When the pandemic began in early 2020, I thought it likely to become an historic event and I began taking notes of what was happening. I had no idea where my note taking might lead. Unfortunately, many of the “experts” telling us to prevent Covid ignored their own guidance, rules, orders and regulations. They were Covid hypocrites who issued orders that they, themselves, apparently did not believe in. My list was 120 single spaced pages as of late 2022 in Parts 1 and 2.
This same behavior occurs in the climate community from those who wish to restrict our lives – but make ignore their own guidance.
Many elite have carbon foot prints the size of small planetary systems – but assuage their guilt by purchasing carbon indulgences from the climate church. And telling the rest of us to stay at home, ride a bike, be vegetarian.
But they are climate hypocrites who do not seriously believe in what they advocate.
A favorite target of their directives is travel.
Air travel is a tiny sliver of carbon emissions – truly tiny – (even cars produce less than most people understand and switching to EVs has a smaller reduction than most expect). We fixate on these because we can see cars and jets – but most of us never see huge industrial plants burning fuel to forge steel or the insides of fossil fueled electrical generation plants. The consequence is that transportation becomes the “bogey man” of climate change because it is visible while big producers are hidden.
Many climate activists tell us to stop flying on airlines but have extensive global travel histories. They lack self-awareness of how hypocritical they look. Air travel is fine for them but if you do it, you are a climate denier and probably a Nazi too.
Oddly enough, this “bogey man poster child” provides an easy way to identify climate hypocrites who preach that we should not travel while they travel the globe, and some by private jet.
Carbon Indulgences
The elite assuage their guilt and promote their virtue by saying “It’s okay for us because we buy carbon credits”.
Carbon credits have become notorious for scams and virtue signaling. “Credits” are sold on forest tracts whose owners agree not to cut them down – but many tracts were never going to be cut anyway, sometimes due to inaccessibility or limited timber production. In other examples, credits on the same plot of forest have been sold multiple times. As the WSJ reports, much of the world’s carbon offset credits do little or nothing to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, pointing to windfarms in China that are not even connected to the grid, or which fail to produce much power. But the elite purchase credits to justify their private jet flights to their multiple mansions located throughout the world. Carbon credits are a scam enabling the elite to tell us how to live our lives while they continue to emit the carbon of a small planetary system.
With the boom in renewable energy, many of the credits that trade hands merely represent a transfer of money from one profitable enterprise to another, critics say:
The end result is companies looking to offset their emissions are buying credits in vast numbers that do little to help neutralize their carbon output.
The global elite set the agenda – “Do as I say but not as I do“. By their actions, they do not actually believe in what they are saying. Academic research finds the “economic elite” run the world – and “average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence” – we will, in fact, do as they say, but not as they do.
These are climate hypocrites and whose self-focused behaviors discourage action and lead to distrust in authority figures and institutions.
Davos, Switzerland – Spring 2022
An estimated 1,500 private jet flights were made by global elite to attend the conference, plus private helicopter shuttles from the airports to the venues. As one pundit put it, they flew in on private jets, to dine on luxury foods while agreeing to tell the rest of us to ride bicycles.
The top 1% are estimated to have more than 2x the climate impact of the bottom 50% of the world’s population.
Hannah Hunt is 23 years old, an activist with Extinction Rebellion, and founder of an anti-fossil fuels activist group. According to the British press, from age 18 to age 23 she traveled by airline to exotic vacation destinations around the world, which she features on her Instagram influencer page. She says the rest of us should not travel – but her travels are more important than your travels.
Speaking at School Strike 4 Climate – New Zealander Izzy Cook voices opposition to people flying in aircraft and proposes that people must be given permission from the government to fly and only for approved reasons.
She is then asked, suggesting an example, “Would flying to Fiji be wrong?” Yes, she says.
The interviewer then asked her, “When was the last time you flew on an aircraft and where did you go?“
Answer: “A few months ago. To Fiji.“
Says she was not embarrassed that she flew to Fiji, she says – which appears lacking in self-awareness and being foolish, which is the definition of idiot.
Let’s take our climate change advice from 16-year-old hypocrites, shall we? More here.
Izzy’s Mom attacks the interviewer accusing her of “bullying my daughter” for pointing out the hypocrisy. Her Mom’s argument is that since Izzy works on climate advocacy it’s okay for her to be a hypocrite: “She also lives a low carbon lifestyle: she’s vegetarian, uses public transport, and buys second-hand.” – which justifies Izzy’s flying around the world while telling others not to fly.
