- Heroes, Villains, And Establishment Hypocrisy
Heroes, Villains, And Establishment Hypocrisy
Trump and Johnson’s populism have shaken the old Establishment, and raised some very interesting questions about who is and who is not nowadays inside the Establishment and a beneficiary of the protection of the liberal elite.
This week, two startling examples in the news coverage cast a very lurid light on this question, and I ask you to consider the curious cases of Hunter Biden and Brendan Cox, two of the most undeserving and unpleasant people that can be imagined.
The BBC news bulletins led on the move to impeach Donald Trump for, as they put it, his efforts to get the President of Ukraine to undermine a political opponent. To be plain, I think Trump was quite wrong to get personally involved in this, but please park the entire subject of Donald Trump to one side for the next ten minutes.
What I find deeply reprehensible in all the BBC coverage is their failure to report the facts of the case, and their utter lack of curiosity about why Joe Biden’s son Hunter was paid $60,000 a month by Burisma, Ukraine’s largest natural gas producer, as an entirely absent non-executive director, when he had no relevant experience in Ukraine or gas, and very little business experience, having just been dishonorably discharged from the Navy Reserve for use of crack cocaine? Is that question not just little bit interesting? That may be the thin end of it – in 2014-15 Hunter Biden received US $850,000 from the intermediary company channeling the payments. In reporting on Trump being potentially impeached for asking about it, might you not expect some analysis – or at least mention – of what he was asking about?
As far as I am aware, the BBC have not reported at all the other thing Trump was asking Zelensky about – Crowdstrike. Regular readers will recall that Crowdstrike are the Clinton linked “cyber-security” company which provided the “forensic data” to the FBI on the alleged Russian hack of the DNC servers – data which has been analysed by my friend Bill Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA, who characterises it as showing speeds of transfer impossible by internet and indicating a download to an attached drive. The FBI were never allowed access to the actual DNC server – and never tried, taking the DNC’s consultants word for the contents, which itself is sufficient proof of the bias of the “investigation”.
Crowdstrike also made the claim that the same Russia hackers – “Fancy Bear” – who hacked the DNC, hacked Ukrainian artillery software causing devastating losses of Ukrainian artillery. This made large headlines at the time. What did not make any MSM headlines was the subsequent discovery that all of this never happened and the artillery losses were entirely fictitious. As Crowdstrike had claimed that it was the use of the same coding in the DNC hack as in the preceding (non-existent) Ukraine artillery hack, that proved Russia hacked the DNC, this is pretty significant. Trump was questioning Zelensky about rumours the “hacked” DNC server was hidden in the Ukraine by Crowdstrike. The media has no interest in reporting any of that at all.
It is plain in that case that Trump is the media’s villain and the Bidens, father and son, are therefore heroes being protected by the Establishment media.
Now let us look at the case of Brendan Cox.
Boris Johnson’s behaviour in the Commons this week was reprehensible. Watching the unrepentant and aggressive braying of the Tory MPs, I was genuinely concerned about the consequences for democracy should these empowered right wingers ever get a majority. Johnson has removed the social restraint which used to cloak their atavistic instincts.
This Tory display also very much reinforced what I have been saying for years, that we will not gain Scottish Independence through a repeat of 2014. We were allowed a referendum with only moderate cheating by the British state purely because they believed there was no chance we could win. They have been disabused. There will never be a Section 30 order an an agreed referendum again. We will have to seize Independence by means which the British state will deem unlawful. Anybody not prepared to do that is not serious about Independence.
I digress. Johnson’s behaviour is appalling and he is at an interesting stage where the Establishment and its media is unsure whether to embrace or repudiate him, the calculation depending on whether they think he will win, and on the impact of Brexit on their personal financial interests. But as with Trump, I ask you to set aside your judgement on Johnson and not think of him for a moment.
Yesterday BBC news programmes brought us repeated appearances of Brendan Cox to comment on Boris Johnson and other MP’s parliamentary behaviour. This Brendan Cox:
One such allegation was that Cox pinned a co-worker to a wall by her throat while telling her ‘I want to fuck you’. Cox left the organisation before being subjected to scrutiny on this and other allegations. However, another woman, a senior US official who met him at a Harvard University event, made similar allegations against him, ‘of grabbing her by the hips, pulling her hair, and forcing his thumb into her mouth’ ‘in a sexual way’.
