What is it about fossil fuels and the people who produce them that brings forth such uncontrolled hatred, anger, and vengefulness in a very large segment of the population?
I’ve been trying to figure out the answer to that question for many years, but I’m no closer today than when I started. I look at the use of fossil fuels in the world, and somehow I see enormous benefits to mankind — reliable electricity, transportation of people locally and at long distances, and of freight to enable worldwide trade, comfortable heating and cooling of homes, refrigeration to preserve food, computers, and so much more, all at remarkably low cost and remarkably small environmental impact. Most uses of fossil fuels either have no good substitutes (e.g., air travel, ocean shipping, steel-making), or only substitutes that have both higher cost, plus inferior functionality and/or their own environmental problems (e.g., wind, solar, or nuclear for electricity).
With almost no exceptions (e.g., the Unabomber) everybody who has access to fossil fuels or their energy output uses them in large quantities, precisely because they provide great benefits at low cost and low environmental impact, in ways that nothing else can. Even the most virtue signaling of climate fanatics, with almost no exceptions, won’t give up air travel, or buildings made with steel and concrete, or full-time life-saving electricity at the hospital, or plenty of other things that come only from fossil fuels.
The image that I can’t get out of my mind is the spectacle of the witnesses speaking at a public hearing I attended in May 2022 on the subject of the “Scoping Plan” then proposed for New York State to banish fossil fuels from its energy system. (That Scoping Plan has since been adopted, with essentially no significant changes.). As I reported in this post on May 3, 2022, I observed about 60 people testifying at this hearing, of whom only three spoke critically about the idea of banishing fossil fuels — and those three were myself plus two representatives from local utilities (whose criticisms were understandably mild and hedged, to say the least, given the political environment that they face).
At that hearing, a large number of supporters of banning fossil fuels gave impassioned and emotional pleas to speed up the process. What had aroused these strong emotions? The witness whose testimony I remember most vividly was a thirty-ish woman who stated that her young son had severe asthma, which she blamed on the fumes emitted by her gas-powered kitchen stove. Speaking of the health problems of her son, this woman broke down in tears and deep sobs, which definitely seemed genuine, and blamed the son’s problems on the uncaring gas utility. And yet for some reason she continued to use the gas stove. Had it never occurred to her that it was completely within her agency to go out and buy an electric stove? I was hoping to get a chance to ask her that question, but she disappeared before I could track her down.
In the years that I’ve been following this subject, the efforts to impose punishments and revenge on fossil fuel producers in this country have only proliferated and become more impassioned and more intense and more angry. Here are a few markers along the way:
- In this post on January 24, 2018 I reported on lawsuits that had just been brought by certain cities in California, and by New York City, both against a group of five major oil companies, blaming them for the “nuisance” of CO2 emission, and asking for some large and unspecified amount of damages plus some equally unspecified injunctive relief. I nominated those cases for the prestigious title of “stupidest litigation in the country,” based on the proposition that I couldn’t figure out what they were really trying to accomplish. I asked, if it’s money they want, why don’t they impose a tax on fossil fuel purchases; but then I answered my own question: “Oh, wait a minute, they already have that. Well, they could double it!” Ultimately, the cases could only be understood as vengeful political acts against irrationally hated adversaries.
- The New York case from January 2018 ended up getting dismissed in the District Court, and that decision was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, while the California case that I had discussed continues to this day to kick around the courts after a convoluted procedural history. So would this long stint in purgatory be the death of this type of effort to exact revenge on large oil companies for the sin of producing fossil fuels? The opposite. Such cases have proliferated like mushrooms in the years since. Here is a May 2023 post from a Columbia Law School blog with some extensive history of cases taking the same or very similar form. According to author Korey Silverman-Roati, “In total, at least 25 [similar] cases have been filed in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Vermont.”
- Nearly all of these cases were brought in state rather than federal courts. (The exception was the New York City case — the one that ended up getting dismissed.). The occasion for the May 2023 Columbia blog post was that the Supreme Court had just denied a certiorari petition that had been filed in several of the cases seeking to get them removed into the federal courts. With that Supreme Court action, there are now somewhere around two dozen of these cases moving forward in one state court system or another. The plan is to exact massive financial revenge against these evil oil companies.