Thus: as long as you are a climate advocate, vegetarian and use public transport occasionally, feel free to fly around the world while telling others not to! It’s logic!
She is about 30 years old, a travel blogger who has traveled to over 40 countries, has lived and worked in France, China, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Guadeloupe, Nicaragua (and the Caribbean), and has traveled in Chile and Argentina to research “sustainable tourism”. Her own business focuses on travel, and now sustainability. She met her husband, who is from Italy, while traveling in China. She says on her blog that Italy is her 2nd home (they presumably sail a boat across the Atlantic?)
A graduate of the University of Montana, where she grew up, she went on to earn a Master’s degree in “Green Management” at a university in Italy and an undergraduate study abroad in Granada (Spain).
She is as global and privileged as any 30-year-old can be.
She has declared a travel Climate Emergency and signed on to a group promoting a global tax on aviation to discourage air travel, which favors taking buses and trains (such as the high-speed rail service from Los Angeles to Honolulu...), avoidance of eating meat, only staying at places that practice sustainability (e.g. solar powered, local food sources only), and we should fly less and stay longer (because everyone can do that on 2 weeks of vacation per year!)
The above is common among the well-traveled elite – now that they’ve traveled the world, they seek to make it more expensive and difficult for others to do so – which makes themselves even more elite as they will be the ones with global skills that others will have difficulty obtaining. There is hypocrisy in having gallivanted about the globe, and now advocating others curtail such experiences.
Advocates like Hunt, Cook and Wilhelm have a lack of awareness of how this propaganda messaging looks to others – it looks like hypocritical, privileged elite-ness – excuse me, global eliteness.
Sophia Kianni, Youth UN Climate Ambassador and Activist
As of this writing she is a climate activist, studying environmental science and public policy (in other words, activism) at Stanford University. She was selected as the youngest UN Ambassador on climate.
From the Washington Post:
I try to make choices to lessen my impact on the planet and reduce my carbon footprint, but it’s also important to know that the very concept of the carbon footprint was invented by an ad agency hired by fossil fuel companies to distract people from the huge amounts of pollution that Big Oil and gas companies produce. So while it’s important for everyone to do their part, those who pollute the most have an obligation to reduce the most.
Translation: Since the concept of a carbon footprint “was invented by an ad agency”, her own personal carbon footprint is not relevant.
The article reads like a parody – a commenter notes the WaPo has turned into The Onion! Air travel is okay for her to visit family (like the sob story of public health officials who ignored their own rules because they hadn’t seen their family in 6 months!):
It would have been impossible for me to get home for this [spring] break without choosing to fly: Taking buses across the country would have taken 3-4 days of nonstop travel and cost several hundred dollars more.
Yet she co-chaired a major manifesto calling for financial disincentives to fly (she is said to be extremely wealthy so that wouldn’t matter to her, but would to you, of course)
Note – this section was going to be a short item – but geesh, she is a global elitist dripping with self-centered, narcissistic behaviors as she travels the world telling the rest of to get our acts together.
Kianni is a Global Traveler
Obviously, she is more important than you or I, so she can travel about the world while telling us to cut our climate impact. From her Instagram page, she has made numerous trips to Europe. She has participated in Extinction Rebellion events (ER advocates flight shaming and the end of air travel):
She is famous for having organized an international group to translate climate literature into other languages; the average age of her translators is 16 years old (what could possibly go wrong with that?) She regularly attends meetings with the UN Secretary General. She has done extensive global travel – and is a global elitist, reportedly having ahigh net worth.
Some of her global travels:
Amsterdam, 4 years ago
Italy
Bermuda
Edinburgh, Scotland
France
In September 2021, she was in Madrid, Spain to tell us about climate change. She was co-chair of the Youth 4 Change Climate manifesto which states “Incentivizing low emission options such as bikes and public transportand financial disincentives for air travel“.
She is currently in Egypt at COP27. Her participation seems to have a lot of self-promotion:
Endless self-promotion
The narcissistic self-promotion is off scale:
Are 20-year-old college students qualified to advise the UN on global policy issues that affect humanity for eternity? Do they know as much as they think they know (many of us have learned, through experience, that things are more complex and nuanced than they seemed at age 20)
The comments to her post were not positive:
From the above, her posts suggest she was more focused on self-promotion than saving the planet.
She is an elitist who found her gravy train – uhhh – gravy travel. She can travel about the world and tell the rest of us how to live our lives – but we can’t travel because air travel is evil.
She is an elitist, world trotting hypocrite telling the rest of us not to fly.
She needs to think about how this looks to the average person out in the world, living real lives not having her privilege and wealth. But she seems incapable of self-reflection and self-awareness.
