In the UK the current lot in government, the Labour Party, are broadly equivalent to the Democrat Party in the US. They believe in things like
Censorship
Punishment for saying or writing hurty things or things that turn out not to be true
Mass immigration is good for a country
Violent criminals should be treated leniently, particularly if their violence was committed in the furtherance of some, but not all, political causes
We must save the planet by tweaking the Great CO₂ Control Knob in the Sky
We should blow the crap out of Russia, and who the hell cares if we start world war 3 in the process?
Our societies are deeply oppressive to anyone who isn’t white, or straight, or able-bodied
Islam needs to have special provisions and protections not afforded to any other religion
You can become a woman (or a man) by the simple expedient of declaring oneself to be one
The best that can be said is that maybe, for some of them, their hearts are in the right place. It is not, however, clear what’s going on in their heads. If anything.
The Labour Party do differ in some respects from the Democrats. For example, in the UK we’re still promoting the deeply racist requirement that voters must have government-issued photo ID in order to vote and that, in our small isle of some 70 million souls, we are able to conduct a national election and count the votes in the course of a single night1.
As expected, the Labour Party have taken off their pre-election cuddly sheep’s costume and are now beginning to look more like ravening wolves. This week they’ve been turning up the green dial. Our Foreign Secretary, David Lindon Lammy2, has declared that ‘climate change’ is his most important job. Far more important than preventing the Earth from turning into a nuclear wasteland after world war 3.
Our Energy Secretary, Ed Milliband3, has told us what a blessing from above green energy is
Every wind turbine we put up, every solar panel we install, every piece of grid we construct protects families from future energy shocks.
I’m all in favour of reducing our environmental impact as humans on this planet. I’d like to see us achieving the minimum possible negative impact.
But, realistically, everything we do has some environmental impact. Think you can build a house without impacting the environment? Or breathe?
There are certain necessary impacts we have to make in order to live.
The notion exists that, somehow, there’s all this free stuff out there that we can readily convert to energy so that we’re no longer polluting the planet so much. That free stuff being wind and sunshine.
It’s a nice theoretical idea that, like all such idealizations, meets the hard rubber on the road of reality at some point.
But what happens when the wind stops winding and the sun stops sunning?
I’m sorry, love, I can’t make you a cup of tea while you’re counting those newly-found ballot boxes because there’s only a gentle breeze blowing and it’s the dead of night.
The answer to this conundrum is batteries. Yes, more batteries. Batteries the size of small cities. Because we don’t have nearly enough batteries in the world at the moment. Let’s rip out of the ground every rare earth metal we can and turn it into batteries. Sure there’s going to be enough to provide back-up for every green power station and to power every single car on the planet4.
And what happens when all those batteries run out because, erm, they do have a finite lifespan of around 10 years5 (at best)?
Let’s just dig up some more stuff, because I’m sure there’s plenty. Worried about AI taking over your job? Learn to sing Heigh-Ho and work with a pickaxe (5m 41s).
The problem is that we need energy on demand. We can provide that with immediate energy generation to meet those fluctuating requirements, or we can store energy when there is a surplus of windy stuff and shiny stuff.
Either way, we need a system capable of generating energy on demand6.
Or we could just give up on our capability to produce energy on demand altogether.
Right. That’s gonna be a real vote winner.
But, alarmingly, instead of pursuing a world of plenty, the great and the good seem hell-bent on pursuing a world of scarcity7. Our ingenuity (as a species) is being directed towards ways in which to limit human progress. You can only fly once every two years, eat only 300g of meat a week, and be confined within a 15-minute zone of where you live, for example.
We can find endless ‘academics’ to research questions of global significance as exemplified in the following ground-breaking research8
My queer, crip, decolonial, and Pilipinx-led Ma’chado, Ma’arte, and Over-Acting (MMOA) praxis of swirly excess is guided by connections to queer, crip, Mad, and BIPOC feminist ancestors, past, present, and future. This theory and practice praxis—is shaped by the decolonial leadership and wisdom of multiply marginalized peoples and forefronts disability justice tenets developed by majority transgender, queer, and disabled BIPOC feminists. Drawing upon a queer, decolonial, and crip of colour critique autoethnography as methodology, I analyze swirly and non-linear moments throughout my life as being recognized and treated as “too much.”
We sorely need more brains working on how to solve our energy problems - because even if we weren’t stuck in this climate-change straitjacket we’re going to have to find ways to power the life of over 8 billion souls. They’re not all going to be wanting to live in energy poverty, are they?
But we need them to be working on ways to expand our possibilities, not limit them.
Of course, don’t ever mention the N-word. Nuclear energy is only to be spoken of in hushed tones, behind closed doors, when no-one can take offence.
Perhaps it all boils down to whether one takes a positive or negative view of human existence. Personally, I’d like to believe in the potential of humans to do great and wondrous things. But that’s just me.
I’ll end with an example of this madness. Here in the UK when you sell a house you have to pay for some kind of energy efficiency assessment (an EPC). When I was in the process of buying my little place 3 years ago, with a small back garden, the report was duly handed over to me as the potential buyer. It recommended that I put a wind turbine in the back garden to improve the energy efficiency rating.
Somebody paid for that report.
Perhaps that’ll be what the Labour government will recommend for all those pensioners it’s going to freeze to death this coming winter, whilst making sure that illegal immigrants are warm and well-fed.
Without a tea break in which we suddenly come across boxes and boxes of uncounted ballots that arrive just in the nick of time to save democracy
Did you know that an anagram of his name is Odd Vinyl Mind Lama? Or Oddly Anal Mind Vim?
An anagram of his name is Dim Bland Lie
According to that Googly thing, the fount of all unbiased wisdom and knowledge, there are approximately 1.5 billion cars on the planet. And in 2015 there were, excluding passenger vehicles like buses and coaches, around 1/3 of a billion vehicles for the transportation of goods.
Wish I got 10 years out of my bloody mobile phone battery
A bit like elections in the US where they can generate votes on demand
But only for the great unwashed like you and me
This quote from an academic paper is taken from this excellent article
"Let’s rip out of the ground every rare earth metal we can and turn it into batteries."
And as my brother (now a doctor of Geology*) could tell you, doing this destroys - for ever - the fertile soil the REMs are extracted from. That's not mentioning the lakes of heavy metal-laced pollutants produced in making the batteries. China has districts, access restricted of course, where there are literal real lakes of heavy metals and other stuff all mixed up into some kind of sludge with a leaden sheen.
Because baby needs a new iPhone every year.
Actual real environmentalist policies would immediately wreck post-Cold War globalist capitalism since they'd have to favour domestic production of food, and all the industries that goes into food logistics (roads, railroads, labs, harbours, ships, trains, cooling/freezing units, dairy handling alone is a nightmare when you think of the details and so on). To say nothing of the building/construction sector. We at least have forests made up out of material - imagine a 70 000 000 pop. UK trying to get by on domestically available materials.
And it is at this point the Greens of today jump onto the "we need to be fewer"-idea of yore. While supporting massmigration of people from the most proliferate populations on the planet.
When I say liberals, greens, feminists, and so on have the intellectual maturity of toddlers, I ain't jestering.
*Just got to brag about him a little. Who would have thought that the guy who had so low attendance in compulsory school he didn't even qualify for a failing grade (!) would make himself an academic career involving going on international top-tier conferences before he'd even netted his first doctorate degree? Plus a wife and three kids on top of that. Puts my incessant griping into perspective, it does.
“Green energy” is actually camouflage for “no energy”, which is what they really want. The “environment” is not their concern at all — inflicting suffering is their goal, their religion.
Your material comfort, indeed your very existence, enrages them. You must be enslaved and suffer so that they may achieve their rightful place as world-wide overlords.