We live in troubled times. Many very strange ideas are loose in the world. For the last hundred years or so Western Civilization has become increasingly unstable. And now most of the first world has embraced its own destruction. The idea of eliminating the majority of humanity from the planet in pursuit of some ecological paradise is a common philosophy among millennials. And the belief that subsistence conditions that include eating bugs and giving up mobility and things like climate-controlled homes is being promulgated by the government and “thought leaders.”
I think we will find out very soon whether the majority of our countrymen agree with these ideas. After all we are a “democracy” or something like one. If the ayes have it, we’ll get bugs and electric cars. But something leads me to believe that the whole world won’t succumb to this plan. I have to believe that there remains a substantial group of people that aren’t fools and know that human ingenuity is substantially more capable of overcoming problems than what’s currently on display from the “green revolution” crowd.
I guess the question will be where will that ingenuity be allowed to flourish. Up till recently the United States was the premiere center of innovation. And we were also a magnet for entrepreneurs from across the world who were looking for a chance to pioneer new concepts in everything from robotics to medicine. But now this trend is reversing. Many innovators are returning home to their own countries to launch new companies and build factories. Places like China and India are rejecting the green revolution in response to the need to reap the benefits of twentieth century technology that was made possible by fossil fuel powered industry.
Wind mills and solar panels are being deployed in the West but the rest of the world is burning coal, oil and natural gas. And if things continue in the direction they’re going, eventually nuclear power plants will also become a common sight in the non-Western countries. When that happens where will the center of innovation be located?
That’s the main question. Which culture will have the confidence to continue the legacy that the Western World has already bequeathed to humanity? What a strange thought that maybe in fifty years Europe and North America will be living in some kind of post-modern poverty with a marginal economy based on some socialist model while some currently third world country takes the lead and raises the standard of living of their people even higher than what we currently enjoy.
Strange or not, it might be the future. I’m far from confident that Americans will come to their senses and demand better for their children than the message of deprivation and mediocrity that we’re being fed by the Democrats and their corporate allies. We’re currently at a very critical juncture in our history. We’ve recently been given a vision of energy prices becoming unsustainable while the government is using huge subsidies to convince Americans to buy electric cars. And at the same time foods like meat and milk are also becoming prohibitively expensive. This would be the time for angry consumers to lash out at the Democrats and punish them at the polls. But what if they don’t?
That would tell me that the old America is gone for good and the current crop will be led by the nose to whatever fate the elites have planned for them. And that will be a good time to start looking around and figure where the new center of human flourishing will end up.
I hope we don’t fail this test. My whole world is anchored to this country. All my relatives and especially my descendants are all here. I want them to be part of the best society on the planet. And so, I pray there are still enough people with common sense to keep us on the right track and moving into the future. But from where I’m standing it looks like a fifty-fifty shot.
I wonder when the millennials will realize that depopulation efforts do not exclude them. When will they be hit with the thought that many of them are championing their own demise? Will it happen only when their own heads are on the chopping block? When they themselves are facing the proverbial headsman’s axe while a much older and wiser group watches and says, “You got what you wanted. You’re welcome!”
I’ve told this story many times. I knew a millennial who was married and told me that he and his wife were intentionally foregoing children to help the planet. I told him my grandchildren thanked him for his decision. But they would fill up the extra space with more descendants of their own.
Innovation follows energy. Where there is cheap, plentiful power there will be prosperity.
Europe is about to go into a very cold winter having shut down all of their nukes and thinking they could buy natural gas from Russia forever. If Trump were still president, we could sell then all the LNG they needed but, with our current Luddite president, that is not an option. It won’t even take until the midterms before we hear about the people freezing in Germany. It remains to be seen if the US voters can learn from the European’s mistakes.
Wind power followed by steam power followed by the internal combustion engine created our modern world. The nations that refuse to go back to animal and human labor to run their civilization will inherit the modern world. The West isn’t looking very good in the immediate future. I wonder how it will turn out.