- And how about another line of attack seeking to destroy these fossil fuel producers? It now comes to my attention that there is a campaign to introduce bills in state legislatures (all in blue states, to the extent I have learned so far) seeking to impose on fossil fuel producers an obligation to fund a type of “superfund” mechanism to pay the states large amounts to “mitigate” supposed climate damage. Here is the text of such a bill recently introduced in the Vermont legislature in 2024, and here is another one from my own New York from 2023. I’m given to understand that comparable bills are somewhere in the works in other states, including Massachusetts and Maryland. I have the same question that I had about the “nuisance” lawsuits: Why not just impose a tax? The only answer I can think of is that a mere tax does not give a sufficient demonstration of anger and revenge.
- And now for the most recent escalation, to yet another whole new level. Yesterday, there appeared in the left-wing magazine The New Republic an article with the headline: “The Case for Prosecuting Fossil Fuel Companies for Homicide.” I’m not making this up. Brief excerpt (from a long article): “Climate change is not a tragedy, it’s a crime.” This refrain, increasingly common among climate activists, encapsulates rising moral outrage at major fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP as more information has come to light about their knowledge and conduct regarding global warming.” You might think that this is completely unhinged, but believe me, the authors (and the “climate activists” that they refer to in the quote) are completely serious. Their anger is intense, and their goal is revenge.
And yet at the same time, all of the people engaged in these campaigns of anger and vengeance are major users themselves of the fossil fuels. If these products and their producers are so evil, wouldn’t a better strategy be to go out and produce substitutes that are better and cheaper and lack the environmental downside? Ah, but those better substitutes don’t exist. The world is investing trillions in the effort to come up with such substitutes, but so far nobody has succeeded. And by the way, nobody is going to succeed at this during my lifetime.
So far, the overall strategy of the major energy companies has been to lie as low as possible and hope that before long these people will come to their senses and this will all blow over. That may have made sense when this started. Ten years ago, I would not have believed that this insanity could possibly have gone as far as it has. However, given where we are today, I think that the time for lying low has passed.
Here’s my proposal for the next phase of this game. The fossil fuel producers, either individually or through trade associations, should pick a state, logically a relatively small one (Vermont might be a good place to start), and go to the legislature with this proposition: Ban us! Make the sale or use of fossil fuels in your state illegal, starting at some early date, like for example tomorrow. We will then withdraw. And your citizens will then find out whether they prefer life with fossil fuels, or without them.
In other words, stop being such pansies. It’s time to call their bluff.
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New York would make a much more effective and compliant target for this.
The useful idiots (useless tools?) are coopted to generate the illusion of a plurality being against fossil fuels. Some of these idiots are genuine. Others are paid shills.
But the real perpetrators are not against fossil fuels. They use them every day and will continue to do so. They don’t even hate the energy companies, that is just useful posturing.
The real deal is the trillions of dollars of energy company cashflow that they want to tap into. Lawfare, taxes or mandatory contributions to “Mitigation Funds” the solution is ALWAYS the same – “Give Us Money”. They hope to vilify energy companies so as to make it politically feasible to extort them (just like they did with the tobacco companies but an order of magnitude larger).
The Leftist, anti-capitalist mindset go hand-in-glove with the negativity toward fossil fuels. As has been frequently mentioned on this site and many beyond, it’s been the ability to exploit the energy-generating capabilities of coal, oil and natural gas that have been mainly responsible for global advances in technology, industry, transportation, agriculture, health care, construction, manufacturing…you name it. They’ve also been at the forefront when it has come to increases of life expectancy, population growth, poverty alleviation, agricultural output, disease control, reduction of manual labor, etc. Except this is precisely what the anti-fossil fuel crowd dislikes the most because they keep trying to delude us and themselves that only a return to some pre-industrial era will save mankind and the rest of the planet. They need to face reality: few people are listening to them and even fewer intend to follow their demands.
Fossil fuel haters are simply too stupid to realize that the discovery of said fuels are one of the main reasons that our oceans still contain whales and sea turtles. Idiots have no clue that before plastics and fuel oils, humanity looked to animals (and plants, but luckily those could be farmed) and their parts for fuel, tools, clothing and other products. Homes were lit with whale oil, rather than kerosene (and now electricity). Corset stays, dress hoops and other things were made from whale baleen. Combs, eye glass frames and other personal items were made from sea turtle shells. Piano keys were made from elephant tusks, instead of plastic as they are now. If you wanted to stay warm in winter you wore a wool or fur coat. There were no synthetic materials. Glues were often made from animal remains – the idea of sending an old horse to the glue factory was actually a thing at one time.
When you think about it, PETA ought to be out there battling against Extinction Rebellion! If you love animals and you care about the future of iconic wild animals you should be trumpeting the virtues of fossil fuels.
