Jimmy Dore reports in the above video on collusion between UN and Google to control public access to climate information . Below is a transcript from the closed captions. JD is the host with some asides from Kurt Metzger (KM) The UN spokesperson is Melissa Fleming (MF), United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications. Text in italics with my bolds and added images.
JD: It turns out Google is the richest company in the history of humanity–did you know that Google gets more money than Exxon, more money than Apple. They have more money than Tesla, they have a lot of money. “Google teams up with the UN for verified climate information.” So this is an article from the United Nations, This is from April 22nd of last year.
KM: Well I hope they fight nitrogen deniers.
JD: So I don’t know if we covered this, which is why I want to cover it now. Did you know that if you Google climate change, Google has now rigged it. It’s not just, well whatever the most popular websites are that talk about climate change come up; the order of the 10 most popular articles.
That’s not what they’re doing. They’re making sure that the popular articles don’t show up and they’re trying to control the narrative. They only want certain ones, only articles the United Nations approves of. That’s what Google’s doing.
KM Look, millions of people around the world go to Google to get information about climate change and sustainability. Nobody is going: What about sustainability? What about that word you just invented a couple years ago? Sustainability, sustainability.
JD: In addition to organic search results, Google is surfacing short and easy to understand information panels and visuals on the causes and effects of climate change as well as individual actions that people can take to help tackle the climate crisis
KM Should I glue my head to a painting?
JD: So here is the under Secretary General for Global Communications at the UN; ready.
MF: Served with Google for example. If you Google climate change, at the top of your search you will get all kinds of UN resources. We started this partnership when we were shocked to see that when we googled , climate change we were getting incredibly distorted information right at the top.
JD: So when she Googled climate change, she was getting a lot of articles that she didn’t agree with. They would come up because what Google is supposedly doing is just showing you what’s the most popular articles, without an editorial input. She’s saying we didn’t like that people were getting to see those articles that were popular that we disagree with. So we went to Google and we told them artificially manufacture your Google results when people Google climate change. And have these special articles that we like come up, those that push a specific agenda about climate change. And they say it right out in public, she’s saying it on camera.
KM I’m relieved. It was about time they started doing this, so I was happy to hear it
MF: So we’re becoming much more proactive. You know, we own the science and we think that the world should know.
JD: Like the Vatican, we own the science. You mean like Tony fauci did. And then he had to admit that he was lying constantly during covid because he was. We Own the science, we own the science: Nobody owns the science, science doesn’t work like that, there’s no such thing. It’s always: Question science. Science always needs to be questioned and tested, always. That’s why Einstein didn’t trust what Newton said about gravity, he had his own ideas. And now we know about E equals m c squared.
MF: And the platforms themselves also do, but again it’s a huge, huge challenge, that I think all sectors of society need to be very active in. We need total control.
JD: We own the science sounds about right. So if you thought when you Google something you’re getting organic natural results, no you’re getting propaganda selected by people like her, articles they want you to have. They want to control your thoughts, and they are. And that’s what propaganda is. They’re all propaganda and they just brag about doing propaganda right in the open.
KM: I’ve heard we own the Sciences, the second time I heard it that sounds like a catchphrase or something.
JD: Someone says we own the science, we own the science. No what you own is the Google results on the science. So that means you own the conversation and the narrative in the culture. But you don’t own the science. Own the science, what kind of a thing is that to say I don’t know.
Mine work at Westmoreland’s Rosebud Mine near Colstrip. Credit: Alexis Bonogofsky
Montana Free Press reports on how the state legislature liberated project permitting from CO2 hysteria, and the nonsense labeling the essential trace gas as a “pollutant.” The article is Gianforte signs bill banning state agencies from analyzing climate impacts. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
House Bill 971 comes as Montana courts are poised to consider how “clean and healthful environment” protections intersect with energy regulations.
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte has signed into law a bill that bars the state from considering climate impacts in its analysis of large projects such as coal mines and power plants.
House Bill 971 was among the most controversial energy- and environment-related proposals before the Legislature this session, drawing more than 1,000 comments, 95% of which expressed opposition to the measure. HB 971 bars state regulators like the Montana Department of Environmental Quality from including analyses of greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts, both within and outside Montana’s borders, when conducting comprehensive reviews of large projects.
It builds off of a decade-old law barring the state from including
“actual or potential impacts that are regional, national,
or global in nature” in environmental reviews.
Comment: The pertinent wording appears in Part 2 of the Act:
(2) (a) Except as provided in subsection (2)(b), an environmental review conducted pursuant to subsection (1) may not includean evaluation of greenhouse gas emissionsAND corresponding impacts to the climate in the state or beyond the state’s borders.
