The collectivist Net Zero political project is starting to come apart before our very eyes. Making everyone poor, cold, hungry and confined to small living territories was always a tall political ask, but decades of green virtue-signalling, backed by a ‘settled’ version of science that cannot be debated in polite society, has kept the show on the road. Writing in the Daily Telegraph last Wednesday, Sherelle Jacobs said there comes a time when the sacred mythology that underpins an orthodoxy simply crumbles. She was writing about liberalism in general, and the pieties behind mass illegal migration, but she could easily have been referring to Net Zero.
The recent decision by the European Union to allow the sale of internal combustion cars after 2035 was a small sign that reality is starting to intrude on those overseeing the destruction of Europe’s industrial base. There was a fig leaf in the announcement to hide the blushes suggesting that the cars must be run on carbon captured from the air and mixed with hydrogen produced from ‘green’ energy. As always with such hypothetical green technologies, one is inclined to discount those based on pure wishful thinking. The U.K. is still committed to banning the sale of internal combustion cars after 2030, but developments in Europe may produce a rethink.
The hard politics behind this decision is that Germany has enjoyed 70 years of unprecedented prosperity based on heavy industry reliant on cheap energy, recently secured from Russia. Its car industry is one of the most innovative and competitive in the world, and faces near destruction in the move to battery cars. This fate of course is likely to be shared by most European countries including the U.K., with China monopolising both the production of electric cars and the refining of vital minerals.
Writing recently in the Daily Sceptic, Andrew Montford, the Deputy Director of Net Zero Watch, said that inhabitants of the Westminster Village were happy to hype up fears of climate purgatory and fib about the cost of the renewable road to redemption. “Once the public understands the depth and extent of the deception, and the damage done to the economy and the prospects for our children, the trickery over Covid is going to look decidedly peripheral,” he added.
There have been few more egregious Net Zero deceptions than the suggestion that wind and solar power is far cheaper than fossil fuel. This canard has finally been put to bed with the recent news that Net Zero Watch has established through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request that Contract for Difference (CfD) instruments are little more than taxpayer-funded guarantees that no matter the price of electricity, wind farms will always win.
Recent auctions have seen wind farms drive down the price at which they say they will supply electricity to the grid. This price is then guaranteed with a CfD under which the taxpayer picks up the tab if the wholesale electricity price drops lower. If the price rises past the guarantee, the wind farm pays the excess back to the taxpayer. That is the theory, and it is the basis of countless headlines in mainstream media and academia. “Offshore wind is now so cheap it could pay back money to consumers,” reported Imperial College in 2019. The reality, of course, is different.
Net Zero Watch says its recent Energy Department FOI “revealed that offshore wind farms and other generators are under no obligation whatsoever to take up their CfD options”. The Government has no power to enforce them. When electricity prices soar, as numerous restrictions on fossil fuels make likely, the wind farms ignore their options, and sell their power on the open market. While this racket continues, the British taxpayer pays total annual renewable subsidies of around £13 billion for a power source that still only accounts for barely 5% of total U.K. energy needs. Meanwhile, huge costs are incurred in providing energy back-up to compensate for the irregular nature of renewables. As more renewables come on stream, the more costly back-up is required.
Elections are always tricky when attempting mass collectivisation projects like Net Zero. The science can be settled and admirable ecological objectives can be hijacked, but when the electorate twigs that it is their holiday, their car and their beef steak that is under threat, they can cut up rough. Last Sunday’s ‘Berlin Climate Neutrality by 2030’ referendum failed to secure the 608,000 votes to pass, despite a massive and well-funded campaign by media, celebrities and activists. Reporting on the results, the German website No Tricks Zone noted that Berliners had been harassed for months by activists blocking traffic. Berliners were said to have seen the folly of the initiative, “and the high costs it would entail politically and financially”.
The German online publication Pleiteticker noted that members of the upper middle classes had declared war on the lower middle classes with their destructive climate measures. For years, these groups have been spreading their ideas “in a self-righteous, arrogant and sometimes aggressive manner”. It suggested that outside the Berlin political bubble and other urban feel-good oases, there is not much support for these causes.
Certainly there doesn’t seem to be much support for giving up food. Over in the Netherlands, recent farming protests were translated into spectacular electoral gains in the upper Senate for the farmer’s citizen movement (BBB). The Dutch Government plans to reduce nitrogen emissions by massively cutting livestock farming and buying up thousands of farms. The Netherlands is a massive food exporter, the industry being worth a reported £80 billion. Green activists are increasingly targeting food production, using the argument that nitrogen fertiliser is emitting nitrous oxide into the atmosphere.
David Legates is a Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware, and he notes that if you want to stop N2O in the atmosphere, you have to stop agriculture. In the atmosphere, the gas is just 334 parts per billion. Because of margin of error considerations, Legates observes, climate models do not actually calculate any warming effect.
Guardian activist George Monbiot recently called for an end to animal farming. It is difficult to know when this madness will end. The academic economist Ralph Schoellhammer recently noted in an article in Newsweek that climate activism isn’t about the planet – it’s about the boredom of the bourgeoisie. It might be argued that pampered and indulged elites have had it easy for so long that they have lost all track of understanding how food, warmth, shelter and security from the ravages of nature are both produced and secured.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Peter Hitchens is, as usual, right: the death penalty is in principle a good thing, but the present state of Britain’s judiciary makes it impossible to advocate seriously for its reintroduction. The Letby case is a prime example of that, as was the Sally Clark case 20 years ago.
I say we give the convicts a choice: 1) death, or 2) life in prison without parole. Many will actually choose the former. Once on death row, you get 30 days to decide your fate, and if you don’t decide either way by day 29, by default you get executed on day 30. And none of these fancy expensive drugs (or gas, or electric chairs), an ordinary firing squad will do just fine. (Cigarette and blindfold optional.)
I think that having the State in a position where they can decide to end your life on a pre-text is a bad idea right now. You might end up on a trap door with only a rope to break your fall for a misplaced Tweet. On the Letby case, I know that there is a lot of emotion around this, but there are also considerable concerns about the case and verdict and an appeal is likely.
I’m with Blackstone, especially on this type of case. IMHO there are too many cases like Lucia de Berk or Ben Gunn for comfort.
Do we want the death penalty?
Think about it.
Do we want to hand the government on a plate a method of permanently silencing individuals they do not like, when “cancelling” them does not go far enough?
Do we trust the government not to abuse the law? Look at how they used the Public Health Act.
Do some of us suspect that over the last three years, the government has been killing off sections of society they do not like, under our very noses?
As a sticker on a bus stop in north London observed, Boris Johnson wrote about “why is nobody controlling the population?” in 2008 or so.
As for whether LL is guilty or not, with all the circumstantial evidence (funny how she has a highly memorable alliterative name, like Sharon Shoesmith, who was also turned into a public pariah): I would like to think that if the evidence got through a 10-month trial, with all the crown court protocol, and the jury took a month to deliberate, it’s extremely unlikely that she is innocent. There were probably plenty of opportunities for her to get off on a technicality. I don’t know how widely reported the case was early on (as I avoid mainstream media), but I’d never heard of her until the guilty verdict.
The media whipping up a storm about her refusing to appear in the dock has echoes of the baying mob against those who refused to clap, to obey the mythical “only allowed out for an hour”, to wear a face nappy, to take the jab. Even Sunak was interviewed saying he will change the law on this – an easy way for him to be “seen to do something”, just like lockdowns.
Lots of the evidence for Partygate was purely circumstantial, as Saint Boris tried to argue (he didn’t use the word “circumstantial” – it’s too long for him).
And if anything comes to light (we can only hope) about the Plandemic being deliberately started, and the government locking down for sh*** and giggles, evidence for this is likely to be circumstantial.
“I would like to think that if the evidence got through a 10-month trial, with all the crown court protocol, and the jury took a month to deliberate, it’s extremely unlikely that she is innocent.”
Given what many of us have learnt over the last few years, we should IMO definitely be questioning the integrity of the justice system as applied in individual cases. Judges can be bought off and/or threatened, as can defence lawyers. And defence lawyers can be incompetent. And the jury process is also open to abuse and cannot be relied upon, IMO.
