Thread

CLIMATE CHANGE AGENDA

1. I listened to a political discussion yesterday evening, I'll post the link at the end of this thread.

2. Some of you may have heard of Mark Blyth: he's a Scottish, lefty political scientist/economist & a professor at Browne University in the US.

He gets it. 'Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea' was the book that tuned me into his observations.

3. And he's usually very accurate. The interview was recorded just before the US elections & he forecast a Biden win, followed by disputes over the result :-)

But it's his analysis of the Climate Change agenda that made me stop & think.

4. In summary, it's his view that the West's move towards green technologies is an attempt to curtail the might of the CCP & China's dominance in world trade.

The West has finally woken up to the fact that China is a threat.

5. The economic stagnation across Europe has weakened the continent & it has fallen behind - now an outdated backdrop. It has lost much of its ability to produce goods & the frequent theft of intellectual property by Chinese manufacturers depletes potential profits further.

6. The Belt & Road initiative: a route from China into Europe provides infrastructure for the transportation of goods to satisfy European manufacturers, who are ever thirsty for cheap products to sell or use within their assembly lines.

7. Much of the software used in German cars are made in China, with the German workforce focused on making the vehicle shells & assembly. So Germany is heavily reliant on China to keep its main economic product rolling off the production line.

8. What a bloody mess 'they've' made of it. A continent full of enterprise, innovation, culture & well educated people, at the mercy of a group of elites who've failed to see that their economic model was the road to ruin.

9. The difficulty we have is that it's taken over a decade for them to acknowledge there's a problem, and even more worrying, that they believe they have the answers to the problems they created in the first place.

10. The Blair's of this world, trotting out the same crap.

Assuming this green new world is achievable... has anyone stopped to think how this will impact on our relations with the Middle East?

11. The presently friendly Arab nations are likely to feel less amicable towards the West if their main source of income (oil) is due to be phased out. The present issues in relation to terrorism & migration can only worsen if Arab nations economically deteriorate.

12. The US may be far enough away to buffer the disquiet, but Europe is vulnerable. We saw just how vulnerable when Turkey opened its borders earlier this year, allowing migrants to flow to the Greek border.

13. I get the feeling we may be replacing one geo-political problem with two. China will be none too pleased if their investment in Europe (the Belt & Road) isn't appreciated & the Middle East find itself shut out in the cold due to a significant drop in oil revenue.

14. There seems to be a lack of joined up thinking that's coming too late anyway. Is it another 'good idea' that's going to be badly executed by those who are too far up their own political echo chambers to realise.

Here's the link to the interview:

15. So the plan seems to be that manufacture will move away from China & back to the West. Powered by clean energy, presumably green tariffs will act as a protectionist mechanism to make Far East imports less attractive financially.

16. A digital currency for Europe to provide a platform to rival the likes of Paypal & Alipay.

Will they pull it off? IMO they've put their eggs in one basket again. A continent needs more than green energy to reinvent itself as a serious, economic global force.

17. We've fallen so far behind the emerging economies & have done next to nothing when European innovation is ripped off. Our IP laws need to be toughened up. Designers/inventors need a return on their time & efforts to make innovation worthwhile.

18. It's a tall order & the talons of China have already penetrated countries. Italy has sold much of its clothing & footwear manufacture to Chinese firms - hence the Covid outbreak in February when Chinese workers returned to Italy from spending the Chinese New Year at home.

19. It's a mess & I doubt the Davos brigade have the means to put ideas into action. It's also a bit of an insult that the ideas haven't been shared with the people that matter most in all of this, the electorate. We're just assumed to follow along without input.

20. A successful plan needs to take the people with it, not leave them bewildered as to what's going on.

I'm far from confident the likes of Biden, Clinton, Blair, Macron & Merkel have the skills to make it work. They've messed up too often & citizens have paid a hefty price.