Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

The Realities Of “Going Green”

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | June 14, 2022

I came across this on Facebook, translated from Norwegian. It’s a good summary:

Batteries do not create electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, especially through coal, uranium, natural-powered power plants or diesel-powered generators. So the claim that an electric car is a zero-emission vehicle is not true at all.

Since forty percent of the electricity produced in the United States comes from coal power plants, thus forty percent of the electric cars on the road are carbon-based.

But that’s not all of it. Those who are excited about electric cars and a green revolution should take a closer look at the batteries, but also wind turbines and solar panels.

A typical electric car battery weighs a thousand pounds, roughly the size of a suitcase. It contains 25 pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel and plastic. There are over 6,000 individual lithium ion cells inside.

To make each BEV battery, you’ll need to process 25,000 pounds of salt for lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for cobalt, 5,000 pounds of resin for nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore from copper. In total, you have to dig out 500,000 pounds of dirt for a battery. ”

The biggest problem with solar systems is the chemicals used to turn silicate into the gravel used for the panels. To produce sufficient clean silicon, it must be treated with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, fluoride, trichlorotane and acetone.

In addition, gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium diselenide and cadmium telluride are needed, which are also highly toxic. Silicone dust poses a danger to the workers and the tiles cannot be recycled.

Wind turbines are non-plusultra in terms of cost and environmental destruction. Each windmill weighs 1,688 tonnes (the equivalent of the weight of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tonnes of concrete, 295 tonnes of steel, 48 tonnes of iron, 24 tonnes of fiberglass and the hard-to-win rare soils Neodym, Praseodym, and Dysprosium. Each of the three blades weighs 81,000 pounds and has a lifespan of 15 to 20 years, after which they must be replaced. We cannot recycle used rotor blades.

Admittedly, these technologies can have their place, but you have to look beyond the myth of emission freedom.

“Going Green” may sound like a utopian ideal, but if you look at the hidden and embedded costs in a realistic and impartial way, you’ll find that “Going Green” does more damage to earth’s environment than it seems.

I’m not opposed to mining, electric vehicles, wind or solar energy. But I show the reality of the situation.

June 14, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism | Leave a comment

It’s Now Crucial to Understand What We’re Up Against

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | June 12, 2022

Patrick Wood, a repeat guest, has spent decades studying technocracy — an invented economic system that the global cabal is currently trying to implement worldwide. He was recently interviewed by The Defender, the Children’s Health Defense newsletter. You will find that interview below. I would encourage you to watch because it provides a really good background of Wood and his work.

This conversation also ties in with an interview I recently did with professor Mattias Desmet, author of “The Psychology of Totalitarianism,” which will air in a few weeks, so be sure to keep an eye out for that one. While technocracy and totalitarianism have many similarities, there are some differences in perspective, which we will unravel here.

“I wish there was something else to talk about, but this is it,” Wood says. “This is the topic of the day. This is what people need to know and understand.

If we are going to fight back against this enemy, which previously has pretty much been unseen, we must recognize who we’re dealing with. Period. We cannot provide any defense or offense to push back on this unless we know who the enemy really is and what they’re thinking, what’s in their head.”

COVID Was Technocracy’s Coup D’état

While the COVID crisis sent most into a state of confusion, Wood was not surprised by the chain of events that eventually took place. He’d been following the climate change alarmism and the sustainable development agenda for a long time, and as soon as the same people who were promoting climate alarmism jumped on the COVID train, he knew they were connected, and that COVID was going to be used to promote the technocratic agenda.

The same flawed computer models used to convince us climate change will kill us all were also used to incite panic about the lethality of COVID. These computer models are basically rigged to say whatever they want them to say. According to climate change alarmists, mankind should have been wiped off the face of the earth 10 years ago. Yet here we are. The COVID models also failed, missing the mark by miles.

“At the time [in early 2020], I said this is technocracy’s coup d’état. They’re finally making their major global move to do what they said they were going to do for a long time. Now, they’re actually putting shoe leather to it and they’re making it happen, so I called it coup d’état early on,” Wood says.

Unfortunately, to quote Wood’s coauthor of previous books, Anthony Sutton, only 2% of people have critical thinking skills, 8% of people think they can think, and 90% would rather die than think. This willful ignorance explains why only 10% of a given population, on average, does not fall into mass formation hypnosis.

Wood, along with Dr. Judy Mikovits and Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, an international lawyer who cofounded the German Corona Investigative Committee — have formed the Crimes Against Humanity Task Force. The first event will be held in Tampa, FL with guest speaker, Michael Yeadon, Ph.D.

“We believe there is a great case to be made that, indeed, crimes against humanity have been committed in the same context and sense that they were discovered at the Nuremberg trials that produced the Nuremberg Code, which is now embedded in the legal system in every nation on earth, [including] our country and every state as well.

Medical experimentation is verboten, period, and yet it has happened anyway, with no informed consent along the way. People are getting sick and dying, the same old drill. What went wrong? We’re presenting this case to the American public in person, and I will say the dynamic of talking to a live audience today is a breath of fresh air for me, personally. I think everybody else would say the same thing.“

Creating a New Normal on Our Own Terms

While many resist this stance, I and Wood agree that the crisis is not over, and it’s not going to right itself. No. It’ll get worse, and things will never go back to the way they were. It’s important to realize that we shouldn’t want things to go back to the old normal, however. Because the old normal is what precipitated the many crises we’re currently facing.

We can fully expect that the partially failed vaccine passport will be replaced by digital identity, which will progress to a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Most central banks in the world will be rolling out CBDCs within the next three to five years.

Digital identity and CBDCs are a disaster racing toward us like a freight train, and it’ll be extremely difficult to get out of harms way. The past two years will seem like a picnic compared to what’s coming.

“If my hypothesis is true, January 2020 was the coup d’état that started this war in earnest, the hot war, if you will, versus the leading up to it. Lots of bad stuff happened from 9/11 through 2020 that we could point to and say, it looks like somebody’s orchestrating this, but it went into a hot war, literally, globally as well, in January 2020. Revolutions never stop with one attack. That’s obvious. I’m sure it’s self-evident.”

By Their Words and Actions, You Can Know Them

So, who instigated this global revolution? Who’s pulling the strings? Who’s the real enemy? It’s not the populace. It’s not even a specific nation. It’s a conglomerate of wealthy and influential people all over the world. But they have a shared philosophy, ideology and agenda. Wood explains:

“What’s going on is called The Great Reset of the planet. The Great Reset has become a catchphrase. Most people don’t have a clue what it means yet, but it’s promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is tightly interlinked and coupled with the United Nations.