Aileen Getty – Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion
Just Stop Oil is a group of anxiety ridden folks who believe we will all die within years due to climate change, and we can stop the climate from changing by whining about it, disrupting society, damaging historic venues and art works, and blocking ambulances and fire trucks carrying ill patients to hospitals. (“Their behaviour is fundamentally immature and destructive.“).
She is the founding donor of the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF).
In 2017, Getty sold her modest 5,255 sq foot Malibu mansion for $14 million, just a year after buying it. The same year she bought a NYC mansion for $19 million. (She rode her bicycle between Los Angeles and New York City, of course?) She grew up in Italy, her husband is from Italy and she has traveled the world extensively in support of her causes. Undoubtedly, they sail a boat to cross the Atlantic.
Gail Bradbrook, Ph.D.
ER was founded by Gail Bradbrook, who spent two weeks in Costa Rica consuming psychedelic drugs (yes, really) – she flew there on a jet plane consuming oil – and under the influence of psychedelics she was inspired to found ER. A drugged out global elite traveler, she did her PhD post-doc work in India and France (she rode her bike to both places – haha, just kidding – she drives a diesel fueled car and does, in fact, fly on jet planes.)
They lack expertise in useful fields, where real talent might be used inventing solutions. Instead, they whine and disrupt the lives of others who are working to solve problems. They can’t even agree on what they are protesting:
Just Stop Oil has been protesting in London for the past two weeks, and the group said in a press release that its actions were “in response to the government’s inaction on both the cost-of-living crisis and the climate crisis.”
Their childish behavior persuades many to ignore environmental activism and issues.
VW climate protesters demand bowl to ‘urinate and defecate’ | news.com.au – When activists glue themselves to walls and floors, they are asking to be stuck there, right? VW provided them with food and water but did not bring them portable toilets – the activists then complained that the company they are vandalizing did not treat them as invited guests! They say they will glue themselves to the floor until “their demands to decarbonize” the entire German transport sector are met – because they can easily decarbonize the entire transport sector in a few hours? VW has already committed to converting to all electric vehicles.
Sir Chris Hohn
Hohn is a UK-based billionaire hedge-fund manager who claims to live a “simple lifestyle” and make donations to worthy causes. He is the largest single source of funding for Extinction Rebellion, which aims to shut down air travel – yet:
The son of a Jamaican immigrant to Britain, Sir Christopher grew up in Surrey and is known for his simple lifestyle. He reportedly lives in a rented house, drives a Toyota Prius and wears a black Swatch watch he has had for years. The couple met as students at Harvard University and married in 1985. They have four children – triplets aged 12 and an older child aged 15.
They have homes in London, the US and the West Indies.
Undoubtedly, he rows a boat between the UK, the US and the West Indies – or drives his Prius across the Atlantic. He attended universities in the UK and the U.S. and previously worked in the Philippines, Singapore, the U.S., and London, per news reports. His charity, Children’s Investment Fund has offices in Nairobi and New Delhi.
As a person who benefited immensely from global travel he supports groups that want to deny travel opportunities to others.
How much of Hohn’s donations are caused-based marketing, such as the faux “effective altruism” of Sam Bankman-Fired? Hohn has said his life’s mission is to give money away: “My life is actually about charity“. He has fashioned his public persona around this image – much like Bankman-Fried. How much of it is for marketing purposes?
(Note – Hohn really does contribute large sums of money from his earnings, to charity but so did Bankman-Fried.)
Rule by a tiny minority – just 3.5% of the population – in other words. That is anti-democracy.
Rather than study engineering and science to develop solutions, they are children throwing temper tantrums, asserting they have right to authoritarianism rule by a tiny elite minority through extorting the population. Their own words:
The good news, the members say, is that they have extensively studied the history of social change and believe they have a scientifically tested approach that enables just a small minority to bring the political system to its knees.
In other words, rule by authoritarianism and elite – not by using logic and facts to persuade a majority to support climate control. The goal is to end democracy – and turn rule over to a technocratic elite, one of the central ideas of governance by bureaucratic Central Committees.
These children in Norway live in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, having a sovereign wealth fund of $1.3 trillion, the largest such fund in the world. The funds come from Norwegian oil fields and income from the fund provides free university education, public schools, libraries, services, transportation, and other infrastructure for these children to live an exclusive, globally elite lifestyle. But they don’t know that.
Since its inception in the 1990s, Norway’s wealth fund has invested the country’s enormous oil and gas revenue widely across the world and across economic sectors. Today, the fund holds nearly 1.5% of all shares within listed companies globally.
