* image from Twitter/X
In the last article we covered some of the reasons why the official narrative on our climate does not ring true. However it's hard for people to believe that they have not been told the truth - why would 'they' lie to us?
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore was asked who is responsible for promoting unwarranted climate fear and what their motives are, he said: "A powerful convergence of interests. Scientists seeking grant money, media seeking headlines, universities seeking huge grants from major institutions, foundations, environmental groups, politicians wanting to make it look like they are saving future generations. And all of these people have converged on this issue." (Forbes)
We can add to that the UN with its IPCC and COP summits, political & social ideologies, foreign rivals.
These elements overlap and with the momentum of emotional, business and political commitments already made and the whole thing takes on a life of its own.
United Nations/IPCC
The UN has a key role. It was conceived during WWII with a charter to do what the League of Nations had not been able to in preserving peace and security, but with an expanded role adding human-rights elements, international justice and general well-being. It was given a shiny reputation and grand headquarters, maybe more in hope than expectation, with saint-like General Secretaries: U Thant, Ban Ki-moon, Kofi Annan, large secretariats and proliferating agencies. It is paid for with taxes.
There has not been a hot world war since 1945 but this is more down to the military and economic strength of the US than anything the UN has achieved. Indeed in the many regional, civil and proxy wars the UN seems to have been ineffective, not least in its peace-keeping duties – eg the Rwanda genocide. Even when supposedly promoting peace in Gaza parts of the UNRWA have been contributing to conflict.
The UN is not value-free. Current Secretary General António Guterres says "No one wants a world government. But we must work together to improve world governance” (!) Guterres’ background is as Socialist PM in Portugal, President of Socialist International, and latterly head of the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees. As an ideology, socialism favours state over individual, central planning over market-choice, atheism over respect for God.
It’s said the UN needed to find other ways to justify its position and foster its world governance aims and found an opportunity in the environmental movement – something to unite the world and which needed global oversight. Enter multi-millionaire Maurice Strong ‘the man who, more than any other, redefined a trace gas as the meal ticket for tens of thousands of climate functionaries — the same people whose light-fingered heirs are today gathered in Paris.’ (COP21) Quandrant.org.au
He was “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology” and organised the early meetings for the UN: Earth Summit, The Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, UN Environment Program (UNEP). The 'woke capitalist' was however caught in a huge bribery scandal, fled to China and was stripped of his many eco awards. (Telegraph). A Fox News 2007 report said it shows "the tangled nest of personal relationships, public-private partnerships, murky trust funds, unaudited funding conduits, and inter-woven enterprises that the modern U.N. has come to embody—and which Maurice Strong has done so much to create'. Embarrassing as this was the eco-cause continued with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Its founding charter is based on the pre-determined assertion of a link between human activity and climate change. If this link was not there it would have to close down (it should!). This informs its quasi-scientific, partisan approach.
UN members’ political & social ideologies
Power & control
What do the member states think of the climate narrative and its authoritarian effect? The vast majority of countries making up the UN have low scores for democratic freedom (see democracy index also 'human freedom index'). Only 8% of the world’s population(14 countries) have ‘Full Democracies’ so overall, UN members are inclined to authoritarian policies and opposed to anything that would threaten their domestic power. Their countries are also less well off than the more liberal-democratic nations, but don't want to apply the liberal-democratic approaches that would help prosperity. Instead they are going to be happy with anything that will move wealth from the West without the related wealth-creating and human-rights reforms.
For other countries, anything that reduces the agency of the electorate is going to be attractive to the bureaucrats, as the long-standing ideals of democratic choice have been widely substituted for elite control (viz Brexit obstructionism). The EU has been seen as a model for world governance with its oligarchic executive and show parliament. Only in the face of dire electoral peril does the UK government start to roll back the more damaging consequences of co2phobia.
Money
The UN has a formal partnership agreement with the World Economic Forum. What's in it for the hundreds of billionaires and government representatives at Davos?
'Green deals' consume a lot of tax-payer money. According to the UK government '£16.4 billion of expenditures which received financing raised in financial year 2021 to 2022' (£8.6 billion 2022/23). This includes funding over 200,000 EVs and charging points (while EV market demand decreases due to insurance, fire-risk and other disincentives). But adding up all the green levies the total is over £50 billion, for each household £621 in 2021!
The US is spending massively more than this. And the WEF in 2022 gleefully announced that net zero by 2050 will cost us 'An extra $3.5 trillion a year ...equivalent to half of global corporate profits, a quarter of world tax revenue and 7% of household spending.'
The public might believe that these huge sums of their money just virtuously convert themselves into helping the planet, without worrying too much about how. The money obviously gets spent in the form of grants and subsidies to organisations for various projects probably without too much scrutiny as to their eco-effectiveness. No doubt there’s a hard-nosed scramble to get this windfall cash. Often it’s quite brazen, energy suppliers like Octopus moan about the delay in a tax-funded grid connection for a projected solar site - in Northern Ireland...
One subsidy example: Wind farms are paid if their power is not needed! This was highlighted recently when generating companies were censured for charging 10% more than they should for ‘curtailments’. When the wind is blowing and there is more generation than needed, we pay them for the energy the grid can’t use, adding £40 to the average bill! Presumably this is because their cost-effectiveness is so low they would go out of business without this extra money. The rising overall subsidy is over £110/MWh.
