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Brownstone Institute

Imagine Life without Fossil Fuels

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9 minute read

From the Brownstone Institute

By Thi Thuy Van Dinh

At 4 am on Tuesday 9th July in Seville (Spain), I woke up alerted by a text to my phone. “We had a bad night with Hurricane Beryl. Your house still stands and the critters are safe, two big trees down, no electricity, no Internet, and poor phone service.”

My children and I were visiting Andalusia, one of the oldest and most gorgeous European regions, blessed with the best food and the warmest people. This is one of my favorite places on earth, but for now, my family and I are calling South of Houston (Texas, US) home.

I panicked, being instantly seized by maternal instinct. Our entire house is run by electricity. On our return in a few days, there would be no warm food, no milk, no air conditioning, no TV, no running water, no toilet flushing. In town, neither kid activities nor story time at local libraries. These conditions are undoubtedly hard for young children who have only known comfort so far, although hundreds of millions of children are growing up in such circumstances daily.

Then I calmed down. The first thing to do should be thanking God for protecting human lives there, and for our wonderful friends and community.

I understood what happened immediately. Trees have fallen everywhere, taking down most of the grid and affecting more than a million people. It would take a few weeks to fix it. Houston would be first, of course, the crowded and business-minded urban areas will be rightly prioritized and rural areas follow after. After such largesse provided for the solar industry by successive American administrations, why has there been no money to put wires and cables underground in hurricane-prone regions?

We always have a month of canned meat and dry salami, drinking water, olive oil, lard, animal feed (we have some farm animals,) and 750 gallons of water in storage, candles, matches, and flashlights. For emergency situations like a war or a natural disaster. We have a pool conveniently built for Texan summer heat even though the filter won’t work. I can dig a hole in the garden if I want to give the kids some survival training, or I can use the pool water for toilet flushing. Our hens and ducks give us more than enough fresh eggs daily.

But I should have kept a few solar phone chargers and probably some solar panels for our well pump (solely activated by electricity). My husband should have had a better stock of gas to run our generator through the fridge and the two freezers. At least, I can still grill and the kids can help gather dry branches to make a fire and cook camping meals. After all, it is easier to survive without energy in a hot place than in a cold place.

My situation isn’t probably the worst, and I will be able to help some people around me with food and water. I will entertain the kids with games I used to play under the moonlight and the starry sky. However, with little or no gas (petrol) in town, and likely long lines at available stations, I will have to calculate our car trips well.

I told my 7-year-old what happened. He said he would fry eggs on the car and roast marshmallows on sticks. Young children are such marvelous beings. With only their imagination and innocence, they bring wonders to our world. Who knows, we might be lucky enough to catch some fireflies in a jar – I replied, nurturing his excitement. As his mother, I have the duty to minimize his suffering. Nevertheless, I would like to seize this opportunity to give him and his younger sister some duress training on life without fossil fuels – coal, gas, and oil to power modern devices – a bit like how I grew up.

Have the international, national, and non-governmental Net Zero crusaders ever lived a day without using any technology powered or facilitated by fossil fuels and their byproducts?

I would like to invite them to live here with us. I will show them that had I had solar panels on my roof, I would likely be cleaning up all of their dangerous debris around the house. Right now, a Tesla would be of less use than an ox cart in my Texan town.

But life at my homestead after Hurricane Beryl seems rather poetic. Well-prepared, a week or two without electricity might equal an ecological or soul-searching retreat with meditation time, good books on a hammock, bird-watching, simple yet exotic farm-to-table meals, and constellation identification.

For a real experience of a life without fossil fuels, climate leaders and activists should consider signing up for the sustainability internship program offered by Mr Jusper Machogu, a Kenyan farmer who was recently attacked by the BBC for his campaign on X requesting “Fossils Fuels for Africa.” Participants will learn how to grow foods without technologies powered by fossil fuels and live with a minimal impact on nature in rural Kisii.

Ploughing the land with bare hands before planting isn’t fun at all. Watering the crops regularly might well bring people closer to God with spontaneous prayers. Weeding or harvesting by squatting under the sun is tough. Even without factoring in any risk of pests, diseases. and unfavorable weather, what are the chances they would have to get out of poverty and food insecurity without cheap, reliable, abundant, and scalable energy?

Billions of subsistence families are still going through this. Worse, they continue to put their health at risk by cooking with agricultural wastes, wood sticks, and cow dung, while the Western world and their investment funds shamelessly demand poor countries and their populations to adopt intermittent, expensive, and unreliable green energies, instead of supporting fossil fuels (as well as hydropower and nuclear) production and infrastructure.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who repeatedly called to “close the door on fossil fuel era” (on International Clean Energy Day – 26 January 2024), would you live entirely and produce your own foods without fossil fuels?

United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP) Chief Inger Andersen, who, at the closing of the 28th Climate COP (Dubai, UAE), claimed that “we know the solutions, we know what needs to be done,” would you be able to build a town for your staff without using oil, gas, and their byproducts?

How may we, as voters and taxpayers, demand that decision-makers lead by example, truly adhering to their green agenda first, before they insist that others implement it?

