Leftists vs. Masculinity; The EPA vs. Markets; & Sweden vs. Renewables
Leftists vs. Masculinity; The EPA vs. Markets; & Sweden vs. Renewables
In his Editor’s Column this week, Michael Walsh considered our culture’s war on the masculine virtues and argues that we will miss them once they’re gone.
In Praise of Toxic Masculinity
Today, St. Martin's Press will publish the paperback edition of my 2020 military history, Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost. The book, my first venture into this particular field, sold out the first week of its publication (December), forcing the publisher to go back to the printer for tens of thousands more copies. I am therefore grateful to you, my readers, for making this book such a success….
Unsurprisingly, the most controversial aspect of my tour of the historical battlefield was found in my Introduction, "To Die For," an examination of the specifically masculine virtues involved in war, including my argument that women have no place in combat, that an army that finds itself fielding women is one that has already lost. This outraged some fantasy-land feminists, but as I complete the sequel, A Rage to Live, A Time to Die for publication next year, and having surveyed in detail commanders such as Achilles, Alexander, Caesar, Constantine, Aetius, Bohemond, Napoleon, Pershing, Nimitz, and Patton -- and putting them all into a Clausewitzian context via a close reading in German of Book One of On War-- I am even more certain of my thesis than before.
Fundamental to my understanding is the demonstrable fact that among human beings, war is the norm and peace the aberration, and in order to survive, society in all important aspects must be organized around that basic principle and fact of life. This is how the book opens:
“The state of peace among men living side by side is not the natural state; the natural state is one of war,” wrote Immanuel Kant in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795). “This does not always mean open hostilities, but at least an unceasing threat of war.” Indeed, war is the natural state of man, and the history of the world is written in blood... To observe that war is crucial to civilizational advancement is also to observe the following: that human beings have a larger purpose than simply living out their threescore and ten. That men are born to father children and defend them and their women against other men who would kill them or otherwise take advantage of them.
That the measure of a real man is not how much money he makes (although that is one metric, to use current jargon) but what he has done in his life: how far he has sailed, how well he has loved, how he has raised his children, and how much, or little, they love him. What he has contributed to the historical record, what he has left in the way of posterity, and for posterity; his mark, whether it be empire or a simple X. Every age, it seems, yearns for peace but—heeding the old Roman maxim, Si vis pacem, para bellum—prepares for war.
This issue of "toxic masculinity" has loomed even larger over the past few years, as certain segments of our society have now gone full speed ahead in their attempted destruction of the biological boundaries between male and female, claiming that sex differences (they use the odious squid-ink word "gender") are arbitrary, artificial constructs. But there is nothing artificial about the thrust of a bayonet through the chest, or the primeval evolutionary necessity to sacrifice oneself for your comrades during battle, or the physical strength, endurance, and just simple rage than marks the male animal in an existential fight. Let us hope that our civilization doesn't have to relearn this lesson the hard way, although it probably will. Women should no more be expected to die in combat than men should be expected to die in childbirth.
Clarice Feldman wrote about the EPA’s recent, questionable attempts to transform the automobile market.
Catch 22: the EPA v. the Free Market
Only 6 percent of new vehicles sold today are electric. That's because the market for them is generally limited to wealthy buyers who live in warmer climates, travel shorter distances, and can take advantage of the substantial tax credits for electric vehicles. The rest of us are put off by the fact that these cars are less efficient and more expensive.
In the hopes of driving that percentage up, and with the stated purpose of combatting "climate change," the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has come up with a new scheme — artificially scaling back the number of gas-fueled vehicles automakers produce. To accomplish this they have proposed new regulations whereby the auto industry would have to cut emissions by half by 2032. This would ensure that most cars (67 percent) sold by that date are electric vehicles.
Of course, this won't do anything positive for the environment — it isn't as if electricity is created by the outlet you insert the plug into and the rare metals their batteries require grow on trees. But what does the EPA care about facts when there is an ideology to be imposed?
Alas, controlling markets is easier said than done, meaning the EPA's plan is unlikely to succeed. Francis Menton explains why:
The current automotive sector of the economy represents thousands of elements coming together via private markets to satisfy customer demand. Each of the elements falls into place because someone perceives an opportunity to make money by providing that element. As just one example, gas stations don’t exist because the government ordered them up, but because entrepreneurs perceived that they could make money by building the stations and buying the pumps and making gasoline available at that location at a price that would cover all costs and allow for a profit.
Contrast that to what is now supposed to happen for electric vehicles. The government is allegedly going to be paying for some half a million charging stations around the country.... And why does the government have to do this? If the demand were there, entrepreneurs would already be installing the stations. It turns out that the stations are quite expensive to construct (at least the “fast charging” variety), and then you can’t really mark up the electricity that has to be purchased from the local utility. So it has to be done with government subsidy.