These anti-CO2 command-economy edicts and subsidies distort the market and thus make things more expensive, work less well and stop better solutions being developed. This is a huge ‘Opportunity cost’. As we saw with ESGs (another UN/WEF sponsored authoritarian scheme), they benefit entities other than consumers and shift massive amounts of money, resource and political agency out of our hands. Undue collusion between government and business at the expense of the population is the definition of fascism.
While 'climate deniers' are claimed to be supported by the fossil fuel industry this is all a huge misinformation campaign to divert attention away from the people who are making the real money as Jessica Weinkle masterly lays out.
Side-note - Energy shortages
We’re already highly indebted by Covid borrowing. A recent report by the UK’s Global Warming Policy Foundation points out that the required energy infrastructure cannot be afforded in time so we can expect shortages in electricity (and all other services that depend on it). 'Realistically the reduction in private consumption would have to be 8% to 10% for 20 years. Such a shock has never occurred in the last century outside war periods and even then never for more than a decade.' Professor Gordon Hughes (Former World Bank economist). This alone should make us wake up (and it seems it has with recent UK announcements on gas generation plants). However the WEF promotes 'degrowth' for us - a consequence of its slogan: 'you will have nothing and you will be happy'.
Side-note - Food shortages
The protests of the farmers in Europe and UK have reached the public's notice despite media muting. Farming practices release 'greenhouse gases' not only for beef but also fertilizers made using natural gas so there is a programme to shut them down - all geared to 'global warming'.
Side note - Environment
As with all mass-influencing campaigns, it helps if there is a grain of truth. Climate is changing - but naturally - and has benefits of extending growing seasons and product diversity. Where it provides greater challenges, adaptation strategies can be devised but they need to be geared to those nations' priorities not UN/WEF dogma. In the next article we'll look at better ways of helping poorer nations.
Some of the minor activities wrapped up in Net Zero spending are genuinely helpful: reducing plastic, pollution, energy and other waste, promoting bio-balance, better pesticides, greening cities, quieter electric transportation. But these must all be done transparently and with all the negative costs identified. They could all have been done at a tiny fraction of the Net Zero cost. As the Duke of Norfolk says about changes in ecology on his Sussex farm while keeping it profitably growing food: 'Let's listen to all the science, not just that bit that suits our entrenched positions'.
Side note - Censorship
This coercive impoverishment of the West, based on an evident falsehood or part-truth, needs a massive propaganda scheme to survive. We saw this in Covid and the same techniques are still being used. The BBC created the Trusted News Network (Newspeak!) to coordinate what was acceptable across the English-speaking world. Google suppresses search results and attaches warnings to videos. The UK Army has its hybrid warfare division, 77 Brigade, that was turned against its own population during Covid. As almost all sectors of funded society have something to gain out of the climate narrative, it's surprising how many there are who dissent and these are less well-funded but robust and persistent. It's easy to paint individuals as rebels (and some maybe relish this too much!) but beware 'false flag' operations (eg social media accounts) where fake actors speak nonsense, justifying 'misinformation' reprisals. Many who support man-made (anthropogenic) global warming struggle to refute the genuine arguments made against it, instead they just assert it’s 'settled science'. Science is an enquiry process and so is never settled, least of all with a highly complex multi-disciplinary system like climate whose mechanisms are still only partly understood.
Side note – Foreign powers
China, radical Islamic countries and other rivals, while vying for top-dog status, are obviously happy for the West to follow a debilitating course, and their many agents (academia, media, politicians & aides) promote it. China has corraled most of the rare-earth metals needed for batteries and other electronics so can control this market, supplying the world while using coal-fired power. CO2 does not seem high-risk to them.
Summary
Patrick Moore’s 2011 comment above about motives (scientists & universities after grants, newspapers after headlines, eco-dogma, political virtue-signalling) are only too well-known, but they are relatively benign compared to the overarching move toward world-wide authoritarianism. This erodes the power of democracy with its implicit valuing of individuals and their God-given dignity. This in turn leads to a breakdown of the Christian-inspired work practices that lead to prosperity. A good UK film is Climate: The Movie - humorous too!
Along with this is the seeming hatred of mankind with an overall policy of 'degrowth' diminishing human flourishing with reduced freedoms, food, heat and space. Also reduction in population with social policies favouring abortion and opposing marriage and families.
At the end of the day, national leaders will ignore the UN/WEF if it doesn't suit them and they can get away with it (as with recent UK decisions around Net Zero). We need to pray that our society leaders fulfil their God-given mandates to honour His ways.
The crazy thing is that we really do need a world-wide movement – but it’s of Grace not coercion. There is only one Sovereign and He brooks no other (first law of life). So this feels a lot like a Tower of Babel moment! It seems God is in favour of nations, plural, and opposes too much power concentration. It’s interesting that the strongest nation, the US, has a constitution that recognises man's evil potential and has many checks and balances to try to mitigate that. When these break down (as is currently being attempted) that union of states will no doubt also break down, like other great centres of power.
The biggest previous empire, the British, was dissolved - but peacefully, and possibly prematurely for some of its constituents. The beneficial influence of this tiny island nation was surely the result of a work of God over several centuries and often in the teeth of its organised religion and politics. It was a work in a ‘remnant’ of people who were motivated by His Spirit, inspired with His love and guided by His Word.
For us today ‘take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.’
