“We Have to Have Our Abilities to Consume Reined In…”

In relation to my previous post, there’s a companion YouTube podcast of Michael Moore, Jeff Gibbs – the director of the film – and Ozzie Zehner who wrote the book The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism that inspired it. They discuss the reaction the film has been drawing. At the time I write this, there were eight comments, most of which were people OUTRAGED that they didn’t know this information.

I left this comment. I’m curious as to how long it will last before being deleted.

People like myself – I’m an electrical engineer – have been trying to point out that wind and solar are not viable alternatives to fossil fuels for literally decades, and the only reason they are implemented is the massive subsidies of taxpayer dollars. That electric cars are not “pollution-free” but instead move the pollution from the tailpipe to the smokestack of the power plant (not mentioning the pollution associated with battery manufacturing and disposal), which is usually located somewhere far away from the people who can afford electric vehicles. What have we received in return? Vitriol and hatred and accusations of being on the payroll of “Big Oil.” Well, as Mr. Gibbs discovered, we were right, and all that money WAS wasted. Now you want us to “rein in our ability to consume,” and control our population. Well, if you haven’t noticed, Europe isn’t reproducing at replacement rate. The only reason the US population is rising is immigration. But you’re telling the people living in the Third World, “We’ve got ours, you can’t have any. It’s for the Planet.” Who are you going to trust with the POWER to “rein in our ability to consume”? The same people you relied on in the Green movement?

“Less Must Be the New More.”

I strongly advise you to watch this film.  It is a brutal indictment of the environmental movement as organizations run by cynics taking advantage of useful idiots and financed by corporate billions.  It illustrates, with painstaking accuracy, the false promise of “green energy,” – wind, solar, biomass.

It is also an advertisement for the Voluntary Human Extinction movement.  Quotes from speakers starting at about 46 minutes in:

There are too many human beings using too much, too fast.

As a global community we really have got to start dealing with the issue of population.

Population growth continues to be, not the elephant, but the herd of elephants in the room.  We have to have our abilities to consume reined in, because we’re not good at reigning them in if there are seemingly unrestrained resources.

Just who is going to do the reining in?  And how?

The filmmaker has a valid point – there are real problems that need to be addressed, and the environmental movement is just a “feel-good” effort that is in fact counterproductive.  There is little to no incentive to actually address the problems, because no one wants to live like the Amish except the Amish, and I’m not certain about them.

But I did notice that the only comment made about nuclear energy was an aside jab at General Electric, which he notes makes both nuclear power plants and wind turbines.

Seriously, watch it.  It’s worth your time.  Meanwhile, I have to see my psychologist about my endorsement of a Michael Moore-backed documentary.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE]
UPDATE: 5/26/20 – “Planet of the Humans” has been yanked. One of the short sequences in the film was used without the permission of the creator of it, and he filed a Copyright takedown claim. Michael Moore is getting hammered by the Left for being RIGHT WING.

Read This. No, Seriously.

My Secret Life as a Reporter for “Doll Reader” Magazine

It’s not long. It’s the story of a woman who graduated with a double major in Women’s Studies and English who wanted to be a Journalist (capitalized on purpose – it was her calling!) for the Washington Post, but ended up writing for a collectible doll trade magazine and discovered that the B.S. that had been poured into her head her entire life actually was B.S.

The sheer arrogance and disdain she admits to towards people she considered beneath her (and that’s pretty much everyone she worked with) is TEXTBOOK for the Anointed Left.

She managed, at least somewhat, to overcome it. Reality has a tendency to do that.

The Eduocracy is Worried?

Harvard Magazine warns of the damage homeschooling can do to children.  Note that they used the Bible as one of the books, and that the cartoonist cannot (apparently) spell “Arithmetic” correctly.  Note that more than one critic of compulsory government schooling has pointed out that one tenet of the architects of “Public Education” was reducing the influence of parents on their own children to better condition them as good cogs for the social machine.

I Don’t Think the American People will Willingly Surrender Their Firearms

Over 342 MILLION background checks since 1999.  Not all new gun sales go through the FBI.  Some states do it internally.  Not all background checks involve the sale of a firearm.  Some may represent the sale of more than one firearm.  Not all firearm sales are of new firearms.

But I think The Narrative™ that there are only about 300 million firearms in private hands is well and truly busted, since as a nation we’ve been buying guns for 230+ years, not just the last 20.

And look at March, 2020.  Largest number of background checks in a month, EVER. Closest previous record was December, 2015.  What precipitated that again?  We’ve had more background checks in the first three months of 2020 than in the entire YEAR for 1999 through 2005.

And all the guns that have been purchased?  I don’t think the people who bought them did it with the intention that they’d give them up if asked nicely.

Quote of the Day – Robert Heinlein Edition ca. 1984

From an interview in the WaPo from September 5, 1984, In the Strange Land Of Robert Heinlein:

You can go to a cocktail party on the campus of a major university and be asked three times what sign were you born under. And we’ve got citizens in this culture who honest to God believe that professional athletes and actors are important people with opinions worth paying attention to!

And

I’m not convinced that we’re going to make it. I’ll bet on the human race. I’m just not sure about the United States of America.

Analysis: Truer today than ever.

Education Quote of the Day

Seen at Instapundit by Robert E. Wright of the American Institute for Economic Research:

As I recently argued elsewhere, America’s educational system has not prepared us for the government power grab because it does not create enough Emersonian independent thinkers or, frankly, even adult thinkers. Due to the extreme Left bias of higher education, many of America’s college graduates remain intellectually infantilized to the point that they can do little more than Tweet ignorant hate at any idea that does not accord with Progressive mantras.

 Analysis:  True. Read the piece in that second link.