Dear Friends,
It seems to me, you have to hand it to the elite, their lack of cognitive dissonance is superhuman. I mean, most normal people would experience severe cognitive dissonance, when claiming that strip mining millions of acres of forestland to produce the cobalt, lithium and other metals needed for their “green” economy, is perfectly fine… but producing food for the miners is a world ending emergency. That would flip most people’s minds inside out. To hold such divergent, and absurd viewpoints, and hold them as equally true, would be like someone being a Zionist Nazi. You would think the cognitive dissonance would be overwhelming. Clearly though, the ability of a progressive to hold mutually exclusive viewpoints, and not break down, is herculean… or is it?
The rare earth element refining alone, causes ecological disaster that will take centuries to mitigate, if ever… but it’s in Mongolia, and those people are poor and powerless, so who cares? There are lakes that will be toxic for centuries, eventually draining those toxins into the ocean, but hey, at least some CO2 didn’t go into the atmosphere for it. Because if CO2 were to triple, the ecological disaster would be stupendous… plants would flourish, even in the desert. The need for fertilizer would decrease due to the increase in airborn fertilizer. Resulting in increased food yields for man and beast. We can’t have that! So the experts have decided, in all their wisdom, education and moral superiority, that polluting entire regions of other nations is acceptable, if some CO2 is kept out of the air.
Child labor in Africa is the source of much of the cobalt. The progressives would rather those kids starve, that would be more humane in their tinfoil eyes. Of course, the other option, the one we are not allowed to talk about, is the wealth of nations option. Where the rulers cut taxes, regulation and rent seeking to increase the wealth of the nation. They use the market system to bring in equipment that adults run, so the children can get an education, instead of black lung. That would require cheap energy though, and eliminating cheap energy is what the green energy movement is all about. Taking that option off the table. So the only possibilities left, are children toiling in toxic metals to create a clean economy, or they starve to death from poverty. No cognitive dissonance there.
Solar panels are also called solar batteries. Why? Because it takes so much energy to produce them, you only get out what it takes to make them. Only in the last few years has the threshold been broken, in the industrial manufacture, that they produce more energy than it takes to make them. So, for the most part, solar panels are simply stored coal energy, to be converted back to electricity upon exposure to sunlight. The best panels will produce 120% of the energy it took to make them. Then there are the mankind endangering schemes to cool the planet. Spraying sulfur compounds into the stratosphere, dumping tons of iron into the sea to trigger runaway algae growth, and putting giant sunshades in orbit to block sunlight. No way they could go wrong in an extinction level event… to save us from CO2.
I find it odd that “green” requires centrally planned pollution, planet endangering schemes and toxic chemicals… but farms are the planet’s mortal enemy. That has to make you wonder. How can strip mining, child labor, unmitigatable pollution, converting coal to solar, etc… be green, while farming, the most earth friendly activity human beings do, is not? Especially without triggering titanic cognitive dissonance in the minds of progressives. I think it does. I think that’s why progressives are so angry and bitter. They are holding onto a dragon’s tail, in their minds, and dare not let go. The cognitive dissonance would swallow them whole. It is so overwhelming, it silences the rational part of the brain, by the fear of what would happen to their worldview, should they acknowledge it.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
