BACK TO THE CAVES!

Comment on the Green demonstrations outside the Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire

Today's environmental campaigners, motivated by suspicion of modern technology, want to turn the lights off permanently. Listening to a TV interview with one of the self-appointed guardians of the planet, I was stunned by his response when asked what his alterative would be to the loss of seven per cent of the UK's generating capacity if Drax was closed down. He said it was something `we would all have to live with'. I was reminded of a religious sermon with a vicar chastising the congregation for sinning before God. In this case it was the sin of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that offended our moral guardians....

But there is something risky about this, even from the point of view of the environmental movement. Targeting electricity generation is not the same as taking on vivisection, nuclear power or genetically modified crops. By taking on coal-fired power stations environmentalists are now questioning the actual existing fabric of our energy infrastructure without which modern society cannot function. It is not so much fears of new technology that are driving the protests, but doubts about whether already-existing technology is a good thing.

Electricity is an underrated marvel of the modern age. Our capacity to generate vast quantities of electrical energy has only really existed for a century or so. Electrification was the big advance of the early twentieth century in the modern economies of the world. We can easily forget how our lives are dominated by the easy availability of electricity. When there's a power cut our lives pretty much grind to a standstill as people go in search of musty candles and hidden boxes of matches.

It is therefore unthinkable that we should turn the clock back to a time before the national grid. Yet this is what some eco-warriors are seriously considering. Of course, it would be unfair to say they have advocated the abandonment of electricity generation per se; they want us to turn to alternative sources of electrical energy. The government, too, wants to go down the alternative route. The decline of natural gas supplies has driven the government to consider new rounds of nuclear power stations - which no serious green would agree to - and an expansion of alternatives including wind farms and tidal power.

But there is something unconvincing about being told to use wind, solar or tidal power as an alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear power. With every statement advocating alternative sources of energy there is the proviso that, even with massive investment in alternatives, there just won't be enough capacity to match current consumption of energy.

We are really being offered another alternative - actually to reduce our demand for energy. During previous energy crises, when fossil fuel supplies looked in jeopardy, we were told to share baths, turn off the lights, cut back and economise. But that isn't quite what today's campaigners have in mind. They don't just want minor reductions in waste and increases in efficiency. They actually want us to reduce our energy use considerably and adjust to a new world of less.

In the past, this was called austerity. Governments that try to impose austerity on society need a pretty pressing reason to do so, as it usually isn't very long before it results in political conflict and either a reversal in policy or the removal of the government. However, today we are told to accept austerity in the name of saving the planet, and it is supposedly radical greens - taking their cue from government dithering about energy production - who are at the forefront of pushing the New Austerity. It is a strange inversion of history that today's young radicals are telling us to give up on modernity and look forward to a future which is not so bright - literally.

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THE GREEN NOMENKLATURA

One of the bitter ironies of the 20th century was that communism, which began as an egalitarian doctrine accusing capitalism of selfishness and calloused sacrifices of others, became in power a system whose selfishness and callousness toward others made the sins of capitalism pale. The ruling elites of the Soviet Union, called the "nomenklatura," had their own separate and superior stores where ordinary citizens were not allowed to shop, their own separate and superior medical facilities, as well as their own separate and superior living quarters, all off-limits to the masses. Everyone in communist societies addressed one another with the egalitarian term "comrade." But some comrades had the arbitrary power of life and death over other comrades.

Soviet communism is now history but people who talk equality and practice elitism, who wrap their own selfishness in the mantle of idealism, and who sacrifice others on the altar to their own vision without a moment's hesitation are not only still with us but have become the norm on the left. They don't have nearly the power that the Soviet dictatorship had. But they use whatever power they do have in the same spirit. The green ideology of today, like the red ideology of the past, takes it for granted that other people do not have the same rights as the new nomenklatura.