This elite group of people represent in mix all of the people that were originally in the Trilateral Commission back in the 1970s. It’s the same kinds of people, the same agenda to transform the world into their vision, the way they think things ought to be. These are the people that have orchestrated this whole thing and they’re the ones that are pushing it right now.

It’s easy to identify most of the people involved in this. You can look at the Klaus Schwabs and the Bill Gateses [of the world], and the thousand companies that belong to the World Economic Forum. They all have CEOs, board members, et cetera, that are part of the World Economic Forum. It’s pretty easy to identify them today.

The idea of The Great Reset is complete transformation of society and individuals that live in this society. The World Economic Forum is boldly talking about both. They talk about this technocratic takeover on one hand, to reform society, that is the structures of society, the institutions, but they also talk about the restructuring of humanity itself.

That is, the merging of technology with the human condition, with the flesh, the changing of genetic code, Humanity 2.0, H+ is another term is used. This is mad scientist type of stuff. The average guy on the street has never been exposed to this.

It’s hard to get your head around how evil this whole thing is, and it’s all uninvited. Nobody asked for it, they just did it. That’s another thing that’s really important to understand: This didn’t just come out of the blue or fall out of the sky from outer space. This has been in the works for a very long time.”

Agenda 21 Laid the Groundwork

In 1992, Agenda 21 was created. That was the genesis of sustainable development. That’s where that doctrine was openly described. The Agenda 21 and the Biodiversity Convention that took place at the same time was the agenda for 21st century.

As explained by Wood, Agenda 21 was foundational in the sense that laid out all the events being rolled out and changes being implemented today. It’s just that no one was really paying attention to where things were headed, the ultimate implications of it all. Of course, those who did see the writing on the wall were discredited as “crazy conspiracy theorists.”

“There was a great book released in 1994 called ‘The Earth Brokers.’ The two authors were scholars. They were also the original environmental crowd. They weren’t on our side necessarily, but they went to the Agenda 21 conference in good faith, figuring there was going to be some negotiation to dial back the development that was messing with the Third World and try to get the planet back together.

They went hoping to turn some things around, and they came away from the Agenda 21 conference completely disillusioned … In that book, they criticized the Agenda 21 process. They started out by saying something like this: ‘We argue that USAID — the United Nations conference on economic development — has boosted precisely the type of industrial development that is destructive for the environment, the planet and its inhabitants.

We see how, as a result of USAID, the rich would get richer, the poor poorer, while more and more of the planet is destroyed in the process.’ What can we say, but ‘amen’ to that. Here we are today. It’s exactly what’s happened.”

The Plan to Own and Control All Life

“The Earth Brokers” also reviewed what they learned from the Biodiversity Convention, which ran parallel with the Agenda 21 conference. It had the same participants, just two different thought tracks brought together at the same conference.

“They wrote about the biodiversity convention, which has become incredibly important today to the United Nations. They said the convention implicitly equates the diversity of life, that is animals and plants, to the diversity of genetic codes. By doing so, diversity becomes something modern science can manipulate. It promotes biotechnology as being essential for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

They redefined the term biodiversity, for one, but they also said the main stake raised by the biodiversity convention is the issue of ownership and control over biological diversity. The major concern was protecting the pharmaceutical and emerging biotechnology industries. That was their assessment.

To which, today, we can say, ‘Bingo!’ That is exactly what happened back then, and this is exactly the expression today that we see of the genetic takeover of life on planet earth. They’ve gotten the seeds, they’ve gotten the plants, they’ve gotten the animals.”

Today, the technocrats are also moving in on the human genetic code. Chief medical officer of Moderna, Tal Zaks, for example, has stated that Moderna, a developer of the mRNA COVID jab, is “hacking the software of life.” He described the human genetic code as an operating system, and if you can change that operating system by introducing a new line of code, or by changing a line of code, you can change how the operating system functions.

Since 1992, legislation has been created to protect Big Pharma. You could say the 1992 Agenda 21 was a pre-coup. They laid the groundwork back then to protect the pharmaceutical and emerging biotech industries they knew were coming. And, today, the very genetic makeup of mankind is up for grabs.

Origins of Technocracy

Technocracy dates further back than the 90s, however. Handwritten letters dating to the 1930s reveal some of the originators of the technocratic movement had gotten into an argument with the Hearst newspaper empire, and because of that, they forbade journalists to discuss them or the technocratic ideology. Hence, technocracy went underground and got sort of buried for a few decades. Wood explains:

“What happened was, Howard Scott, one of the cofounders of Technocracy Inc., was also the leader of the group at Columbia University when it was housed there in 1932. He had promoted himself as being a certified engineer and one of the intellectual guys that would fit in to Columbia University. He wasn’t from Columbia, but he was heading the [technocratic] movement there.

It was discovered, while he was there, that he was a complete fraud. He had no engineering degree at all. He was just a blowhard. He was a promoter — basically a con man — and Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia … flipped out, and drop-kicked Scott out of Columbia …

By the same token, Howard Scott was out working in the media like crazy, and he worked the Hearst empire to get articles about technocracy published all across the country.

When Randolph Hearst discovered, as Butler did, that he had been taken for a ride and that his media empire had been manipulated, he freaked out and sent out a telegram-type memo to every newspaper in the country, saying, ‘If anybody ever mentions technocracy again, you’re fired.’

Well, that took care of that. History books have a 25-year lag, typically. Historians don’t go back and analyze stuff from last year to write in history books. They go back 25 years and they look around and they read the newspaper articles and whatever, and try and figure out what happened. That’s how they write history.

Well, there’s this huge hole on the technocracy movement because it just got dropped out. All of a sudden, there’s no newspaper articles. It’s just like they disappeared into thin air. The big, highly credentialed scientist and engineers at Columbia who were crowing about technocracy the year before, now, all of a sudden, would not dare mention the word.”

Wood eventually discovered a major university archive at University of Edmonton in Alberta, where all of the leaders of the Canadian technocracy movement had combined their papers in the ’90s.

The documents were placed in a warehouse where they sat for years on end, until a catalog of them was finally published on the internet. It was a real jackpot. Wood and his wife drove to Edmonton and spent a week sifting through and copying materials. After that, it wasn’t very difficult to break down how the technocratic agenda had been moved forward and was being implemented.

Totalitarianism Versus Technocracy

While the outward expression of technocracy will appear as totalitarianism, the control center is not a dictator. Rather than a single person ruling by the decree, technocracy relies on control through technology and algorithm. This is a very important difference. In short, there are no people behind the curtain pulling strings. There’s no individual to blame or hold accountable.

The “dictator” is an algorithm. Looking at Google over the past couple of years, in particular, we can see this in action. We can also see it in the censorship of social media, and in the social credit system in China.

“The so-called artificial intelligence boom has created the possibility of controlling people by algorithm, rather than by political dictate,” Wood says. “There has been a battle between technocrats and governments ever since technocracy started. Back in the day, they hated government. They wanted to get rid of government. There is still that propensity today.

You see it at the World Economic Forum, you see it at United Nations. They want to dissolve the national governments of the world. Historically, fascism and communism have been instituted by national governments. These entities are on the hit list for technocracy. We saw this, by the way, just recently. There was a conference in Dubai, called the World Government Summit1 [March 29-30, 2022].

It was partly put on by the United Nations and there were a bunch of financial mucky mucks there. There was one in particular, Pippa Malmgren — she’s from America, but she’s in Great Britain — and she does financial wealth management services for the ultra rich.

She talked about the destruction of the fiat currency system, and she said, when it happens, there’s simply going to be a change-over. All the fiat currencies are going to go, and there’s going to be an implementation of digital currency. But she also made point that the nation state structures of the world are declining rapidly now. She saw, I guess, that the nation states are the target of destruction. They must go.”

This has been in the works for some time. Look at the European Union. While Europe has country borders, the EU member states have virtually no power to do anything anymore. They’re subservient to the EU’s wishes. “That’s why a lot of people in Europe call the EU a technocracy, they’re a bunch of technocrat elites — they’re unelected, they’re unaccountable,” Wood says.

Nobody can get to them and they’re making decisions for everybody else. So, while the nation states are still there in name, they’ve stripped of their sovereignty. The World Health Organization is now also in the process of stripping nations of their sovereignty through the so-called Pandemic Treaty, which will grant the WHO unprecedented power and influence to govern behind the veil of “global biosecurity.”

We also see the rule of technocracy in companies such as Google, which is meddling in the affairs of nations, oftentimes wielding more power over people than the state itself. So, it’s important to realize that the enemy is not a nation state.

Today’s enemy cannot be compared to anything that nation states have produced in the past, such as fascism, communism or socialism. This is an altogether brand-new entity. So, while technocracy feels like totalitarianism, today’s totalitarianism is an outgrowth of technocracy, and cannot be compared to any previous totalitarian regime.

“If you look at it in the context of the takeover genetic material on earth, this is the dangerous payload that we face. It’s not just the governance part of it. It’s not just the scientific dictatorship part of it, where people now can be manipulated in doing things that don’t want to do. We’re talking about the direct takeover of the human genome.

This is an incredible thing, because that means, potentially, that our genome of humanity could be changed,” Wood warns.

Unintended Consequences Are Probable

Now, it’s quite possible, and indeed probable, that the orchestrators of this technocratic takeover are in over their heads and will end up self-destructing. They’re playing a game that has never been played before, so there’s no telling what unintended consequences might be initiated.

One such unintended consequence could be a world war, and if that happens, gene editing the human genome will become irrelevant, because the living standards of the whole world will be pushed back hundreds of years. Wood comments:

“No question about it — World War III or a world war is going to be triggered. It’s not in the best interest, for instance, for the World Economic Forum to have a world war. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen either. So far, I think the Ukraine war is pretty orchestrated and scripted in many ways to the agenda of the World Economic Forum. But it doesn’t mean it couldn’t lose control and the thing just goes nuts.

If that happens, I don’t know where I’d put that on the doomsday clock. I’m not really sure, but it is definitely a possible outcome. If it does happen, it will spoil everything for everyone for a very long period of time. As the Bible says, it’ll take seven years to go through the countryside and bury all the radioactive bones. That’d be very ugly.

It might not be [a nuclear war]. But it could be. They have the technology. I mean, just look what they can do by launching these pandemics and these bioweapons … Another thing that can happen — and again, we’re talking about waves of attacks, things that could bring us down and bring about this Great Reset — is some type of a cyber attack.

This has been in the news a lot lately. A cyber attack could be a false flag operation, but it doesn’t really matter what it is, whether it is or isn’t [a false flag], but some big thing, like taking down the power grid, or taking down JPMorgan Chase and nobody can get their money out for a period of a week.

Something like that would, again, put the fear of God into everybody. We’ll be back to the fear and panic; we’ll do whatever you say to get safety, et cetera. It will perpetuate the takeover, the coup that we’re looking at. These are two possibilities, near-term, that are very real. We’ve got different scenarios right now, but we know where this group of technocrat actors are going.

We understand their mindset, their philosophy, if you will. I hate to even call it that, but what is in their head? There’s no passion, there’s no compassion, there’s no love, there’s no mercy, there’s no grace, there’s nothing like that. It’s a completely inhuman endeavor to capture mankind into a scientific dictatorship, the likes of which the world has never seen before.”

Preparing Can Help Ease Your Anxiety

The Boy Scouts motto is “Be prepared,” and that is what I would encourage everyone to strive for at this time. Another motto to embrace would be “Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.” Prepare as best you can for any and every contingency. If you can, get out of the big cities and big urban areas. Rural areas where you can build community is your safest bet.

Prepare for sustained food shortages with long-term food storage. Secure a potable water source. Stock up on medical remedies. Prepare for supply chains of all kinds to fail and stock up accordingly. Transition out of fiat currency, either by spending it on things you’ll need in the future, or buying physical gold and silver.

Prepare for energy shortages, rolling blackouts and the complete shut-down of the power grid. Importantly, don’t rely on high-tech solutions. Include low-tech manual backups in your preps. If the thought of all of this scares you, remember that taking action is the best remedy. Knowing you’re prepared will ease a lot of anxieties.

Why Free Speech Is on the Chopping Block

Free speech is a universal concept. Everyone, everywhere, have a mind and want to express themselves without being censored or canceled for their views. Free speech is now under attack worldwide, and the truly massive attack on free speech began at the same time as the coup d’état started. This is because silencing dissent is required for the full takeover to occur.

“These technocrat transhumanist revolutionaries must destroy free speech at the same time that they take over the world, because they have to control the narrative,” Wood explains. “The attacks on free speech right now are absolutely legendary, off the charts, everywhere on the planet.

If Mattias Desmet is right, and I feel absolutely certain that he is, because I can read a history book as easy as anybody, when free speech is effectively silenced, that is when the killing of the scapegoat begins. It’s always the scapegoat that gets killed first. There may be other groups that get mixed in, but the people who are the scapegoat are the ones that will be attacked by the mass formation psychosis crowd.”

Eventually, the totalitarian regime will devour its own. It’ll kill its own leaders in the name of the greater good. But in the meantime, it’ll start by culling various scapegoats, one group after another.

“Original technocracy from the 1930s, was defined in their own magazine, which was called ‘The Technocrat Magazine.’ They defined themselves in 1938 as ‘the science of social engineering.’ That was what they said about themselves.

Technocracy is the science of social engineering and they talked incessantly in their literature about Pavlov and BF Skinner and how they could control people and mold people to the economy, to the utopia that they wanted to build.

They’ve had since 1938, at the very least, to think about how to develop the science of social engineering to be used against humanity. I don’t think we need to even think about it any further.

We can feel it today. It’s right in our face, every day. They’re using these techniques against the people of the world to manipulate them, to hypnotize them, to push them into mass formation psychosis. Somebody at the top knows exactly what they’re doing with this. That’s my point.”

And, again, tech companies like Google and Facebook play central roles in that effort. I look at Google as the Skynet of the Terminator series. They’re probably the worst offender of all the technology companies that are accelerating this. They the champions of social engineering. They own DeepMind, the most sophisticated artificial intelligence company on the planet, and they’re clearly using it for nefarious purposes. That said, they’re certainly not alone.

Action Plan Moving Forward

In closing, we need to give careful thought to how we might slow down, block or at least limit the devastation that’s been planned for us. At the top of that list, aside from preparing yourself and your family with the essentials for life, is to buck the narrative.

“Anytime you feel like you’re being given a role to play, just refuse to play that role,” Wood says. “I don’t care what it is, just don’t do it. If they say, ‘You need to wear a mask because blah, blah, blah — don’t wear a mask. Just don’t play the role they give you.’

I know, but there’s a lot of personal choice here. You got to make a personal decision on what it’s worth to you to do it. I personally haven’t worn a mask yet. It’s cost me. I haven’t flown an airplane for a long time. I didn’t go a lot of places.

It’s important to keep your mouth open, not shut. We need to reestablish human connection again. This has been denied us with all the social distancing and lockdowns and everything else. Get in touch with people. It hurts, I realize, for a lot of people, because relationships have been burned between children and parents and brothers and sisters. Get over it, deal with it.

You have to get out and reconnected with people again, because the future of humanity is in those connections.

Just don’t argue with them. If you love them, love them anyway, in spite of where they are. But it’s also important to get with like-minded people and spend time developing deeper relationships with people. Guys have lost the ability to have best friends, almost universally across the country.

Women are better at having best friends, but they’ve been denied best friends because everything’s been broken up. Get embedded in a local church and start going to these home fellowships, whatever, where people are meeting face to face and just talk to them …

We have a lot of answers and a lot of tangible things we can help people with. You need to do it, be prepared to do it. When you have the opportunity, open your mouth and help them out. At least, give them some hope, because right now the other side wants you to have no hope. They want to strip all hope away from you so that you will turn to the government or turn to the technocrats for help.

We need to help people with this whole hope business and not to sell hopium, as some people call it, but to give them some tangible help on what they can do right now to put up a defense around their own body, around their own mind or whatever it might be …

This is where we are as a world today — we, on the non-mass formation psychosis side, we’re all in. Whether anybody else recognizes that as immaterial, but we are all in this. This is the most important civilizational, existential thing that we’ll ever deal with in our lifetime.

It really is that important. It’s not something we can just say, ‘Well, it’s just another problem,’ kind of like, ‘We had problems with Jimmy Carter.’ No, it’s not that kind of problem. This is a bigger existential threat that we’re facing right now.

We must be dead serious. But there’s hope, I will say. And until it’s over, it’s not over. We can make a difference and we need to try. We just can’t throw up our hands and say there’s no point trying, I’m going to go home and get drunk. Klaus Schwab told you, with his own lips, that by 2030 you will own nothing and you will be happy. They’re trying to make it happen. Yes, they are.

One of the reasons, by the way, that the World Economic Forum has met with the United Nations to speed up the agenda, closer on this side of 2030, is because of the mounting resistance around the world to the agenda. I’m convinced of this. I’ve been watching this since the beginning.

Americans can’t have 500,000 people in the street protesting anything, that doesn’t happen here. That’s just not our culture. But not Europe, at the drop of a hat, you’ll get a 100,000 people in the street, all screaming and banging pots and pans and hollering and carrying signs.

I know they see these massive hordes of people that are saying, essentially, ‘Hell, no’… This has to have an impact on them. I think that’s one reason they’re trying to accelerate the program right now and make it happen faster.

To me, that’s just kind of a little bit of a sign of resistance is working, and this to me, this ought to tell the resistance to double down — double down right now on whatever it is you’re doing. Do twice as much as you did last week or last month and continue to put the pressure on it.”

Sources and References

June 14, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

France entered ‘war economy’ – Macron

Samizdat | June 13, 2022

France will adjust its six-year military spending plan in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, President Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday.

Macron said he instructed the government to “carry out a reassessment of the military spending program in the coming weeks, in the light of the geopolitical context.”

France “has entered into a war economy in which I believe we will find ourselves for a long time,” he said during the opening of the Eurosatory arms expo in Paris. The French president said that Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine created “an additional need to move faster and become stronger at a lower cost.”

“As for anyone doubting the urgency of these efforts, we only need take another look at Ukraine, whose soldiers are in demand of quality weapons and are entitled to a response from us,” Macron noted.

France and other NATO members are supplying Kiev with weapons, including armored vehicles, missiles, and drones.

Macron said Europe needs “a much larger defense industry” and should not rely on procuring weapons from elsewhere. The current program entails spending €295 billion ($308 billion) between 2019 and 2025 on modernizing the French military. The annual military budget is set to reach €41 billion ($43 billion) this year and €50 billion ($52 billion) in 2025.

Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Europe would boost its defense in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. She said EU countries had announced increases of their defense budgets to an additional €200 billion ($209 billion) in the coming years.

