Greta: Now Surplus to Greenie Requirements

The entire Greta childrens-crusade thing is a fascinating story: one day the whole thing will perhaps be truthfully told.  (Or not.  There appears to be some evidence - some would call it conspiracy theory - that she is 100% a carefully-contrived PR exercise, right from her first solo sit-in.  In this account her mother basically handed her over to shadowy "green" forces to do with as they pleased:  there's a word for that ... and a lengthy prison sentence.)

Anyhow, as you know, I reckon "she" contributed just a little to the great Story of 2019, the Year When Zero Carbon Went Mainstream.  It wasn't her doing; nor was it XR's: but they are all definitely part of the overall canvas (along with the panic-stricken Theresa May and whomever it was told her to rush that Net Zero Carbon 2050 Act through, who may yet get a lot of "credit" when the history books are written).

But now?  Greta's contribution to recent climate debate has been characteristically petulant, if not paid as much heed as last year; and it's interesting.

She is now drawing attention to the rather obvious fact that, notwithstanding 2050-style legislation around the whole western world, climate change is not being treated as an *Emergency* (as all those silly motions passed in debating chambers around the world would have it) - and we know this because we've just seen how people respond to a real emergency, Covid-19 being the case in point.  She was hoping that everyone by now would have voted for the complete lockdown and trashing of the world economy - for Climate reasons.   Much stamping of little foot and blinking-back of tears: but there it is.  She's nailed it.  We know it.  And nobody's really listening anymore.

So what is happening?  Back to my "2019" thesis.  The 2050 legislation across the western world is exactly the icing on the cake that confirms to the whole world's industrialists and bankers (and con artists, political parties, kleptocrats, organised criminals etc) what they'd already decided 12 months ago - that this is the only game in town, now given a sturdy touch on the accelerator by all the multi-trillion Keynsian "Green Deal / Covid recovery" schemes now being drawn up.  Helpfully, these include lots of basic infrastructure renewal for "adaptation" / "mitigation" / "resilience" - so even the big, traditional steel-n-concrete boys are invited to the party, much to their amazement & delight.

Coupled with this "mainstream capitalism" development - not quite what many greens had in mind, hahah! - the Left is developing a response of its own, which also isn't exactly what the greens hoped for.  To take the UK left as an example: as noted here before, the Labour Party's apparently rather comprehensive version of the Green New Deal is quite strong on the *Just Transition*, which in classic workerist fashion turns out to mean that (a) everything must be implemented by a unionised workforce, and (b) anyone currently in a dirty job must either be granted a shiny new clean job / apprenticeship / etc, OR left doing that job for as long as it takes to come up with a transition plan.  Lefties in other countries  take similar stances: and hard lefties take a very tough & uncompromising line on priorities.

Green New Deal advocates and the wider Left should factor into their plans the need for a just transition to a post-extractivist society ... This must be an absolute red line, even if it threatens decarbonisation targets [their emphasis]

Like I said, not quite the red-green alliance thing.  Indeed, XR itself is deeply out of favour on the hard left (all those middle-class white XR types being racists, dontchaknow?); and lefties now tend to identify + despise what many a rightist has long railed against - Ecofascism.  Doesn't have the correct marxist interpretation of exploitation, see?

And Greta?  Well, if you believe the conspiracy theory, she is fronting for a cabal of NGOs who plan to use the Climate impetus to institute a World Government thing that - wait for it - will take it upon itself to issue extraction licences on All The World's Natural Resources, for licence / royalty fees that they will (a) lay claim to for their nasty world-government plans; and (b) take a % on, for themselves (of course! - Gulbenkian on a scale hard to imagine; they are nothing if not ambitious). 

They may, of course, get trampled in the rush - because every industrialist, bank, con artist, political party, kleptocrat, organised criminal etc on the planet has similar designs ...

ND

Corbyn; I still hate Bankers but I dont know why

What is it with people and fighting the last war?


BQ's excellent preceding post on the UK military highlights how hard it is for people to break away from their pre-conceptions. We need a big army or a big navy, whatever, we say what we want then often try to fit that into the story we want to tell.


So today Mr Jeremy Corbyn, a serious candidate to the be next UK Prime Minister, is engaging in his old game of the politics of envy. In this FT article, he is quick to blame bankers for all our ills and also to suggest we don't need them anymore. Worryingly, the bankers quoted decide to play up to this with some very unhelpful statements which do them no good at all.


But overall the Corbyn critique of banking is a decade or more out of date. Did the banks cause the great crash? Yes and no, certainly the total mismanagement of the UK banks such as HBOS and RBS was key - but so was the complicity of the UK government (including the useless Bank of England at the time) in allowing this to continue as long as huge tax revenues came in.


We all know what then happened, bust banks and a bust economy that has struggled for 10 years to recover and indeed even in 2017 we are not close to having a stable economy. The structural deficit remains and so does a large QE programme with near zero interest rates. There is nothing normal about the asset bubbles created due to this monetary experiment.


However, this time, in 2017, the Banks are no responsible. Regulations are much tighter, derivatives are more closely regulated. So anaemic is bank lending and their attention to their balance sheets that a whole new industry of non-bank lenders is thriving and fintech companies are being founded at 30 a day in London.


Bankers pay has collapsed, very few now earn the millions that were on offer 10 years ago - only top management really earn it. But Hedge Funds are crazy, 20 people businesses often with a chunk of them taking tens of millions home each year. There are hundreds of hedge funds in London. All the real profits are in these trading and asset stripping businesses, often created with family office money from the Middle East and elsewhere.


The continued inequality in the UK is not driven by the army of compliance managers at Barclays, nor was it ever, it is driven by the use of London as the financial centre of the world's rich families and estates. As much as this causes angst, why would we wish this away? There is nothing to replace it were it to be regulated away. All we would see is a sharp decrease in bankers, lawyers and accountancy jobs in London.


A real far sighted government, of which there is no sign, would instead be looking for ways to either spread this business across the UK (unlikely due to the nature of personal networks) - or better harness the taxes paid to kick-start the more normal economy outside of the South East.


Corbyn as a populist is in fact far more dangerous than Trump. He is stupid in his analysis as show here, stuck in an out-dated world view which cannot solve the issues he espouses so highly and has nothing to offer but the politics of identity and envy.

Disturbing news for the reality-based community

Why do I keep meeting people who are spouting commie nonsense. Only today I have met some senior executives who should know better. They are bemoaning the state of the country post-Grenfell and saying how rubbish we are governed and how things must change....


How the rich (err, them?) have got richer and the poor poorer. How neo-liberal economics has taken us there, how terrible Brexit is for the Country.


Basically, the Corbyn mantra is working. The Tories too are wrongly adopting this nonsense instead of rallying around their own message.


Very worrying - is it just me or is this becoming common, that people have lost sight of the reality of the Hard Left and are instead running to its, umm, warm embrace?