West Europe was deforested in the 1850’s
The regrowth was due to widespread use of fossil fuels, as will be the case for at least 200 years, because then they will be gone.
The deforestation of Europe started in the Middle Ages. Before the advent of coal and the Bessemer steel smelting process, the only way to make steel was by burning down forests to make charcoal.
Now there’s a post from sheer ignorance. The Forests of the UK and Europe were cut down for increased farmland and grazing, some more for shipbuilding and housing. Charcoal production uses smaller trees, usually coppiced over years and was only a small part of deforestation – generally charcoal making contributed to the management of woodlands, not destruction.
It took 4000 100-y-old oak trees to build one UK Navy ship of war, 3 decks of guns on each side, true monsters in those days
Their average life was 15 years
It was forbidden in New England to cut a King’s oak tree, or any tree, over 24 inches in diameter
Houses built before 1770 often had 23.5 inch wood floors. That was a legal status symbol.
Spain had used up all its old trees, and ceased to be a major maritime power; the Dutch, then the UK took over
Fossil fuel and steel-making with coal and limestone changed all that.
The forests could finally start to regrow.
“because then they will be gone.” Gee, another of those scary predictions; non previous of which, have materialized.
Indeed. To a hungry, cold person a tree is simply fuel and material for shelter, and the nearest endangered species is supper. Only fossil fuels have provided the prosperity to allow these spoiled children the luxury of their assumed virtue.
“Fossil fuel haters are simply too stupid…”
I can’t agree. I find it very rare to encounter a “denier” among otherwise intelligent, capable people.
Ignorance and scientific illiteracy is the first issue. For example, many are totally unaware that h20 is the primary greenhouse gas, or understand that correlation is not causation.
Part and parcel with ignorance is acceptance of dogma (a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.) The more invested you are in a belief, the harder it is to admit error. (Think Jonestown)
https://youtu.be/ltjI3BXKBgY?si=_Dje3IWG2rcbeu8h
“In reality, those who repudiate a theory that they had once proposed, or a theory that they had accepted enthusiastically and with which they had identified themselves, are very rare. The great majority of them shut their ears so as not to hear the crying facts, and shut their eyes so as not to see the glaring facts, in order to remain faithful to their theories in spite of all and everything.”
MAURICE ARTHUS, Philosophy of Scientific Investigation, 1921
Good points Lee, thanks.
(Side note: before elephant tusks were known, ivory was obtained from marine creatures in the eastern Arctic of Canada plus Greenland.)
The ultimate purpose is overturning the current structure of society, replacing it with something different and with more elite positions for the activists. However, you say
Many in policy making positions may not be exactly listening, but they are anxiously placating protest groups whose views and demands they know are senseless on their merits.
Its because they understand that what is dangerous is the underlying intensity of discontent, which has a leadership of failed elitists and a followership of immiserated working people.
So you get more and more token measures to try and placate the movements before they get too dangerous. Whether these measures actually meet the voiced concerns of the activists is immaterial. Put up some wind turbines. Who cares if they generate useful power? We are doing something.
The fossil haters are folks with evil agendas, they are afraid to mention, so they use fossil fuel as their foil, somewhat like the Catholic Church, for self-aggrandizement and enrichment, helping Spain develop its colonies in South America, etc., after 1492.
“Many in policy making positions may not be exactly listening, but they are anxiously placating protest groups whose views and demands they know are senseless on their merits.”
Whic begs the question “Why are they in those policy-making positions”.
Never to be answered.
Because voters are stupid.
Yes, Michel.
The haters want Marxist revolution.
They want to be the ‘priests’ of Plato’s other world.
Economics teacher and philosopher John Ridpath explained why they become angry, in a lecture to a conference of the Ayn Rand Institute.
As their method of knowledge is emotions, they triple down because they don’t know any other way.
Very few people smarten up – I met one guy who did when he always lost debates with Objectivists, recently a young lady just started thinking about life.
Exchanging the fruit of their labor, i,e. ‘money’, for car gas or home heating is evident ‘capitalism’ to a leftist. They want travel and warmth to be provided by the collective. So paying for fuel is a constant reminder to them of how they DON’T want the world to work. It’s no wonder it makes them angry. /s
It’s just self loathing.
I can answer that question. Virtue-signaling by “Defending the Earth,” nothing more. They hate all forms of mining and drilling. Despite the fact that modern prosperity depends on mining and drilling, they love to be seen as advocates of The Natural World.