(2) (b) An environmental review conducted pursuant to subsection (1) may include an evaluation if:conducted JOINTLY by a state agency and a federal agency to the extent the review is required by the federal agency; or the United States congress amends the federal Clean Air Act to include carbon dioxide emissions as a regulated pollutant.
Gianforte signed HB 971 into law May 10 over opposition from climate and environmental groups that had argued that the measure hinders the state’s ability to respond to the crisis of our time: the atmosphere-warming emissions of greenhouse gases that are shrinking the state’s snowpack, reducing summer and fall streamflows, and contributing to catastrophic flooding and longer, more intense wildfire seasons. Opponents had also argued that the majority of Montanans believe in human-caused climate change and want meaningful climate action.
Proponents of the measure, including its sponsor, Rep. Josh Kassmier, R-Fort Benton, argued that by pushing back on a recent ruling revoking a NorthWestern Energy gas plant permit, HB 971 underscores that it’s lawmakers, not judges, who set policy. Other proponents, including the Treasure State Resources Association and the Montana Petroleum Association, asserted that HB 971 protects state agencies from an “unworkable” mandate to measure greenhouse gas emissions and that any such regulation properly belongs under federal regulatory frameworks such as the Clean Air Act.
NorthWestern Energy Plan Building a New $250M Natural Gas Power Plant at Laurel, Montana
Gianforte spokesperson Kaitlin Price echoed this assessment in a statement to Montana Free Press.
“House Bill 971 re-established the longstanding, bipartisan policy that analysis conducted pursuant to the Montana Environmental Policy Act does not include analysis of greenhouse gas emissions,” Price said. “The bill would allow evaluation of GHGs if it is required under federal law or if Congress amends the Clean Air Act to include carbon dioxide as a regulated pollutant.”
It also comes as theU.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers a rule that would expand regulations dealing with power plants’ emissions of greenhouse gasses. If passed, the rule would require power plants like the coal-fired plant in Colstrip to capture 90% of its carbon emissions by 2038.
Climatists are increasingly complaining about critics dismissing their doomsday claims as false alarms. Recently I posted on meteorologists upset about negative pushback from their audiences. [See Enforcing Climate Correctness (Fact Checking)]
What is happening of course is that the horrors of the collectivist Net Zero project are becoming increasingly apparent, as a widespread attack on almost all human activity is launched under the suggestion that the climate is breaking down. Until recently the ‘settled’ science promoting this view had a safe, largely uncontested space to prosper. But scepticism about the unproven hypothesis that humans operate the climate thermostat by burning fossil fuels is growing, with two recent polls showing that over 40% of people surveyed worldwide believe climate change is mainly due to natural causes. Far from coughing up the huge sums required to hit Net Zero, 4 in 10 Americans are not even prepared to pay more than two dimes a week to combat climate change.
It is hardly surprising that the banning of meat eating, along with all the other notable Net Zero suggestions such as no flying, shipping, barely enough energy to heat homes and cook food and restrictions on all common building materials, is starting to foster wide debate – even sometimes robust debate. Maslin, along with many of his fellow climate extremists, seem oblivious to this gathering trend. This is perhaps not surprising. In 2018, he was one of a number of eco-activists who signed a letter to the Guardian saying they would no longer “lend their credibility” by debating climate change scepticism.
The loss of Twitter as a ‘safe’ space for climate alarmists has been a bitter blow. It is not seemingly enough to exert considerable control over most other public platforms including social and mainstream media. Global Witness is of the view that if climate scientists are unable to do their work because of “stress and fear caused by harassment”, the critical evidence that undergirds climate action and solutions is put at risk.
It is reasonable for social media users to tell delicate activists like Maslin that there is really nothing to worry about from our climate. It’s just free speech, and it applies – in fact it is vital – in science and geography, as elsewhere. But it’s not just about science anymore. It is becoming apparent that Net Zero is being used as an attack on almost all human activity. Everything humans do to survive, from keeping warm to growing food, is being cast as an attack on Mother Earth.
Expert Findings Awaken Censorship
The alarmists are calling for greater censorship of growing numbers of studies and perspectives that refute and contradict claims made by “consensus” scientists. For example Fraser Institute recently published Celebrate Earth Day by burning latest UN climate report. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Ahead of Earth Day, and not coincidentally, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a summary of its summaries of summaries of a massive unreadable multi-volume report that specifies how the climate is changing and what must be done. Again, not surprisingly, the new plans are more stringent than the already unachievable previous plans.