In contrast to Assange’s treatment, and despite a social-media furore, for nearly three years there was largely a media blackout on the story. At last, in February 2018, a right-wing tabloid broke the embargo and reported the allegations, and other news organisations had to follow suit. Finally, ‘Cox apologised for the “hurt and offence” caused by his past behaviour’ and announced he was withdrawing from public life.
I strongly recommend you to read that last linked article.
Cox is very much on the wavelength of the Establishment media, a full member of the New Labour neo-liberal elite who shuttled between jobs in the Labour Party and in high paying neo-liberal propaganda organisation Save the Children. Cox was personally pocketing £106,000 a year plus expenses from donations to the “charity”. A serial unfaithful sexual aggressor, his wife’s murder sees him recast by the media as the grieving survivor of a perfect marriage. Precisely his strongest political supporters – Jess Phillips, Stella Creasy etc – are Julian Assange’s bitterest opponents due to far flimsier, hotly denied and less attested sexual allegations than those against Cox. But neo-liberals get a free pass from the modern feminist movement (cf Bill Clinton).
Boris Johnson’s behaviour was a disgrace. But that is no reason for the BBC rehabilitation of the “retired from public life” sexual predator.
The fascinating thing is the binary, good versus evil, narrative which is being pursued in the liberal media. Trump and Johnson are bad. Therefore Hunter Biden and Brendan Cox must be good. The truth, of course, is much more complex than that. I am afraid to say that if you want an excessive simplification, a more accurate one would be that the entire political elite on all sides are self-serving and venal.
There is a more interesting story inside that, where significant portions of the public have lost respect for the Establishment, due in large part to the vast and increasing wealth gap in society, but this disillusion has been battened on by populist charlatans, and particularly directed against immigrants. This feels like an extremely unstable phase in society and politics. But instability brings the possibility of radical change, which is indeed much needed. We must all work for good from it.
* * *
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, Craig’s blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate. Subscriptions to keep Craig’s blog going are gratefully received.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2019 – 23:45 - For Renters, These Are The Most Expensive Neighborhoods In The US
For Renters, These Are The Most Expensive Neighborhoods In The US
Peak renting season is upon us, and RentCafe is back with its annual ranking of the most expensive ZIP codes for renters in the US.
Unsurprisingly, different ZIP codes in New York City and across California snagged the most spots in the top 50, thanks to a profusion of high-paying jobs in industries like tech and finance.
NYC has 28 ZIP codes in the top 50; of those, 26 are in Manhattan and there’s one each in Brooklyn and Queens. 18 ZIP codes in Cali and 4 in Boston round out the top 50.
ZIP code 10282 in Manhattan’s Battery Park City has retained the No. 1 spot as the most expensive ZIP code in the country since last year, with apartment rents climbing above $6,000. ZIP Code 10013, which covers the neighborhoods of Tribeca and SoHo – some of the trendiest spots in the city. In third place for Manhattan renters is ZIP code 10023, which covers some of the Upper West Side, where Central Park views have driven rents north of $5,000 a month.
The most expensive ZIP codes for renters in Cali range across Los Angeles, San Francisco, Corte Madera, Redwood City, Culver City, Menlo Park, San Mateo, Mountain View, Marina Del Rey, Santa Monica, Cupertino and Sunnyvale, Cali.
Outside of NYC, the most expensive ZIP Code is LA’s Westwood 90024, ranked 4th with an average rent of $4,944. In 5th place nationwide is Los Angeles ZIP Code 90048, covering parts of West Hollywood and Beverly Grove.
Boston is the only city outside of Cali and New York to make the top 50 list, with four ZIP codes. The priciest rents are in 02210 in Boston’s Seaport District/West Broadway area, with an average apartment rent above $4,000.
Outside of the top 50, RentCafe also created a chart showing the most expensive ZIP codes for renters in each region.