Moon
It is perhaps redundant to point out that mining is, and has to, greatly increase, with far more environmental damage than drilling, to produce the useless products they are demanding. Hypocrisy does not seem to cover the insanity. When I pointed this out to one such vehement support of ‘replace all energy sources with wind and solar and stop killing mother Gaia’, the response was a breezy “well, at least I don’t have to see it happening here.”
“What is it about fossil fuels and the people who produce them that brings forth such uncontrolled hatred, anger, and vengefulness in a very large segment of the population?“…
“And yet at the same time, all of the people engaged in these campaigns of anger and vengeance are major users themselves of the fossil fuels.”
You simply have to understand Leftists and how they operate. In the second paragraph above, we see another example of what they’re famous for: hypocrisy. Double standards. They don’t practice or believe their idiocy, they just support it, and want to force it on you and everyone else.
But why, in this specific case, why do they attack fossil fuels so virulently? Because it is and has been the lifeblood of capitalism and Western Civilization. They hate both. They know that they can’t defeat either one on the battlefield or in the marketplace, so they do the next best thing- sabotage the lifeblood. Attack fossil fuels, even though they use them all the time, and often have “carbon footprints” larger than small towns. The only way to counter them is to win the information battle, but unfortunately conservatives aren’t very good at that, and the Left has a lot of ammo at their disposal.
The hate goes much further that just fossil fuels.
What do these things have in common?
•HydroelModern agriculture
•ectric dams
•IC cars
•Nuclear Power
•Reliable electric grid using multiple sources
•GMO and GE foods
•Fossil fuels
•Fracking
•Nitrogen fertilizer
•Forest management
•Pipelines
•Aquaculture
•U. S. Constitution
•Free speech and open debate
•Municipal waste incineration
•Diet that includes meat and dairy
•Freedom
•School choice
Thanks Johnesm.
I cover activist motivation with quotes in http://www.moralindividualism/newleft.htm.
The unhinged aren’t a problem without the efforts of law firms like Sher Edling who gather in contributions and work on a contingency basis as a matter of routine. The partners and employees of that firm and others make their living by using lawfare against companies with resources. Once again, it’s all about the money. The Sher Edling people ride around in gasoline-powered limos and fly to court appearances in jets.
The unhinged always manage to make themselves a destructive nuisance. The law firms simply take advantage of them and all the courts and bureaucrats that support them..
An example of Sher Edling’s activities.
Right on! Powerful good idea! Great article.
And they never themselves have solar panels on the roof, that is for the peasants in their mud huts.
Yes, alGore leaves the lights on in his mansions.
Fossil fuels are the gift of God! | Christian Voice UK
Where’s our usual trolls to support this very dumb and ignorant attack on fossil fuels. 😉
We wait in anticipation.
Back under their rocks – even they have just enough intelligence to avoid an obvious turkey shoot.
” … woman who stated that her young son had severe asthma, which she blamed on the fumes emitted by her gas-powered kitchen stove.”
About the time I was born, my family switched from coal heat to gas. There must be millions of us — raised with gas heaters and kitchen stoves – – that never had asthma.
Modern research seems to point toward genetic relationships.
Genetics of asthma: an introduction for the clinician – PMC (nih.gov)
A great aunt had a gas well on her property, as did others in western Pennsylvania. There were small gas lights on the walls of her rooms. No asthma there either. I suppose if a person is genetically prone to asthma the burning of gas in a tightly sealed house would not be good. My aunt’s house was not wired for electricity when we visited in the 1940s and early 50s.
Going to state the same. My wife worked at a Allergy / Asthma clinic and the doctor’s mother did the first research and found the same percentages. back in the 1950’s. Took her a long time to get it recognized by the medical field.
My middle son suffered from Asthma from about 2 years old until he was in his early teens.
His most serious attacks came in May and September usually on the same date. May usually on Cup Final weekend and September on my dad’s birthday.
Man-made pollution not involved, natural pollution like pollen and fungus spores the most likely candidates. The other interesting thing was we’d see the same people amongst the other children being treated in hospital when our son was in usually for 4 or 5 days.
Yes Ben.
Tree pollen is a frequent offender, inland May sounds likely (earlier on the midwet coast).
Mold spores are frequent offenders when weather is warm and wet.
And some people are allergic to some cats.
You are confusing the relatively few individual cases of asthma susceptibility with the mass of population.
And of course there is the question of keeping burner nozzles clean for optimum combustion.
And of kitchen ventilation – many old houses do not have exhaust ands.
Yes, genetics are probably a key factor.