These endeavors have nothing to do with climate and everything to do with using extortion to end democracy. We need to call them out for what they are, deadbeat fascists. The more they do this, the greater the turn off to doing anything about climate.
They dangerously forced the shutdown of the Berlin, Germany airport by blocking runways. Because screaming children should rule the world, not democracies. The concept of a democracy that is based on education, information, evidence and facts and individuals choosing policies is so 20th century. Climate enthusiasts believe that in a true democracy, a tiny sliver of technocratic elite and screaming activists that act like six year olds should lead us as it is the only way forward!
Related:January 6 2020 and Trump
Trump and the January 6 rioters that stormed the U.S. Capitol believed they were in command and asserted a non-existent right to overthrow an election. They too were anti-democracy, just as much as the climate activists are anti-democracy with their “just 3.5% to take control”.
You either believe in democracy or you do not. The goal does not justify the means.
Climate enthusiasts who profess a desire to end democracy are doing their cause massive harm, just as Trump and his volunteer henchmen did to his political fortunes. Climate “activists'” goal – in their own words – is for a technocratic elite forming a single global government that ignores the democratic majority will of the people. Because they believe their cause is righteous and pure, ending democracy and human rights is itself necessary. They have made this clear, stating that per their theories, if just 3.5% of the population engages in civil disobedience, then they will win control.
They, like Trump’s January 6th supporters, are fascists.
These actions by climate activists – engaged in activities that have nothing to do with climate – and often impede the work of those developing real solutions – are a turn off to others taking action.
Prince Charles
Prince Charles (now King Charles III) tells us we should live within 5 to 10 minutes of our workplace. No more long commutes.
He says we should walk or ride a bike to get around.
Cheaper neighborhoods should be abolished, and cheap and expensive housing should be combined side by side.
Like father, like son: In August 2021, son, Prince Harry, flew a private jet from Aspen, Colorado to California, after attending an equestrian event. Harry tells us climate change is the world’s most pressing problem and you, dear peon, should do something about it, so he can continue to fly around the world by private jet.
FTX is very serious about minimizing our impact on the global environment where we live and work, and as a company we have taken several important steps to ensure this. Here, I would like to share several key points to explain why FTX’s environmental impact is de minimis, but nonetheless explain the additional steps the company has taken to reduce even further this impact. First, FTX has no factories or physical products and therefore does not leverage global shipment networks, a substantial source of energy consumption. FTX has a small workforce with a small physical-office footprint, renting only a few small offices spread out around the world, and operates online. FTX corporate operations, therefore, do not have direct impacts on climate change at a globally relevant scale.
Bankman-Fried had become a legend by pushing an image of monkish aloofness, vowing to forsake the allures of his extraordinary wealth – sleeping on beanbag chairs, driving a Toyota Corolla – and to give away his fortune for the greater good.
Yet in April, when Avedisian was hired as a master of ceremonies for a conference in the Bahamas sponsored by FTX, Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, she saw how the 30-year-old billionaire really lived: in a guarded island compound, every need closely catered to, the world’s elite at his beck and call.
Canada: Deputy Finance Minister Michael Sabia (Climate, not Covid)
Deputy Finance Minister Michael Sabia, who called climate change “a massive change to humanity,” spent nearly $11,000 in first-class airfare, according to Blacklock’s Reporter .
Read the whole story. You and I will be prohibited from traveling while the elite go about their lives with carbon footprints the size of small planets.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan)
September 2020:
“The science is clear — climate change is directly impacting our public health, environment, our economy, and our families,” Whitmer said in a statement. Discussing her plan in a virtual event with other governors, she added: “There’s no time to waste when it comes to fighting climate change. We’ve got to act now.”
After issuing a travel caution to residents of Michigan, Gov. Whitmer flew to Florida and then lied about her travels saying she had been “in town the whole time“. She had, in fact, visited her Dad in Florida, while prohibiting similar visits in Michigan by Michigan residents. She said she went for just 2 days (it was actually 4 days). She blamed “spring break” travel to Florida for the upsurge in daily cases occurring in Michigan – while she traveled to Florida and lied about it. She traveled on a private jet that was operated as a charter flight in violation of FAA regulations. She refuses to say who paid for the private jet – with indications it may have come from a private business group in Michigan. And she had not yet been vaccinated either.
So of course, she flies by an illegally operated private charter jet. Because she cares and you do not.
NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ahern and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau
Jet pools on Canadian PM’s private 200 passenger VIP jet flight – after earlier making a big deal about taking a bus because she’s climate aware. The climate preachers intend to stop you from traveling – but they will not make changes to their own lifestyles. It’s as if they don’t believe in climate change.
