Cross-posted from my new site at woodrisebooks.com. It’s a site meant to accompany the four-volume Woodrise series that will be forthcoming over the next four years.
Are you paying attention to global warming now?
For more than thirty years the left has warned that we must all pay attention to global warming, or to climate change, as convenient. Conservatives and libertarians, in general, have not heeded their warnings and have assiduously avoided even the subject matter, whenever possible. Commonsensically, we don’t see much of a threat looming and hence, we’ve thought that this will all blow over shortly. Maybe we’ve thought that our political time, effort and monies are best applied elsewhere.
In this, we’ve been wrong and I hope that now we can at least recognize the shape of the threat that hangs over our civilizations.
This threat, however, has little to do with sudden sea level rise, loss of species or more frequent hurricanes. The threat that grows daily has far more to do with the rise of global authoritarianism and the weakening of the freedom and liberalism that has facilitated the progress of much of the planet at large. Conjured imaginary fears have been favorite tools of dictators the world over, likely throughout the history of human civilization itself. This one has arrived on a record-setting scale.
To control the climate means to control everything. This is why the paradigm, or the religion, of climatism matters. Even a cursory look at current international efforts to control climate now shows that what’s really at stake is balance of trade, unprecedented transfers of wealth, establishment of arbitrary rule, the supplanting of science for orthodoxy, global energy supply, property rights, food supply and perhaps most importantly, the free speech necessary to take a stand for our own survival. “Survival” might sound a bit extreme but let’s briefly discuss the Covid era and the current state of Europe.
The response of governments to Covid showed us that authoritarianism remains always in the offing and authoritarians remain always opportunists. Our collective response to authoritarianism, as Americans, largely demonstrated to those in power that Americans are now weak minded, easily scared and easily controlled. We didn’t know what to do or how to preserve our liberty when governments told us which of us where essential and which weren’t, told us to put on masks, told us to stand six feet apart in the breadlines, kept our dying elderly from visitation and silenced troublesome dissenters. It’s demonstrable now in most countries that fewer people would have died had governments done nothing over the last three years.
Climate change has also been posed as an existential threat. Why would governments not now act according to precedent?
Few in the United States are aware of the current European turmoil, largely instigated by climatism. Dutch farmers are in open revolt as they are shut down and one of the great bread baskets of the world is severely curtailed. They’re about to be thrown off their lands. Most of the available energy in Germany currently takes the form of mass protests against the German leaders who have overseen the collapse of this once great industrial power. Green energy has eroded the potential of this industrious people even as their overlords bring on new measures to reduce fertilization of soil and still ramp up carbon mitigation efforts. A massive fine was just levied against France for its failure to ramp up “renewables” quickly enough. It doesn’t matter that they’re a leader in carbon emission reduction due to their reliance on nuclear. Great Britain’s energy sector has been severely curtailed.
Watching Europe now, a few steps ahead of the United States in cooperation and subjugation, we see that there’s no real concern for human well being, no tears shed by the very insulated elites. Bread and Circuses stand in for meaningful reforms. We’ve entered an age of rule by those who don’t actually believe one of their own useful talking points: “Lives Matter”. Unlike the fake doom imparted by climate change dogma, we may have much less than ten years to save ourselves from an irreversible fate and some very cold winters.
Great piece and excellent pictures, as always. If this winter is a cold one in the U.S. and Europe, we will see some genuine hardship. And it’s all so pointless and easily avoided.