Good Title

Joel Kotkin, one of my favorite writers (among so many) at the estimable City Journal, has described the “watermelon” (Green outside, Red inside) mindset perfectly:

Climate Stalinism

The Left’s fixation on climate change is cloaked in scientism, deploying computer models to create the illusion of certainty.  Ever more convinced of their role as planetary saviors, radical greens are increasingly intolerant of dissent or any questioning of their policy agenda.  They embrace a sort of “soft Stalinism,” driven by a determination to remake society, whether people want it or not—and their draconian views are penetrating the mainstream.  “Democracy,” a writer for Foreign Policy suggests, constitutes “the planet’s biggest enemy.”

And right there, in that last quote, is the whole game given away.  As Kotkin observes, most people outside the wealthy and academia are hugely skeptical of the whole “global warming / -cooling / climate change” movement because they have correctly deduced that regardless of all those laudable intentions to “save the planet”, the final costs of doing so would be catastrophic for their own livelihoods and prosperity, e.g.:

Imagine what will happen if a President Elizabeth Warren bans fracking in places like Texas, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania;  in Texas alone, by some estimates, 1 million jobs would be lost.  Overall, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, a full ban would cost 14 million jobs—far more than the 8 million lost in the Great Recession.

Confronted with the abject failure of Communism everywhere it’s been put into practice, all that’s left for these would-be Stalinists is to try to bypass democracy and enforce their control over the population by diktat  — the very definition of Stalinism — using climate change as the fig-leaf.

I’ve written about this topic so often I’m starting to bore myself;  in Maskirovka (2017) and Proper Analysis (2019), to list but two of the more comprehensive posts, I outlined the eco-freaks’ mindset and the (failed) accounting behind the move to curb “greenhouse gases” respectively.  And of course, on any number of occasions I’ve debunked the junk statistics (which Kotkin derisively calls “scientism”) that these Marxists are using to try to give their loony theories some form of respectability.

Make no mistake:  these control freaks and their lickspittle fellow-travelers in the mainstream media are not going to quit.  We’ve already seen how has-been President Urkel’s EPA passed regulations which furthered the goals of the watermelons, stopping or delaying fracking, construction of new pipelines and so on.  Expect the same, or worse, from future Administrations run by Communists of the Warren / Sanders / [insert socialist candidate here]  ilk — which is why these bastards need to be implacably opposed at every turn, whether in local / state government, Congress or the White House.

Now, more than ever, is the time when we need to deny them ever getting their hands on the levers of power because once they do, it won’t just be your guns they come after:  it’ll be your cars, your jobs and your money.

And after they get into power via the much-maligned democratic system, don’t expect them allow themselves to be voted out of office too easily, either.

Under the Communists, the First Amendment will increasingly come under attack (“hate speech”), ballot boxes will get stuffed (by illegal immigrants), and regulations will be promulgated which bypass the legal system.  And if that little shit Beta O’Rourke did nothing else, he announced with absolute clarity these would-be Stalinists’ intentions towards the fourth  box.

I can’t put it any clearer than that.

In the past, I’ve treated Nov 19 (National Ammo Day) and April 15 (Buy A Gun Day) as two separate entities.  That time, I think, has passed.

 

Not that my Readers would need any reminders or encouragement, of course…

Strangely Satisfying

You know, if an Alpine mountain community lived in constant fear of avalanches, one could feel a certain sympathy if said avalanches caused severe damage to the place each year and some loss of life among its inhabitants.

I suspect, however, that one would feel somewhat less sympathetic if the community refused to deploy snowplows and rescue helicopters purely because of the emissions from those vehicles.  Indeed, one might even get unworthy feelings of smug satisfaction and even Schadenfreude  from the annual, tearful news reports of death and destruction.

How then, are we expected to feel when California gets plunged into darkness and suffers loss of property and life through the regular occurrence of wildfires?

Fire conditions statewide made California “a tinderbox,” said Jonathan Cox, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Of the state’s 58 counties, 43 were under red flag warnings for high fire danger Sunday.

And just so we know exactly why these conditions have reached the point to where they have:  despite the fact that hot Santa Ana winds create an annual risk of deadly wildfires, California continues to ban the clear-cutting and controlled burning of deadwood and -brush in wilderness areas as well as in areas close to suburban development because of supposed-ecological concerns.  That’s the “tinderbox” referred to above.

Moreover, it’s hard for the rest of us to feel pity for Californians when it’s clearly the fault of their own elected officials and legislature who continue to force their wrongheaded Gaia-worship on the Golden Shower State, with consequences that have become not only annual, but predictably horrible.  (And which some, equally-predictably, somehow manage to escape.)

I should feel guilty about my Schadenfreude, but I really don’t — just as I don’t feel sorry for Californians who complain about high taxes, iniquitous government interference in their lives, high real-estate prices and the whole dreadful litany of self-inflicted ills, all without exception imposed on them by, once again, their stupid, venal and self-serving elected politicians.

Let ’em burn.  Maybe at some point they may even be forced to try and get some change enacted through the ballot box, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.


Update:  unusually, I seem to have understated California’s problems.

Wish I’d Done That

Found via Insty (thankee, Squire), is this incredible piece of investigative journalism done by someone who, I suspect, isn’t a journalist:

Horrifying: Media and Climate Hoaxers (But I Repeat Myself) Report That Literally Everywhere on Earth is Warming at Twice the Rate of the Rest of the Earth

You’d think an actual journalist (I know, more rare than a virgin at a Clinton cocktail party) would have noticed this, but as the headline suggests, most of the journo persuasion are riding the Doom Wagon (no relation) for all it’s worth.

Anyway, follow the link and read it all the way to the end, where Ace makes this conclusion:

One begins to suspect that climate “scientists” have made up a scheme of dozens of “adjustments” they have granted themselves to make to the actual data, enabling them to tweak any temperature down and any other temperature up.

As we say here in Texas:  ya thank?

Utter Stupidity

From the Golden Shower State comes this latest foolishness:

Despite the fact that natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels hands down (and now the cheapest), liberals continue to oppose it. The “keep it in the ground” folks scored another victory this week when the city of San Jose California voted to ban natural gas lines and appliances in all new construction projects going forward. This is allegedly part of the state-mandated goal of going 100% “carbon-free” by 2045. Of course, as with all things, the devil is in the details.

Here’s the math which these fools are ignoring;

So now, all of the appliances, including furnaces, stoves, water heaters and all the rest, will be electric. And the buildings will have electric outlets where people charge their vehicles. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that a considerable increase in the load on the electrical grid is coming. And where does California get their electricity? More than half of it comes from… wait for it… natural gas-fired plants.
To get rid of the natural gas plants when you’ve already banned coal plants, you’ve only got a few choices. Hydro is good, but California isn’t exactly brimming with water. (They get about 12% of their energy from hydro and they’re nearly maxed out.) Nuclear would be perfect, but they’re phasing that out too. (That’s another 9% they’re getting ready to lose.) That pretty much leaves them with solar and wind, which accounts for roughly 24% of their current power generation. Do you really think you can go from there to 100% in a decade or two?

And for the life of me, I could not come up with a better conclusion than the article’s:

It’s so brilliant on paper and yet so stupid at the bottom line.

Leftism in a nutshell, if you ask me.  And as a wise man said: