‘We’re going to build a different future with one — one with clean energy, good-paying jobs.”
That was President Joe Biden talking about the climate “crisis” and how it “is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world.”
Right about the time Biden was giving this speech, the World Economic Forum painted a picture of what Biden’s future would look like.
Suffice it to say, if you like socialism, you’ll love it. Because it involves a radical transformation of our economy that brings the end of private ownership of things like cars, phones, laptops, and other electronic devices.
The WEF article begins by admitting something that the left usually refuses to acknowledge: There aren’t enough metals around to power everything with “clean energy.”
“This transition from fossil fuels to renewables will need large supplies of critical metals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, to name a few. Shortages of these critical minerals could raise the costs of clean energy technologies,” writes Winnie Yeh, the World Economic Forum’s head of responsible sourcing.
Just how large a supply is she talking about? Even assuming that all the metals in use today are recycled, the World Bank estimates that the production of these minerals would have to increase roughly 500% by 2050 to meet the demand for “clean energy” technologies.
That means massively mining the stuff, which as we’ve pointed out repeatedly in this space, is hugely damaging to the environment — and far, far more damaging than drilling for oil.
“Mining has been called the ‘blind spot’ of the green energy transition,” Yeh writes. “On land, it has been associated with biodiversity loss, overuse of water resources, tailings waste, labor, and geopolitical issues.”
The stuff also can be mined from the ocean, but more than 100 environmental groups are opposed to deep-sea mining and more than 653 marine science and policy experts from over 44 countries have called for a moratorium on it because of the harm it would cause.
So, if raping the earth and ravaging the seas to get the minerals needed for “clean energy” are off the table, what’s left?
Ah, the global elites have the answer!
Just get everyone to give up ownership of their cars, cell phones, and other stuff that needs power to operate. If we all shared the stuff, we’d need less of it.
“More sharing can reduce ownership of idle equipment and thus material usage,” Yeh says.
Other leftists have been singing the same song. Late last year, a transport minister in the United Kingdom declared that we had to move away from “20th-century thinking centered around private vehicle ownership and towards greater flexibility, with personal choice and low carbon shared transport.”
Of course, getting people to give up their cars for the “good of the planet” won’t be easy.
And so, “to enable a broader transition from ownership to usership, the way we design things and systems need to change too,” the article says. “Introducing more of these circular models requires significant effort and changes to our current way of life.” (Emphasis added.)
(We are quite certain that the sharing part would apply only to the hoi polloi, not the elites who populate organizations like World Economic Forum.)
We can’t be the only ones who read things such as this and wonder What. Is. The. Bloody. Point??
Even if the left’s “clean energy” vision were to become a reality, the impact on global temperatures would be negligible, if there was any impact at all.
And to achieve that meaningless result, we would either have to ravage the land and oceans, or learn to live in a Soviet-style state, or some even worse combination.
In other words, there’d be widespread deprivation, a tremendous loss of individual liberty, and a massively expanded government presence — in exchange for nothing.
This is the future Biden intends to build.
We say, no thanks. We’ll keep our gas-powered cars and trucks, our cell phones and laptops, thank you very much. Because an ownership society — powered by fossil fuels — is what has produced today’s unprecedented and widespread prosperity.
We hope there are enough other people willing to say no to Biden’s future that it never comes to pass. And that 100 years from now, our heirs will look back on today and wonder why so many supposedly smart people lost their minds in the early 21st Century over a phony “climate crisis.”
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
I won’t be around to see it so it doesn’t make a lot of difference to me. Personally, I see a return to the horse and buggy days, the days before technology provided us humans all this mobility and ability to communicate. On the other hand, Jesus may – and probably will – come and it’ll all be taken care of.
I refer to this as the”climate hoax.” Of course, the dictators won’t give up a thing and we’ll all live like feudal serfs. What probably frosts them is that the internet keeps people aware of all of their diabolical plans. The more they brag about their ideas the more people detest them. Keep talking, knuckleheads.