To look through a searchable database of ZIP codes to see if yours made it on the most-expensive list, click here.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2019 – 23:25 - China Unveils "Super Surveillance Camera" That Can Link To Its Social Credit System
China Unveils “Super Surveillance Camera” That Can Link To Its Social Credit System
Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
Device can identify individual faces out of crowds of tens of thousands; Will take mass surveillance to a new level
A new camera with a resolution five times more detailed than the human eye, able to monitor thousands of people in real time and identify individual faces has been unveiled by Chinese scientists, prompting renewed fears about mass surveillance.
ABC News in Australia reports that the new 500 megapixel cloud camera AI system, dubbed a ‘super camera’, was revealed at China’s International Industry Fair last week.
The camera system, equipped with state of the art facial recognition utilities, was designed by Fudan University and Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The designers claim that the system can detect and identify thousands of human faces or other objects in real time and instantly locate specific targets in environments such as crowded stadiums.
Of course, it would work equally as well at protests.
The designers suggested that police could set up the camera system in the center of Shanghai and monitor the movement of crowds, while cross-checking the images with medical and criminal records.
Li Daguang, a professor at the National Defense University of the People’s Liberation Army in Beijing told the Global Times that the system could “very easily be applied to national defense, military and public security.”
Technology like this in the hands of Communist Chinese authorities, who already operate a citizen social credit system, does not bode well for privacy rights and freedom.
“The Party-state has massive databases of people’s images and the capability to connect them to their identity, so it isn’t inconceivable that technology like this is possible if not now then in the future,” Samantha Hoffman, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noted.
The social credit system, which rewards ‘good behavior’ with incentives and punishes disobedience by restricting and banning people from buying travel tickets, is currently enforced using a vast network of over 200 million surveillance cameras, as well as other tracking tools.
However, the 500 million pixel ‘super camera’ would take surveillance capabilities to a different level.
Scientists noted that the current crop of cameras are able to monitor thousands of people at once, but each face is in the wide shot can only be represented by a few pixels, meaning “you couldn’t clearly see your targeted person at all”.
The data from the video will be “fed into a pool of data that, combined with AI processing, can generate tools for social control, including tools linked to the Social Credit System” said the ASPI’s Hoffman.
Of course, this kind of thing is all fine because it’s all the way away in China, right?
Wrong.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2019 – 23:05 - Marriage Rates Are Falling Due To Shortage Of "Economically Attractive" Men, Study Finds
Marriage Rates Are Falling Due To Shortage Of “Economically Attractive” Men, Study Finds
In the US, conventional feminists talk about the ‘wage gap’ like it’s some kind of international conspiracy to short-change women. On ‘Equal Pay Day’ and other new feminist holidays, numbers like ’78 cents on the dollar’ are bandied about, supposedly representing the gulf between what women and men earn for the same job.
Of course, many women who are ‘outraged’ by the wage gap probably don’t understand how that number was produced. They would probably be offended if somebody mentioned that different studies have arrived at wildly different conclusions about the gap in pay between women and men. Amusingly, at the highest echelons of corporate America, females are routinely paid more than their male counterparts.
But in a new study published by the Journal of Marriage and Family, a team of Cornell sociologists looked at the factors behind America’s falling marriage and family-formation rates. They found that American women are struggling to find ‘suitable’ partners due to a lack of ‘financially eligible’ bachelors.
In other words: America’s men are too unemployed, broke and sad to marry.
The study’s lead author, Daniel Lichter, who has been studying marriage in the US for 30 years, gave an interview to the New York Post, where he declared that there’s a “shortage” of “economically attractive” men. He blamed the “lack of good jobs” and the gig economy for this situation.
But the roots of this problem are even deeper. Today, college graduation rates are higher for women than for men, while men have been disproportionately impacted by the opioid epidemic, representing more than 70% of all addicts. They also experience higher rates of suicide.
Not only do women hold more advanced degrees than men; they are also beginning to replace men as the prime breadwinners for families. This gap has led to more “highly educated” women “marrying down.”
One single New York City woman shared some of her “theories” about what’s going on with men with the NYP:
Single New Yorker Gina Thibodeaux has some theories of her own about the fella famine.
