Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The problem is so big, and elected governments are so unreliable…
‘A kind of dark realism’: Why the climate change problem is starting to look too big to solve
By Steven Mufson
Updated 05 Dec 2018 — 2:03 PM,
first published at 11:26 AMIn the daunting maths of climate action, individual choices and government policies aren’t adding up.
…
But effective policy is lacking. Nordhaus advocates a whopping carbon tax, which the Climate Interactive model shows would kill off most coal, sharply reduce driving and boost purchases of more fuel-efficient vehicles.
No appetite
Getting such a carbon tax adopted in the US, however, is hard to imagine. Washington state voters in November rejected a $US15-per-tonne carbon “fee” after Big Oil companies poured more than $US31 million into the state to block the measure. BP, which had endorsed a $US40-per-tonne nationwide tax, gave the most to defeat the bill.
Congress hasn’t shown any appetite for a carbon tax, either. A proposal to impose a $US40-per-tonne carbon tax and return the revenue to people in dividends has not caught fire yet.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron has ignited protests by proposing fuel taxes he says are needed to fight climate change. “One cannot be on Monday for the environment,” Macron said, “and on Tuesday against the increase of fuel prices.”
…
Lack the authority
That’s partly because international organisations lack the authority to enforce rules on wayward nations. In Poland, several major countries are expected to admit to missing the targets they agreed to at the Paris conference three years ago. One example is Brazil, whose new president Jair Bolsonaro, the “tropical Trump”, has talked about clearing part of the Amazon for roads and development. That would damage the world’s lungs – the trees that absorb carbon dioxide and pump out oxygen at high rates.
…
What kind of world would we live in, if the UN had “enforcement” powers?
Imagine Brazil wanted to develop the Amazon, to help lift their suffering people out of poverty A United Nations armed with “enforcement” powers could send an international army to Brazil, to stop Brazilian politicians from “damaging the world’s lungs”.
What if French deplorables objected to climate change fuel taxes? The United Nations would issue an enforcement decree requiring the French government to crush the protests, to ensure the progress of vital policy action to combat global warming.
What if the USA elected a President who opposed United Nations policy? I think you get the idea.
There seems little room for doubt about the kind of world we would live in, if greens like Mufson have their way.
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30 years ago…the UN/IPCC put a system into place….that guarantees CO2 levels will increase
….that’s what you’ll get
CO2 will be increasing as long as we’re improving the climate and enhancing the ability of the biosphere to flourish. The system that the IPCC/UNFCC/World Bank has been trying so hard to establish insures the perception of tiny increasing trends that they can blow way out of proportion by applying nonsense science. While this fools many, it’s not fooling everyone, so they want to be able to include ‘enforcers’ in their racket of extorting the developed world for being successful and redistributing the ill gotten gains to the third world with no absolutely no accountability for who it goes to or what it’s spent on, all under the cover of ‘green’.
Why isn’t RICO being applied? This is exactly what it was designed to address.
Would love to read your comments on the Green Religion we are supposed to adopt. Yet another reconstituted enforcement. I say this as a lifelong committed Catholic.
Religion has no place in science. Green idolatry (i.e. worshiping windmills), certainly qualifies as the practice of a faith based religion.
The difference is that if you tell a priest that you’ve lost faith in God, he will try and convince you otherwise. If you tell a follower of the green cult that that you’ve lost faith in the IPCC, they will tell you to burn in hell.
Nancy Anita Hermann December 7, 2018 at 6:25 pm
Would love to read your comments on the Green Religion we are supposed to adopt. Yet another reconstituted enforcement. I say this as a lifelong committed Catholic.
________________________________________
Nancy, commentators won’t cope “I say this as a lifelong committed Catholic.” without the obligatory /sarc
I bet the 3rd world won’t see an iota of that. It’s all earmarked for the ruling class to make and police more of their rules.
Do we really want to do this again?
ipcc guru https://www.google.com/search?q=ipcc+rk+pachauri&oq=ipcc+pajauri&aqs=chrome.
now had enough time during detention to learn about the basics of catastrophic climate change.
Even he tells nothing new.
Let give the UN authority to regulate traffic between Uranus and Neptune! When they have a 20 year track record of having successfully done so, with publicly available date showing high effectiveness, then we’ll consider expanding that authority to include Pluto, Nd take it from there!
Is this the UN who appointed Colonel Gaddafi to oversee human rights, and Mr. Mugabe a goodwill ambassador?
Good concept, but they UN would need another $78 million USD annually to support such a program.
If we had absolute assurance that the funding for the traffic regulation would come from existing budget, then it would be a program to support.
