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Friday, 22 May 2020

Forward to the fifties



Anyone paying attention over the past few decades must be aware that something ugly seems to be coming our way. Although the coronavirus debacle has no direct link to the climate game, flaky science and authoritarian bungling have obvious links to flaky climate science and authoritarian eco-bungling.

It has been clear for a long time that there is a settled global political intention to shackle democracy in the developed world in order to control and limit the ability of our ordinary citizens to consume. Primarily this is our ability to consume energy in the form of everything from electricity to fossil fuels to plastics, transport and all kinds of consumer goods.

A base level from which to assess the end point of this managed trend could be the nineteen fifties. No central heating, no car, no automatic washing machine, no dishwasher, no freezer nor any other appliance consuming more than a nominal wattage. Add to this limited air travel, limited holidays abroad and limited ability to travel long distances on the roads.

Feed in a few modern touches such as pervasive censorship and surveillance, intrusive control of health and diet, sweeten the pill with a digital fantasy world and and relentless propaganda and maybe we have a plausible glimpse of the future. More plausible than epidemiological models anyway.

Naturally these things are never explicitly spelled out but they have been obvious for years. The thinking behind the screw-the-West trend is equally obvious. A primary UN policy objective is equality, but it appears to hold the view that certain areas of the world will never achieve equality with the developed world. No prizes for guessing which areas they might be.

So global policy is for the developed world to be endlessly kicked in the nuts by a combination of loony bureaucracies, unhinged celebrities, flaky science and mad academics. A touch of evil seems to be in there too. Stir in a widespread Malthusian outlook that current living standards developed world are not sustainable and we’re done. We have a long-term global policy based around the severe reduction of developed world freedoms and living standards.

Yours and mine that is.

Not theirs.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's an odd one, because the normal socialist utopianism a la Marx requires very high levels of production which are then appropriated for serving the socialist state. Hence the dash for industrialisation and the five-year plans of Stalinism. Marx himself was very keen on capitalism delivering a surplus, otherwise Socialism would be unattainable.

I can't think of anyone who would benefit from holding the West back from its full potential. Maybe they think we are looking at a huge energy shortage if we keep on. Maybe it's just misplaced guilt at what we have done to the poorer nations.

Whatever. The fifties, but without cheap coal. That will be a challenge! Do you remember the frost on the insides of windows in the morning? Paraffin heaters? Izal toilet paper? Appealing, eh!

Graeme said...

I have started to think back to the Skripal affair. Was that a trial run to see how it would work to lock down an entire city for 6 months? I find the BBC and media obsession with telling us that there are too many people consuming too many resources just seems to get worse and worse. It seems too orchestrated to be completely random

A K Haart said...

Unk - I do remember the frost on the insides of windows in the morning. And paraffin heaters and Izal toilet paper. I'm sure misplaced guilt and fears about energy shortages are in there, but also a culture which lacks dynamism and the incentives to make material progress. Maybe we are too comfortable - it often feels that way.

Graeme - I'm sure it is too orchestrated to be completely random. It seems to come from the UN as a settled range of policies and assumptions about a sustainable future picked up by other bureaucracies and now promoted as a done deal by a vast range of interests which have come to thrive on it.

Graeme said...

I found it interesting to read an article today about WHO. It's top priority is climate change! No wonder covid 19 has destroyed the world