Cop26, climate catastrophism to justify an increasingly marked authoritarianism
In Glasgow, on the occasion of the new International Climate Conference, COP26 , the main world leaders speak with a single voice. And it is that of catastrophism.
The speeches make you shiver, it seems to be present at a meeting of millenarians of ancient times. The end of the world is around the corner and there is also no hope of life and salvation after death. Johnson immediately opens by saying that we, without realizing it, live in a 007 movie. Like “… James Bond in those movies where he has to defuse a deadly machine a few minutes before it clicks, but this is not a movie”. And so "We have to disable this doomsday device." The best is reached by Prince Charles: "The world must put itself in a disposition of war spirit, as a last resort, in the face of the challenge of climate change that looms on the planet".
But who do they have to convince? Because everyone really seems to agree. The leaders of China and Russia are missing, who have sent their ministers. These are no small absences, considering that Xi Jinping absolutely rules over the most polluting country on the planet and Vladimir Putin over the geographically largest, as well as the second nuclear power (civil and military) in the world. But the two leaders antagonistic to the West are not the ones to whom the messages are addressed. They are not even mentioned, much less contested. So who are all these terrifying messages addressed to? To Greta and the more radical ecologists, who were in the streets of Glasgow to incite even more alarmism? Not just them. There would be no need.
We are the target of the alarmist messages of the heads of state and government gathered at COP26 . We, citizens of the countries they govern. What is happening, in fact, is a great effort by the States to change the economic model, with the explicit or even passive consent of all the main entrepreneurs. This is an attempt to make a worldwide "New Deal" . And, if Roosevelt's, at least, was aimed at saving capitalism ("from itself"), this new "Green New Deal" instead has the theoretical aim of saving the planet from capitalism.
Mario Draghi, who liked the liberals of today as much as Roosevelt liked those of that time (except for Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand and a few other deplorables ), speaks as a utopian and constructivist, when he states, at the conclusion of the G20: "We are building a new economic model and the world will be better ”. A better world, no more, no less. And how? He explains it to Cop26 : “We must strengthen our efforts on climate funds, make public and private work together. Tens of trillions are available. Now we have to use them, find a smart way to spend them quickly. We need all multilateral banks and in particular the World Bank to share the risks with the private sector ”.
Pay attention to the terms. “Making public and private work together”, considering the real power relations, means making the private work according to the interests dictated by the public sector, that is, by the government. “Finding an intelligent way to spend them quickly”, referring to the trillions of which Draghi talks about, means: spending them as the government says, on projects chosen by the state. Because “in an intelligent way”, in a free market, is in fact a meaningless expression: in a liberal system, intelligence is that of prices that are spontaneously fixed by the encounter between supply and demand. Spending the trillions, available in private pockets, "intelligently", that is, in a different way from what their owners would have done, means only one thing: planning. Curious that Draghi also claims to want to spend them "quickly". Before we know it? Probably yes, right, however, to put even more urgency in a speech that is based on the emergency, on the imminence of a catastrophe, on the short time available to make irreversible choices.
And the expected changes should be known by now, in the numerous study papers on how to reduce the temperature rise. We will have to give up fossil fuels. So we will have to change all the heating systems and travel on electric vehicles. Where it is not possible to transform the engines, the movements must be kept to a minimum. Greta says that only the heads of state and government will be able to take the plane. And for the production of energy, to recharge the batteries of the new electric vehicles? There will be renewable energies (the most prudent will also build or maintain nuclear power plants, but not in Italy). And if that's not enough? Consumption will have to be reduced, the population will have to be re-educated to a more Spartan lifestyle. Diet will also be affected: at least 20 percent less daily meat consumption. So someone will also have to check what we have on our plate, every day. Reforestation is the first point on which the COP26 participants reached an agreement. It will be a return to the past: the lands that are now destined for agriculture will again be covered by forests, as in the Middle Ages.
Such drastic changes certainly require consumers' preferences to be "redirected", with or without their consent. They require control and planning. In other words: an increasingly marked authoritarianism, because a market left free and a democracy in which a Trump or a Bolsonaro "risks" winning, would be increasingly inadmissible obstacles in the new model. Only "science" can set the objectives of the new planners who, it is assumed, must be so good and foresighted as to set the right production quotas in the long term, to the point of limiting the temperature growth to 1.5 degrees in the next 30 years.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/cop26-il-catastrofismo-climatico-per-giustificare-un-autoritarismo-sempre-piu-marcato/ on Wed, 03 Nov 2021 03:55:00 +0000.