Author

Dr. Thi Thuy Van Dinh (LLM, PhD) worked on international law in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Subsequently, she managed multilateral organization partnerships for Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund and led environmental health technology development efforts for low-resource settings.

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Brownstone Institute

Counting Coup: The Great Comeuppance For The Deep State

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From the Brownstone Institute

By Thomas Buckley 

It is, yet again, fashionable amongst the dwindling tribe of progressives to yell loudly that what is happening now in DC is a coup.

Donald Trump (and his Muskian minions) are running roughshod over the government, destroying norms and constitutional precedents and being very rude about it in the process.

Despite being elected on a platform of doing exactly that only a few months ago, the deep and/or woke state (before woke became a cool and easy way to grift graft billions, the deep state didn’t really care about things like trans whale rights, by the way) and its well-credentialed but poorly educated horde of government job dependent supporters are crying – literally – foul.

Elon Musk is unelected. You have no right. This is not a dictatorship. How dare you change anything that has worked so well for us for decades? At least slow it down. (Note – if you really thought you were being murdered you would yell “Stop!,” not “Slow down,” so maybe even progwokes get it, at least at a subconscious level.)

This is a coup, they yell.

Well, no it’s not. The nation – eyes wide open – elected Trump to do exactly what he is doing right now, whirlwinding through federal agencies to end the generational oligarchical scam.

Note – Joe Biden theoretically was elected to bring normalcy and decency to DC only to see his administration become a corrupt cavalcade of lies. In fact, unlike Trump, Biden did exactly the opposite of what he said (or mumbled or read) during the campaign that he was going to do as president.

If a coup involves false pretense, then look no further than Delaware.

Obviously, all actual coups involve change, but not all change is by definition a coup.

The concepts are not transitive.

And everything that has been done so far is well within the purview of the president – in theory, Joe Biden could have done everything Trump is doing now, if his handlers had let him or if it had ever occurred to him to do so.

What is happening is not a coup – it’s basic reform. It’s trying to sort out the absurdities of government spending and programs and to shut down the most egregious; case in point the USAID.

Vast billions slushed through the agency (one hopes the ludicrously named, cartoonishly-villainous National Endowment for Democracy is next) under the cover of political correctness and/or expediency on its way around the globe, most of which ended up in odd pockets of strongmen and politicians and “civil society” power-base builders who would then turn around and support the agency and its many many QUANGOs and foundations and such.

The money was not about helping actual real people – it was about creating an international network that could be called upon to do the bidding of the American intelligence community and the globalist socialist socialite statists, now one and the same. When you pay people they will pay you back, however they can, from writing op-eds to going on MSNBC to railing against populism – whatever you need at the moment.

That being said, there is one possible interpretation of the idea of a coup that could have more than an element of truth to it – counting coup.

Counting coup was a Plains Indian warrior tradition in that you didn’t necessarily have to kill your opponent in a battle but merely touch them – essentially bonk them on the head – and get away unscathed. That humiliated your opponent and counted – more than counted – as a moral victory (in fact, amongst the Crow – at least – it was one of four tasks that had to be completed in order to become a war chief.)

It was bravery personified.

And it can be said that Trump, Musk, and his hyper-caffeinated hackers are doing that with every move they make – counting coup.

Millions for gender-diverse Serbians?

Bonk on the head.

Paying global media types to twist the truth to benefit the interests of the deep state, including pushing to prolong the war in Ukraine and even possibly support the impeachment of Trump?

Bonk on the head.

Trying to help overthrow foreign governments?

Bonk on the head.

Government DEI programs?

Bonk on the head.

Paying for the BBC, climate change silliness, and Iraqi puppet shows?

Bonk, bonk, bonk on the head.

Not only is this not an actual coup, this is not even revenge or retribution but long and desperately needed reform.

And while counting coup was a way to humiliate an opponent it is not clear if that is the current intent, though one can be sure there is more than a little snickering glee amongst those involved in the process.

What is happening now is the tearing down – from the inside – of the ossified calcified oppressive state that has built up over the last 40 years.

The deep state is finally getting its much-deserved comeuppance and it may be happening just in time.

Bonk.

Author

Thomas Buckley is the former mayor of Lake Elsinore, Cal. a Senior Fellow at the California Policy Center, and a former newspaper reporter.  He is currently the operator of a small communications and planning consultancy and can be reached directly at [email protected]. You can read more of his work at his Substack page.

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Agriculture

How USAID Assisted the Corporate Takeover of Ukrainian Agriculture

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From the Brownstone Institute

By john-klarJohn Klar  

A recent essay titled “The Real Purpose of Net Zero” by Jefferey Jaxon posited that Europe’s current war against farmers in the name of preventing climate change is ultimately designed to inflict famine. Jaxon is not speculating on globalist motives; he is warning humanity of a rapidly unfolding reality that is observable in the perverse lies against cows, denigration of European farmers as enemies of the Earth, and calls by the WHO, WEF, and UN for a plant-based diet dependent entirely on GMOs, synthetic fertilizers, and agrichemicals.