“I find generally that dudes these days just do less across the board,” says the nurse practitioner. “Their parents have coddled them and taken care of them, and they just don’t go out there and make more money.”
The 38-year-old Upper East Sider stresses that she’s not looking for “anything outrageous” – “safety and security, as far as finances go” – but she’s still coming up empty on dates.
She says it’s because the men she goes out with don’t feel the innate “push” to succeed that she does.
“I think for years they’ve always just taken their role in society for granted, and I think that they’re just getting lazy culturally,” she says.
Another woman from South Carolina said most men she meets are underemployed and “wildly in debt.” Often, they’re intimidated by her ‘stability’ even though she doesn’t consider herself “all that successful.”
What’s to be done about this situation? It’s difficult to say. Men really just need to get it together.
But next time feminist start citing manufactured statistics about a ‘wage gap’, men can counter with the ‘mating gap.’
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2019 – 22:45 - PCR: Adam Schiff Epitomizes The Total Collapse Of Democratic Party Integrity
PCR: Adam Schiff Epitomizes The Total Collapse Of Democratic Party Integrity
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
US Rep. Adam Schiff, Democrat from California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, had no qualms about lying through his teeth in his opening statement prior to the testimony of Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. Everyone present had read the transcript of the telephone conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky, and everyone knew that what Schiff, who said he was reading from the transcript of the telephone call, was saying was not in the transcript. How can it be that the chairman of a House committee in a room full of newspersons and TV cameras has no qualms about intentionally misrepresenting the written record in order to make it conform to the lies the Democrats and their stable of corrupt presstitutes have spread about a telephone call revealed by an alleged whistleblower, a likely Democrat operative, who claimed to have heard it second hand.
When I was a member of the Congressional staff, any Representative who so dishonored a committee of the House and the House itself as Schiff has done would have been reprimanded, brought before the Ethics Committee, and forced to resign. But the Democrats have ground integrity under their heel in their fanatical determination to prevent Trump’s reelection.
In his opening statement Adam Schiff further showed his total lack of integrity in his assault on the integrity and character of Joseph Maguire and made wild and irresponsible charges probably never witnessed previously in the halls of Congress.
The transcript of the telephone call shows that what the alleged whistleblower said is false. Yet in the face of the evidence Adam Schiff speaks as if the evidence does not exist and that the alleged whistleblower’s second hand statement is true. Once again we hear the Democratic Party say, “Evidence? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence.” They don’t need evidence because the presstitutes support their lies and control the explanations given to Americans.
The Democrats are betting their future on their lies being shielded by their media whores and that the insouciant American people will hear nothing but false allegations against Trump repeated endlessly, as was the case with Russiagate. If the people realize that the “impeachment investigation” is another hoax like Russiagate, Schiff will have destroyed the Democrats’ chances in the next election.
The extraordinary rudeness and incivility of Democrat members of the committee toward Maguire, cutting him off before he could answer their accusatory questions, thus leaving the accusation unanswered, together with Schiff’s lies demonstrate that political and social collapse in the United States is far advanced. American democracy was never very democratic, but when an entire political party disrespects truth and is determined to gain power at all cost, we know that the end is near.
The Republican ranking member of the committee, Devin Nunes, explained what the successor to the failed Russiagate witchhunt is all about.
For those with the stomach for it, the hearing can be watched here:
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2019 – 22:25 - Australia Introduces AI Cameras To Bust Distracted Drivers
Australia Introduces AI Cameras To Bust Distracted Drivers
An Australian state has introduced special high-tech cameras to catch people using their smartphones while driving, according to the Straits Times.
New South Wales (NWS) Roads Minister Andrew Constance announced on Monday that they would introduce 45 Mobile Phone Detection Cameras by December. Each unit contains two cameras; one which photographs what drivers are doing inside their car, while another captures the vehicle’s registration plate.