The death penalty is acceptable when one has a sound and uncorrupted criminal justice system. We don’t have one. Interestingly , in Old Testament times, which is often condemned for being a bloodthirsty era, criminal convictions required at least two witnesses to the crime, and conviction rested on the eyewitness accounts being in agreement. Anybody giving false witness to the crime was dealt the same punishment as the accused would have received. There was no question of convicting someone on circumstantial evidence either, like simply being in a certain place at a certain time.
If Lucy Letby ever eventually wins an appeal, a lot of people are going to look very stupid, like Lord Denning and many others after the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four won their appeals.
“Disbelief at Reading Festival’s ban on ‘cultural appropriation’ clothes”
Judging by the state the revellers left the campsite in, we should all be grateful that our future World is in such good hands..
And I bet the vast majority of these people just abandoning their unwanted posessions to the four winds consider themselves ‘green’ and ‘eco aware’. Hypocrites.
Thery leave the tents and sleeping bags ‘for charity’ as if anyone actually wants damaged and burned tents, and sleeping bags reeking of urine and vomit. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole lot ended up in a hole in the ground…
“Democrats’ climate change blame game for Hawaii fire confronted by reality after Maui identifies cause”
…but as always, the lie has been round the world while truth was putting its boots on…
Some arsonists apprehended in Greece are allegedly migrants also.
”For the past week, Greece has once again been plagued by wildfires, particularly in the vicinity of Alexandroupolis, in the northeast of the country, near the border with Turkey, which is close to where 13 Pakistani and Syrian migrants were arrested for arson.
A video posted on social networks last Tuesday says the group was caught red-handed trying to start a fire near the town of Alexandroupolis. They have been charged with illegal entry and attempted arson by a public prosecutor, but one government source says the fire was an “accident.”
https://rmx.news/greece/13-pakistani-and-syrian-migrants-arrested-for-arson-as-deadly-wildfires-erupt-near-greek-border/
..I think it’s still got some way to run..a lot of stuff I’m reading is now saying that while TPTB want people to accept the ‘utility company’ story…they don’t believe that’s true either.
There are still entire families missing presumed dead….including hundreds of children, and still no one is talking about them….….there is still a lot of talk about it being a land-grab?……Still a lot of apparent inconsistencies in the stories…
I have heard that Oprah WInfrey bought the land not too long back, something I’ve not been able to confirm…
The brilliant actor James Woods said this on his X feed, about Maui..which might hold a fair bit of truth!?
“Someday after all the land is appropriated, Hollywood will make a movie about this. Rich people in tuxedoes will celebrate their compassion and give each other little gold statues. And then everything will be forgotten”
“Wikipedia should focus on content creation – not social justice campaigns”
Wikipedia’s content IS a social justice campaign, where they are able to squeeze it in. Who “runs” it is somewhat opaque to me; there are lots of volunteers contributing who I imagine are mainly lefties judging by the articles, but I am not sure how you get to be one of the people who decide stuff when there are disputes – but it’s been taken over by the left just like everything else. Still some good stuff in there on non-political subjects.
Indeed. On TV series and discographies, Wikipedia is fine. It’s also very useful when looking up peoples’ Early Life. But much beyond that it veers off into far-left propaganda.
You only have to look at the Talk page for each article to see how the process is managed.
Only left and far-left leaning publications are acceptable as “trusted sources”, so it’s inherently biased and often full of establishment lies, e.g. Trump and Russia.
On a related note, I use a search blocker called uBlacklist which allows you to block websites from google search results. I find results to be much more useful when you get rid of the propaganda from the Guardian, BBC, Independent, CNN and NYT that Google pushes to the top.
Why isn’t it cultural appropriation when non-Europeans wear European style clothing? Tells you all you need to know. Everything to do with race and culture is just a thinly disguised way to attack white people and our culture.
South Asians should stop using chillis in their food: chillis came from the Americas and were introduced to Asia by evil white people from Portugal.
Thanks; I didn’t know that. I will try to throw that into conversations.
The whole idea that “cultural appropriation” is bad or even avoidable is so absurd that you wonder how it has taken hold and how a civilisation that embraces ever progressed beyond living in caves.
Living in caves was cultural appropriation from Australopithecines, so wash your mouth out with soap. Oh, that was invented by foreigners too.
