June 17, 2021

World Report Card: The Inexorable March Toward Zero Carbon Emissions (Not!)

June 17, 2021/ Francis Menton

As we all know, the most important task currently facing the world is the elimination of carbon emissions from energy consumption in order to save the planet from the existential crisis of climate disruption.
The world actually got started on this task back during the 1980s and 90s, with the creation of the IPCC (1988), the issuance of the IPCC’s First (1990) and Second (1996) Assessment Reports on the climate, and the signing of the Kyoto Protocol (1997) for emissions reductions.
But it was only after 2000 that things really started to get serious. In 2005 the Kyoto Protocol officially took effect. It was June 2008 when Barack Obama promised (in his speech accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for President) that this would be “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal ..."). Two years later, in 2010, Germany adopted legislation formalizing its Energiewende program to replace fossil fuels with “renewables.”
So by today the U.S. and Europe have been hard at work for well over a decade on the real nitty gritty of getting rid of fossil fuels and replacing them with “renewables” like wind and solar power.
It’s time for a Report Card on how things are going.

June 15, 2021

Distinguishing Respect From Patronizing Condescension In Matters Of Race

June 15, 2021/ Francis Menton

In our current national moment, distinguishing respectful conduct or language toward others from patronizing condescension in matters of race is of great importance. You might think that making this distinction would be easy, but I suggest that in many circumstances it is not easy at all.
Recently, many things that have become the latest fashion in what practitioners think is heightened respect appear to me to be exactly the opposite — condescension. That can be the case even where the respect-that-is-really-condescension is demanded by the recipient. And I am not the only one noticing this phenomenon.
Let’s consider a few examples.

June 14, 2021

June 14, 2021/ Francis Menton

To my list of examples of reality intruding into the utopian dreams of climate cultists, add the results of yesterday’s referendum in Switzerland. The headline at Reuters is “Swiss reject law to help country meet Paris carbon emissions goal.”
It seems that the Swiss parliament, after multiple years of considering and debating various proposals, had finally passed a package of measures intended to “save the planet,” or at least to push the Swiss people into achieving a Paris agreement goal of 50% emissions reduction (from 1990 levels) by 2030.
As usual with these things, the entire strategy consisted of forcing the Swiss people to atone for their sins of prosperity by becoming poorer, in the form of higher prices for fossil fuels and airline tickets and forced restrictions on building heat and automobiles.

June 10, 2021

June 10, 2021/ Francis Menton

As you may already have learned, on Tuesday a left-leaning website called ProPublica published an article announcing that it had obtained tax returns of “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years.” The headline of the piece is “The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax.”
If you were still harboring any doubts that the IRS is a criminal enterprise in service of the progressive cause, this should put an end to them.

June 07, 2021

June 07, 2021/ Francis Menton

As we all know, making predictions can be difficult, especially about the future. On the other hand, sometimes it’s just a question of distinguishing reality on the ground from pure self-delusion.
At the moment, we have two visions competing to be the reigning official prediction of the future of energy. One of those visions, foreseeing the rapid demise of fossil fuels, is on full display even as we speak in a virtual summit put on by the American Clean Power Association.
The summit began today and is running for four days, through Thursday June 10. The speakers are a who’s who of “clean energy” glitterati, starting with essentially all the leading U.S. Democratic pols. OK, President Biden is not speaking; but then, he doesn’t get out much these days in his dotage. But the speaker list includes both Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, as well as all the leading Biden admin “climate” officials (Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Climate Envoy John Kerry, White House Climate Czar Gina McCarthy} and plenty of representatives of “woke” corporate America (e.g., Andrew Steer of the Bezos Earth Fund, Anne Finucane of Bank of America). And on and on.
You get the idea. These people are our betters, and to the extent they are not actually the “experts” themselves, we can be sure that they are tightly tied in to the true experts by direct brain connections.
The other vision of the future of energy can be called the “reality on the ground.”

June 05, 2021

June 05, 2021/ Francis Menton

It’s easy to get discouraged about the “climate” scare, otherwise known as the socialist takeover of everything under the cover story of a faux moral crusade to “save the planet.” Sometimes it seems that all you can hear are preening politicians and academics and journalists and “scientists” shouting about the immediate “existential crisis” that requires the prompt end of fossil fuels and that your energy use (but not theirs) must be severely restricted.
Just today, UN Secretary-General António Guterres issued a statement warning that the next ten years are our “final chance” to avert a “climate catastrophe”:
We are rapidly reaching the point of no return for the planet. We face a triple environmental emergency — biodiversity loss, climate disruption and escalating pollution. . . . Science tells us these next 10 years are our final chance to avert a climate catastrophe. . . .
The few people pushing back get shouted down and drowned out. How could this possibly end well?