In presenting the report, which is still not available in its final form, Antonio Guterres, UN secretary-general, called on developed countries to move up their already impossible “net-zero” greenhouse gas emission timelines from 2050 to 2040. He also wants coal use to end entirely by 2030 in developed countries, and wants the developed world on carbon-free electricity generation by 2035, meaning no gas-fired power plants. Yes, only 12 years from now.
If we don’t follow that advice, we’re told, we’ll cruise past the politically-determined target of limiting increased global average temperature to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. And, we’re told, UN scientists believe we’ll see all kinds of negative trends—droughts, floods, storms, hot weather, cold weather, ocean acidification, glacier retreat (basically all the worst parts of the Bible). Some of this may be true, much is likely untrue, as almost all of it is based on speculative computer models infused with assumptions about how things might work in nature, rather than rigorously measured values that establish how they actually work in nature. Canadians who believe computerization can correct soothsaying will be concerned; those who believe the future is unpredictable will be less so.
But either way, the secretary-general’s net-zero acceleration is a terrible idea that Canada’s governments should ignore, mainly because the side effects of this prescription will be far worse than the ailment. In 2021, RBC estimated it would cost a cool $2 trillion to reach net-zero by 2050. Broken down by year, the estimated cost rivalled spending on our health-care system. And RBC’s estimate assumed continued use of natural gas, which the UN is taking off the table. And even though, through RBC’s rose-coloured glasses, a “nation of electric vehicles, solar-powered houses and hydrogen-fueled airplanes” will help enormously, RBC found even the best-case scenarios for these technologies might only get Canada three-quarters of the way to net-zero—the old net-zero of 2050, not the potential new net-zero of 2040.
Finally, as always, the climate benefits from all of this will be negligible.
Nothing Canada can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (already a small and diminishing fraction of global emissions) would be enough to exert a measurable influence on the climate. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Trudeau’s friends in China, the world’s largest emissions emitter, are allowed to emit with abandon. Hopefully, Canadian policymakers will file the new UN report in the voluminous burn bin with other silly UN reports, and with the Trudeau government’s current woes, there’s room for hope.
Ben Pile’s Compilation of Climate False Alarms
Pushback Against Ruinous Climate Policies Takes to the Streets
The growing resistence to elite’s agenda is not only in discourse, but now working people are protesting in the streets. Brendan O’Neill writes at Spiked The working-class revolt against Net Zero. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Danish truckers are the latest workers to rise up against eco-authoritarianism.
Danish truckers are the latest workers to join the rebellion against green authoritarianism. Yesterday, they caused ‘road havoc’ in Denmark. They parked their huge hauliers side by side on key roads. Sections of the border with Germany were affected, as were the M11 and M16 around Copenhagen. Roads towards the ferry docks at Helsingor – ‘one of the most important ports in Denmark’ – were also briefly clogged by angry truckers.
Their beef? The government’s plan to introduce a ‘truck tax’ in 2025. As part of its devotion to the cult of Net Zero, the Danish ruling class wants to slash carbon emissions by 70 per cent before 2030. And one way it intends to do that is by imposing a punitive mileage-based eco-tax on the drivers of diesel trucks, in the hope that the financial pressure will become so unbearable that they’ll switch to electric trucks instead.
The ingratitude is staggering.
Truckers are the lifeblood of a modern society. They transport the fuel, food and other goods that are essential to everyday life. They drive alone, for hours, in all weathers, to keep society well stocked. And how do the elites in Copenhagen repay these people who, without fuss or fanfare, bring them everything they need? By slapping them with a new kind of sin tax – the sin in this case being to drive a vehicle that the eco-minded consider to be ‘dirty’ and ‘polluting’.
No wonder the truckers are angry. Others are, too.Dutch farmers have been in a state of revolt for a couple of years now. They’re raging against their government’s plans to cut nitrogen emissions by half before 2030, which would entail farmers getting rid of vast numbers of their livestock and possibly lead to the closure of 3,000 farms.
The nitrogen-slashing policy was drawn up under pressure from the eco-oligarchs in the EU, who are heaping pressure on all member states to hurry toward that secular heaven of Net Zero. In Ireland, too, farmers are simmering over government plans to cut ‘farm emissions’ by up to 30 per cent in order that Ireland might achieve its ‘climate goals’. They’re worried that 58,000 farm jobs could be lost to the elites’ slavish devotion to the Net Zero ideology.
Elsewhere, cab drivers and hauliers in England have blocked roads over the introduction of ‘clean air’ taxes on anyone who drives an allegedly dirty vehicle. Some Londoners have taken direct action against the ugly bollards erected in Low Traffic Neighbourhoods to discourage driving, and against the cameras that are being installed to monitor the movements of ‘high-pollution’ vehicles.