Where the new nomenklatura enjoy a particular lifestyle in a particular community, then the power of government is used to preserve that lifestyle and freeze that community where it is, even if that means freezing out other people who may not have the same money or the same lifestyle preferences. Monterey County, California, is a classic example, though by no means unique. A recent story in the Wall Street Journal quoted residents of that coastal community as saying how much they liked its lifestyle and ambiance -- as a justification of laws that make it nearly impossible for anyone with less money to live there.

First of all, laws forbid building anything on three-quarters of the land in that county. Existing residents who support such laws don't own that land but they can politically keep others from living on it, which is the whole point of much rhapsodizing about "preserving" this and "saving" that. Land prices skyrocket when the supply of land is artificially and drastically reduced, which means that housing prices become astronomical. The consequences for those on the outside looking in were illustrated by the story of a farm worker in Monterey County whose family had been living in a room for years but who now could finally afford to buy a small house. This farm worker was described as "thrilled" to the point of tears as he bought a 1,013-square-foot home for $490,000, even though it would take 70 percent of his income to make the mortgage payments. He planned to rent out one of the rooms to try to make ends meet.

His situation was not as unusual as it would be in most other places. The average share of income required for someone with the average income in Monterey County to buy the average home there is 60 percent. But of course this does not apply to the existing residents who bought or inherited their homes in years past. Far from suffering economically from the laws they pass, they see the market values of their own homes go up by leaps and bounds. One of these residents describes herself as a liberal Democrat and an ardent environmentalist. Election results in this and other affluent counties in coastal California suggest that she is very much the norm among the new nomenklatura.

The green nomenklatura talk egalitarianism like the old red nomenklatura and similarly ride roughshod over others while doing it. Their economic ethnic cleansing has driven tens of thousands of blacks out of some liberal Democratic counties. There were 79,000 blacks living in San Francisco in 1990 and 46,000 today. So many people with children are leaving these bastions of liberal Democratic environmentalists as to force many schools in these counties to close. But the new nomenklatura go around feeling good about themselves while leaving havoc in their wake.

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World oil not running out, says energy boss

The world has an abundant supply of oil, and high petrol prices are just the reality of a globally traded commodity, ExxonMobil Australia chairman Mark Nolan said today. Mr Nolan used his speech to the Asia Pacific oil and gas conference in Adelaide today to debunk the theory of peak oil, which suggests oil supplies have peaked and will dwindle over the next 20 years. Such predictions, he said, had been around since the 1920s, particularly at times of high oil prices. "The fact is that the world has an abundance of oil and there is little question, scientifically, that abundant energy resources exist," Mr Nolan said. "According to the US Geological Survey, the earth currently has more than three trillion barrels of conventional, recoverable oil resources. "So far we have produced one trillion."

Mr Nolan said the oil industry had always underestimated the extent of global resources and the ability of technology to both extend the life of existing oil and gas fields and find new ones. "We should not forget that we can recover almost twice as much oil today as when we first discovered it over 100 years ago," he said. "And when you consider that a further 10 per cent increase in recoverability will deliver 800 billion barrels of oil to our recoverable total, we have every reason to be sure that the end of oil is nowhere in sight."

Mr Nolan said that by 2030, conventional fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) would still account for 80 per cent of the world's energy requirements. But Mr Nolan said it was very difficult to predict what would happen in the future with both crude oil and petrol prices. "They are both regionally traded commodities, they are priced by the market, priced by the region," he said. "The fuel price is ultimately driven by the source of the product, which is the crude price, and of course that is traded regionally and internationally."

Mr Nolan's comments were endorsed by the president of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, Eve Sprunt, who said the proponents of peak oil theory often confused oil reserves with available resources. "When you are talking about reserves, you are only talking about a very small fraction of the total resource base," she said. "The reserves are the portion for which the infrastructure is largely in place, the technology is in place and that can be produced at the current oil price. "But if you are planning for the long-term energy future of your country you need to understand the resource base." "The whole name of the game is moving resources into the reserves category." Ms Sprunt said high oil prices also presented opportunities such as the viable development of other fuels. "It's a time when new alternatives emerge," she said.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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