He furthers wonder what will happen when those government-built charging stations break, since there's no market incentive to keep them operational. The answer is they'll stay broken! This is what current E.V. owners are already finding. "That's how socialism works," says Menton. Which is to say, it doesn't.
Our Founding Editor, John O’Sullivan, looked into the growing realization in Europe that “renewables” are not the energy source of the future.
The Dogs Bark and the 'Net-Zero' Caravan Moves On
One of the commonest errors in making public policy is to assume that the solution to a problem must be related to—indeed, generally the opposite of—whatever caused the problem. In fact there is no necessary general connection between a problem’s cause and its solution. In some cases, there may be such a link: for instance, getting someone who has just taken a drug overdose to swallow an emetic in order to vomit the problem out. On the other hand, when a fire brigade arrives at a burning building, it doesn’t search for the causes of the fire, it simply aims the water and extinguishes it.
Similarly, in dealing with the problem of "climate change," we face a range of possible solutions: some based on trying to reduce its presumed cause, namely the use of fossil fuels. This is the method we refer to as mitigation. Others are based on making the impact of fossil fuels less damaging, also known as adaptation. And a third based on technical “fixes” such as increasing cloud cover to block or even reverse warming.
These distinctions are important because it’s becoming clearer that the policies based on mitigation, notably net-zero—adopted by the United Nations, the European Union, and almost all the institutions of supra-national authority—have costs that are far heavier than the predicted costs of "climate change" itself.
That’s an irrationality in itself, with further irrational consequences. For these heavier costs will have to be paid by people living today who are predicted to be considerably poorer than people living in the future. It's urgent too, because the costs will be arriving in the next few years— by 2025, 2030, or 2035 (experts differ) — with, for instance, “Green” tax levies and regulations mandating electric cars and home heating systems that are much more expensive (and often less efficient) than the ones they currently own. And that's not even taking into account the enormous capital investment, financed inevitably from higher taxes, that will be needed to “electrify” any country that opts for electric vehicles over petrol-driven ones.
What follows from all this is that "climate change" policy will have to move on from net-zero to far less costly solutions rooted in adaptation and technical innovation. That’s the background to the recent rash of government reversals of policy following electoral setbacks and consumer resistance to their plans.
Reliance on renewable energy sources looks likely to be the first casualty of this new recognition of reality. Sweden’s government announced in late June that it was abandoning its former target of a one hundred percent renewable energy supply and adopting instead what the government called a “technology-neutral” aspiration for a "fossil-free" energy supply. Sweden’s finance minister, Elisabeth Svantesson, told the Swedish parliament: “This creates the conditions for nuclear power. We need more electricity production, we need clean electricity, and we need a stable energy system.”
Sweden’s move from renewables to nuclear is a very significant one because the Swedes, like the Germans, have been highly averse to nuclear power. It probably marks the beginning of the end of “renewables” as the solution to global warming.
But as Dr. John Constable of Net-Zero Watch points out it’s a fairly modest change—moving from renewables to nuclear, biomass, and hydro-power and still aiming to abandon fossil fuels entirely—that’s only possible for a large country with a small population like Sweden. It couldn’t work for big industrialized nations like Germany, France, and the U.K. which must still rely massively on fossil fuels if their economies are to survive and prosper.
Peter Smith compared the grand plans of Australia’s climate activist government with the reality of things on the ground.
Climateer$ Meet Small-Town Australia
‘Net Zero Australia’ is a partnership between the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland, Princeton University and international management consultancy Nous Group. Launched in 2021, it aims to set out how Australia can reach net-zero for products used domestically by 2050 and for exports by 2060. It uses modelling developed by Princeton University and Evolved Energy Research for their 2020 Net-Zero America study.
Be skeptical. Models of complex reality spit out results, often treated as gospel, on the basis of selective hypotheticals fed into a highly-simplified set of equations which cannot possibly mirror the complexity of real life. Thus, they are universally hopeless at predicting outcomes which deviate much from the prevailing norm. For example, find an economic model which predicted the sub-prime crisis? There isn’t one.
Net Zero Australia released its report on July 12, 2023. It is not recommended reading. It’s seventy-one pages of questions and different scenarios (six of them), of diagrams and dot points. Writing a concise report in plain English has gone out of fashion. The reason is evident. "Bullshit baffles brains," is the way one former colleague of mine used to put it. There is however an eye-watering bottom line which concentrates the mind.
Apparently, Australia (governments plus the private sector collectively) has to spend “up to $9 trillion on the transition in the next 37 years.” Of this, AUD1.5 trillion must be spent by the end of the decade. Put this in context. Take USD1.5 trillion. A whole heap of money, even in America, yet it’s only about 6 or so percent of United States’ GDP. An amount of AUD1.5 trillion is over two-thirds the value of Australian GDP. It is simply an unbelievable amount of money for Australia to find. And AUD9 trillion? I wouldn’t be surprised if China was able to buy all of Australia’s recoverable resources for that amount of money, which it could then exploit without the least worry about emitting CO2; being a developing country and all.