Susceptible people should avoid many things in the air, even have a HEPA filter to reduce particles in the air.
And there are medicines.
I believe the major driving force behind banning fossil fuels is political ideology supported by propaganda. Fossil fuels are synonymous with Capitalism. The Russian Revolution never ended.
There’s probably a lot of leftover resentment stemming from historical references to people like the Rockefellers, who became extremely wealthy from refining and selling petroleum, as do Saudi princes in today’s world.
While the “oil barons” in Rockefeller’s day enjoyed a near-monopoly, today’s fossil-fuel market is very splintered and competitive. The largest private oil company, Exxon-Mobil, only controls about 3% of the world’s known petroleum reserves. It’s extremely difficult for any corporation to control the market with such a small market share. In fact, the entities with the largest market shares are government-controlled oil companies in non-capitalist countries such as Saudi Arabia or Mexico. Governments can be more of a threat to the availability of energy than any corporation in a capitalist society.
The Rockefellers never had anywhere close to a monopoly. They made a lot of money because the engineers that they hired developed more efficient ways of refining crude oil. By the time the government got around to breaking them up, their competitors had already improved their processes and were regaining market share.
Um – Rockefeller succeeded aby continuously working hard to be more efficient, thus lowered the cost of oil thus fuel by a lot.
History channel did a good bio on Rockefeller which also covered the trust-busting part of the story. It’s an episode of The Titans who Built America (or The Men who Built America).
Industrial society, or at least capitalist industrial society, is evil. Return to Nature, in a communist organic utopia. Of course, the major feature they want is communist, if that, all that green froofroo doesn’t really matter anymore.
To most leftists, the greatest sin of capitalism is that the capitalists don’t hold leftists in the same regard as they hold themselves. In their “minds” this proves that capitalism is hopelessly broken.
Shut down in phases beginning in winter…
Start with the natural gas that heats their homes and cooks their food
Then the heating oil that serves the same purpose
Then move to the fuel that heats the fluid in their driveway de-icers
Next the Gasoline that fuels their transportation
If they haven’t started screaming yet by Summer…
Move on to the FF that generates the lion share of their electricity to run their A/C units
Hatred is the fuel that drives revolutions. And we’re in a slow-moving revolution now; it’s been building for 50 years and it might take a few more decades to complete. We (sceptics and normal adults with functioning intellects) are the counter-revolutionaries. If we don’t get organized and do something to stop it, we will be the ones lined up against the wall when the haters take over.
Hatred is a renewable resource, and you don’t need expensive wind or solar farms to harvest it. Just point out the latest target (fossil fuels, Trump, Milei, Meloni, Wilders, Rowling, Israel, the list is almost endless) and a fresh torrent of hatred will come gushing out of what must be an infinitely large reservoir.
“What is it about fossil fuels and the people who produce them that brings forth such uncontrolled hatred, anger, and vengefulness in a very large segment of the population?”
Same reason they have an insane hatred for Donald Trump. They’ve been brainwashed relentlessly by the left wing media until they have become worked up into a frenzy. Liberals who were normal rational people a few years ago are now completely insane. They believe men can be women, women can be men, men can have babies, and climate change is an existential threat. Anyone who disagrees is an enemy who must be destroyed.
I like your idea. Make them live with the consequences of their own folly. That might work but on the other hand the brainwashing may be so deep that it is irreversible.
A bit of an aside, but the Indian subcontinent has solved the “men can be women” problem: In India there are three genders – men, women and Hijra. With a third gender recognised, men can be prevented from forcing themselves into women’s sport or women’s spaces.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)
Several Pacific Island cultures also have 3 genders – they seem to cope with it.
I would have said enjoy.
Liberalism is a mental disorder
I worked in Montana for a few years as a landman/lobbyist for a coal company that wanted to build a plant to convert lignite to pipeline quality gas and take water from the Yellowstone during the “Spring Rise” for the gasification. The loathing for me personally as well as the Project dripped from the opponents especially those in the Agencies, legislature, and media. It never happened, but we built one in North Dakota;(using water from the Missouri) hardly any “loathing”.
The reason these monsters keep doing this is because there is nothing to lose when they fail. It is a win for them even when they fail. It is the publicity and power they gain from their actions that they are after. We have become soft and meek, look at the looting and carnage that takes place in the name saving the planet or social justice. They destroy what ever they want with little to no consequence. We have no one to blame but ourselves because we don’t want to appear reactionary or uncivilized. We need to punish these monsters and punish them good, it needs to hurt. The first thing that should happen to those opposed to fossil fuels should be that their residences, offices and fossil fuel transportation be cut off. I would like nothing more than to free them from their fossil fuel chains. We know who they are, we know where they live and we know how the travel. All done legally of course.