Revelations about the evil doings of the Orwellian-monikered “United States Agency of International Development” (USAID) reveal a roadmap to totalitarian control unwittingly funded by America’s taxpaying proles. USAID’s clandestine machinations have long focused on controlling local and global food supplies as “soft colonization” by multinational chemical, agricultural, and financial corporations. European farmers revolting against climate, wildlife, and animal rights policies are harbingers of this tightening globalist noose.

The roots of the current globalist plan to “save humanity from climate change” link directly to the infamous Kissinger Report, which called to control world food supplies and agriculture as part of a globalist collaboration between nation-states and NGOs to advance US national security interests and “save the world” from human overpopulation using “fertility reduction technologies.” Kissinger’s 1974 Report was created by USAID, the CIA, and various federal agencies, including the USDA.

Fast forward to 2003, the Iraq War justified using fear-mongering propaganda about weapons of mass destruction and neo-conservative malarky about rescuing the Iraqi people. The US-led occupation of Iraq became a rapacious profiteering smorgasbord for colonizing corporations husbanded by USAID. Iraq is heir to the birthplace of human civilization, made possible by early Mesopotamian agriculture: many of the grains, fruits, and vegetables that now feed the world were developed there. Iraq’s farmers saved back 97% of their seed stocks from their own harvests before the US invasion. Under Paul Bremer, Rule 81 (never fully implemented) sought to institute GMO cropping and patented seed varieties, as Cargill, Monsanto, and other corporations descended upon the war-ravaged nation using American tax dollars and USAID.

That playbook was more quietly implemented during the Ukraine War, once again orchestrated by USAID. Before the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe, prohibiting GMO technologies and restricting land ownership to Ukrainians. Within months of US intervention, USAID assisted in the dismantling of these protections in the name of “land reforms,” free markets, financial support, improved agricultural efficiency, and rescuing the Ukrainian people. In just two years, over half of Ukraine’s farmland became the property of foreign investors. GMO seeds and drone technology were “donated” by Bayer Corporation, and companies such as GMO seed-seller Syngenta and German chemical manufacturer BASF became the dominant agricultural “stakeholders” in war-torn Ukraine. Russia may withdraw, but Ukraine’s foreign debts, soil degradation, and soft colonization will remain.

The UN, WTO, WHO, and WEF all conspire to peddle a false narrative that cows and peasant farmers are destroying the planet, and that chemical-dependent GMO monocropping, synthetic fertilizers, and patented fake meats and bug burgers must be implemented post haste (by force if necessary) to rescue humanity. The argument that pesticides and synthetic fertilizers (manufactured from natural gas, aka methane) are salvific is patently false. They are, however, highly profitable for chemical companies like Bayer, Dow, and BASF.

Jefferey Jaxon is exactly correct. The Netherlands committed to robust agricultural development following a Nazi embargo that deliberately inflicted mass famine following their collaboration with Allied Forces in Operation Market Garden. France boasts the highest cow population in all of Europe. Ireland’s culture is tightly linked to farming as part of its trauma during the (British-assisted) Irish Potato Famine. The corporate/NGO cabal now uprooting and targeting farmers in these nations and across the EU in the name of staving off climate change and preserving wildlife is a direct outcropping of Kissinger’s grand dystopian scheme launched through USAID in 1974.

Americans watch European farmer protests from afar, largely oblivious that most all of US agriculture was absorbed by the Big Ag Borg generations ago. Currency control linked to a (political, environmental, and economic) social credit scorecard promises the fruition of Kissinger’s demonic plan: “Control the food, control the people.”

Modern humans suffer a double hubris that blinds them to the contemplation of the truth of Jaxon’s hypothesis: a cultish trust in technology, coupled with an irrational faith in their self-perceived moral superiority to past civilizations (Wendell Berry calls this “historical pride”). Yet, as long as mankind has had the capacity to harm another for personal gain, humans have devised ways to control food for power or profit. Siege warfare generally depended on starving defenders of castle walls into submission.

Even if globalist food control proposals are well-intentioned, a monolithic, monocultured, industrial-dependent worldwide food system is a lurking humanitarian disaster. Berry observed:

In a highly centralized and industrialized food-supply system there can be no small disaster. Whether it be a production “error” or a corn blight, the disaster is not foreseen until it exists; it is not recognized until it is widespread.

The current push to dominate global food production using industrial systems is the cornerstone of complete globalist dominion over all of humanity. The “Mark of the Beast” without which no American will buy or sell goods – including guns, bullets, or factory-grown hamburgers and cricket patties – is mere steps away. Mr. Jaxon is correct that these leaders “know these basic historical and current facts,” and that “[f]armers are becoming endangered because of government [climate] policy … and it’s being allowed to happen.” USAID has been actively seeding and watering this dystopia for decades.

Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates are as fully cognizant of this fundamental truth as Henry Kissinger was in 1974. USAID has aided all three. Having lost almost all of their small farms over the last century, Americans are well ahead of Europeans in their near-complete dependence on industrial food.

That’s the plan.

Author

  • john-klar

    John Klar is an attorney, farmer, food rights activist, and author from Vermont. John is a staff writer for Liberty Nation News and Door to Freedom. His substack is Small Farm Republic.

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