Russia attacked Ukraine in late February, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

June 13, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Lockdowns: the evidence revisited

Professor Marilyn James, Professor of Health Economics, Professor David Paton, Professor of Industrial Economics | Health Advisory & Recovery Team | June 10, 2022

“It is possible that lockdown will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in modern history” – Professor Douglas Allen[1]

In March 2021, we wrote two sections in ‘Covid-19 the evidence’, namely ‘Economic impacts – the true cost of lockdown’ and ‘Lockdowns – do they work?’.  Over a year later, we have revisited not only the financial costs of lockdowns but also the societal costs, the impact on healthcare and the lack of evidence for overall benefit.

Assessing the economic costs of lockdowns and other Covid-19 restrictions is not easy, partly because the pandemic itself would have impacted economic activity independent of Government restrictions. However, we do now have considerable evidence that both voluntary behaviour change and government restrictions have significant economic effects.[2],[3] Further, voluntary changes tend to have most impact on the activity of groups most vulnerable to Covid, whilst Government restrictions have a disproportionate effect on those least vulnerable. This means that not only do most mandatory restrictions have a significant economic impact, but any benefits in terms of reductions in hospitalisations or deaths are minimal.[4]

Many of the immediate economic consequences of lockdowns were masked by the eye-watering amount of money spent by governments on furlough and business support schemes.  Given the limited evidence that stay-at home measures and business closures have any significant impact on infection rates[5], the question needs to be asked whether the billions spent paying business to shut down and people not to work could have been used better by building up capacity in the health system. The stay at home message of “protect the NHS” may have been no more than elaborate code for don’t highlight years of dwindling funding that failed to keep pace with growing population and demand in health care, with the NHS entering the pandemic with spending per GDP at the lowest level since 2009.[6]

Although furlough and business support schemes have had success in limiting the impact on unemployment, the longer-term economic consequences of lockdowns are now becoming clear. The lack of spending opportunities during lockdown contributes to a build-up of personal and corporate savings. As restrictions have eased, people begin to spend these savings and, combined with the supply chain issues that have built up in the meantime, sustained inflation is the inevitable result. Even worse, having spent about £70 billion[7] paying healthy people not to work via the furlough scheme and some £150 billion in total on support measures[8], the ability of the government to respond to this lockdown-induced cost-of-living crisis via either tax cuts or increased benefits, is limited due to the hit to public finances caused by lockdown-induced government spending.

It is perhaps no surprise that a series of research papers looking at data from Australia[9], the UK[10], Canada[11] and the US[12], have concluded that the costs of lockdowns exceed any plausible estimate of the benefits many times over.

The pandemic saw one disease prioritised over all others. It is now painfully clear that the “all others” are set to suffer with longer and larger health consequences than those of the covid-19 crisis itself. The report issued by the BMA is terrifying in every sense.[13] At the start of the pandemic 4.24m were waiting for elective treatment this now stands at 6.18m. Ridsdale makes the point “stay home” may well have contributed to excess deaths as people died at home without access to care and government policy prioritised covid above all other health concerns[14]. This figure of 6.18m masks and continues to mask the lack of referrals that occurred. There is no reason to suppose demand has dropped for elective care, yet, since the pandemic there have been 4.51 m fewer elective referrals. The latest figures show some 300,000 are waiting over a year for treatment. Again, this figure is masked by GPs under referring, reporting their ability to make referrals is severely constrained, yet the patients are still sitting at primary care level needing care. If the elective surgical figure continues to remain well below pre pandemic levels, NHS waiting lists will only continue to rise. Add to this routinely soaring long waits of over 12 hours at emergency department level and the gap between target time for cancer surgery and actual time to getting surgery increasing, the health picture created by covid prioritisation in the UK is frightening.

Lockdowns created isolation from our social and working worlds. The latest report from MIND states “Isolation and loneliness have made people’s mental health worse – with young people particularly badly affected.”[15] Similar can be said for older people especially those in care homes. The unintended consequences of removing activity, family and social interaction from the elderly may be more serious than the direct disease consequences of covid, with isolation being listed as cause of death in a number of care homes in the USA.[16]

Given what we now know, it is hard to disagree with the conclusion of Professor Doug Allen’s analysis of lockdown costs and benefits in Canada that “lockdown will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in modern history.” 1

References

  1. https://doi.org/10.1080/13571516.2021.1976051
  2. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272720301754?dgcid=rss_sd_all
  3. https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/rest_a_01108/107399/Do-Stay-at-Home-Orders-Cause-People-to-Stay-at
  4. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42973-021-00077-9
  5. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484
  6. https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/health-spending-as-a-share-of-gdp-remains-at-lowest-level-in
  7. Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme: statistics – House of Commons Library (parliament.uk)
  8. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9309/#:~:text=Current%20estimates%20of%20the%20cost,per%20person%20in%20the%20UK
  9. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s40592-021-00148-y.pdf
  10. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/national-institute-economic-review/volume/87652BB968C8244B2E478DAA353C7DF9
  11. https://doi.org/10.1080/13571516.2021.1976051
  12. https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf
  13. https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/nhs-backlog-data-analysis
  14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m3515
  15. https://www.mind.org.uk/media/8962/the-consequences-of-coronavirus-for-mental-health-final-report.pdf
  16. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hidden-covid-19-health-crisis-elderly-people-are-dying-isolation-n1244853

June 12, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

One in Six Germans Forced to Skip Meals Thanks to Food Price Crunch: Survey

Samizdat – 11.06.2022

Europeans face a perfect storm of soaring inflation, self-inflicted energy price shocks caused by sanctions on Russia, and fears of a looming recession. In Germany, the region’s traditional economic and industrial powerhouse, ordinary people have taken a hit to their wallets, while businesses have warned of large-scale losses and layoffs.

Nearly one in six Germans (16 percent) have been forced to go without regular meals to make ends meet, and another 13 percent may face a similar situation if food prices continue to rise, a new survey by the Institute for New Social Answers (INSA) for Germany’s Bild newspaper has found.

According to the survey, people from low-income households whose income after taxes is less than 1,000 euros per month have been the most heavily affected, with 32 percent of respondents forced to skip meals regularly.

42 percent of those polled also indicated that they are forced to cook more sparingly due to inflation, leaving out certain ingredients in meals, or dessert. Another 41 percent said they rely on supermarket special offers and discounts to stretch their euros as far as possible.

INSA’s study was conducted on 7 June, with a representative sample of 1,002 people queried.

Adolf Bauer, president of the German Association for Social Affairs, told Bild he was “greatly worried” by the survey’s results, saying it was a “clear sign that the measures taken by the federal government to date are not sufficient.” Bauer had previously warned Berlin not to introduce an energy embargo on Russia, saying it would add to suffering among ordinary people caused by out of control energy, food and rent prices.