LOL so true
I know, right? The whole specious concept of “cultural appropriation” being somehow bad is really just silly. Literally EVERY culture in history (and prehistory), except perhaps those tiny few who remain isolated and uncontacted to this day, is “guilty” of this “sin”. Even if it is defined a bit more narrowly, such as picking and choosing what one wants from another culture and discarding the rest, practically every culture is still “guilty” of doing so as well.
Talking of isolated peoples, I once got into an argument on YouTube regarding the inhabitants of the North Sentinel Islands who tend to kill visitors. Some ship ran aground nearby at some point in the past and they went onto the ship and stripped it of stuff that looked useful to them. The narrator of this video I watched made some comment along the lines of “and so, the Sentinelese entered the Iron Age”. I pointed out that the Iron Age was when humans noticed there was iron ore in the ground, dug it up, learned how to manipulate it and made useful stuff with it. That’s not quite the same as finding a crowbar on a ship. Some lamebrain replied to me along the lines of “but yes they were in an Iron Age because they were using iron tools”. No wonder we’re doomed if people really think like that.
Indeed, one’s IQ can easily drop ten points just hearing someone say that.
As did potatoes and tomatoes and corn. These foods spread across the globe but their origin was South America.
Mustn’t forget tobacco too. Actually, isn’t tobacco due for a revival given its serious adverse effects on health?
This really does make for concerning reading when you see an overview of the situation like this. ‘Mohammed’ has eclipsed ‘John’! ‘The great replacement’ going great guns in the UK and across Europe;
”Leicester, Luton and Birmingham are among 14 large areas of England where people who identify as “white” now make up the minority. The highest proportion are found in the London boroughs of Newham (69.2%), Brent (65.4%) and Redbridge (65.2%). Outside London, the highest proportion of non-whites is in Slough (64.0%), followed by Leicester (59.1%), Luton (54.8%) and Birmingham (51.4%).
For the first time since the 7th century AD, England is no longer majority-Christian.
“The British will be a minority by 2066,” wrote David Coleman, the most important English demographer, professor at Oxford, in Prospect magazine. “The 50 percent threshold has no special demographic significance, but it will have considerable psychological and political impact, and the transition from majority to minority will represent a huge shift in cultural, political and religious identity.”
And in the future, to accommodate all immigrants from Asia, England will have to build “eighteen Birminghams”.
Mohammed today is the first name in all of England: the first in Manchester, the first in Nottingham, the first in Leicester, the first in Leeds, the first in Luton, the first in Bradford…Everywhere the same numbers in the biggest British cities.
In just a generation, Islam will be the first religion in all of England.
And to think that just ten years ago, to the great wrath of the liberal intelligentsia, David Cameron defined England as a “Christian country”.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/376190
“…in pursuance of a decision on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country”, as someone once said.
Yes..although we are told that from the last census around 18% of the UK population is from an ‘ethnic’ background, what they fail to mention is that in schools that jumps to over 35% of children are from ethnic backgrounds….I’m not sure it will take to 2066?…..
Bit ‘rabbit holey’ or maybe paranoid for this early in the day (
) but this does sound kind of prophetic from decades ago. Maybe we are becoming the slowly boiling frogs as our cities turn gradually into prisons..and this is before the internet! Man’s got a point. ( 3min clip )
https://twitter.com/WillingWitness/status/1696202515300458788
Chilling. And quite possibly true.
Their future is in the control which can be exercised in cities, especially “smart” C40 cities. Rural areas are a real problem for them: all those hard to get to places to evade detection, outbuildings they don’t know about, farm animals and fields providing self-sufficiency, mechanical plant allowing unregulated travel/digging/building, undeclared fuel dumps, the odd firearm, plenty of pitchforks, the absence of easy surveillance/control options, not to mention a curmudgeonly local population (of which I am one). Patrick Vallance’s document on imagining net zero admits as much, in saying that institutional trust/compliance is much higher and easier to enforce among urban populations. Hence concerted attacks on rural ways of life. If enough people (1) leave the city and (2) ditch their smartphones, the whole project collapses.
Wow, spot on!