There are 41 non-stop flights a day between London and NYC. One every half hour. Justin Trudeau and Jacinda Ardern aren’t flying commercial, though. They’re taking a 200-seat VIP jet so they can lecture other world leaders at the UN about climate change. #UNGA2022#nzpol
Many of the elite have carbon foot prints the size of small planetary systems – but assuage their guilt by purchasing carbon indulgences from the climate church. And suggesting the rest of us should stay at home.
“Climate offsets” are well known as scams, particularly those involving selling forest rights. In many cases, “carbon offsets” are sold on forests that no one had any intention of cutting down, often because they are in geography that makes logging difficult or impossible. Worse, some of these offsets are sold multiple times as there is no way to track their offset ownership.
The investments of 125billionaires produce 393 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year, according to a report by Oxfam.
That’s the equivalent CO2 output to the whole of France and makes the average billionaire’s annual emissions a million times higher than a person in the poorest 90% of the world’s population, the global poverty charity says.
But it’s okay – they talk the talk about everyone else lowering their carbon footprint and they buy scammy carbon offsets to not cut forests that no one was planning to cut anyway. And they use biofuels in their private jets so all is good!
Hollywood Celebrities
Leonardo DiCaprio is well known for his climate change activism. But the lifestyle changes he demands of others to mitigate climate change do not apply to him.
Lots of celebrities enjoy the high life while telling us how to live ours.
Dr. Lise Van Susteren
Dr. Van Susteren is a psychiatrist who has a specialty in the mental health impacts of climate change.
From Wisconsin in the U.S., she traveled to France and attended medical school in Paris in the 1970s, did an internship in Togo in West Africa, and then a residency in the U.S. Am guessing she traveled to France prior to deciding to attend med school in Paris, on family trips, or study abroad or recreationally, or all of those.
She travels the world lecturing on climate change: “In September 2006, she was chosen as one of the first fifty persons to be trained in Nashville by Al Gore to give her version of his global warming slide show, the basis of the documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” She returned several times to Nashville as a Senior Trainer and was subsequently named to the Board of Directors of The Climate Project. She has presented her slide show to over 100 educational, religious, political, environmental and business audiences in the United States and abroad. She has traveled to the Arctic to lecture on the impact of global warming there and frequently lectures on the health effects of climate change“
Dr. Van Susteren, a global traveler, appears in this article about “flight shaming” and is quoted in the context of discouraging air travel. The elite do what they want, and after spending a lifetime of air travel, turn around and tell us to be ashamed of traveling by air. She says climate change advocates must “lead by example“. But what is their example?That it’s okay for elite to do as they damn please while telling us useless peons to walk everywhere?
Former VP and Inconvenient Truth documentary producer, Al Gore reportedly engaged in hypocritical activities and worked to clean up his behavior after being caught at it.
In 2007, his 4,000 square foot Tennessee mansion consumed more energy per month than the typical American home in a year. Snopes and FactCheck.org say this was true in 2007, but Gore eventually added solar PV, reduced lighting demand, improved insulation and became LEED certified. (Chances are it will take up to 20 years for these changes to pay back the carbon produced during the manufacturing and retrofit work during the remodel.)
He also owns or owned a 6,500 sq ft ocean front home in California. He has traveled all over the world, extensively, giving lectures and presentations on climate change, and specifically, climate change related investment opportunities in which the very wealthy may participate. He was formerly Chair of Generation Investment Management – a way for the wealthy to invest in climate profits.
He admits to occasionally using private jets and says he also travels on commercial airline flights. He says he purchases carbon offsets to ameliorate carbon produced (carbon offsets are notorious for scams and frauds).
He justifies his massive homes, boats, and travel by saying he now uses alternative energy or carbon offsets – because he can afford to, and you can’t. He could live a scaled back lifestyle AND buy carbon offsets – but none of the elite do that. Instead, they purchase their carbon indulgences to pretend they are justifying their outrageous carbon emissions.
Many of the wealthy (Al Gore is worth hundreds of millions of $s) spend much on multiple, large homes, travel on private jets, own yachts, and other vehicles – but assuage their guilt at using orders of magnitude more energy than you or I, by purchasing carbon indulgences to support their efforts at doing God’s work to save the world.
The National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Society has large numbers of web pages and programs devoted to climate change education and that climate change threatens everything in existence.
