The ultimate inversion

 

On his first day in office, President Biden dispatched a letter to the United Nations, blithely signaling that the United States was back on board with the Paris “Climate” Agreement.

President Obama was the first president to formally drag the United States into the concealed stratagem agreement back in September 2016. He managed to do so under international law through “executive authority,” since, on the surface, it allegedly imposed no new legal obligations on our country; although he agreed to commit U.S. citizens to turning over some $3 billion US green tax dollars to the insatiable Green Climate Fund …a fund that set for itself a goal of raising $100 billion a year by 2020!

However, when President Donald Trump, following through on a campaign promise, mucked things up for the gullible global warming crowd by officially pulling the nation out of the hornet’s nest November 4, 2020— the earliest possible date under the agreement and a day after the presidential election, the earth’s surface temperature actually did experience a peculiar upsurge.

Be that as it may, Melissa Denchak, a freelance writer who has a culinary diploma from New York City’s Institute of Culinary Education and loves writing stories about food, couldn’t wait to indulge in the new climate cuisine, spouting, “This new era of U.S. climate leadership represents our last, best chance to course-correct in the global race to tackle climate change. In fact, the Biden’s climate plan,” she eulogizes, “is the most comprehensive ever undertaken by a U.S. president—and he intends to rally international leaders to cut emissions even more aggressively than under the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

And, if we are to take the word of the Democratic National Committee, “Joe Biden knows there is no greater challenge facing our country and our world. That’s why he is outlining a bold plan —a Clean Energy Revolution—to address this grave threat and lead the world in addressing the climate emergency.”

According to a peer-reviewed study published June 29, 2021, by five lead authors in the journal Global Environmental Change, we Americans must slash our energy use 87 percent and abandon limited government and our free economy if we are to live “sustainably” and meet the goals of the Paris Climate Accord.

Although the study’s authors concede that only countries with high energy use accomplish “decent living standards,” they nonetheless conclude that our political and economic systems are “misaligned with the aspirations of sustainable development” and are “unfit for the challenges of the 21st century.”

Suggests Craig Rucker, President for The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a Washington, D.C.-based 501 nonprofit organization founded in 1985 that advocates for free-market solutions to environmental issue, “You can kiss individual freedom and prosperity goodbye, along with individual housing, cars, air travel, entrepreneurship, and even eating meat.”

Apparently, the problem with the world is that you and I are too free.

I advise you to read the lead-in to the “Abstract” from the recently published “Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use: An international analysis of social provisioning”:

“Using a novel analytical framework alongside a novel multivariate regression based moderation approach (everyone knows what kind of approach that is, right?) and data for 106 countries, we analyze[z] e how the relationship between energy use and six dimensions of human need satisfaction varies with a wide range of socio-economic factors relevant to the provisioning of goods and services.”

While a glut of professors and research fellows claim to “understand what defines and characteris[z] es human needs, and what levels of which goods, services and conditions generally satisfy these needs,” and given “the socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use have been highlighted as crucial areas of research,” these high-caliber (am I allowed to use that word anymore?) folk admit these factors “remain virtually unstudied.” In fact, “studies are almost entirely absent.”

“Ultimately,” the magnificent five conclude, “the socio-ecological performance of countries is highly contingent upon the broader political-economic regime.” (They chose the right noun there!)

This would seem to solicit, as their findings boldly imply, “The dominant political-economic regime is unsuitable for meeting the needs of all people at sustainable levels of energy use.”

Solution: “A fundamental transformation of the political-economic regime may be necessary to prioritis[ z]e and realis[z]e the provisioning of sufficient need satisfaction within sustainable levels of energy use.”

In plain English: “The government will decide what should be sufficient for each of us to fulfill our human need satisfaction.

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” —Ayn Rand