“Editor’s Note: We’ve seen governments institute the strictest controls on people and businesses in history. It’s been a swift elimination of individual freedoms.”
by Doug Casey
International Man: Western countries are leading the charge in restructuring their economies around the issue of climate change. They’re committed to a comprehensive agenda to “decarbonize” their economies by 2050.
What’s your take on this?
Doug Casey: To sum it up in one word, it’s insane. In two words, it’s criminally insane.
Before the Industrial Revolution, the overwhelmingly major fuel source was wood. After that, we went to coal, which was a big improvement in density of energy and economics. Then, we went to oil, another huge improvement in energy density and economics.
These things happened not because of any government mandates but simply because they made both economic and technological sense. If the market had been left alone, the world would undoubtedly be running on nuclear. Nuclear is unquestionably the safest, cheapest, and cleanest type of mass power generation. This isn’t the time to go into the numerous reasons that’s true. But if nuclear had been left unregulated, we’d already be using small, self-contained, fifth-generation thorium reactors, generating power almost too cheap to meter. The world would already be running on truly clean green electricity.
Instead, time, capital, and brainpower have been massively diverted to so-called “ecological” power sources—mainly wind and solar—strictly for ideological reasons. The powers that be want to transition the whole world to phony green energy, like it or not.
I’m all for green energy in principle. There’s no question that solar and wind are worthwhile and effective for select applications—generally small, isolated, special locations where conventional fuel is inconvenient or too costly. The efficiency of solar has been tremendously improved over the last few decades, as has wind efficiency. But neither make any sense for mass base-load power in industrial economies.
With further technological advances, they may become more economic someday. Perhaps people will eventually put large collectors in high Earth orbit and microwave the power down to the surface. There are all kinds of sci-fi possibilities. But right now, “green” is just a nice word for “stupid,” “ideological,” or “government-sponsored.”
Doing things the green way takes power away from the markets, which is where people vote with their dollars. It instead places power in the hands of ideologues and bureaucrats.
In brief, wind and solar are being promoted at the very time, nuclear and fossil fuels are being damned. It’s the opposite of what should be happening and a very bad trend from every point of view.
Put me down as liking the birds and the bunnies as much as anyone else, but I’m anti-green. Anyway, ecofreaks don’t really care about the birds and the bunnies so much. That’s just a veneer. They actually just hate people and really want them to disappear. At a minimum, they want to control them. And the great global warming/anti-fossil-fuel hysteria is a great way to do it.
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MCViewPoint 