is not reflective of real life elsewhere. In Germany, for example, electricity prices trended upwards during the 2010s, notwithstanding Energiewende. A study out of the University of Chicago shows that U.S. states which adopted “renewable portfolio standards” had higher electricity prices than those states which did not. As the authors point out, the higher prices likely reflect costs that renewables impose on the generation system due to their “intermittency” and “higher transmission costs.” Quite so. But this is mere prelude to the brave much greener world ahead.

According to EIA figures, wind and solar accounted for just 12 percent of electricity generation in the U.S. in 2021. Australia is higher at 22 percent. But, vitally, in both countries fossil fuel power is strongly in the mix—61 percent in the U.S. (plus 19 percent nuclear) and 72 percent in Australia. It can still backup intermittent sources of power. Watch out when the balance tips a little further. Coming to your neighbourhood fairly soon: unaffordable electricity, blackouts and, inevitably, authoritarian diktats. Verboten, home heating above 61°F. VIPs excepted of course. To everyone according to their needs.