Meanwhile, the National Geographic Society does this:
John Kerry’s private family jet took 16 trips this year alone (nypost.com) (up to August 2021). However, those flights were not for him – he flies in large government private jets, as required for his job. Of course. He flies dozens of times per year to climate meetings, via large government private jets. Because he can and he’s important – and you are not.
Canada: Deputy Finance Minister Michael Sabia
Deputy Finance Minister Michael Sabia, who called climate change “a massive change to humanity,” spent nearly $11,000 in first-class airfare, according to Blacklock’s Reporter .
World Climate Leaders Fly Private Jets to Scotland Climate Meeting COP26
More than 400 private jets, many of which were airliner class jets, not small biz jets, flew to Scotland to attend the COP26 climate meeting.
There were so many private jets that some were relocated to airports as far south as London (meaning a flight to Glasgow to drop off the elite, then a flight to southern England to park, and then a return flight at the end of the conference, before heading off to their home country).
This hypocrisy will be repeated at COP27 in November 2022 in Egypt (Update – again ove 400 private jets to Egypt). Conference success will be determined by how many rules, restrictions, and expenses the elite foist on the people while continuing to jet about the globe, exempt from their restrictions.
30,000 (or more likely 40,000 as that is how many attended COP26) delegates have flown to Egypt from about 200 countries to attend COP27. Presumably, like COP26, hundreds of private jets will have made the trip to Egypt.
Of course. Because they are more important than you. Shut up peons.
Greta Thunberg
A few years back, she got tons of publicity about taking a sailboat from the U.S. to Europe – because climate. But at least two sailing crew members flew across the Atlantic to crew the boat – negating Greta’s carbon savings. But it was a much publicized and successful PR stunt. The meeting she sailed to attend in South America was canceled and relocated to Spain – she had to sail back again, traveling extensively in the America’s by both car and train. The hypocrisy was large. Of course, those of us in the real world are unable to spend weeks sailing back and forth across the oceans on privately owned $1.5 million yachts- but privileged elite like Greta have lots of time available. (The luxury yacht crossing was donated by an Australian Youtube sailing couple as publicity for their Youtube channel.)
Throughout history, lives of nearly everyone have improved. Take a look at global poverty and literacy rates, life spans, and other metrics, over time. Everywhere we look, life is getting better, over time. And not just a little bit but by huge amounts.
The global fertility rate is about 2.3 and dropping rapidly. It’s been dropping since about 1960. The U.S. dropped below 2.1 in 1972. But you didn’t know that. See the Demographics series on this web site or read the book “Empty Planet”.
Your brain is stuck in 1970 – the baby boom was a bizarre anomaly since reversed:
US Fertility Rate
The global fertility rate will soon cross below 2.1.
Dozens and dozens of countries have been in decline for decades. Read the Demographics posts on this web site or read the book “Empty Planet” (or other books on this topic) to understand why and what this means.
Global Travel is Fine If You Document How Bad Everything Is
There is an assortment of writers, journalists, artists, environmentalists, photographers who extensively travel the world to document “environmental catastrophe”. If you are documenting a “catastrophe”, you can fly as much as you want and have a carbon foot print the size of the moon!
For example, from the author bio of Planet Ice: A Climate of Change, we read this modest travel itinerary (multiple times to the same areas, as this was over a 15-year period).
A trip leader for Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, JAMES MARTIN has contributed to Outdoor Photographer magazine and has seventeen books to his credit. For the Planet Ice project, he has ventured to Antarctica, Greenland, Baffin Island, the Alaska Range, Mount Everest, Patagonia, Central Africa’s Ruwenzori Mountains, Mount Kilimanjaro, the Alps, the Canadian Rockies, Glacier National Park in Montana, Ecuador’s volcanoes, Washington State’s Cascade Mountains, Alaska’s North Slope, the Three Gorges in China’s Yunnan Province, and Shishapangma, also in China.
The author’s past work was leading “photos safaris” all over the world. But if it’s for a worthy cause, no problem!
Of course, as you may know, those who have traveled all over the world extensively now tell us only the elite who are documenting problems are acceptable people.
Peter Kalmus, NASA (He is not a hypocrite)
Peter Kalmus is a NASA scientist who enjoyed the privilege of studying at elite Harvard and Columbia University and now works for NASA. He says he has chosen to not fly on airplanes since 2012 due to climate fears and his carbon footprint is 1/10th that of average American (Mine is 1/4th and we plan to hit 1/8th). He is a scientist working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration yet founded an organization to discourage air travel. Seems to be a conflict that would get the rest of us fired if we opposed our own employer and refused our employer’s request to travel. Weird.