You are right. If they had “authority” to do such a thing, you’ll can bet your last dollar they’d make several branches of government to patrol it, enforce it, write policy about it, document their failure at it, and want more money to improve it.
Rather than the problem being to big for countrys to solve, climate change is too small to solve, as in it’s not actually a problem.
Roger that James.
Indeed the author is advocating giving the UN authority to solve a non-problem. It’s not about “climate change” never has been, it’s all about power (and not the kind that is generated through the use of fossil fuels, hydro, nuclear, solar, wind, or any other fuel source).
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken
James,
+💯
You beat me to it…I was going to say the same thing.
Notice on the one hand we skeptical scum are not to use “apocalypse” or “catastrophe” when talking about “climate change”.
But the climatariat can talk about imposing a worldwide tyranny to enforce the climate consensus will.
These are some twisted pathetic twits pushing their climate based nonsense.
I have my yellow vest order in the shopping cart ready to hit ‘buy’ if something like this ever happens.
Actually, given this article is from WAPO, maybe I’ll delete my cart and buy a vest from some place not owned by the same person.
The Amazon post is not our friend. Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world. He wants what is good for Jeff Bezos. His lackeys and puppets and brown-nosers are not our friend.
“What kind of world would we live in, if the UN had “enforcement” powers?”
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot
stamping on a human face – forever. George Orwell
Let me check on what the Ministry of Truth is saying today and get back to you.
“What if the USA elected a President who opposed United Nations policy?”
I think the USA already did, they didn’t need enforcement under Obama and why they need it now.
The peons aren’t behaving properly. The solution is (as always) more government.
Exactly.
The deplorables are rejecting their cake.
Transnational Progressives seem addicted to making claims that because of X, we need for Transnational Progressives to take over. X varies, but the desire remains constant.
And now the real agenda is no longer hidden.
And this:
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” Maurice Strong 1992
It doesn’t require a conspiracy. It only requires a commonly held belief.
Climate science is the same. No conspiracy required.
https://usefulstooges.com/2015/12/23/maurice-strong-dealmaker-for-china/
Regarding the Maurice Strong quote, is it possible that one of the reasons (or main reason) for many US pollution laws and regulations that started taking off in the latex 60s, early 70s, was NOT to clean up the earth or US but to force these industries offshore?
The reason I ask this is that I’ve noticed that many Asian countries are now industrialized (and Strong spent the last years of his life living in communist China, who is now heavily industrialized).
And the quote from Strong specifies “industrialized nations” vs saying something like:
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that there is no more industrialized nations anywhere on earth?
And now the real agenda is no longer hidden.
The agenda has never been hidden. Only when it starts to bite to people sit up and take notice.
Un’s Prof. Ottmer Edenhofer spilled the beans not so long ago: “One must say that we redistribute, de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy …This has almost nothing to do the environment any more.”
There’s this:
“We are setting out to intentionally change the economic model that has been reigning since the Industrial Revolution. – Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary – UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
I wouldn’t trust the UN to oversee a School Crossing guard.
Thank god they do not otherwise kids would die!
You can’t make a supranational omelet without breaking many, many eggs.
1.) You have to have people willing to die for and defend the UN … perhaps the greenies might all sign up 🙂
2.) You have to pay for your army, perhaps the greenies will all donate to the cause.
3.) Then the others with world power have to allow you to build up your army … bye bye greenies.
It’s a good and a bad news. Good news is that even the most scary propaganda about alleged catastrophic consequences of human-induced warming is failing: that propaganda simply cannot cover up lack of hard evidence and that becomes evident to the public. Even if this propaganda is ferociously and relentlessly supported by most of the mass media, academia and politicians.
Bad news is that, as consequence of good news, time for more direct solutions. Read: enforcing planet-saving policies on the international level by brute force. I cannot see that happen just yet, but – looks like the other side starts to realize that conventional methods won’t work.
Who will volunteer to physically force China to stop building and financing coal plants? Any hands? I don’t see any hands. Thought so. So therefore all the alarmists and greenies only agenda is to sink their own economies. And for what? Not only is more CO2 in the air NOT a problem, but we need more CO2 in the air for greenery around the world NOT less.
Who will volunteer to physically force China to stop building and financing coal plants? Any hands? I don’t see any hands. Thought so.
Correct. China will be pursuing its own agenda, ignoring all this climatic pressure. Still, China will happily help de-industralise Western economies by, for instance, sponsoring ‘useful idiots’ as Vladimir Ilici Lenin allegedly described Western intellectuals who supported Soviet communist regime.