Verena Bentele, president of the Social Association of Germany, a major Berlin-headquartered socio-political advocacy organization, echoed Bauer’s concerns, saying the figures show that people are “suffering greatly from the increased prices.”

“Members tell us they can only afford pasta and toast. We urgently need the VAT on fresh foods to be abolished and financial relief for those who have so far received nothing from the government’s energy price flat-rate,” Bentele urged.

Germans and other Europeans have faced out of control inflationary and price pressures in recent months, with Handelsblatt reporting double-digit growth on some food items in April. Last month, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten reported that EU sanctions on fertilizer imports from Russia and Belarus would result in losses of up to 3 million tonnes of harvest in the current year. Europe relied on the two countries for some 4.6 million tonnes of its 13 million tonnes-worth of fertilizer consumption last year, while local production efforts have been hampered by the large amount of energy required to produce them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has lamented at the European Union’s decision to commit “economic suicide” by depriving itself of cheap and reliable Russian energy supplies, and expressed sympathy for ordinary Europeans and Americans suffering as a result of their leaders’ decision-making. “The truth is that the current problems that millions of people in the West face are the result of many actions by the ruling elites of their states, their mistakes, myopia and ambitions. These elites are not thinking about how to improve the lives of their citizens. They are obsessed with their own selfish interests and surplus profits,” he suggested at a briefing in March.

June 11, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

US policies led to ‘new G8’ – Moscow

Samizdat | June 11, 2022

The United States “with its own hands” pushed the countries, which are not participating in “sanctions wars,” to form a “new Big Eight” group with Russia, the Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Saturday.

Following the launch of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine in late February, the US, EU, UK and many other countries imposed hard-hitting restrictions on Moscow, making Russia the most sanctioned country in the world.

In a Telegram post, Volodin included a table with IMF data on GDP based on purchasing power parity of countries he calls the “new G8” and of countries forming the current G7 (after Russia’s participation in the bloc was suspended over Crimea’s vote to join the country in 2014, the G8 effectively turned into the G7).

“The group of eight countries not participating in the sanctions wars – China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Iran, Turkey – in terms of GDP at PPP is 24.4% ahead of the old group,” Volodin wrote.

In his opinion, the economies of the G7 members – the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada – continue “to crack under the weight of sanctions imposed against Russia.”

“The rupture of existing economic relations by Washington and its allies has led to the formation of new points of growth in the world,” Volodin claimed.

While having serious economic difficulties, the US, according to the Duma speaker, continues “doing everything to solve their problems at the expense of others.” Creating tensions will “inevitably” lead the US to lose its world domination, Volodin stressed.

“The United States created the conditions with its own hands for countries wishing to build an equal dialogue and mutually beneficial relations to actually form a ‘new Big Eight’ together with Russia,” he said.

Meanwhile, on Friday, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Eric Woodhouse said that Washington and its allies had realized that they would get “spillovers” of anti-Russia sanctions into their own economies. Their determination in imposing sanctions on Moscow, he claimed, has demonstrated a willingness to “accept those costs.”

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted on the same day that the anti-Russia sanctions have made a “huge difference to food and energy prices,” amid record-setting inflation. The remarks followed the statement by the Russian President Vladimir Putin who said that “many years of mistakes made by Western nations” in their economic and sanctions policies have caused “a global wave of inflation, disruption of established logistical and manufacturing chains, a surge in poverty and a deficit of food.”

June 11, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Boeing falls victim to anti-Russia sanctions’

Samizdat | June 10, 2022

Boeing’s decision to pause production of its popular 737 MAX plane may be due to sanctions imposed on Moscow, air safety expert Roman Gusarov told the newspaper Izvestia. Russia provides critical parts and components to the American aircraft maker.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing had to bring production of narrow-body jets to a halt for 10 days in May due to supply-chain snarls.

“Boeing’s dependence on Russian titanium is extremely high, amounting to about 30-40%, meaning that at least every third Boeing aircraft is assembled entirely from Russian titanium,” Gusarov said, adding that apart from titanium, which is vital to aircraft engineering, the company also imports titanium products from Russian producer VSMPO-AVISMA.

The analyst added that the US aircraft manufacturer previously received nearly finished parts that were produced at a jointly-run factory in the Russian town of Verkhnyaya Salda.

In March, Boeing suspended titanium purchases from Russia, saying that it had substantial inventory of the metal and could secure additional supplies from other sources. This decision was made after Russia was hit with severe sanctions by the US and its allies.

According to Gusarov, the temporary halt in production of the 737 MAX jets could be attributable not only to the suspension of Russian titanium deliveries but also to the global disruption of supply chains. The expert added that the annual global production of up to 600 planes typically involves engaging nearly all of the global manufacturing capacity of the relevant components.

“After all, Russia has also imposed indirect retaliatory sanctions that target supplies of nonferrous metals and products of gas-to-chemicals industry, which are widely used by microchip producers across the world,” Gusarov said, adding that the products for Boeing are made by thousands of global companies.

In March, Bloomberg reported that the ban of Russian aircraft from US airspace could also hit Boeing because the company used to contract giant Antonov An-124 cargo planes, operated by Russia’s Volga-Dnepr Group, to move supplies to its plants in the US.

June 10, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Russia’s attempt to reshape the world economy

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 8, 2022

Starting on 31 May, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov embarked on a tour of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, where he visited Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), among others. Lavrov’s main objective of these visits is to strengthen ties between Russia and GCC nations amid a global race for geopolitical dominance.

The Middle East, especially the Gulf region, is vital for the current global economic order and is equally critical for any future reshaping of that order. If Moscow succeeds in redefining the role of Arab economies vis-à-vis the global economy, it would most likely succeed in ensuring that a multipolar economic world takes form.

The geopolitical reordering of the world cannot simply be achieved through war or challenging the West’s political influence in its various global domains. The economic component is possibly the most significant of the ongoing tug of war between Russia and its Western detractors.

Prior to the Russia-Ukraine war, any conversation on the need to challenge or redefine globalisation was largely confined to academic circles. The war made that theoretical conversation a tangible, urgent one. The US, European and Western support for Kyiv has little to do with Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence and everything to do with the real anxiety that a Russian success will demolish or, at least, seriously damage the current version of economic globalisation as envisaged by the US and its allies.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the world was no longer a contested space between two military superpowers – NATO vs Warsaw Pact – and two massive economic camps – US vs USSR. We often speak about the US invasion of Panama (1989) and the war in Iraq (1990) to demarcate the uncontested US ascendency in global affairs. What we often omit is that the military and geopolitical component of this war was accompanied by an economic one.