He’s not a hypocrite like many of the above, but did he do his global travel earlier in life and can now be virtuous saying he will no longer fly? Those of us that have not traveled will be forced into travel lockdowns and denied the experience and knowledge the elite previously obtained. They really do not want the rest of us to fly. We should be taking the high-speed rail service from Los Angeles to Honolulu…
He has engaged in childish pranks like chaining himself to the doors of a bank and encourages kids to go on school strikes (a strike is when people withhold labor from a job, a school strike is when kids cut class – and no one cares because they produce nothing).
His company, Patagonia, was long known for its unique open workspaces, a good place to work, with childcare and other benefits, and advocacy of environmental issues, including direct financial support. However, when younger, he extensively traveled the world, including Europe and parts of Asia, in search of climbing challenges.
In 2022, he donated the entire company to a trust, so that future profits would be used to address climate change. He does have a conflict with his past global travels but he has and is putting forth what appear to be legitimate efforts to promote changes.
Neil Oliver’s Comments on the Hypocrisy of the Elite (NOT a hypocrite)
Neil Oliver points to the elite that tell us how to live their lives, but continue living their lives as usual, with carbon footprints the size of countries.
Summary
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased. Ice packs in many areas have retreated. This is thought to be caused by human-induced climate change, primarily from burning fuels that emit carbon.
Climate activists believe that we can organize a highly complex sequence of decades long activities to control the climate.
If we don’t act some say humanity will be extinct by 2030. Seriously.
Global elite want us to change our ways – but as shown, above, they will not change their own ways and continue to lead a globalist lifestyle of luxury. Their emissions of greenhouse gases are more important than your emissions.
Many climate activists, including youth activists, have lived a life of global luxury but say the rest of us should revert to lockdowns, without future travel. Even though travel has relatively minor impacts on carbon emissions compared to almost everything else.
Elite activists tell us their goal is to end capitalism and democracy and establish a new global world order, with the global elite in charge. Extinction Rebellion says their goal is that support of 3.5% of the population will enable them to rule the world – thus not only the end of capitalism but the end of democracy itself. Thunberg tells us we must destroy capitalism but offers no alternative – but the destination is obvious -> the end of democracy, freedom and rule by technocratic elite who are smarter than use inferior peons.
Next up – wealth redistribution, but call it “reparations”, for future climate disaster costs that exist in climate model scenarios (note that recent disease models were so poor that in October 2022, the CDC said they discontinued publishing model output because they had “low reliability”). We now blame routine and common weather events on “climate”. It’s a shake down operation.
All combined – if climate change is real, the elite are not acting like it is a real issue.
REMINDER
We have cut our household carbon output to about 1/4th that of the average American home and have a goal to reach 1/8th of the average home.
My home has six-inch walls with genuine R-19 (or better) insulation, triple pane windows
We upgraded the attic insulation to R-60 (it’s more than R-60)
Solar PV powers our home.
We donate 1.5 megawatt hours of clean, solar produced electrical generation to our local utility grid, for free, every year.
Installed a 60-amp 220v outlet in the garage and another 220v outlet outside, for future EV charging, which will come from the excess production of our home’s solar PV.
I continue driving my older car which averages 42 mpg. Based on overall life cycle energy costs, this is more carbon efficient than replacing with an EV. Indeed, one analysis finds that at 200,000 miles of EV driving, an EV reduces carbon emissions by a mere -28% versus a similar sized gas car when considering total lifecycle energy costs. Personal EVs have almost no impact on global carbon emissions (see more on that topic, below).
We air dry laundry on a clothes rack, seasonally outside, or inside during the winter months.
Our house is lit with LED lighting, and we rarely have multiple lights on.
The home is heated by locally sourced wood products made from wood waste; the UN says wood is carbon neutral (I disagree since there is energy to collect, process and transport – but those costs occur for other forms of energy too).
The house has AC but we manage the house temperature by opening windows at night and cooling down the home’s thermal mass, which remains cool – usually below 77 degrees, all day, without using AC.
The water heater is electric; we turn it to “Vacation” mode when we leave.
We compost all “green stuff” including kitchen scraps.
We eat little meat (I am not vegan for health reasons).
There is not much we can do, personally, in terms of energy used in food growing, production and distribution, or other products and services, including health care. We have done what we can do directly. Many do not understand that even if you reduce your personal footprint, energy is still used to produce and deliver food, products, and services that make your life possible. All transportation produces an estimated 28% of US greenhouse gases – that’s about 10% for ships, large trucks, aircraft and railroads – and the rest for personal vehicles and small business vehicles (pickup trucks, vans, etc). The rest (72% or so) comes from (mostly) electricity generation and industrial processes. Driving an EV only impacts your minor component of greenhouse gases, if your electricity is cleanly sourced. In fact, if we switched all light vehicles used by consumers and businesses to EV, tomorrow, we might reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as little as 5%.
