Rickards: The (Authoritarian) Green New Scam

The climate change agenda is not about climate change. It’s about total political and economic control of the population

From Jim Rickards at Daily Reckoning (the part that I’m quoting here is at the end of this article entitled ‘DEI Must DIE’ article):

Those yelling the loudest about climate change want to destroy the oil and natural gas industry, destroy nuclear power plant construction, shut down coal-fired plants, end coal mining, mandate electric vehicles (EVs) on very short deadlines and eliminate gas stoves in your kitchen, fireplaces and even outdoor barbecues.

They also want to build wind turbine arrays offshore and on deserts, plains and even mountains near you. They want to install solar module fields on every rooftop and open space near a population center.

Doug here: It’s already taken 18 years just get a permit for a 732 mile high intensity power line from Wyoming to near Las Vegas to link a large wind farm power source to the California market. See here. How many more years will it take to build it? 5 more years? 10? Will it be built at all once inflation in material costs make it uneconomical? Presumably, the 600 windmill project is just the start?

This single example shows that the added complexity of government bureaucracy has ground everything to a near halt. Also, it turns out that many land owners didn’t want a high voltage monstrosity going through their land. NIMBY.

We’ve seen excess and rigid regulation recently shut down air travel too. If you are missing just one stewardess, you can’t take off. No exceptions.

The climate change radicals want to increase the mining of lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, rare earths and other dangerous chemicals to feed their obsession with EV batteries.

They’re spending hundreds of billions of tax dollars to subsidize the EVs, battery manufacturing and a coast-to-coast network of charging stations to keep the EVs moving (even if they do have to stop for a charge every 180 miles).

Doug here: It’s Central Planning on Steroids. Yeah, that always ends well—NOT. The Soviet Communist State completely collapsed because it didn’t work, just like the Communist Kleptocracy that was Venezuela. If Central Planning works so well, why don’t we build 60 million empty concrete shells of apartments in giant concrete ghost cities that are still barren—like the Chinese? But, but….GDP!

How’s that worked out for them? These apartments are all “sold” and owned by Chinese people who used to pay mortgage payments while their new Ghost City home is, well, uninhabitable.

The greenies also want to mandate “15-minute cities” where you can walk everywhere in town within 15 minutes. That may sound attractive if you chose it voluntarily. That’s not what the greenies have in mind. They want 15-minute cities as a Trojan horse to eliminate automobiles entirely and force you to ride bicycles or use public transportation. In the end, you’ll need a permit to fly to another city.

The permits will be rationed and you’ll have to put yourself on a waiting list until your turn. You can pay for your ticket with the new central bank digital currency (CBDC), assuming your social credit score is high enough and you didn’t vote for the wrong candidate in the last election.

In short, the climate change agenda is not about climate change. It’s about total political and economic control of the population. So-called climate change is an elite scare tactic to get you to fall into line and obey government orders (as most people do).

Elites claim that if we don’t radically reduce CO2 (carbon dioxide) and CH4 (methane) emissions, global warming will melt the ice caps, raise sea levels, put island nations underwater and flood the New York City subway system in 10 years or less. They’ve been making similar claims for 40 years and they’ve been wrong every time. That doesn’t stop them. Fear works.

What is new is that the climate crowd now has the political power they need to push their agenda using fear and the regulatory state to attack your means of transportation, your personal conveniences and your consumer choices.

This is being enabled by Joe Biden and thousands of bureaucrats buried in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and scores of other agencies.

The U.S. Treasury, SEC and the Federal Reserve have even joined in by regulating loans to the oil and gas industry and requiring financial disclosures about climate change and other ESG (environment, social and governance) metrics.

Meanwhile, the World Bank (controlled by the U.S.) is being encouraged to deny loans to industries that involve carbon-based development and to steer financing toward projects approved by the climate mavens. This is called the “all of government” approach in which every agency gets involved in pushing the climate agenda, even if it’s not the primary job of that agency. The pressure never stops.

In short, the climate change debate could not be more relevant to investors. Those calling the shots in the Green New Deal (what I call the Green New Scam) will decide which industries win or lose, which projects get financed (or not), which initiatives are subsidized by the government or left to wither on the vine and which companies will feel the regulatory heat if they don’t get with Biden’s programs…. snip…..

We’re living in a world where major forces beyond our control have been hijacked by elites to create a climate of fear to achieve their agenda of total government command over your life. It’s time for Americans and citizens around the world to learn the facts, push back on the elites and reestablish public policy based on real science. It’s time to push the torrent of flawed models, phony data and bogus warnings out of the way.

Unfortunately, the public relies on media elites and political leaders for their information propaganda. As decades roll by and scare stories are discredited time and again, public skepticism will rise and the alarmists will lose credibility.

The danger is that alarmists may pass legislation, limit choices and impose costs in the name of climate change before the public catches on to the scam. At that point, the economic damage becomes semi-permanent even if alarmism fades.

In these elites’ vision, citizens will be confined to small towns or cities for extended periods. Travel will be tightly restricted. Appliances will be downsized with no consumer choice allowed. Taxes will be imposed on targeted activities to discourage use. Education will be turned to indoctrination to raise a generation who believe in the climate lies needed to gain support for these measures (that kind of indoctrination has been underway for some years).

Welcome to the world of the green elite. It’s coercive, restrictive, arrogant and apparently not much fun. It’s a world where the elites control everything and you do as you’re told. It’s a world based on lies and fear. It’s coming sooner than you expect unless citizens can join hands, reassert the truth and push the elites back into a corner where they belong.