The Chinese are smart enough to know that the IPCC wildly over-estimates the effects of CO2 and that the fear of CO2 by the West is a competitive advantage for them. I expect them to ride this wave of green insanity as far as they can.
If we were smart, we would put a massive tariff on solar cells to offset their cheap energy producing them and punish them for the lax environmental controls on their manufacturing facilities.
When it comes to force, the UN is particularly cowardly. They wouldn’t protect people in Rwanda from being massacred and they wouldn’t protect the people in Srebrenica. They make me sick.
Giving power over the people to faceless bureaucrats is the Corporatocracy checkmate move. Orwell saw it coming he simply missed the arrival date. EPA, IPCC matters not what acronyms we use it all spells Deep State Totalitarian Authority. They will just make them agencies of the IRS and enforce Bureaucratic dictates with the FBI.
We snoozed and we losed (sp). They dumbed us down in their Brainwashing Centers called public school and hoodwinked us with their Propaganda Ministry aka the mainstream press. Along the way they bought off the institutions of higher learning with federal grants and turned them into agent training centers for future bureaucratic comrades to keep watchful eyes on all of us Winston Smiths. We the people whom they have declared enemies of the state for destroying the planet by refusing to follow instructions and OBEYing the man.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
Idealistic Democratic Socialists like O-C, who is 4 primary colors short of a full crayon box, see it as a Romantic Comedy with a happy ending.
The cognitive dissonance amongst the Greenie illuminati runs rampant now. It’s fun to watch the mental gymnastics they have to perform in order to keep the hope of keeping the CAGW dead-cult-walking alive.
Let me get this straight. A publication which could not exist without freedom of speech wants, in essence would amount to a world dictator with such powers that in all likely-hood, would limit the freedom of speech the publication needs to exist?
It could just be me, but this seems nucking futs!
If one truly wants to lower CO2 levels, the means is as simpole as can be : molten salt small modular reactors, being developed by a dozen companies and national governments. Cheaper than any exiting energy generation technology, capable of providing all levels of power – baseload, peak load, etc and
inherently safe and manufactured and installed quickly- this would be a strategy far better than what one might get from a carbon tax and would be far more likely to be popular with all parties. One of the biggest obstacles to the move to force lower CO2 levels is the stupid technologies that are being
pushed. I have no objection to making sure CO2 levels do not continue rising but do object to the baindead technological methods the global warming nutballs are recommending.
Again (for the hundredth time), Kent, where can we see these in commercial operations so we can evaluate for our selves how cheap, safe, quick-to-install, etc they are? Oh, what’s that? there are none in commercial operation? that’s means you are spouting hype about vaporware. I can get similar hype about solar and wind and breakthru batteries. Hype and reality can (and often are) two differnt things
As I said to you numerous times before, they sound promising but until they make it out of the theory stage and into the practical application stage, all your hype is meaningless.
Thorium molten salt was tested for a run of several months in the 1960’s. What more do you want? -Cover the planet with them and THEN ask if they are viable? Oh wait, that’s what we’ve done with wind and solar, and found that unless we can develop hypothetical Grid storage, they are NOT viable.
Seems like thorium is the better bet than a battery that only exists on paper. Especially as building a test reactor would cost peanuts compared to the trillions spent on wind turbines.
No progress can be made without taking some kind of financial risk, but the financial risk with a plentiful return makes more sense than the one with a meager return, all else being equal.
Thorium molten salt was tested for a run of several months in the 1960’s. What more do you want?
Electric cars were not only tested for a run but in production back in the late 1800s. But they weren’t considered competitive with the interal combustion engine and thus disappeared from commercial use until recently. Just because something was tested in a lab doesn’t make it viable in the real world compared to the alternatives. I want to see some (just one would do, which is one more than we currently have) actually in commercial use to prove that the technology works to scale and can produce the energy economically enough compared to the alternative. the only way to see if they are “cheap, safe, quick-to-install, etc” is to see one operating in the real world.
Seems like thorium is the better bet than a battery that only exists on paper.
thorium would be better than a battery that only exists on paper *if* thorium itself didn’t only exist on paper at the moment.
No progress can be made without taking some kind of financial risk, but the financial risk with a plentiful return makes more sense than the one with a meager return, all else being equal
And no sane investor will take a financial risk to mass produce something that is unproven in the real world whether it be thorium or your better battery. They’ll want to see the first one in real world action (ie a working prototype) at the very least. Promises and hype won’t cut it. And that’s what both thorium and your “on paper only battery” currently has – endless hype but nothing real to show for it.
Especially as building a test reactor would cost peanuts compared to the trillions spent on wind turbines.