Choices you make influence carbon usage, but sometimes, in ways you did not intend. If you live where 100% of your electricity comes from coal plants, then buying an EV might make things worse! Conversely, if you live in a place with nearly 100% of your utility power from solar, wind and hydro, investing in solar PV may have no impact on carbon reduction! In the latter case, you’d do better by purchasing an EV! I have an essay on that topic here.
I had not traveled to Europe until age 63, in 2022. I have now visited one country in Europe. Any additional travel will be under the umbrella of public humiliation “Flight shaming”, of course. The global elite don’t want competition from others having global experiences and knowledge like theirs. I must point out that having international experience is a mandate in many professional fields today and will be extraordinarily important in the 21st century – the most globalized part of world history. 93% of those with a 4-year degree (U.S.) have traveled internationally, and 70% have been to 3 or more countries. Essentially 100% of upper management has international experience – typically born abroad, lived abroad, worked abroad, or studied abroad and did an internship abroad. The 21st century will be far more global – due to the fertility rate and labor shortage issue, dozens of countries insist they will address this with more immigration. The U.S. plans to import more highly skilled workers, who, are global – and these will be the future leaders in our businesses and organizations. Those who have global experience will thrive. Thus, denying global travel is a way of making the current elite even more elite. Americans lacking in global experience will be cut off from future leadership roles.
Online carbon calculators say our household produces 1/4th the annual carbon output of the average American household. Our goal is to drop that to 1/8th. We are about as carbon neutral as one can be in the U.S.
After the past two and half years of public health inconsistencies, contradictions, incoherent and illogical messaging, outright lies and daily “dueling experts” contradicting each other, calling each other names, I lost trust in “experts” including in climate science.
Carbon dioxide increases are concerning – but then “climate” is following the same path of hypocritical technocratic elite telling us how to live our lives, while they spew vast planet-sized clouds of carbon. Their direct message is they do not actually believe what they are preaching.
I have no confidence government efforts to control climate will produce more benefits than harms. At best, their rules will yield “winners” and “losers”, where the winners are the globalized, technocratic elite in charge while the rest of us will be losers. Look at the success (not!) of controlling Covid-19 – most of what was done was ineffective, and if it did work, was not sustainable – and came with extreme costs. WHO itself documented these problems in 2019 – before the pandemic!
As of Sep 2021, per WHO, 60% of the world’s population had had Covid. A pre-print study available in November 2022 estimates that 94% of the U.S. population has had Covid. It’s as if none of what they had us go through made any difference – and certainly little of what they promised us was true. It’s now about day 1,000 of 15 days to flatten the curve ….
My confidence in government control of climate is the same as confidence in public health: which is none.
Sorry if that viewpoint disappoints you.
That said, it makes sense to continually seek efficiency improvements and effective energy reductions – regardless of whether climate change science is real, or less than estimated, or just messed up. You do not need to “believe” in climate change to adopt that approach.Therefore, I will continue to cut our own greenhouse gas footprint and continue to seek improvements in efficiency and effectiveness with our next target being 1/8 the carbon footprint of a typical American home.
I, however, will not spend every day spewing fear and hysteria, and engaged in self-flagellation over not being “pure enough” but will focus on solutions – not virtue signaling – and will not tell everyone else how to live their lives.
Afterward
Sophia Kianni’s behavior, documented above, and that of the other young climate activists, really, really rubs me the wrong way – a global elite, global traveler who co-chaired a manifesto saying we should not travel – but not only is it okay for her to travel the world, everything is about her – look at those posts of hers from around the world and at COP27 – it’s all about self-promotion that she is better than the rest of us peons. At 20 years old, she confuses her wealth, youth, and pretty privilege for intellectual fire power. In 2022, I visited Europe for the first time – and I’m 3x her age. But since I was born at the peak of the baby boom (a fact over which I had no control), I am the one at fault for theoretical catastrophic climate change.
These self-centered, narcissistic, wealthy kids tell the rest of us how to live our lives while they go about their elite lifestyle, preaching how virtuous they are. Almost none of them participate in developing solutions – that requires study and work in science and engineering. Instead, they study public policy and political science, jet about telling the rest of us to fix things because we are horrible people.
I cannot emphasize what a total turnoff these behaviors for climate activists have become.
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