The Pope; Joe Biden; & Other Flailing Lefties
The Pope; Joe Biden; & Other Flailing Lefties
In his Editor’s Column this week, Michael Walsh engaged in some ecclesiological commentary.
Was St. Malachy Right?
These are hard times for conservative Catholics. For the past 60 years, they have had to watch their church gradually but steadily abandon many of its bedrock principles in what was at first an attempt to stay "relevant" but now looks very much a hostile takeover by the forces of relativistic "progressivism." Under a series of weak and/or malicious popes, beginning with the unaccountably sainted John XXIII and continuing to the present day in the reign of the regrettable Pope Francis, the Church has abandoned its liturgy, its core beliefs, its traditions, its probity, and its sexual morality. Can things get worse? Of course they can.
And if you missed last week’s Editor’s Column, make sure you give it a read.
Dead Man Shuffling
If I were a Democrat -- and I thank the good Lord above every day that I am not -- I would be very, very worried about the New York Times/ Siena College poll that broke yesterday. "Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds" ran the headline. The story was even worse for the donkeys: critical swing-state voters hate just about everything pertaining to Joe Biden, including his age, his waning mental faculties, his policies, the direction of the country and, probably, his dogs too. It's as if the long-suffering American people finally burst out of their media-imposed prisons and, in a cheer moment that will likely end Biden's candidacy, thrashed the architect of their misfortunes.
Steven Hayward wrote about the ways in which climate concerns are merely a vehicle for a larger Leftist project.
The Hamas Wing of the 'Climate' Cult
Now and then the mask slips. Naomi Klein’s book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Versus the Climate, argues that only socialist revolution can solve the climate “crisis.” It isn’t hard to find philosophers and political scientists arguing that democracy itself should be sacrificed to fight climate change. The open embrace of authoritarianism makes evident that climate change is only a pretext for their real object, which is revolution and the drive for power to achieve it. If climate change didn’t exist as a cause to be exploited, the deep left would find something else—any cause will do to mobilize protest against civilization.
Right now the something else is the cause of Hamas, which is proving more able than Extinction Rebellion at getting large mobs into the streets. This was made evident when the Joan of Arc of the climate cult, Greta Thunberg, posted on social media a photo of herself declaring “Stand with Gaza,” alongside another activist with a “Climate justice now!” banner. It turns out that Thunberg is just as ignorant about the Middle East as she is about climate change: the photo included in the background a toy octopus—an old Nazi-era symbol of supposed global Jewish conspiracy.
With the joining of climate action and Hamas, we can think of Thunberg and her acolytes as the Hamas wing of the "climate change" cult. And instead of calling out the radicalism of Thunberg and her enabling elders like Klein, Oreskes, Gore, etc., the useful idiots of the media celebrate Thunberg. Time magazine named her “Person of the Year” in 2019—the youngest in the magazine’s history.
Joan Sammon explored the collapsing market for wind power.
Winds Dying Down for the 'Wind' Industry
With the recent announcement of multiple wind projects being canceled and the broader downturn of renewable energy exchange traded funds (ETFs) during the last half of this year, the strength of the Biden administration’s green energy transition initiative may be weakening. The markets -- broadly understood to reflect the sentiment of investors -- seems to be suggesting what many have understood since President Biden took office: that the green transition, often touted by wealthy globalists as some kind of social saving grace, lacks sufficient market relevance and acceptance to exist outside of the construct of subsidies, tax credits, and mandates imagined and promoted by globalist central planners dedicated to societal control and surveillance schemes.
In October, New York authorities denied requests from the world’s top offshore wind farm developer, Ørsted, and industry counterparts BP and Equinor to renegotiate their contracts for four offshore wind projects and 86 land-based projects. Ørsted, a Danish multinational is purportedly scrapping its Ocean Wind I & II projects, located off southern New Jersey due to what it described as problems with supply chains, higher interest rates and a failure to obtain additional tax credits above the 30 percent the company already had secured. The two projects were supposed to deliver over 2.2 gigawatts of power.
Meanwhile, the canceled New England contracts, representing three more projects, would have provided another 3.2 gigawatts of wind-generated power to Massachusetts and Connecticut. Those developers likewise said their projects were no longer financially feasible.
The combined 5.4 gigawatts generation capacity just canceled, represents 31 percent of the 17.4 gigawatt target envisioned by the administration, according to data from ClearView Energy Partners and the Energy Department. Between the cancellations from last month and others previously announced, more than half of the 17.4 gigawatt target has been canceled or are at risk of being canceled.
Representative of a trend that has been percolating in the stock market since earlier this year, these cancellations have worsened the outlook further. The S&P Global Clean Energy Index, comprised of the 100 biggest companies in the renewable energy sector had, as of last month, an abysmal year-to-date return of -31.08 percent. Similarly, the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF had a -29.78 percent YTD return.
Ørsted sounded the alarm in early August when it warned shareholders and the broader market of up to $2.3 billion of impairments on its U.S. project portfolio. Ørsted share price has dropped 56.89 percent this year, with most of the decline accumulated since August as the viability of Ocean Wind I & II began to fade. Similarly, the U.S., NextEra Energy Partners LP, the renewable energy company of NextEra Energy, had its shares decrease by 70.93 percent so far this year.
While supply chains and economic conditions have undoubtedly tightened since these projects were first envisioned by energy developers and by the Biden Administration, the push toward a green energy transition has never been an initiative seeking improved economics for consumers. Rather, improved economics were only going to be realized by those promoting the "climate change" narrative and advocating for the lucrative projects that flow from it. Those who believed they would financially benefit from the administration‘s green energy projects in the U.S. and those across Europe are the same entities that have unceasingly beaten the world about the head with a false choice—wind- and solar-powered electrification or societal destruction.
But most Americans know better. It was only three years ago after all when this green transition was fully thrust upon us during the throes of a dubiously originated virus. America at that time was the producer of abundant and inexpensive fossil-fuel products when Biden took office. So efficient at producing inexpensive energy was the U.S. back then that America was a net exporter of oil and gas to markets around the world. Since then, the administration has sought to dismantle that economic advantage.
Relatedly, Tom Finnerty blogged about the possibility that the Biden Administration might bail out the Green Energy industry.
'Renewable' Energy: Too Big to Fail?
Finnerty also contributed a blog post on yet another environmentalist attack on a priceless work of art.
The 'Climate' Vandals are Back, with Hammers
David Cavena wrote about major stumbling blocks for the E.V. industry.
The Return of the Edsel?
People are creatures of habit. We have become habituated over the past century-plus, to convenient, affordable personal transportation. Politicians and their apologists in the media and academy are attempting to force us to buy vehicles powered by expensive, inconvenient, exploding, environmentally toxic (before and after use) batteries, without providing any valid reason for us to do so.
Now governments and private companies all over the world are finally seeing the whole “climate change” narrative for what it is: a hoax, and a financially unsustainable one, at that. Telling us to make a large purchase justified only by the promise that it will save the world is dumb. Expecting us to do so is even dumber. It isn't easy to change something so fundamental to one's lifestyle as personal transport, especially when doing so is very expensive. When a young couple wants to start a family or buy a home, or an older couple wishes to fund their retirement – things these same politicians have made unaffordable – expecting them to buy a battery-powered car is, to say the least, unrealistic.
On the other side of the equation, car manufacturers must make a profit in order to stay in business. Political incursions into the marketplace undermine that. Motivated subsidies to manufacturers to build products their customers do not want only waste the resources necessary to succeed, as well as increasing the inflation making it yet more difficult to buy these contraptions – and everything else.
It seems that the CEOs of the biggest car companies in the world are belatedly recognizing this, and that the bloom is coming off the E.V. rose. The result bodes well for their future and our freedom, and poorly for politicians on Team Zero.
A topic Finnerty touched on as well, with a particular eye to the rental car business.
Rent an E.V.? No Thanks
And Elizabeth Nickson looked into a hot new scheme out of the environmentalist playbook.
As 'Net-Zero' Comes a Cropper, a New Threat Arises
The entire universe envies the lush interior of the U.S. Increasingly empty, it is filled with a cornucopia of minerals, fiber, food, waters, extraordinarily fertile soil as well as well-ordered, educated, mostly docile people. Worth in the quadrillions, if one could monetize and trade it, financialize it, the way the market has financialized the future labor of Americans, well, it would be like golden coins raining from the sky.
On October 4th, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a proposed rule to create Natural Asset Companies (NACs). A twenty-one day comment period was allowed, which is half the minimum number of days generally required. NACs will allow BlackRock, Bill Gates, and possibly even China to hold the ecosystem rights to the land, water, air, and natural processes of the properties enrolled in NACs. Each NAC will hold “management authority” over the land. When we are issued carbon allowances, owners of said lands will be able to claim tax deductions and will be able to sell carbon allowances to businesses, families and townships. In the simplest of terms, that's where the money will be made. WE peons will be renting air from the richest people on earth.
The following are eligible for NACs: National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, Wilderness Areas, Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, Conservation Areas on Private and Federal Lands, Endangered Species Critical Habitat, and the Conservation Reserve Program. Lest you think that any conserved land is conserved in your name, the largest Conservation organization in the U.S., is called The Nature Conservancy, or TNC, which, while being a 501(c)3, also holds six billion dollars of land on its books. Those lands have been taken using your money via donations and government grants, and transferred to the Nature Conservancy, which can do with those lands what it wills.
If this rule passes, America's conserved lands and parks will move onto the balance sheets of the richest people in the world. Management of those lands will be decided by them and their operations, to say the least, will be opaque.
That’s all for this week, but keep a look out for our upcoming pieces at The Pipeline!