The units use artificial intelligence (AI) to exclude drivers who are not touching their phones. Photos that show suspected illegal behaviour are referred for verification by human eyes before an infringement notice is sent to the vehicle’s registered owner along with a A$344 (S$320) fine. Some cameras will be permanently fixed along roadsides and others will be moved around the state. –Straits Times
“There is no doubt drink-driving, as far as I’m concerned, is on a par with mobile phone use, and that’s why we want everyone to be aware that you’re going to get busted doing this anytime, anywhere,” Constance told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
A six-month trial of two AI cameras checked 8.5 million vehicles – detecting 100,000 drivers holding their phones. Under NSW law, drivers are allowed to use hands-free cradles and Bluetooth, however touching a phone while driving except to give it to a passenger is illegal. The law applies to those sitting at red lights and stuck in traffic jams. According to Constance – NSW authorities will relax the law to allow caught drivers to pay their fines at restaurant drive-throughs.
NSW wants to expand the program to 135 million checks per year by 2023, according to the report.
National Roads and Motorists’ Association spokesman Peter Khoury, a leading advocate for road users, accused the government of using stealth to crack down on illegal phone use. While the association supported tougher action against drivers distracted by phones, it wanted signs warning motorists that phone detection cameras were operating in an area, as happens with speed cameras in the state.
Government modelling found that the phone detection cameras could prevent 100 fatal and serious injuries over five years. –Straits Times
So far this year, over 16,500 drivers have been fined for illegally using their phones.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2019 – 22:05 - Physicists Are Creating Lasers Powerful Enough To Rip Holes In The Fabric Of Reality
Physicists Are Creating Lasers Powerful Enough To Rip Holes In The Fabric Of Reality
Authored by Jake Anderson via TheMindUnleashed.com,
People generally balk at the idea of scientists experimenting with and manipulating certain pillars of physical reality, whether that be gene splicing, artificial intelligence, or nuclear fusion.
But in the last couple of decades, a new twist on this modern Island of Dr. Moreau-style narrative has surfaced in the form of scientists experimenting on high-velocity elementary particles (such as the CERN Hadron Collider) and other quantum enigmas.
Laser physicists recently chortled “hold my beer” in announcing that they are developing a laser so powerful it can shred all matter, including the very electrons and nuclei that constitute the fabric of reality itself.
Earlier this month, the physics journal Physical Review Letters published a paper discussing how new technology could allow a high-velocity laser to pierce “through [the] fabric of the Universe.” The trick, according to a researcher at the Université Paris-Saclay, is to anchor and focus the laser using a mirror made of plasma.
In an analysis written for Ars Technica, physicist and writer Chris Lee broke down the logistical hurdles the new technique could overcome. By consolidating a 5-10 petawatt laser for around 5-5000 joules of energy for somewhere between a picosecond or femtosecond, scientists can muster an intensity of 1022W/cm2, which is when a plasma state kicks in and creates a conductive gas of excited particles whose electrons reflect light.
Other laser experiments have concentrated as much as 200 petawatts of power on a target for less than a trillionth of a second.
Using a plasma mirror, scientists can reach 1029W/cm2 and accelerate electrons to the point where they will be “generating real charges from the apparent nothingness of empty space.”
“The way the mirror oscillates also means that the light frequencies are all multiples of each other,” writes Chris Lee. “The mirror reflects all these colors together, and they add up to a pulse that is even shorter in time. In fact, the pulse goes from being 20fs in duration to 0.1fs (a femtosecond is 10-15s). This by itself increases the intensity by a factor of 100. The shorter wavelength also means that the light focuses to a smaller spot.
“The end result is a factor of 1,000 higher intensity for the same input laser and a simple mirror swap.”
Then what happens?
“They can all stare in wonder at the hole they made,” Lee concludes.
What is the purpose of using lasers to rip a hole in space/time?
Previous laser experiments have sought to discover virtual particles, extra dimensions, and even dark matter. Last year, Chinese scientists used a 100-petawatt laser—“10,000 times more energy than there is in all the world’s electrical grids combined”—to try and produce electrons out of the quantum ether by separating them from their antimatter twins.
For now it appears we’re going to have to trust that scientists know what they’re doing with the fabric of reality.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2019 – 21:45 - "Smart Manufacturing:" AI And 3D Printing Allows Chinese Car Startup To Bypass Trump's Tariffs
“Smart Manufacturing:” AI And 3D Printing Allows Chinese Car Startup To Bypass Trump’s Tariffs
Pix Moving, a Chinese automobile startup using artificial intelligence (A.I.) to design vehicles and convert the blueprints into instructions for 3D printers, isn’t afraid of President Trump’s trade war and has utilized technology to bypass tariffs, reported Nikkei Asian Review.
Angelo Yu, the founder of Pix Moving, has outsmarted the most powerful country in the world: the U.S., as A.I. designs vehicles, uploads the blueprints onto the cloud and sends the instructions to 3D printers that can be based anywhere in the world.
“We don’t export cars to the U.S.,” Yu said. “We export the technique that is needed to produce the cars.”
Pix has gained attention from two major automakers, Volvo and Honda motors. Yu told Nikkei that if Henry Ford was still living, he would be using A.I. and 3D printers to produce automobiles.
“If Henry Ford were still alive,” Yu said, “I believe he would have also built cars using A.I.”
Yu’s startup could be the solution for Chinese manufacturers to bypass President Trump’s tariffs.
To reduce the number of parts needed to make an automobile, Yu and his team turned to an A.I. technique known as generative design, which is a program that entirely uses A.I. to design the vehicle with some human inputs such as car size and maximum weight. Many other inputs could go into the design, but from there, Yu said the computer does all the work.
Siddharth Suhas Pawar, a mechanical engineer at Pix, told Nikkei he was often “surprised” by the A.I.’s suggestions.
“I would have never thought about making a car that way,” Pawar said. Vehicle designs by A.I and humans showed A.I
were far more detailed with revolutionary designs.Once A.I. designs the vehicle, Yu’s team signs off on the final design. Uploads it to a cloud where it can be sent as instructions to 3D printers.
For instance, the chassis, A.I. reduced the number of parts from thousands to hundreds. A.I. can work out the clock, designing new components and reducing parts, making the design of a vehicle in only 12 months, versus 36 months for a traditional automaker.
Since Pix is data-driven, the company can quickly replicate factories that would only be exclusive to China, anywhere in the world, at a moments notice. If President Trump was targeting Chinese automobile companies with tariffs, Yu could quickly shift production lines anywhere, anytime, with literally at the flip of a switch. If he had to move production to Japan, he could do it. He could even move production to South Korea, the U.S., Vietnam, and or even South America.
“Pix has a unique and interesting approach to problem-solving,” said Matt Lemay, a specialist at Autodesk who invited the Chinese startup to join the program. “Pix’s vision of the future, on not just autonomous vehicles but also new methods of design automation and smart manufacturing, makes them a compelling partner.”
Unlike large automakers, whose production lines are for mass production, Yu said his 3D printers could handle small batches. In April, he received his first order from a Texas company who wanted a self-driving truck.
Yu said the design of the truck should be completed in the near term. He said his company had secured a factory in an abandoned warehouse in San Francisco, where A.I. computers in China are wrapping up on the final design of the vehicle. Once the design is completed, engineers will sign off on it, and upload it to the cloud, where 3D printers in San Francisco will receive the instruction to start printing the truck.
“The U.S.-China trade war will motivate more and more Chinese manufacturers to embrace smart manufacturing,” Yu predicted. “In the future, international trading will no longer run on cargo but on the cloud.”
And just like that, President Trump’s trade war is absolutely worthless — as per one Chinese company, utilizing A.I. and 3D printing to skirt around economic duties. The world will move forward, technology and the human will to adapt will outsmart dinosaur governments. It’s only a matter of time before big automakers get ahold of this technology and process.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2019 – 21:25 - Greta Thunberg To Poor Countries: Drop Dead
Greta Thunberg To Poor Countries: Drop Dead
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
On Monday, celebrity climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered a speech to the UN Climate Action summit in New York. Thunberg demanded drastic cuts in carbon emissions of more than 50 percent over the next ten years.
It is unclear to whom exactly she was directing her comments, although she also filed a legal complaint with the UN on Monday, demanding five countries (Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey) more swiftly adopt larger cuts in carbon emissions. The complaint is legally based on a 1989 agreement, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, under which Thunberg claims the human rights of children are being violated by too-high carbon emissions.
Thunberg seems unaware, however, that in poor and developing countries, carbon emissions are more a lifeline to children than they are a threat.
Rich Countries and Poor
It’s one thing to criticize France and Germany for their carbon emissions. Those are relatively wealthy countries where few families are reduced to third-world-style grinding poverty when their governments make energy production — and thus most consumer goods and services — more expensive through carbon-reduction mandates and regulations. But even in the rich world, a drastic cut like that demanded by Thunberg would relegate many households now living on the margins to a life of greatly increased hardship.
That’s a price Thunberg is clearly willing to have first-world poor people pay.
But her inclusion of countries like Brazil and Turkey on this list is bizarre and borders on the sadistic — assuming she actually knows about the situation in those places.
While some areas of Brazil and Turkey contain some areas that approach first-world conditions, both countries are still characterized by large populations living in the sorts of poverty that European schoolgirls could scarcely comprehend.
Winning the War on Poverty with Fossil Fuels
But thanks to industrialization and economic globalization — countries can, and do, climb out of poverty.
In recent decades, countries like Turkey, Malaysia, Brazil, Thailand and Mexico — once poverty-stricken third-world countries — are now middle-income countries. Moreover, in these countries most of the population will in coming decades will likely achieve what we considered to be first-world standards of living in the twentieth century.
At least, that’s what will happen if people like Greta Thunberg don’t get their way.
The challenge here arises from the fact that for a middle-income or poor country, cheap energy consumption — made possibly overwhelmingly by fossil fuels — is often a proxy for economic growth.
After all, if a country wants to get richer, it has to create things of value for other countries. At the lower- and middle- income level, that usually means making things such as vehicles, computers, or other types of machinery. This has certainly been the case in Mexico, Malaysia, and Turkey.
But for countries like these, to only economical way to produce these things is by using fossil fuels.
Thus it is not a coincidence that carbon emissions growth and economic growth track together. We see this relationship in Malaysia, for example:
And in Turkey:
And also in Brazil:
Source
We no longer see this close a relationship between the two factors in wealthy countries. This is due to the fact many first-world (and post-Soviet) countries make broader use of nuclear power, and because high income countries have more heavily abandoned coal in favor of less-carbon intensive fuels like natural gas.
It is thanks to this fossil-fuel powered industrialization over the past thirty years that extreme poverty and other symptoms of economic under-development have been so reduced.
For example, according to the World Bank, worldwide extreme poverty was reduced from 35 percent to 11 percent, from 1990 to 2013. We also find that access to clean water has increased, literacy has increased , and life expectancy has increased — especially in lower-income areas that have been most rapidly industrializing in recent decades.
Just as carbon emissions track with economic growth in middle income countries, child mortality tends to fall as carbon emissions increase.
We see this throughout the developing world, including in India,
And in China:
Source
Industrialization isn’t the only factor behind reducing child mortality, of course. But it is certainly a major factor. Industrialization sustains modern health care amenities such as climate controlled hospitals, and it increases access to clean water and sanitation systems.
Greta Thunberg, ignores all of this, mocking the idea of economic growth as a “fairytale.” But for people in the developing world, money and economic growth — two things Greta Thunberg thinks are contemptible — translates into a longer and better life. In other words, economic development means happiness, since, as Ludwig von Mises pointed out, “Most mothers feel happier if their children survive, and most people feel happier without tuberculosis than with it.”
Thunberg’s blithe disregard for the benefits of economic growth is not uncommon for people from wealthy countries who are already living in an industrialized world built by the fossil fuels of yesteryear. For them, they associate additional economic growth with access to high fashion and luxury cars. But for the billions of human beings living outside these places, fossil-fuel-driven industrialization can be the difference between life and death.
And yet, Greta Thunberg has seen fit to attack countries like Brazil and Turkey for not more enthusiastically cutting off their primary means to quickly deliver a more sanitary, more well-fed, and less deadly way of life for ordinary people.