Great, then build one so we can have something tangible to examine to see how well it works in the real world.
Running a test reactor in a lab for a few months is not evidence that it capable of being ramped up to production quantities at an economically viable price.
No. But it’s a start…
Yes, but you don’t get the gold medal when you are standing at the starting line, you actually have to run the race first.
Who wants lower CO2 levels and for what reason? Do any of the green religion followers understand that 280ppm was historically low as in LOW ! That in it’s self should have been a serious question for them to use their models to predict how low it could have got if I did not help out with my gas guzzler. We should be congratulation ourselves for averting catastrophe not crying over it! What level of atmospheric CO2 do they think is “nice”? Important number to work from one would think, like a temperature which is also “nice” and sea level which is “nice”. Who decides what these should be and where are they posted? Of course one person’s nice is not everyone elses “nice”. Why do they not publish a set of valuse considered by the despotic UN to be “nice”? Is it because they do not know? The absurd reference currently for temp based on the Little Ice Age is too stupid for words. In reality the green hysterics “ideal” colour will actually be brown because below 200ppm photosynthesis grinds to a halt and then even green activists and climate pseudoscientists will DIE. I wonder who they would blame then with their last thoughts, clearly not themselves.
There is one outside of Tonopah Nevada. It’s a disaster. It has 10,000 + 1,200 sq ft mirrors that focus the beams on a tower. It melts a fantastic number birds, even for the desert of Nevada. It’s only ever met it’s goals for 3 months out of several years of operation. Just the molten lithium salts cost like $30,000,000 dollars. It’s a total eyesore if you’re driving within 20 miles of the place, as it’s like having a continuous sunrise. It often goes down for several days in a row.
You state that molten salt modular reactors can be “manufactured and installed quickly”. However, you left out the critical word – nuclear. Aside from NIMBYism and the onslaught of the Greens against anything nuclear, I suspect that said reactors could not be manufactured or installed quickly without a massive change in the regulatory environment. The current incumbents of the regulatory agencies aren’t going to budge from the tried and true regulatory approach that has kept them in business for decades. It would take someone more successful than Trump to turn that regulatory battleship from its current course.
And therein lies the biggest single reason that such technology, assuming it works and is scalable, will never be implemented.
Mufson should just move to a socialist dictatorship country. He’ll get the oppressive government authority he so treasures. And just like his propaganda at Washpo, mufson will write the same empty drivel at the government approved fake news outlet. All the news the government will allow peons to have.
I’m not so sure this is so impossible that we can make fun of it. Both seaboards, where most people live, are nodding their heads in agreement to this nonsense. And they are working on ways to change how we vote, how we count, and how we elect our governments just so these nutty ideas can be our new reality. The base on which the constitution sits is not exactly firm anymore and UN suggestions, first the small ones, could become directives. At that point in time, game over.
Liberals will eventually bemoan their short- sightedness. The trick is to get them to see the cliff now instead of after the jump off the cliff. That may be harder than the most wicked science question.
I don’t think it’s impossible at all – all it requires is that people willing to turn our sovereignty over get voted into the position to do so. And some of them have been.
Which is why I said joking about something that sounds ludicrous is not always wise. Ludicrous has a habit of becoming reality. And time was wasted joking about it.
This is the logical next step for the globalists. It follows the same thread as the Macron/ Merkel EU army. Bureaucratic power requires enforcement power. So while nation states are required to reduce their military capacity, multinational supranational organizations want that military enforcement of their edicts.
We can start by banning the building of new Coal Fired power stations. Any country that builds a new coal fire power stations will not be allowed to trade.
How much that will not happen?
This is likely what they want to do, but they have an easy workaround that’s already been implemented which is to exclude China, India and other ‘developing’ economies from being punished for being successful.
Goreites want to skip the defining-the-problem and proving-the-problem steps, and skip straight to the fun global slavery step.
‘A kind of dark realism’: Why the
climate changemarxist-takeover problem is starting to look too big to solve.Fixed it for the stooge.
Won’t work because a strong military can only enforce such craziness.
And they like cheap fuel.
Jean Parisot
The UN ‘Peace Keeping’ forces would be better leveraged if the US citizen were disarmed in the same manner as happened in the UK and Australia.
Hi Steve Case
Re: the famous Orwell quote about the “boot stamping on a human face”
Pulease-the quote should be updated to:
“A Gucci loafer stamping on a human face.”
Bob, the ruling class has a secret police force to do the dirty work, and they wear boots.
On a smaller scale I always thought this is how the EU will end up with its army, used to put down rebelious ex-countries.
Even better, recruits from the country being invaded can serve as hostages.