By Robert Bradley Jr.
“The Progressive Left is being pillared to stop pushing 20 percent issues (80 percent nonsupport). Blackouts might be a 2 percent issue. The working class deserves the Democrat Party to ditch climate alarm and forced energy transformation–for all the right reasons.”
Now that solar itself got the blame for the recent European blackout, what is the argument from the Deep Ecology, anti-modernism cult?
LA-based climate campaigner Michael Mezzatesta, self-described economics and climate educator, has a new one for the climate debate: blackouts are good, bringing us together! He states:
The mainstream economic narrative in the USA would have us believe that power blackouts are always a bad thing – just think of all that lost productivity! Think of the effect on the GDP!
So I was curious to see this video about the recent blackouts in Spain rack up millions of views on Instagram 👇
I think it resonated with people because it points towards a *new* narrative for society and the economy – one where joy & connection are prioritized over economic productivity.
As the original creator, Lili Poser, said in her caption: During the blackouts, people were “disconnected but more connected than ever.” Imagine that!
Back to Nature, the Garden of Eden? Off the grid for happiness and solidarity? Small is beautiful? Less is more? Negawatts? Degrowth? “I campaign for the extinction of the human race“? Sammy Roth of the Los Angeles Times digs the pain too. “Would it be easier and less expensive to limit climate change — and its deadly combination of worsening heat, fire and drought and flood,” he asks, “if we were willing to live with the occasional blackout?”
And how about Big Brother authoritarianism to achieve all this? [1]
The Progressive Left is being pillared to stop pushing 20 percent issues (80 percent nonsupport). Blackouts might be a 2 percent issue. The working class deserves the Democrat Party to ditch climate alarm and forced energy transformation–for all the right reasons.
————————
[1] “Imagining a low-carbon world, then, means reevaluating our conception of freedom itself.” (– Audrea Lim, “The Ideology of Fossil Fuels.” Dissent, Spring 2018)
You can turn your own power off if you want to.
Just don’t turn mine off or make it unreliable.
Some seconds faster than me 👍😁
I wish more people would turn off their power. Anyone who believes in the climate crisis should do it voluntary. And get themselves sterilized, too.
“Anyone who believes in the climate crisis should do it voluntary. And get themselves sterilized, too.”
I would argue that it would be better for them to reduce their carbon footprint… to zero.
The real danger is that blackouts don’t happen soon. Instead, the dedicated engineers who actually run the grid keep putting on band-aids to allow increased renewables that are mandated and subsidized. Electricity prices increase, but fairly slowly, and brown outs and imposed demand reduction occur, not often at first, but then a little more frequently. When blackouts occur, it’s fossil fuel’s inability to come on fast enough that is blamed, meaning we need more intermittents and batteries. People grumble, but keep going about daily life, because we’ll be told that it’s always been this way, really. Don’t you remember?
Like the proverbial frog in the warming pan of water, the general public may not notice until it’s too late.
The more renewables added to a grid, the less stable the grid. We got a chance to see the Texas electric grid (ERCOT) fail for several days a couple of years ago thanks to its reliance on renewables. And ERCOT is said to be less stable today than it was in 2021 when the multiday blackout occurred.
I expect the Western Interconnection to have the same issues one of these days. They have recklessly added too high a percentage of unreliable renewable power, especially in California.
This article looks like it’s a prep for rolling blackouts in California.
Every grid in the United States has added too much unreliable windmill and solar generation.
Every grid in the United States is now warning about possible blackouts. We never got such warnings before unreliables were added to the grid.
They have recklessly added too high a percentage of unreliable intermittent
renewablepower, especially in California.Fixed it.
These blackouts can get the public used to not having power 24/7, like it will be when we get all of our power from solar and wind.
The Green Blob hates modern industrial capitalism, at least as far as it benefits peasants.
Peasants, aka deplorables.
Idiots. It is not “joy & connection” when you lose thousands of dollars worth of food in your freezer. It is not “joy & connection” when you die because the backup battery in your ventilator ran dry. I could go on. These people are some sort of death cult, who think those among us who are dependent on electricity no longer deserve to live.
It’s not “Joy and Connection” when your store or house gets robbed because the thief knows “No Power” means No Alarm and No 911
Or your spouse dies from a heart attack because you can’t seek medical assistance
Cell Phones require Powered Cell Towers and Land Lines require Powered Receiver Bases
Cell phone towers have a lead acid battery back-up system. At least they did in the late ’90s when I worked at a place that made the enclosures. Probably Li batteries now. Couldn’t tell you how long the battery back-up was good for.
Out here in the boonies, I believe the cell towers have generators.
Where I am it is batteries and they went dead after several hours in a one day outage.
With my previous cell service – the nearby tower would go down several times per year when there wasn’t even a power outage. Ticked me off. I’d call and complain- and they’d say “we don’t seem to detect the outage”. Not even enough competence to know when their towers were down.
According to Robert Bryce many cell towers in Texas have propane-fed backup generators. Aaaaggghhh! Fossil fuel again!
At the end of the day, modern civilization is 100% reliant upon coal, oil and gas for its existence.
A few hours in the UK. The operators kicked up a fuss at being compelled to provide a minimum of four hours. Make of that what you will.
“when your store or house gets robbed because the thief knows “No Power” means No Alarm and No 911”
At least in America, robbers are aware that the home may be well armed. In much of the world, that’s not the case. I don’t happen to have any guns or interest in them. But a friend who is a president of a local hunting club gave me a several stickers that say “Member of the NRA”. I have them on my truck and home windows/doors. 🙂
So Joseph, has your truck been keyed yet?
And the “citizens” who do the keying will be the first to cry, whine-and then demand-help and/or protection. Lib boneheads are so predictable.
It’s a 2004 Toyota Tacoma- it has a lot of dents and rust- never once washed it. If somebody keyed it I don’t think it would be noticeable!
Agreed. “joy and connection” won’t be quite so sweet when the guns come out. Natural, as in Nature, is “red in claw and tooth” as was said by the Poet. Those people are insane.
Yes, when people say we should “embrace Nature“, I always advise that we should go for a squirrel grip version of the embrace.
Nature’s prime objective is to bring about the demise of all living species, and to replace them with more adapted versions. We’re in her cross-hairs just as much as the other millions of already extinct species were.
Our most effective squirrel grip on Nature at the moment is coal, gas & nuclear power.
Wind & solar power are Nature’s squirrel grip on us.
I had to look up squirrel grip; as a Yank I had no clue of it’s meaning (Brit English is a wee bit foreign to us), but once I got it…oh, yes indeedy you are right. Painfully so.
Also known as a Christmas hold.
Anyone who thinks blackouts are desirable is invited to spend a few hours locked in a dark metal box better.known as an elevator.
I wonder how joyous and connected the 8 people who died during the Spanish blackout feel? Or the hundreds who died in Texas. Climate change does not kill people but the measures to try to combat this myth certainly do.
Hopefully, blackouts will bring everyone together in opposition to blackouts.
“Would it be easier and less expensive to limit climate change — and its deadly combination of worsening heat, fire and drought and flood … if we were willing to live with the occasional blackout?”
Since “climate change” is not something that can be measured, it is impossible to quantify the amount of “occasional blackout” that would be required to limit it.
Trying to limit “Climate Change” is insane. CO2 emissions should be a non-issue.
The insanity of Man – even a King by divine Right – trying to control the elements was demonstrated by Anglo-Danish King Canute a thousand years ago.
”Canute set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the incoming tide to halt and not to wet his feet and robes. Yet “continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: ‘Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”
“Political power or office often gives those who possess it the illusion that they control events. That, after all, is the reason why the story of King Canute retains, and will always retain, its relevance to the current political situation.”
King Canute was a very wise man, with good advice.
Fear not, peasant. The ruling “Elites” will inform you how many blackouts/month you’ll have to endure once we get 50+% grid penetration of glorious wind/solar.
Elites exempted from the blackouts, of course
That’s what backup generators are for.
Probably will issue a ration book, too. If you do not use up all your coupons you will be taxed or worse.
What worsening heat, fire, drought and flood?
LIES and propaganda, nothing more.
Mainstream media, for starters, are worsening heat, fire, drought, and flood.
“There is no worsening heat, fire, drought and flood”
This is a figment of Climate Alarmists imagination.
Weather history shows there is no worsening heat, fire, drought and flood. These weather extremes occur every year, but they are not any worse today than in the past, and in some cases they are less severe than in the past.
Increased CO2 amounts in the atmosphere have no detectable effect on weather events on Earth. There is no connection, no matter how hard Climate Alarmists try to connect CO2 and extreme weather. Weather history disproves this line of argument.
According to the IPCC that deadly combination of worsening heat, fire and drought and flood has not been observed…anywhere.
So no it would not be easier, go fix a real problem instead of a fictional one.
Note how they continue to feed people the same bald-faced lies. THERE IS NO “worsening heat, fire, drought and flood.” NONE of those is *OBJECTIVELY* getting worse, EVEN ACCORDING TO their propaganda arm, the UN IPCC.
Climate Alarmists don’t live in the Real World. They have been brainwashed into believing things that are not true. They are so brainwashed, they don’t know they’re brainwashed. Somebody told them CO2 causes extreme weather and they swallow the narrative hook, line and sinker.
Brainwashing is an extremely potent and dangerous force in human society today. Many people are susceptible. Even “smart” people.
Brain washing is akin to learning. Repetition to strengthen neural connections.
Reminiscent of the NYT sharing the upside of unemployment (“funemployment?”) and video clips of the first days of Covid shutdown, with Italians on their balconies, singing and playing musical instruments to each other. Didn’t last long, just as the happiness of owning nothing would be very short lived. Just part of the penchant of the leftists to deny self-inflicted misery.
The Climate Change Doomsday Cult takes one more step closer to becoming a suicide cult.
“Let them eat – I mean burn candles!”
All these “people” advocating this crap need to be forced to live without all the things they want everyone else to live without.
The Hate Carbon Cult goes full Luddite. Enviros went full Marie Antoinette years ago, but the more their kooky notions get disproved, the more they double down.
“Freezing in the dark and nibbling organic arugula is where it’s at, man,”
Pilloried
Put lipstick on that pig. This is like saying there was comradery in the concentration camps because they all shared a common misfortune.
Yes, all these Climate Alarmists have are lemons, so they are trying to make lemonade: Blackouts are Fun!
What rational person would try to sell blackouts as being good? These people are divorced from reality.
Blackouts are Fun!
It’s a variation of “you will have nothing and you will be happy”
+10
Right – extended blackouts would be great in 5 degree weather but only for those who push this nonsense.
What is the working class connection? Don’t the Dems hate the working class?
“… blackouts are good, bringing us together!”
Particularly burglars, thieves, muggers, and pedestrians and vehicles coming together, and vehicles and other vehicles coming together in unlit streets and where traffic lights don’t work.
“… blackouts are good, bringing us together!”
Especially in sub-zero weather. Huddle close to try to stay warm.
The bandage peels back slowly, and with each reveal of the hideous wound the Progressive Left climalarmists show their real motivations. I believe more and more their reality is grounded in Paul Ehrlich, The Club of Rome, and their ilk. Too many people on earth. Too many of the WRONG kind of people (pickup and tractor owners like me). And people who use earth’s abundant resources in ways they don’t approve of. Blackouts are a good start at a way to kill some of them off. The survivors will “own nothing and be happy”.
Further back. Ehrlich was inspired to write his drivel by Malthus, Vogt and Osborn – misanthropists the lot of them.
“Too many of the WRONG kind of people (pickup and tractor owners like me).”
Might be interesting to see how long the elite can go without farm products :<)
“And people who use earth’s abundant resources in ways they don’t approve of.”
The tree huggers rule Wokeachusetts. They’ve been fighting to end forestry and are now close to total victory. Few mills and loggers are left. The state owns almost a million acres of forest but their annual cut is about 5% of growth. Meanwhile, the governor whines about a housing shortage she helped create with her welcoming illegal aliens.
welcoming illegal aliens … and curtailing lumber…..
This must have been published in The Onion! Hard to believe anyone actually thinks this way.
As 3+ decade long Florida resident having been hit directly by four hurricanes, two of which caused extended, multi-week power outage on my family, I can certainly attest that such outages do nothing to promote “joy and connection”.
What it did was to make the nights very long, unless I wanted to burn my house down with candles or asphyxiate myself with a Coleman lantern or a running, noisy, and not very powerful emergency generator. It also made them very hot and humid given that my generator could not power the AC. entertainment was reduced to playing cards or reading during daylight hours only.
Communication was reduced to having to get in my vehicle, plug in my phone, and drive to somewhere with enough power to operate the local cell networks, which all went down … and when even just a handful were operating on emergency juice, they were overloaded for their bandwidth constantly dropping calls, and forget any data transmission.
Of course, to go driving around wasting gas trying to make cell calls on non-existent networks also presupposes you can refill your gas tank, which most of the service stations cannot do because they have no power, and also because people preemptively filled their tanks just like hoarders of batteries, plywood, etc. did when we knew a storm was coming, leaving most of the service stations devoid of gas. While a power outage here in the US may be sudden and of short duration, the silly people in this post advocate doing power outages as a routine event.
Speaking of data, we lost internet too, even the fiber networks.
Oh, and about all that food we had squirrelled away in the freezer worth many hundreds of dollars (you freeze the roasts and steaks, not the fruit loops), gone, gone, gone. Oh, and if you think you can just run down to the local supermarket, they’re also out of power and have to throw away mountains of refrigerated and frozen foods that take weeks for their inventories to recover from. Good luck getting any ice, too.
As for feeling connected with my neighbors, I mostly felt an enormous amount of jealousy towards those neighbors who had invested in a propane-powered whole house generator, who could keep at least all the stuff inside the house powered up. Of course, that only lasts as long as the propane and that doesn’t last very long.
You really don’t want to go there.
Sounds like you could have gotten caught up on some much needed sleep on those long nights
Have you ever tried to sleep when the temperature is 90 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity is also pushing 90%? Don’t forget that you have no fans.
Even if it was safe to open the windows, there’s no wind after the sun goes down.
Agreed, except that 90 degrees + 90% humidity doesn’t happen even in Florida.
Yes, the concepts of realities & consequences just can’t take root in leftists’ brains.
Nothing they undertake ever gets thought through to the unavoidable outcomes of their brain-farts.
We don’t live in the “Anthropocene”, we’re living in the “Airhead-ocene”.
Why is it the Eco-loons never set a good example by going first?
Off topic- but in the WSJ web version of its paper- I happened to respond to some idiot climate alarmist and gave the link to this site. Then I got an email informing me that it was rejected. Not saying why- whether they don’t allow any links in comments or only climate “denier” links. 🙂
I’d love to see Mick Mezzatesta’s face when after a week of nice inclusive blackout he opens the fridge and finds all the food rotten and no cold beer either.
Does Michael Mezzatesta know that he only needs to take out the fuses from his home electricity supply to have a nice and cosy blackout?
If he wants the spread that joy to his neighbourhood he needs to insert a piece of metal where the fuses were and then turn the sitch to on again. That’ll take care of the whole blocks electricity.
I’m sure the neighbours will want to “thank” him in a very special way once they find out it was him.
So relaxing, when you can’t call the police when your home is raided as the local cell towers are out, as is the phone line and internet.
There are batteries. You get a few hours, tops.
And when your house is on fire….
Or someone has a medical emergency and needs an ambulance….
What an idiot. There is not much “joy” without “economic productivity.”
The only good news for this blackout was that the prevailing weather conditions were not a threat.
Think about when it happens, for longer periods and higher frequency, in actual WINTER conditions.
Freezing and starving in the dark, anyone?! “Joy,” my ass!
Well it’ll surely force the reddit crowd out of their basements and into the sunlight.
…
On second thought, let’s not have anymore blackouts please.