As Panama and Iraq were meant to demonstrate US military dominance, the establishment of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1994-5 was meant to illustrate Washington’s economic outlook in this new world order.

Though unprecedented in their scale and ferocity, the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 seemed like a desperate attempt to reverse the alarming trend in the world’s economic affairs. Though successful in demonstrating the power of civil society at work, the protests failed to produce any real, lasting outcomes. In the US/Western-centred definition of globalisation, smaller countries had little bargaining power.

While rich countries successfully negotiated many privileges for their own industries, much of the Global South was left with no option but to play by the West’s rules. The US spoke of free trade and open markets while maintaining a protectionist agenda over what it perceived to be key industries. Globalisation was branded a success story for freedom and democracy, while, in essence, it was a cheap reproduction of France’s 18th century “laissez-faire” economic doctrine.

It is easy to criticise poor countries for failing to challenge US/Western dominance. In fact, they tried, and the result was economic sanctions, regime change and war. The only silver lining is that this predatory form of capitalism encouraged small countries in the Global South to formulate their own economic blocks so that they may negotiate with greater leverage. However, even that was not enough to influence, let alone dismantle, the skewed global paradigm.

Large economies, like China, were allowed to benefit from globalisation as long as their massive growth served the interests of the global economy, namely the West. Things began changing, however, when China’s political and geopolitical outreach started to match its economic influence. Former US Republican President Donald Trump dedicated much rhetoric and eventually declared economic war on the so-called “China threat”. The current Democratic administration of Joe Biden is hardly different. Though busy countering Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, Washington remains dedicated to its anti-Chinese rhetoric.

The Marrakesh Agreement in 1994, the treaty upon which the WTO was established, was reached to replace the geopolitically defunct General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades of 1948. Note how each of these global economic treaties resulted from their unique global geopolitical orders, the latter following World War II and the former following the collapse of the Socialist camp. Though Russia and its allies are now mostly focused on claiming some kind of victory in Ukraine, their ultimate goal is to sow the seeds for a different economic balance, with the hope that it will ultimately force a renegotiation of today’s globalisation, therefore the West’s economic hegemony.

Russia is clearly invested in a new global economic system, but without isolating itself in the process. On the other hand, the West is torn. It wants to drop on Russia the Iron Curtain of the past, but without hurting its own economies in the process. This equation is simply unsolvable, at least for the next few years.

In a speech at the Eurasian Economic Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that trying to isolate Russia is: “Impossible, utterly unrealistic in the modern world.” His words accentuate Russia’s full awareness of the West’s objectives and Lavrov’s busy itinerary, especially in the Global South, and is Moscow’s own way of animating an alternative global economic system in which Russia is not isolated. The outcome of all these efforts will not only redefine the world from a geopolitical perspective, but will redefine the very concept of globalisation for generations to come.

June 8, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Grading the uses of the Defense Production Act during COVID Mania

By Jordan Schachtel | June 6, 2022

With President Biden beginning this week by invoking the Defense Production Act (this time, to build solar panels) we figured it’s time to take a look at what happened to the DPA during COVID Mania, and explore how it has been used (abused) since March of 2020.

For starters:

The Defense Production Act is a federal law that was enacted in 1950 after the commencement of the Korean War.

The explanation of the bill, via Congress, goes as follows:

“To establish a system of priorities and allocations for materials and facilities, authorize the requisitioning thereof, provide financial assistance for expansion of productive capacity and supply, provide for price and wage stabilization, provide for the settlement of labor disputes, strengthen controls over credit, and by these measures facilitate the production of goods and services necessary for the national security, and for other purposes.”

In short, these are emergency powers granted to the executive with a precedent for being enacted during an actual war. These powers allow the president to compel private companies to work with the government on developing material goods that are supposed to be used for national security purposes.

During COVID Mania, the DPA has been routinely abused for our manufactured national emergency.

Let’s take a look at how the DPA has been utilized to “fight the virus.”

  • March 27, 2020: President Trump defines ventilators and PPE as “essential to the national defense,” and orders GM to start producing ventilators. The move came with bipartisan insistence. We later discovered that ventilators were possibly killing COVID patients.
    Grade: F
  • April 2, 2020: President Trump invokes the DPA to compel several American companies to produce N95 masks. Masks don’t work, though.
    Grade: Hysteria Sells
  • April 28, 2020: President Trump issues an executive order via the DPA to combat food insecurity and “to ensure a continued supply of protein to Americans.”
    Grade: Shrug Emoji
  • January 21, 2021: President Biden invokes the DPA to pursue a “sustainable public health supply chain.”
    Grade: Total Scam
  • March 2, 2021: Biden uses the DPA to give money to Merck so that they can produce more Johnson & Johnson COVID injections
    Grade: Facepalm Emoji
  • September 2021: Biden invokes the DPA to supply fire hose materials to California, citing the climate hoax, because Gavin Newsom’s regime did not effectively manage California’s forests.
    Grade: Avoidable Crisis
  • May 18, 2022: Biden uses the DPA to import baby formula from overseas because American supply became catastrophically short.
    Grade: Cringeworthy 
  • June 6, 2022: Biden issues DPA to advance the climate hoax narrative and give government funds to solar panel companies that otherwise would go bankrupt due to the unproductive nature of their businesses.
    Grade: Boondoggle

June 6, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | | Leave a comment

Poles told to forage for wood to heat homes

Samizdat | June 6, 2022

Authorities in Warsaw have allowed citizens to forage for firewood in forests to keep their homes heated amid spiralling energy costs. Poland is in the midst of a coal shortage after banning Russian imports.

“It is always possible, with the consent of foresters, to collect branches for fuel,” Deputy Minister of Climate and Energy Edward Siarka was quoted by Next Gazeta as saying on Monday.

Those wishing to gather wood must first undergo training and obtain permission from the local forestry unit. The report went on to clarify that people can only take branches already lying on the ground, and cannot cut down trees.

“Only branches can be gathered. At the same time, the collected branches cannot be thicker than seven centimeters,” said Katowice Directorate of State Forestry official Marek Mroz.

He explained that branches should be taken to the local forester, who will issue an invoice. Collectors will have to pay between seven and 30 zlotys ($7.02) for approximately 0.25 cubic meters of firewood.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s government has blamed the war in Ukraine for skyrocketing energy costs. Critics, however, say the conflict is only partially to blame, arguing that costs have risen for the past seven years. Inflation in Poland has climbed to 14% in recent weeks, with fuel prices hitting 8 zlotys ($1.87) per liter.