“Wikipedia should focus on content creation – not social justice campaigns”
The naivete of some of these writers is annoying. Do they think that the social justice campaigns in Wikipedia are accidental? And are we not past the times when it is useful to say “X ought to be doing Y instead of Z,” since the whole strategy is to achieve Z?
It’s like saying that Lenin would be better off getting agriculture right instead of worrying about class enemies.
Quite. For starters, it would be helpful if Wikipedia focussed on facts and truth first and held back on narrative-based opinion, censorship and whitewash rather than AI-driven content creation!
“BlackRock hit by backlash after fall in ESG votes”
Since when has an ethically questionable company with a value greater than several countries given a sh*t about anything other than their own agenda? I’m sure they can cope with a few basis points off their share value for a few days while they drive through their plans for world domination.
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/08/28/cochrane-review-the-latest-scientific-institution-ruined-by-covid-ideology-n574233#google_vignette
“This is another example of how scientific institutions have been destroying themselves. The narrative requires that mask mandates work; the reality is that they don’t. In a rational world, scientists would simply put out the evidence and let the political actors do their thing. They shouldn’t be activists for or against masks, but rather providers of evidence.
But that is no longer the role of scientists. They have assumed the role of oracles whose job it is to act as con men, backing up the claims of the “right” people.
This works in the short term–most people fall in line, believing that the scientists are non-partisan truth-tellers–and destroys scientific credibility in the long run. People catch on to the con.”
So true
Well blow me down with a feather..we were right..of course we were….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12453329/99-PERCENT-Covid-deaths-not-caused-virus-official-data.html#:~:text=Nearly%2099%20percent%20of%20%27Covid,the%20virus%2C%20official%20data%20shows.
Nearly 99 percent of ‘Covid deaths’ reported by the CDC each week are not primarily caused by the virus, official data shows.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Covid dashboard shows just 1.7 percent of the 324 Covid deaths registered in the week ending August 19 had the coronavirus as the primary cause of death.
(not behind a pay-wall)
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/authorities-in-denial-over-vaccine-link-to-soaring-pilot-deaths/
PILOT deaths are in the news again as three more have ‘died suddenly’ this month.
Recent freedom of information (FOI) requests to the CAA and the RAF show an alarming increase in the number of commercial and armed forces pilots registered unfit to fly post the vaccination rollout.
pilots:
· 2018 – 1,550 – normal year
· 2019 – 1,663 – first covid cases reported in December 2019
· 2020 – 851 – air travel restricted because of lockdowns, covid infections at their worst, no vaccine until December
· 2021 – 1,594 – vaccine widely available from January and mandated for US and Australian pilots in November but not for British, the majority of whom would have taken the vaccine or faced restrictions flying to countries with vaccine mandates
· 2022 – 2,784 – post vaccination, huge increase in failed medicals – 75 per cent.
I posted this yesterday but am reposting as this information is mind blowing & completely destroys the whole ‘deadly virus pandemic with vaccines as the only way to stop it’ false narrative. It also destroys the avian flu narrative.
It is well worth investing your time watching this. Lots of information is presented & the fact that ‘covid’ symptoms are exactly the same as radiation exposure symptoms is a good way to get folk questioning the need for a ‘vaccine’ to prevent the radiation exposure.
https://rumble.com/user/cbkovess
Hear, hear! LOL!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJs2yZpQFWA
ALISTAIR WILLIAMS …September Lockdowns?
Discussion with John Campbell and Russel Grant…
Full of interest and info…..
Starts with Moderna’s $400 million ‘donation’ to the NIH…Rishi’s investment in Moderna, and Van Tams new job there…but there’s nothing to see here!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh8CBR78DhQ
Were and are all the variants made in the lab as well?
Some credible researchers from Japan have found anomalies that suggest so.
https://www.steynonline.com/13744/who-making-the-variants
For the time being, “ULEZ: Chaos as fines cancelled”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAnStegdz6Y&list=WL&index=2 This matter was reported on GBN as well.
And another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQJ3XxKpOoU&list=WL&index=3 A “Black Belt Barrister” production this time.
Quite astonishing that there should be any question of the death penalty in the Letby case. For a start, it has not yet been demonstrated to the public that she is without any shadow of a doubt guilty.