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Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t M; “… The Green Leap Forward has set humanity on a fast track to another man-made catastrophe. …” – a warning from a respected US civil rights activist who was born and raised in Communist China.
The West Mimics Mao, Takes a Green Leap Forward
By Helen Raleigh
Sept. 21, 2022 1:33 pm ET…
Like Mao, today’s advocates for the green-energy revolution have become impatient with the slow progress made by renewable energy. Fossil fuels and nuclear power provide 80% of the energy the world needs. Despite years of subsidies, renewable energy is still unstable and unreliable, since the sun doesn’t shine at night and the wind doesn’t blow all the time. Almost all renewable-energy power plants require either nuclear or fossil fuels as backups.
Rather than gradually phasing out fossil fuels while investing in renewable energy research and development, Western green-energy revolutionaries have launched their own version of the Great Leap Forward in Europe and the U.S. Today’s greens operate in a democratic system unlike Mao, but they have resorted to government coercion to replace fossil fuels (and nuclear power) with renewables on an aggressive deadline. The European Union is set to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, and the Biden administration promises to “achieve a 50-52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution in 2030.”
One of the essential lessons from China’s Great Leap Forward is that catastrophic failures inevitably follow from politicians’ insistence on ignoring reason, logic, truth and economics. Europe’s current energy crisis, California’s continuing power outages and Sri Lanka’s food shortages are all warning signs. The Green Leap Forward has set humanity on a fast track to another man-made catastrophe.
…
Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-west-mimics-mao-takes-a-green-leap-forward-clean-energy-china-communism-farming-industrialization-quota-11663767101
Helen Raleigh is a widely respected author and civil rights activist.
If there is one lesson we can learn from history, that lesson is prosperity is fragile. It is entirely possible for nations to tax themselves out of existence, by diverting too much effort towards a useless economic activity, or legislate themselves into ruin, by implementing damaging economic policies which wreck the fragile network which provides the abundance many of us take for granted.
We’ve all seen the warning signs – Sri Lanka running out of food, Europe, Texas, Australia and California suffering entirely predictable intermittent renewable driven electricity supply instability and price spikes.
Mao also ignored warnings. Just a few decades prior to the catastrophic famines of the Great Leap Forward, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had killed millions with a similar policy of forced industrialisation. The famines affected much of the Soviet Union, including regions which share a border with China. Mao or some of his advisors must have had some awareness of what had happened in the Soviet Union – but they were either too afraid to speak up, or were ignored or punished when they did.
Our politicians appear to be making similar mistakes to those Mao and Stalin made. They are impatient, in too much of a hurry to transform the national economy, just as Mao and Stalin were. They are ignoring the warning signs, the growing evidence of unresolved problems, and are plowing on regardless, with targets and mandates.
Today’s green policies are starting to put pressure on farmers, just as policies impacted farmers in Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia. Fertiliser shortages and fuel price pain are a direct consequence of the green energy policies pursued by President Biden and other western leaders – producing fertiliser is energy intensive, so the price of energy has a direct impact on availability and cost.
Our politicians are endangering us all with their ignorance and arrogance.
Horrible historical events, like Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Stalin’s Soviet Holodomor, or ongoing crisis like Sri Lanka’s food shortages, or the energy shortages in California and Europe, are in some ways like major wars. They seem to have a kind of social momentum of their own. They can progress very quickly from a few isolated problems to a national catastrophe. They only happen when large groups of people benefit from or strongly support the policies which created the catastrophe, and are prepared to act, to vigorously push back against efforts to change course, even after the policies start to create major problems.
Once set in motion these deadly events are difficult to stop. The culmination of many years of poor choices cannot be corrected overnight. We can only hope to push back early and hard, to try to avert the worst of the crisis.
“to try to avert the worst of the crisis..”
And that’s NOT a “climate crisis”.
Hooray for Helen. Unfortunately, climate change is a reflexive slogan. A bit of groupthink. Groups often do not turn back early enough. It’s much easier, psychologically, to murder your fellow humans.