When they start living as they demand from the rest of us with no oil powered or produced products they may be believed. So No Airplanes, No Cars, No polyester clothes, shoes etc. What about their food, are they growing their own, does it not take a truck and tractor fueled by diesel to grow and deliver their groceries. I really believe some of these people seem to think that their groceries somehow appear in the supermarket by some magical process that has nothing to do with farmers or orchardists. Ask a child in primary school where the eggs and milk come from and a high percentage will tell you the supermarket, It is frightening that they still believe this as adults. I have members of my own family who do not have reticulated mains power, on an island. They grow most of their own fruit veges and meat, Generate their own power with a series of Solar panels, wind power and to back it up a diesel generator but only as necessary as the price of that diesel and the cost of transporting it makes it extremely expensive. They still have to purchase shipping costs and airfares to come and go from the island, buy in clothes, shoes etc. Bob, could not agree with you more, they need to be cut off. I love going to their protests and or popping their green bubble when I can. Usually its a question of how did you get here for this protest. One I caught in the chemist a while ago now, she clearly said she generated her solar power at night, I raised my eyebrow, questioning her, she backed herself up when I said in that case you would need batteries. No she said, my reply well my solar panels do not seem to produce power by moonlight, where did you get yours as I want some of those. The customers and other staff by that point were falling about laughing. Their lack of knowledge digs their own grave very quickly.
Well, my poor country family had large vegetable gardens, our own chickens etc, goats, sheep, horses.
Electricity only came much later.
We did live in someone else’s house for a few years, with windmill and bank of glass batteries to give us lights and refrigerator – owner made his money off working in the oil patch. 😉
IMO I can figure on a few possible reasons. First one is basic indoctrination – this can be seen all thru history where children are raised to be hostile towards certain things (or certain peoples). Nazi Germany and the Hitler Youth are a prime example. I believe Greta is the way she is because she has been thoroughly brainwashed. She has been taught to hate… But of course that doesn’t answer the question as to what reason the indoctrinators have for brainwashing people from an early age.
Another related factor is ignorance – if you are consistently spoon fed only one way of thinking, then likely you won’t consider (or try to discover) any other options. This is intertwined with the sorry state of scientific knowledge these days and what little is taught in grade schools (and in colleges).
Finally, there is also this persistent theme of romanticizing nature and “living in harmony” with it (as if there is such a state). This goes way back, in movies, books, art work and other media. All the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Movies all the way from Bambi to Avatar and so many others – humans bad, nature good. Silly tropes of animals (and indigenous humans (aliens?) taking only what they need from nature and nothing more. Whoever believes that has never seen what happens when a fox gets into a chicken coop…. it doesn’t just “take what it needs” at the moment. No, it slaughters every chicken it can get a hold of. This isn’t just a human behavior.
People who believe in this impossible nirvana probably have never even been camping! And I don’t mean in an RV plugged in at a camp ground. No, I mean sleeping in a tent, in the woods, on a cold night, cooking your food over an open fire. I’ve done it, and I much prefer a warm bed and a heated house. Imagine doing this every day of your life. Most fossil fuel haters could not even begin to comprehend such an existence.
My guess for those higher ups (those who influence and make decisions and laws) is that some of them are products of the aforementioned brainwashing and truly do believe what they’ve been told about the “evils” of FF. But I also think that there are those who are simply misanthropic Marxist scum would happily sit back and watch ordinary people starve and freeze to death. And finally there are those who will do anything – and run roughshod over anyone – for money. Sticking it to oil companies is fine and dandy, as destroying that industry props up so-called “renewables”. Many get huge pockets full of money, and don’t give a rat’s behind how many people end up suffering and dying. Drug cartels are an example of this. Anything to make a buck… It’s not just hate, but also greed, that fuels (no pun intended) this war on fossil fuels.
As the Jesuites used to say, “Give me a child until he is seven…”
Yes, there’s a photograph of her and sires wearing a violence t-shirt.
The best people though few throw off their mental shackles.
Climate alarmism has been profitable for the likes of Mann, Suzuki, and Gore.
Seattle Times newspaper is now taking money from catastrophists to push catastrophism – owner is going broke.