What we have is a disconnect, as I will shortly come to, between paper plans developed by white-collar activists posing as researchers and action on the ground. I’m reminded of Mike Tyson’s well known remark, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Of the things Australia must plan to do before 2030 to reach the nirvana of net-zero, this below is a mere sample:
Strengthen deployment drivers of renewables, transmission, and electricity storage, as the most important decarbonisation options… Begin planning and development of clean hydrogen infrastructure, including hydrogen storage… implement emission standards for all road vehicles… Decide and communicate the future of gas distribution to household and commercial customers… Implement integrated planning and delivery for renewable energy zones.
Take the last of the things above; apropos renewable energy zones. And juxtapose doings at Muswellbrook, which came to light in the news only two days before the 'Net-Zero report' was released. Muswellbrook (pop.≈ 12,000) is a small town on the New England Highway in the state of New South Wales. Trucks carrying wind turbine blades measuring up to 90 metres long and almost 7 metres in diameter have to be carried from the port of Newcastle -- where they are landed from China – along the New England Highway through Muswellbrook to a planned renewable energy zone near Armadale further north. Problem. The trucks cannot fit under the railway underpass in Muswellbrook, which has a height limit of 5.2 metres. A planned bypass will need to be built at a cost of $340 million. This will take years.
Separately, a small bridge just outside of Muswellbrook is on a different highway to another planned renewable energy zone near Dubbo in the central west of the state. As Sharon Pope of the Muswellbrook shire council reportedly said, “the only two options to get trucks across the Denman Bridge would be to pull it down and make it bigger or build a second bypass. Neither would come cheap.”
In the meantime, the trucks have to skirt the highways and travel on local roads. Local roads wind and the trucks have difficulty turning and churn up the roads, which are not built to carry heavy traffic. Who’s to pay for road repairs, asks the Muswellbrook shire council plaintively? Did the planners include this cost and others like them in their modelling? Silly question. It’s a literal case of plans being undone when the rubber meets the road. Not surprising for government projects.
Tom Finnerty blogged about a new paper analyzing the I.E.A.’s Net-Zero by 2050 report.
The Friedrich Engels Theory of Energy
Rupert Darwall has edited a new paper responding to the International Energy Agency's much-hyped report, Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector. The whole paper is worth your time, as is Darwall's write-up on it at RealClearEnergy. Suffice to say, the IEA report, for all the adulation it received from ESG activists, doesn't stand-up to any amount of real scrutiny.
According to Darwall, "The fundamental assumption underlying the IEA’s net-zero roadmap is that the superiority of alternatives to hydrocarbons—principally wind and solar —will cause demand for coal, oil, and natural gas to wither away." He refers to this as the "Friedrich Engels theory of renewable energy." Just as Engels believed that his imagined communist utopia would, over time, cause the state to "wither away," bringing about the end of coercive government, the IEA holds that eventually traditional energy sources will simply disappear.
This theory is likely to work out about as well as Engels' did when exposed to harsh reality. But Darwall highlights the rather strange and contradictory use that activists have put this argument to. "Progressive groups seized the IEA’s report to justify—indeed, to require—a ban on investment in new oil and gas projects." After all, they'll wither away even faster if the jack boot of the States stomps them to death. Here's one example:
Last year, a resolution filed at the ExxonMobil annual meeting... cited the IEA net-zero report and requested the company’s board to produce an audited report on the impact of applying the IEA’s net-zero assumptions on the company’s financial statements. The resolution received the support of 51.0 percent of voting shareholders.
Darwall's point if so-called "renewables" are so clearly superior to hydrocarbon-based energy that the former will, organically, cause the latter to disappear, then why do they need to ban oil-and-gas investment? Won't those investments just naturally cease? Apparently activist investors are as unconvinced by the IEA's claims as we are.
David Cavena wondered whether conservatives should get behind the Left’s war on dams.
Addition by Subtraction?
America is in the midst of a war on dams. In the past few years, well over a thousand dams have been removed, and we're currently demolishing between fifty and sixty per year. Now there's talk of removing one of the biggest, Glen Canyon Dam, which backs-up northern Arizona's Lake Powell, on the Colorado River, the second-largest reservoir in America.
There are a number of reasons this is happening. Age is one -- more than 85 percent of dams in the U.S. are over fifty years old, and the cost of maintaining or replacing them is exorbitant. But environmentalists, who view dams as an unwelcome intrusion of man into the natural world, are a major driver of the trend. That fact will understandably make conservatives wary. But removing Glen Canyon Dam might be one of those serendipitous moments in which the goods of modernity and the goals of the “climate change” cohort converge.
And, finally, our very own acclimatised beauty Jenny Kennedy tries to save Canada.
Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Extinguishing
That’s all for this week, but keep a look out for our upcoming articles at The Pipeline!