Humans usually blame their neighbors for things they don’t understand. And then the U.N comes along (and the IPCC) and claim only they can fix the problem — which of course is non-existent. Unfortunately, many will sacrifice freedom because of an illusionary threat. It has happened many times in the past with dire consequences.
If history teaches us anything, it’s that we don’t seem to learn anything from history.
They’re already justifying that.
There is one bright glimmer on the horizon. China is now producing electricity from uranium fission at lower cost than scrubbed flue gas coal fired generators. And they have only just started on the transition. They will get smarter and faster with nuclear power.
So the current developed world can ditch all their manufacturing and rely on China to supply the solar panels and wind turbines demanded for NutZero. After the first pass toward NutZero and consequential economic collapse, China will be able to supply nuclear reactors.
US is OK as long as China continues to accept US debt. Australia is OK as it will continue to supply the iron ore and met coal needed to make the stuff the developed world craves. Europe will likely freeze this winter making them a dying breed.
Latest reports show China holds less than $1 trillion of U.S. debt (Japan is now the largest holder of U.S. debt). Not to worry.
China’s holdings of U.S. debt also hasn’t changed in over a decade. U.S. national debt has been entirely monetized by the Federal Reserve, debasing the dollar and causing massive inflation.
Inflation is also causing the value of China’s dollar holdings to decrease. They also can’t sell that debt to anyone else because they would first have to deeply discount the value because of the current fear of future inflation. Secondly, the depth of the market for US debt is rather thin right now, and any attempts to sell large amounts of debt will further depress the value of that debt.
Like Stalin’s Holodomor and Mao’s Great Leap, millions will die.
Yes.
All part of the plan.
Yep.
And just think how easy it will be for the “green” grid to be capable of supporting future electricity demand – after tens of millions of those pesky consumers have been eliminated!
Soylent Green anyone?
It will be no easier with fewer people. The sun and wind are intermittent regardless of the number of people on earth. Whatever windmills and solar panels remain, they will still produce nothing without wind and sun – still need the backup systems and still need the energy to maintain them and replace all them every 10 or 20 years.
This is the most fundamental problem with the net-zero plans. There is absolutely no plan for providing reliable electricity without coal, oil, gas and nuclear and no plan for producing the thousands of products that come from coal, oil and gas when the “goals” have been reached.
It is about the nuttiest and irresponsible a “plan” as has ever been proposed.
Both China and South Korea are competing to sell1.4 GW nuclear for roughly $5 billion to countries around the world. Both have demonstrated they can build these plants in five years or less. Russia was also in the mix (supplied India), but I doubt other countries will be keen on Russian suppliers. I think Egypt did agree to buy some reactors from Russia.
Meanwhile …
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave a message of “encouragement” on behalf of Prince William at a climate change event in New York on Wednesday.
The Prince of Wales personally asked Ms Ardern to deputise at the Earthshot Prize innovation summit while the royal family continues a private mourning period following Queen Elizabeth’s death.
The Earthshot Prize grants five individuals £1 million (AU$1.7 million) each to continue their environmental work as they lead sustainability efforts globally.
It was co-founded by Prince William and environmentalist Sir David Attenborough.
Does young prince willie have his head stuck up his fundament like daddy chuck?
The Industrial Revolution began and started to accelerate because it provided an economic and material advantage to its users.Others saw the advantages and copied, giving us the comfortable lifestyle we have today.These advantage have not materialised with renewable energy and until they do the only way is compulsion and punishment.
The Green Leap Forward has set humanity on
a fast track to another man-made catastrophe.
_____________________________________
Great analogy.
Right on the money, this needs to be distributed far and wide. It is short to the point and in easy to understand language.
I’m not totally convinced these are mistakes.
Again, not totally convinced this is ignorance or arrogance.
You only have to listen to the anti-human rhetoric of the extreme lefties like Attenborough, the BBC, the Guardian etc, to know the end goal.
PS let’s stop calling these people “greens”, “watermelons”, “environmentalists”, they are the extreme left.
We in California have not yet had blackouts. Or, if we have, they have not been reported.
Just be patient if they can manage to extract enough lithium for the well to do car buyer-
It’s common to charge electric vehicles at night. That will be a problem. (msn.com)
When the numpties finally work it out they’ll probably mandate V2G and make it retrospective fitment. You know it makes sense.
Personally in their position I wouldn’t be wasting scarce lightweight lithium battery resources on fixed battery grid firming for an hour or two but they’re desperate for a quick fix I suppose-
Fire at PG&E’s Tesla battery in California is now under control – pv magazine Australia (pv-magazine-australia.com)
It’s under control because they let it burn out. But they shutdown the entire operation and a state highway and issue shelter in place orders until that happens.
Nonsense. We had blackouts in 2000, 2001, 2019, 2020 and 2022. And that’s not counting the power shutoffs to prevent wildfires. In any event, California imports 30% of it’s electricity from other states which means we cannot supply our own grid demand.
And, as Doonman likely knows, nearly all of that 30% is from coal.
Yet
See poweroutage.us to see where there are blackouts. At the present time, all of the lower 48 have no blackouts. Frequently however, California does. And then there is Puerto Rico.
Only because a lot of people and companies were scared into cutting their demand.
Jim, if you have avoided the rolling blackouts so far, consider yourself lucky. I, too, am in California, and I have experienced a few. The first one damaged the electronics in my water heater, and ended up costing me about a thousand bucks to replace. Another one caused spoilage of a lot of food in my refrigerator. The typical time for outages is late afternoon, around 5pm, not surprisingly when solar energy is disappearing from the grid.
Maybe not this year, but it’s happened already: https://abcnews.go.com/US/california-blackouts-power-grid/story?id=89460998
And the news, even MSM, is reporting it’s getting more likely to happen again.
An internet search quickly reveals many articles about California’s blackouts and none disputing that they happened.
A bit of information from a few of those articles:
1996
— Retail price controls distorted the CA energy market.
— “competition transition charge,” a charge equal to the difference between the price-controlled retail price and the volatile wholesale price, [deemed] sufficient for utilities to recover … costs … [e.g., of] green-power contracts … [which were] costly under the old system [Edit: now, they are using OPM to fund them].
— a rapid surge in applications and the construction of new power plants. More new plant applications were submitted in 1998 than in any of the preceding 16 years. ***
[However, t]he state also has a difficult and time-consuming process for licensing. Time has to be allowed for advocacy and input from affected parties, which not only delayed construction but also created uncertainties for utilities and generators as to whether they would actually realize benefits by installing new capacity.
2001
— The first five months of 2001 were characterized by soaring wholesale prices, energy emergencies, and a small number of rolling blackouts.
— Ultimately PG&E [Pacific Gas & Electric] declared bankruptcy.
(Source: https://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge/OurEnergyFuture/TheCaliforniaElectricityCrisisLessonsfortheFuture.aspx )
2006
— In 2006, California amended its renewable portfolio standard to require investor-owned utilities, electric service providers, small and multi-jurisdictional utilities, and community choice aggregators to provide at least 20 percent of retail sales from renewable sources by the end of 2010 and 33 percent by the end of 2020.
2013
California … puts obstacles in the way of conventional energy, which is leading to much higher energy prices … . *** The California Independent System Operator has on many occasions expressed concerns about its ability to maintain reliability in the face of a 33 percent renewable portfolio … .
(Source: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/State-Analysis-California.pdf )
2020
— [In] 2020[, California]
has[was] notbeenable to match rising peak power demand in summer heatwaves with new battery storage capacity [for “renewable” energy].— [A] heatwave in August 2020 prompted rotating power outages.
(Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/california-power-plan-lays-bare-cost-renewables-delays-2022-08-09/ )
#ClimateScientology
It’s all good in theory and in their computer models-
The Left discovers its own agenda is impossible (msn.com)
I witnessed the fall out of Mao’s great leap forward while a child in Hong Kong. The images of immigrant communities living in corrugated iron shanty tows which were simply blown away by typhoons is still with me.
There can be little doubt that there will be hundreds of thousands of people dying across Europe this winter from cold.
In the UK, most of the country rarely falls much below zeroºC for more than a few days at a time yet we still suffer about 20,000 Excess Winter Deaths. The politically expedient term for people freezing to death, usually the elderly.
Across mainland Europe, temperatures frequently fall well below zeroºC for extended periods of time.
And a little observation of the nature of humans. There will be rolling blackouts across the UK this winter, of that there is little doubt. They will be planned and notice given to the areas affected. The result will be people turning up their heating, overheating their houses to ride out several hours of no heat. When the power is switched back on there will be a similar surge of demand as people turn the heat back up again.
I have no idea if this is sustainable or not but it seems the height of government madness as this behaviour will impact on any savings made.
Living with lies-
‘It’s not that you love the planet, it’s that you hate humanity’: Dr Jordan Peterson (msn.com)
Well said, H. Scot.
[Alice Smith froze to death in her sleep] is a tragedy.
[“20,000 Excess Winter Deaths”] is a statistic.
Josef Stalin
There are similarities between Stalin and Mao and the modern leftists. All of them had and have a deep abhorrence of people who are not part of their clique. All of them are socialists. All of them have a lust for power. All of them listened to incompetent people while destroying competent people. All of them could not defend their position, so they silenced all opposition by hardcore censorship.
But I believe their is one difference between Stalin and Mao and the modern leftist: I believe many of the modern leftist actually want to get rid of billions of people. While Stalin and Mao killed millions through repression and incompetence, I don’t think they actually planned on removing those people from the planet. Listening to the words of some of those pushing global warming, they openly speak of overpopulation. Thus, I believe the modern leftist is even worse than Stalin or Mao.
Hard core censorship and outright murder.
As some sage said, might have been H.L Mencken, “I’d rather be governed by robber barons than do-gooders. Robber barons may be satiated at some point, but do-gooders, never.”
It was also said by C. S. Lewis in his book God in the Dock:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
― C.S. Lewis
Janice, I work in higher education administration and have come to call “sustainists” operating on U.S. campuses ‘busybodies.’ They can’t run anything, but they can stick their noses in everybody else’s business.
Yes.
And when asked:
“What do you want to do with your life?” those students often answer, “I want to help people.”
“How will you do that?”
“Protest for the sustainable paradigm 🙄 (they love to use the word “paradigm”).”
If they truly wanted to help people, they would invest in or start a business and GIVE THEM A JOB.
Or, they could just become an engineer. 😊
The so called robber barons got rich by selling people stuff that they wanted to buy, at a price/quality point that was better than was being offered by their competitors.
The comparison to the Great Leap Forward is very apt. The policies being urged and followed by the US, Australia, Germany and the UK are indeed very self destructive.
The thing to ask is why this self destructive behavior is confined to these four countries, and why its taken the particular form it has.
I would suggest reading the story of the Xhosa for the general background:
https://www.siyabona.com/eastern-cape-xhosa-cattle-killing.html
There are many parallels between that episode and the current climate mania.
Also read ‘Sick Societies’ by Robert Edgerton. The ways in which societies can go off the rails are many and various, and Edgerton documents many astonishing catastrophic cases.
I would suggest an explanation of what we are seeing in the four countries where the mania has become most widespread has to do with education. In those four countries over the last 15 or more years they have been educating large numbers of people to be members of the burocratic elite. But the problem is, there aren’t enough elite positions in the societies. So you find a large population of people with large college debts, underemployed, and with educations which are useless for any practical purpose, who have been persuaded that they are destined for elite membership but who gradually find they are never going to get it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
This produces a resentful, nihilistic and destructive attitude, which is attributed to the failings of society. And the complete ignorance of any practical subject also allows advocacy of programs and policies which are plainly absurd. But if your education has been in post modern literary criticism you have no idea what a proper business or engineering case looks like. So opposition to your brilliant ideas seems at best stupid (you are, remember, one of the elite, even if you’re in your parents basement right now), and at worse a conspiracy.
If this is correct, the outlook is rather bleak. After much opposition and resistance to the ideas of Nongqawuse, the political class of the Xhosa finally gave way, the cattle were slaughtered, the ancestors were not raised, and one third or more of the people died in the subsequent famine.
It can happen. And the problem is, the mania is going to take a generation to work its way through, even after people stop going to college on big loans for mickey mouse degrees. And that, while its reducing a bit, and there is resistance, is still going strong. As long as these countries are essentially using their education system to manufacture large numbers of unemployable nihilists who think they should be running things, the madness will continue and even intensify.
On the evidence, the chances of leaders in those four countries adopting policies which take their people over the cliff is pretty high.
You forgot Canada in your list.
Yes, and forgot also New Zealand. But isn’t it striking that the mania is largely confined to the English speaking world plus Germany? And within those countries its confined to a small group of middle class (in the British sense) activists?
Its also striking that there is a clustering of attitudes. Where you find climate activism you also find approval of self declaration of gender, the substitution of the concept of gender for that of biological sex in public policy, and you also find wild ideas about how racist our societies are, the obsession with so called ‘decolonization’, and advocacy of open borders.
The thing that needs explanation is why these ideas cluster together and why they have become so influential in policy circles in the last 20 years.
I suggest they have become popular because of the reasons suggested above – essentially, a destructive impulse which has found this way of expression, but which has its origin in elite over production. And probably they have made their way into the policy making elite via the young who, like the younger sons of the aristocracy in previous eras, had the expectation of acquiring elite positions but discovered at maturity that there were not enough available for them.
What all these countries need is somewhere to export their overproduction to. In the 19c someone referred to the British Empire as being ‘outdoor relief’ for the aristocracy. Outdoor relief was poor relief given outside the home, that is, workhouses. One effect of Empire was a pressure relief valve. It created large numbers of elite positions to which the overproduction could be exported, and those exported were safely away where they could do little damage to the home country.
The current manias, gender, climate, race, have become the obsessions of people with liberal arts degrees whose sense of entitlement has been thwarted by the constitution of society as it is.
What our societies need is fewer media studies graduates and more plumbers and engineers. Fewer university places and more apprenticeships. And an acceptance that there is no point educating large numbers of the young, and driving them to incur large debts, in studying things not worth studying in themselves, and of no use whatever in earning a living. That is a recipe for producing rootless radicals with little stake in society, and we are paying the price for doing it in the current wave of manias.
OK, in the case of electric cars and trucks why not put small generator windmills on the top of these vehicles so that they can, through the force of the air produced by their forward motion, generate the electricity needed to power that forward motion? I’m going to start work on my self-powered EV later today. Stand by for a success story.
😅
The Plagiarizer in Chief loves to rehash communist slogans. Try this instead, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Couldn’t even say that.
“fflpheup…created by uhlllloowwmmff uh… you know the thing”
I’ll up you one D Trump…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMtfAySJWJo
It is hard to know who is funnier. But to be fair and honest Janice, Biden has had a stutter since childhood. What is Trump’s excuse? Perhaps I’ve missed something.
Hi, Simon. 🙂
He didn’t have a stutter as an adult. Until….. he started exhibiting symptoms of cognitive decline ….
Janice
he most definately had a stutter as a child…
https://stamma.org/your-voice/true-paradox-joe-biden-overcoming-stuttering
So….. since he did not have a stutter as an ADULT (ahem), your point is:
Biden is in his second childhood.
Janice,
If you read the article I posted for you, it details how he still has it, but he has developed coping strategies. I had a stutter as a child, and every now and again I still do. His is just more pronounced. It is just sad that people use his stutter to wrongly assume he has dementia. I mean he may well have the onset of it, I don’t know, but his stuttering is a separate issue.
Simon, you may try to argue, but Janice is right.
One of America’s greatest preachers and Bible teachers, Chuck Swindoll, had a severe stutter as a child. Still in the pulpit in his 80s and still mentally sharp, there is no evidence of a stutter today.
There is an obvious distinction between a stutter and mental confusion. Biden is regularly mentally confused. Shaking hands with the air, being hustled off by the Easter bunny, muffing speeches due to confusion, saying outrageous things when off teleprompter. Worst of all, he is clearly being led and handled by others, doing and saying what they tell him. He is not leading, and he is clearly not mentally or physically competent to lead. Even his own party shuns him and is looking for the first opportunity to ditch him. Obama thinks Biden is a clown, not that I have any respect for BO.
Unfortunately, those leading Biden are no more competent than he, from his cabinet to his close advisors to his press secretary.
But his poll numbers are on the up….
“Simon, Simon, … But, I have prayed for you, Simon.” *
🙂
*(Luke 22:31, 32)
*********************
Dear Simon,
Something about your tone at 2:49 am PDT touched my heart.
“But his poll numbers are on the up,” said the ever-loyal Simon, with a hopeful smile.
Why is my heart so full of love for you right now, Simon? It is because, I think, Jesus (living in my heart) loves you so very much that His love is overpowering my own natural antipathy.
Wow. You are LOVED by the One Who “created the heavens and the earth.” Think about that! Selah!! 😃
I know, I know. It’s on your list.
Don’t wait too long… . Time is running out.
Oh, Simon! PLEASE, don’t wait until it is too late😢
Your friend in the USA,
Janice
Dear Simon,
I know you weren’t writing for my sympathy, but, I want to tell you that I am so sorry that you have to deal with a stutter. Even though it only manifests once in awhile, just the fact that it might must cause you a bit of worry.
Yes, indeed, stuttering is nothing to be ashamed of and certainly not to be ridiculed per se. That one has overcome it is to be commended.
Phlashgordon summed it up already, so I’ll leave it there. Oh, except to say that Chuck Swindoll has a lot of good books and videos out that you might find helpful. One of his books, Moses, might be personally encouraging. Moses, mighty in intelligence and courage and knowledge, was afraid to go back to Egypt to tell Pharaoh, “‘Let my people go,” because —- he had a speech impediment.
Sorry for talking at you a bit much, here. Since the thread is sort of winding down, I felt freer to correspond with you.
Take care.
Your friend,
Janice
P.S. Also, bear in mind that when a person stands up and stutters while trying to say something, that stutter touches the hearts of his or her listeners. It helps him or her to get listened to and to persuade.
Oh my word. Janice I was listening to trumps latest speech and he said….”keep our country “gay.”” What is happening to Donald? What Is happening to the US? I mean I’m ok with a few gay but the whole country? It’s too much. It’s official. He’s crossed a line there.
Simon, you are so silly. 😀
I also notice that the leader of one of the main labour movement Unions in the UK has also declared the UK left should be getting behind fracking and nuclear. Did the world just tilt on it’s axis or was that just a lorry driving past?
I hadn’t seen that, very interesting development if it becomes more widespread. I guess someone forgot to tell Ed Milliband his support is slipping away!
Yes, its an instance of Pielke’s ‘Iron Law’. When faced with the choice, people will opt for living standards.
Its also interesting politically, because it marks the split between the leadership of the Labour Party and its electoral and financial base. Labour is still largely financed by the unions. The union leadership is now pretty far left, but its still rooted in representing its members day to day interests, at the moment being focused on cost of living issues.
Long term Labour voters, particularly in the North, are socially conservative and hard headed. They have, on climate, precisely the attitudes of the General Secretary of the GMB. They are also strongly Brexit, and very hostile to contemporary gender activism.
The leadership however, and the membership after the wave of entries under Corbyn, is university educated, southern, urban and very woke. Miliband on climate is an example. Also its strongly Remain.
It was this split that’s being voiced openly by the GMB Secretary, and its a real electoral threat to the Party. The unions will not leave, because they have no place else to go. But the voters do, and they showed it at the last election.
Its interesting times ahead for Labour in the UK. This is not going to get any easier for Starmer, but if he cannot turn the leadership’s ideology around and get its policy preoccupations back to match those of its voters, its heading for another loss at the next general election in a couple of years time. The jury is still out on whether he can do it, or whether he even can see the necessity. He is no Kinnock, who memorably tackled Militant and prepared for the Blair landslides. But that is what it will take to make them electable again.
Well, the answer is, “the hell with ‘build back better’, just put it back the way it was.”
Everything the leftists and green blob touch turns to destruction…