The whole thing was set up by Maurice Strong and is now driven by those who collect wind and solar subsidies, supported by authoritarians (ie. the left) who see an opportunity to take more control. Left politicians are subsidised from the wind and solar subsidies, ie. the money flows round a small evil circuit. How better to gain power than to remove fossil fuels from the masses and keep them exclusively for themselves.
I think you are closer to it here than in the article. One must divide the haters into two camps, because motivations differ. In the one, the mob; in the other the leaders. The mob are whipped like cream into a froth of delusion and anger by spurious research and a compliant press (coupled to a culture that seems less and less given to self-control and accountability).
The leaders are not motivated by anger, but are highly intelligent and strategic, moving pieces on the chess board much more skillfully than their opponents. They are motivated by a vision of a controlled society, them living in one way, with the useful-idiot mob in another (and the resistance killed, jailed, or in exile — and, while living free, living much worse off than the idiots). The jail for society is being constructed all around us, piece by piece, with no piece on its own worth a bullet, but at some point…then it will be too late. ‘Click’ goes the latch.
While you are trying to deal with the incoherent mob you can’t stop the leadership.
Nailed it in one, Richard. Many on this site get bogged down in arguing about how stupid the AGW mob are — which is both true and irrelevant.
I rather think such a distraction is the point.
“What is it about fossil fuels and the people who produce them that brings forth such uncontrolled hatred, anger, and vengefulness in a very large segment of the population?
I’ve been trying to figure out the answer…”
In the first place, for the progressives, the issue (fossil fuels, climate crisis, etc.) is never the issue.
The central issue for progressives is always accession to full police power. Followed by imposition of a collectivist tyranny.
Once you realize that, everything else becomes clear. Whatever means to their ends.
There are many “useful idiots” to seduce along the way. These are the people who have been duped to believe in the apparent issue (fossil fuels, climate crisis, etc.). They provide the passion because they’ve swallowed the indoctrination. In their deranged moral righteousness, they do their part to disrupt and discredit society.
Discredit of society removes the support of the citizenry, who become apathetic in defense of their culture. The social turmoil and antipathies stoked by progressive leaders and acted out by inflamed useful idiots, is meant to fray the civil fabric and ultimately to destroy it.
When disarray becomes critical, progressives make their move and the revolution happens. If it succeeds, the police state emerges. Recruitment of political thugs will fill the ranks of the police. (Sociopathic and psychopathic thugs are always drawn to political enforcement arms.)
With the revolution, the useful idiots first cheer, then become unhappy when their utopia has not emerged and then demonstrate their displeasure as they did before, The police crush them. Literally. As they did not before. They’ll not be the same police.
The most influential of the useful idiots are always the first to receive a bullet. After that, political enemies and then free-thinkers.
That’s ever the progressive program. It’s on obvious display here in the U.S. The violent revolution will come when fuel and food are made scarce (the revolutionary utility of the climate crisis) and the citizens are made desperate and angry. The useful idiots will blame the usual suspects. Thugs will appear. Their turn to violence will promote more violence, more turmoil, ever less social cohesion.
A rogue’s gallery of progressives already owns the executive. Expect their attempt to get to the finish line. The modern revolution appears to be more by corruption and betrayal thus far. Keep the forms, extinguish the integrity..
I’ve read the polemics of academic progressives. They’re absolutely impervious to facts and evidence. Hostile to them. They want their slave state. They’ve convinced large parts of two generations of young Americans to want it, too. All painted in rosy tints, providing a relief against a U.S. portrayed as though horrid. That reality, if it comes, will be hell.
“The central issue for progressives is always accession to full police power. Followed by imposition of a collectivist tyranny.”
Which is why trying to argue science with these lunatics is a complete waste of time. They don’t care about science or the planet, they just want power.
You’re describing the War of the Three Kingdoms and its aftermath. Cromwell’s subjugation of the UK and Ireland, a civil war of Protestants against Catholics, was the initial impetus of British immigration to North America, an area that had been dominated by the French and the Netherlands. The Treaty of Breda gave the UK sovereignty over the eastern seaboard. Then came the American revolution, which you describe above. Its outcome was never completely accepted by the Puritan/Protestants in that non-Protestants hadn’t been exterminated. The next episode was the US War Between the States, fomented by Puritan New England, with results that have been evident for over 150 years.
So the US, or at least the ground on which it sits, has been the site of much revolutionary activity during its short history. The current difference of opinion has nothing to do with science per se. It’s a difference in the view of the world, one based on the remains of Puritan theology and the other on secular thinking, a conflict of religions. Calling the secular thinkers “leftists” is an error in analysis, conflating the terminology of the French revolution with the American experience.
Climate anxiety will be terminated by reality, physical and economic. That’s not to say that it will mean the defeat of the “leftists”. They appear to have strong allies in academia, government, media and business who will all attempt to fashion the future to their own advantage. We live in interesting times.
‘The current difference of opinion has nothing to do with science per se. It’s a difference in the view of the world, one based on the remains of Puritan theology and the other on secular thinking, a conflict of religions.’
The ‘religious’ fervor of the Progressives, and their reliance on government coercion, is accurate, but it came about well after the Puritans. Per Rothbard:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/whose-kingdom-come/
The effects of Puritanism, while in decline, exist to this day. Sunday blue laws being an obvious example. The most prestigious institution of higher learning in the western hemisphere is Harvard University, founded and maintained by Puritans. “Pilgrim’s Progress”, a book until recently found in almost every American home and still in print, was written by staunch Puritan John Bunyan while imprisoned in England. Much of current Protestant theology in the US comes directly from Puritan teachings.
“Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth – are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” Robert A. Heinlein
We do not seem to have any shortage of those who feel sufficiently noble that they should be allowed to feast in their castles without being annoyed by all those serfs who must be kept firmly in their place out in the fields.
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Thomas Jefferson
Please consider these few small items to think about.
While I support your proposal, it has the small problem that Socialists are not the slightest bit interested in being good examples themselves. In fact, they hate good examples..
What they want is to make examples of those in their host society who are between them and power.
To put it another way, they don’t mean to sacrifice to give up plastics, medicine, houses, food, transport, heating & cooling themselves; they mean to sacrifice us and force us to give up those things. For them, punishment of their political enemies is the whole of their moral code.
All they do is LIE and then LIE again. Spring is here very early. That’s not good.
Story tip: https://www.vox.com/policy/24098936/climate-change-snowpack-el-nino-spring-winter?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
Haven’t these sociopaths ever heard of an Almanac, they have been around since the 1650-1700s and in the long run quite accurate. Colonists need to know the dates of the last frost or first frost etc. for a successful planting season. Not so much the best electric car or vegan soy milk.
This is my response to this article.
I wish all those anti-fossil Protestants that they or their parent will all suffer from incontinence and that all those parents will have to wear cloth diapers to collect their feces and that they will arrive at the hospital with a tumor in the brain to make a scan being told that everything made from fossils has been removed from the hospital and therefore a scan cannot be made.
That the ambulance cannot avoid driving because fossil that they have to live with the tumor because surgical removal is not possible because an operating room is more than contaminated with products from fossil. And that Ukraine is being filled with charging stations and that everything driving around there must be cleaned of fossils. No tanks, no trucks, no production grenades and a battery-powered F16.
This is what we must do in the Netherlands you are so right:Ban us! Make the sale or use of fossil fuels in your state illegal, starting at some early date, like for example tomorrow. We will then withdraw. And your citizens will then find out whether they prefer life with fossil fuels, or without them.
In other words, stop being such pansies. It’s time to call their bluff.
no hospitals,no operation theaters no mri scans no diapers but cotton ones no brain operations,no f16 or f35 but on battery no tanks no war ships. No iPhones
well does anybody has a bowl for me I must vomit.
Founders of Royal Dutch Shell will be rolling over in their graves. :-o)
This profound question of “why the hate?” has taken a lot of my thought time since 1973 when I was invited to join a mining company mainly into copper, coal and gold. There was detectable hate back then, mainly surfacing when politics became involved.
Today, more than 50 years later, no answer is known to me. Why the hate? Why the intensity of hate? How come children starting school know about it? Is it simply political propaganda fed to the young so they vote anti-mining when they mature? (I feel it is more complicated than that. For me, it remains as inexplicable as the other question: Why do people go to war to kill others? And they do.)
In Nature, there are female spiders who eat the male after copulation. The best I can offer after those 50 years of rumination is that many or all of us, like the spider, carry a genetic disposition for hate, the target of this outlet of hate being open to sway by propaganda. But for that to work, we need to postulate another genetic disposition, this one to influence others by propaganda.
Sadly, I think we have Buckley’s or none of a chance to alter this hate of fuels. It is wider than fossil fuels. I spent 3 decades countering uranium hate, a rather toxic form that brings to mind that we in Australia have some of the most deadly snakes in our library of wildlife. Now, it is unlawful to harm them. Geoff S
Certainly public school teachers are promoting catastrophism to students, organizations of teachers such as the BCTF promote oppressive regimes.