The Chinese know the benefits of economic growth especially well. A country that was literally starving to death during the 1970s, China rapidly industrialized after abandoning Mao’s communism for a system of limited and regulated market capitalism. But even this small market-based lifeline — sustained by fossil fuels — quickly and substantially pulled a billion people out of a tenuous existence previously threatened regularly by famine and economic deprivation.
Today, China is the world’s largest carbon emitter — by far — with total carbon emissions double that of the United States. And while the US and the EU has been cutting emissions, China won’t even pledge to cap its emissions any time before 2030. (And a pledge doesn’t mean it will actually happen.) India meanwhile, more than doubled its carbon emissions between 2000 and 2014, and its prime minister refuses to pledge to cut its coal-fired power generation.
Source
And who can blame these countries? First-world school children may think it’s fine to lecture Chinese factory workers about the need to cut back their standard of living, but such comments are likely to fall on deaf ears if climate policy means destroying the so-called “fairytale” of economic growth.
As one Chinese resident put it on China’s social media platform Weibo: “If the economy doesn’t grow, what do us people living in developing countries eat?”
Measuring Net Costs of Global Warming
Advocates for drastic cuts in emissions might retort: “even if our policies do make people poorer, they’d be a lot worse off with global warming!”
Would they though?
At the UN, Thunberg thundered, “People are suffering. People are dying [because of climate change.]” But that isolated assertion doesn’t tell us what we need to know when it comes to climate-change policy.
The question that does matter is his: if the world implements drastic Thunbergian climate change policies will the policies themselves do more harm than good?
The answer may very well not be in the climate activists’ favor. After all, the costs of climate change must be measured compared to the costs of climate change policy. If economic growth is stifled by climate policy — and a hundred million people lose out on clean water and safe housing as a result — that’s a pretty big cost.
After all, the benefits of cheap energy — most of provided by fossil fuels — are already apparent. Life expectancy continues to go up — and is expected to keep making the biggest gains in the developing world. Child mortality continues to go down. For the first time in history, the average Chinese peasant isn’t forced to scratch out a subsistence-level existence on a rice paddy. Thanks to cheap electricity, women in middle income countries don’t have to spend their days cleaning clothes by hand without washing machines. Children don’t have to drink cholera-tainted water.
It’s easy to sit before a group of wealthy politicians and say “how dare you” for not implementing one’s desired climate policy. It might be slightly harder to tell a Bangladeshi tee-shirt factory worker that she’s had it too good, and we need to put the brakes on economic growth. For her own good, of course.
And this has been the problem with climate-change policy all along. Although the burden of proof is on them for wanting to coerce billions into their global economic-management scheme, the climate-change activists have never convincingly made the case that the downside of climate change is worse than the downside of crippling industrializing economies.
This is why the activists so commonly rely on over-the-top claims of total global destruction. One need not waste any time on weighing the options if the only choices presented are “do what we want” or “face total global extinction.”
But even climate change activists can’t agree the armaggedon approach is accurate. Last year, for example, Scientific American published “Should We Chill Out About Global Warming?” by John Horgan which explores the idea “that continued progress in science and other realms will help us overcome environmental problems.”
Specifically, Horgan looks at two recent writers on the topic, Steven Pinker and Will Boisvert. Neither Pinker nor Boisvert could be said to have libertarian credentials, and neither take the position that there is no climate change. Both assume that climate change will lead to difficulties.
Both, however, also conclude that the challenges posed by climate change do not require the presence of a global climate dictatorship. Moreover, human societies are already motivated to do the sorts of things that will be essential in overcoming climate-change challenges that may arise.
That is, pursuing higher standards of living through technological innovation is the key to dealing with climate change.
But that innovation isn’t fostered when children shake their fingers at Brazilian laborers and tell them to forget about a family car or household appliances or travel at vacation time.
That isn’t likely to be a winning strategy outside the world of self-hating first-world suburbanites. It appears many Indians and Brazilians and Chinese are willing to risk the global warming for a chance at experiencing even a small piece of what wealthy first-world climate activists have been enjoying all their lives.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2019 – 21:05
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