Demand for raw materials in Poland has far exceeded domestic output since a ban on Russian coal was imposed. Throughout the military conflict in Ukraine, Warsaw has been calling for a complete embargo on Russian energy. In March, the EU nation said it would end all Russian energy imports, including oil, gas, and coal by the end of 2022.

According to media reports, Poland’s wood imports from Russia and Belarus stopped completely at the outbreak of the conflict, and those from Ukraine have fallen by around 75%.

June 6, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Hezbollah: US First Side to Blame for Preventing Lebanon from Gas Drilling

Al-Manar – June 6, 2022

Head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council Sayyed Hashem Safieddine stressed on Sunday that the United States is the first side to blame for preventing Lebanon from gas drilling.

In a local ceremony in south Lebanon, Sayyed Safieddine said “Lebanon has potentials to extract gas and oil off its shores,” calling on the Lebanese state not to subdue to all forms of pressures exerted by foreign sides in this regards.

The Hezbollah official called on the Lebanese state to officially announce the Lebanese maritime borders and the disputed areas, “in order for the Resistance, Army and People to throng together and retrieve Lebanon’s rights regardless of the US stance.”

Sayyed Safieddine in this regard, stressed the importance of Lebanese unity in order to cope with the country’s political and economic crises.

“Resistance is the only choice to defend Lebanon’s wealth and preserve our victories,” he said in remarks carried by Al-Manar.

June 6, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Most Preposterous Lie Is Too Much Even For The Washington Post

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | June 03, 2022

When President Biden talks, there may or may not be any connection between what he says and the real world. Yes, you need to give every politician some leeway, since most of what any politician says will fall in the general realm of political exaggeration or hyperbole. But even within the disreputable category of politicians, Biden can take the lack of connection with reality to a whole new level.

You may have your own favorite among Biden’s preposterous statements. For me, the very most preposterous is one that he has been making repeatedly for the past several months, namely that his energy plans, including expansion of wind and solar electricity generation together with fossil fuel suppression, will save American families the very specific amount of $500 per year each. This claim has popped up in multiple places and multiple formulations. One example came in the State of the Union speech back in March, where Biden said, “Let’s cut energy costs for families an average of $500 a year by combatting climate change.”

It’s just not possible for anyone who thinks about the subject for even a few minutes to believe that building more and more wind and solar generation facilities as our primary sources of energy will do anything other than vastly increase the costs of energy for the American people. Even in the early phases of the process, where wind and solar generation are well less than half of electricity generation (and electricity is then only about a third of total energy consumption), you obviously need full backup from some dispatchable source, almost always fossil fuels, to make your electricity grid work. That means that you will come to have two fully redundant electricity generation systems, when previously you had only one to produce the same amount of electricity. Two fully redundant systems can’t possibly be cheaper than just one. Then, if you insist on phasing out the fossil fuel backup and replacing it with battery or some other storage, you have to add the cost of that storage to the mix. Readers here know that the cost of backing up wind and solar electricity generation with battery storage is truly monumental, potentially a large multiple of the entire U.S. GDP. For more on that subject, see some of my prior posts, for example here and here.

And this is not just a question of models and projections that can be debated. As more and more wind and solar generation facilities have been added to the electrical grid in various places, the inevitable dramatic rise in cost to the consumer has in fact occurred. Steven Hayward at PowerLine in a post on Wednesday reproduces graphs showing the results for two of the most enthusiastic adopters of the wind and sun for electricity, California and Australia. Here is the chart for California:

As California has added more and more wind and solar generation, its electricity rates to the consumer have followed a sharply increasing pattern, up some 58.3% from 2008 to 2021. Even after adding all that renewable capacity, the percent of California’s electricity production from the wind and sun in 2020 was still only about a third, according to a February 2022 Report from the California Energy Commission. Thus California has not yet even begun to confront the challenge of phasing out fossil fuel production and trying to back up its electricity grid with batteries — that will occur when the percentage of electricity from intermittent renewables gets past 50%. But note that dotted red line near the bottom of the chart: the 41 states with “low penetration” of wind and solar generation only had rate increases of 9.5% between 2008 and 2021.

And here’s the chart for Australia:

After declining gradually for decades, Australia’s consumer electricity prices have about doubled since 2005. The doubling coincides with the rapid addition of new wind and solar generation facilities since that time. And as with California, Australia’s generation from the intermittent renewables remains well below 50% of electricity generation, meaning that again the vast cost increases inherent in phasing out fossil fuel backup have not yet begun to hit to any significant degree.

Similar patterns of electricity prices soaring as renewable generation increases can be found in other places with high penetration of renewables, for example Germany and Denmark.

With these data and plenty more like them out there, Biden continues to double down on his assertion of the supposed $500 per family per year “savings” from his plan for green energy transition. In a an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on May 30, Biden put it this way:

A dozen CEOs of America’s largest utility companies told me earlier this year that my plan would reduce the average family’s annual utility bills by $500 and accelerate our transition from energy produced by autocrats.

That line finally got the Washington Post’s “fact checker,” Glenn Kessler, on the job. Kessler’s June 2 piece has the headline “Biden’s fantastical claim of $500 in annual utility savings.” Kessler started by tracking down a White House transcript of the meeting that Biden held in February with the group of utility executives. There was no mention at all of a supposed $500 projected saving in “annual utility bills”:

But when we located the transcript of Biden’s conversation with utility executives on Feb. 9, we found no reference to $500 in utility savings. The figure was also not mentioned in the White House readout of the meeting.

When Kessler asked the White House for the source of Biden’s number, he was then referred to a report of something called Rhodium Group that projected an approximate $500 per household saving by 2030 not from lower utility bills, but largely from consumers switching to electric cars. Putting aside for a moment whether consumers switching to electric cars could save anybody any money as the government strives to destroy the electrical grid, Kessler points to these obvious flaws in Biden’s statement:

But he didn’t hear that [$500 figure] from utility executives. And the report he is citing is not about household utility-bill savings. Most of the claimed savings comes from the reduced cost of driving. And the estimate is for 2030 — when he would no longer be president, even if he served a second term.

Kessler then awards Biden four Pinocchios. And that’s without even figuring out that Biden’s plan to add more wind and solar to the grid is guaranteed to make electricity prices soar.

June 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »