Sunday, November 13, 2011
Coming Full Circle
I'm technically a luke-warmer rather than a Denier, as I believe that the fossil fuel CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere has some effect on temperature (a tiny, barely measurable effect) but I'm squarely in the Denier camp in thinking that we can't stop pumping out CO2 without causing death and misery on a scale formerly never seen. Still, I have always focused on the science of climate change and not on what a concerted effort to stop CO2 (and thus energy) production would actually mean.
Sorry for putting on some blinders. I'll look, with the help of James Delingpole, to a broader horizon. Naomi Klein's recent War and Peace length piece in the Nation was a catalyst here. I read Ms. Klein looking only at her treatment of the first few questions, is it warming unprecedentedly, and are we causing it? (on which she offers no real examination); but she reveals a lot about the later questions belief in anthropogenic global warming cause, namely, can we do anything to stop it and what would such an effort cost us as a species?
I'll let the professional writer frame the issue regarding her "solution" to global warming:
Like we can afford that.
She wants governmental planning. Lots and lots of planning. And not just at the national and international levels. Every community in the world needs a plan for how it is going to transition away from fossil fuels,
She wants a shift to fascist like control of corporations including imposing strict caps on the amount of carbon corporations can emit, banning new coal-fired power plants, cracking down on industrial feedlots, to shutting down dirty-energy extraction projects like the Alberta tar sands (starting with pipelines like Keystone XL that lock in expansion plans).
All energy is equal but some energy is more equal than others.
She wants an end to trade as we know it, with the use of energy-intensive long-haul transport rationed—reserved for those cases where goods cannot be produced locally or where local production is more carbon-intensive.
So we here in the temperate zones can still drink coffee and eat bananas but forget winter fruit and vegetables. Das ist verboten.
She wants totalitarian world economic control with a managed transition to another economic paradigm, using all the tools of planning (government control) so that economic growth would be reserved for parts of the world still pulling themselves out of poverty. The industrial world would be hamstrung with regulation to prevent any growth.
Our current weak recovery from the last recession (largely government caused) is but a taste of the future economic landscape Ms. Klein seeks to impose.
She wants to tax carbon, as well as financial speculation and higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy and cuts to bloated military budgets and elimination of absurd subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Most of all, she wants to go after the profits of the corporations which provide fossil energy.
She appears oblivious to the fact that corporations don't pay taxes they merely collect them from the purchasers of their goods and services. The economically ignorant left always wants to stick it to consumers to teach those evil corporations a lesson they won't soon forget.
She wants to overturn Citizens United, which recognized the right of corporations to engage in political speech (So much for championing free speech rights).
(It's a bitch when the Supremes rule against your world view, huh, Naomi?)
She lastly wants her vision to be more popular. And she's perfectly willing to empower the governments of the world to impose it on those evil, free-thinking right wingers who disagree.
It is a truly frightening piece in its honest admission of a desire to reintroduce the Soviet Union world wide under the guise of fighting anthropogenic global warming. Thanks for the heads up.
Sorry for putting on some blinders. I'll look, with the help of James Delingpole, to a broader horizon. Naomi Klein's recent War and Peace length piece in the Nation was a catalyst here. I read Ms. Klein looking only at her treatment of the first few questions, is it warming unprecedentedly, and are we causing it? (on which she offers no real examination); but she reveals a lot about the later questions belief in anthropogenic global warming cause, namely, can we do anything to stop it and what would such an effort cost us as a species?
I'll let the professional writer frame the issue regarding her "solution" to global warming:
punitive taxation; massive wealth re-distribution; the abolition of free trade and free markets; a state-enforced end to to the "cult of shopping"; the whole to be supervised by a New World Order of selfless illuminati (who presumably resemble Naomi Klein).Ms. Klein's admits straight up that Delingpole was right to say that the global warming hoax advances many of the causes dear to the left: redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, greater government intervention, regulation. In response to her call for a return state planning of all commerce, Delingpole advances this snark, asking if Ms. Klein has found:
Surprising new data showing that, contrary to the false consciousness promoted by the running dog lackey capitalist pigs who write our history books, totalitarian planning regimes of the kind you advocate in fact brought nothing but bounty, happiness and environmental loveliness to Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia and Kim Il Sung's North Korea?Klein wants massive government spending on subways, streetcars and light-rail systems that are not only everywhere but affordable to everyone; energy-efficient affordable housing along those transit lines; smart electrical grids carrying renewable energy; and a massive research effort to ensure that we are using the best methods possible.
Like we can afford that.
She wants governmental planning. Lots and lots of planning. And not just at the national and international levels. Every community in the world needs a plan for how it is going to transition away from fossil fuels,
She wants a shift to fascist like control of corporations including imposing strict caps on the amount of carbon corporations can emit, banning new coal-fired power plants, cracking down on industrial feedlots, to shutting down dirty-energy extraction projects like the Alberta tar sands (starting with pipelines like Keystone XL that lock in expansion plans).
All energy is equal but some energy is more equal than others.
She wants an end to trade as we know it, with the use of energy-intensive long-haul transport rationed—reserved for those cases where goods cannot be produced locally or where local production is more carbon-intensive.
So we here in the temperate zones can still drink coffee and eat bananas but forget winter fruit and vegetables. Das ist verboten.
She wants totalitarian world economic control with a managed transition to another economic paradigm, using all the tools of planning (government control) so that economic growth would be reserved for parts of the world still pulling themselves out of poverty. The industrial world would be hamstrung with regulation to prevent any growth.
Our current weak recovery from the last recession (largely government caused) is but a taste of the future economic landscape Ms. Klein seeks to impose.
She wants to tax carbon, as well as financial speculation and higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy and cuts to bloated military budgets and elimination of absurd subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Most of all, she wants to go after the profits of the corporations which provide fossil energy.
She appears oblivious to the fact that corporations don't pay taxes they merely collect them from the purchasers of their goods and services. The economically ignorant left always wants to stick it to consumers to teach those evil corporations a lesson they won't soon forget.
She wants to overturn Citizens United, which recognized the right of corporations to engage in political speech (So much for championing free speech rights).
(It's a bitch when the Supremes rule against your world view, huh, Naomi?)
She lastly wants her vision to be more popular. And she's perfectly willing to empower the governments of the world to impose it on those evil, free-thinking right wingers who disagree.
It is a truly frightening piece in its honest admission of a desire to reintroduce the Soviet Union world wide under the guise of fighting anthropogenic global warming. Thanks for the heads up.
Labels: Totalitarian Movements; Naomi Klein; James Delingpole
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 8:39 AM 