Excellent editorial! The WEF world vision is rooted in pre-WW II German National Socialism, the Gestapo era, which was totalitarian like the KGB Soviet and East German STASI communist worlds. Similar in many ways to the DNC Utopia vision, where the DOJ/FBI and SWAT teams do terrorizing midnight raids. George Orwell novelized it as Animal Farm, where: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Climate poo-bah John Kerry and his fellow oligarchs and elites (politicians, entertainers, fake news celebrities, etc.) will likely not be sharing their limos, mansions, private jets, beach-fronts, etc.; except where it serves to indulge their various urges and perversions.
Sharing makes the elites ordinary, and true equality undermines their ruling power. Even Stalin when he first came to to power seized a private mansion for himself (much like BLM, which invested its sucker-sourced wealth in mansions). Equality only works as a street-fighting slogan, and has been changed to “equity of outcome” (shared poverty, a dumbing down). Anti-fa street thugs (financed, cheered on, and bailed-out by DNC supporters) believe in eradicating the opposition and “liberating” capitalist goods from their owners; not love or equality in the eyes of god. The WEF, DNC and EU elites seem prepared to forcibly install themselves as Kings of the New World Order. These wannabe Masters of the Universe seem intent on ending freedom, confiscating wealth and taxing to the max. Total control seems the goal. Lots of pretexts or disguises for their actions: COVID, Climate Change, calling everything an emergency. The Netherlands is rolling out farmland confiscation in the name of climate change, and Canada seems ready to follow. Discrediting the USA founding fathers (e.g. as racist slavers) is meant to eradicate freedom by shunning it as racist. An epic battle is brewing.
In my opinion, it is more likely that, because of the Biden economic, energy, justice & policing, border and foreign affairs policies (viz. Afghanistan, China, terrorism and Iran), it will be much more likely-if Biden’s socialistic and fascistic policies continue-that our country will fall and our children will not even be able to wonder why his/her ancestors put up with so many of the foolish energy policies which the Biden Administration is foisting on all of us-and the editorial board is referring to.
This, from the article, must rank as the most sane of the week: 100 years from now, our heirs will look back on today and wonder why so many supposedly smart people lost their minds in the early 21st Century over a phony “climate crisis.”
YOU WILL OWN NOTHING . . . is a command from Klaus:
https://youtu.be/UrEUzKTt7j0
and another command from Klaus:
https://youtu.be/8_8LTUmHWP0
This dystopia is awful. We were promised Terminators, Road Warriors, Replicants, the Vaults…and instead we get soi bois.
We live in rural Alaska. Someone explain to me how this plan will work for us out here.
The Hoi-Polloi may become irate enough to cleanse the elites off the map and share their wealth equally…
Biden stood at the debate podium and said he was going to end all drilling, everywhere.
He did it before any Clean Energy was in place to take the place of fossil fuel.
What kind of President does that?
This send-up of “green” fantasies is fine, especially the parts about ruinous mining. But conservatives in general have a blind spot, too: Hydrocarbon fuels are finite, depleting resources. Fracking of oil and gas deposits makes more of these resources available, but it’s not manna from heaven. The resources are still finite, and meanwhile the energy return on energy invested (EROEI) declines. When EROEI reaches one, the resources are no longer energy sources (but they’re still useful as chemical feedstocks).
Nuclear fission, too, is limited by finite fuels, although this resource can be extended by breeder reactors. Nuclear fusion (of deuterium pulled out of ocean water) could last a really L O N G time, but it always seems to be 50 years in the future.
If fusion never delivers, the long-term human future will thus be dependent upon **incoming** solar energy (fossil fuels are **stored** solar energy, accumulated over tens of millions of years). Implications: a much smaller human population, a much lower standard of living, or both.
What’s the current TWh consumption every day attributed to digital currency ‘mining’ compared to the damage done to our environment by all the methods used to produce that energy? Then add in the energy that powers Mainstream Media’s 24/7 hyperbole, maybe all the (anti-)social media companies’ entertainment activities too, gain some idea of what the costs are for such non-essential activity.
And please don’t leave out what contemporary nuclear power contributes; by any measure (other than CO2 emitted from making concrete for building reactors) its impact is the least damaging of all.
Why not end immigration from low carbon footprint countries to the West which has a declining population ?
The delusional Biden as delusional as those Eco-Freaks from Greenpeace, NRDC, Sierra Club and the rest of the Eco-Freak groups