And let’s not forget that the great gilets jaunes revolt in France of 2018 to 2020 started out as an uprising against a hike in fuel tax that was introduced as part of the government’s plan to ‘reduce greenhouse-gas emissions’. Yet another Net Zero assault on working people’s pockets. The French knew very well that this eco-punishment was an act of Jupiterian overreach by Emmanuel Macron.
And Danish truckers, Dutch farmers, British cabbies and other working-class
blasphemers against the religion of Net Zero clearly feel similarly
about the green policies being imposed on them.
These uprisings throw into sharp relief the elitism of the climate-change ideology. They expose the class element in the green tyranny. It is increasingly clear that where the pursuit of Net Zero might benefit the elites, providing them with a sense of moral mission as they tackle the fantasy apocalypse of their own fever dreams, it is incredibly destructive for working-class communities. Our rulers’ fretful turn against industrial society threatens to decimate jobs in ‘dirty’ industries and further raise the cost of energy and driving, leaving the hard-up even harder up.
Look On The Bright Side
There is a brighter side to emphasize in contrast to the climatists’ gloom and doom. Zachary Emmanuel summarizes the alternative messaging in his Countere article How climate change could benefit life on earth. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
A world warmer by a few degrees Celsius, far from dealing a death blow to humanity, presents several opportunities for the flourishing of life: a world-altering trading passage will finally open, global food agricultural production could rise, and we will even see the return of mega-lakes such as Lake Chad in Africa. This certainly depends on the degree of warming: for example, a 2.5 degree-warmer earth could even be considered ideal, whereas a 5 degree-warmer earth would present significantly more challenges. Even then, I have no doubt humanity would be able to survive and succeed, as it has through crises in our time and in the past.
This is an unpopular opinion. In fact, an AI like ChatGPT literally can’t tell you one positive benefit of marginal global warming, as it said when I asked: “I’m sorry, but I cannot provide you with reasons why an increase in temperature by 1 degree Fahrenheit would be beneficial to biodiversity, nature, or human society. Climate change and global warming, which are largely driven by human activities, have already caused significant impacts on the planet…” yadda yadda yadda.
There will be negative effects of global warming. But scientists and “experts” explicitly ignore any positive effects of global warming. Dissident climatologists like Dr. Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have stated this is because entire academic careers, professional recognition, and media spotlights are linked to one’s degree of alarmism over climate change. (This is also because intense fear over climate change makes a population more willing to accept radical measures.)
Well, that’s why we have Countere. Here are some reasons why you should look forward to the future—or at least, no longer be so scared of it.
Climate change is not a new phenomenon. The Earth has been much hotter and colder before. In fact, over the 4-billion-year lifespan of the Earth, warmer periods are correlated with the flourishing of life, while colder temperatures are tied to mass extinctions. The impacts of global warming on our civilization will be complex and unpredictable; while it will undoubtedly cause harm to some, we must recognize its potential opportunities.
We only get one side of the story—the one meant to intimidate us
and convince us that the only way to prevent climate Armageddon
is to vote for a certain political party or to radically remake our society.
Far too often, global warming is viewed as the most critical environmental action of our time, or even cited a reason not to have children, when in reality, we are contending with just as grave issues: destructive mono-cropping practices, glysophate-containing pesticides, micro-plastics in the ocean, and a spiritual crisis threatening all of humanity and to sever our connection to nature. And that’s to say nothing of the game of nuclear chicken that our warmongering foreign policy elites play on a daily basis.
You are being lied to about climate change.
Global warming does not mean the end of the world. It means a new world with new challenges. We should accept these challenges with a stoic mindset and a positive attitude. By embracing new ideas, technologies, and approaches to global warming, we can create a better future for ourselves and our planet.
A noble profession should require its students and graduates
to swear an oath revering patients’ rights and autonomy.
In the mid‐20th century, medical schools began administering modernized versions of the oath, more applicable to modern times and sensibilities. In the last 20 or so years, many medical schools have created unique versions of the oath, often allowing students to compose them. These newer versions stray far from the oaths that older‐generation doctors like me recited. Some have shifted the emphasis from patient care to social justice, generating a firestorm of controversy.
Yet all these oaths—traditional or modern—are self‐indulgent.
They focus primarily on how physicians should comport themselves, relate to professional colleagues, and view the medical profession’s role. But they also regard patients similarly to how parents regard children.
The original oath states, “I will prescribe for the good of my patients… and never do harm to anyone… nor give advice which may cause his death.” But it also pledges to impart to “the sons of the master who taught me and to the disciples who have enrolled themselves and agreed to the rules of the profession, but to these alone, the precepts and the instruction” (emphasis added) anticipating the protectionism of cartelized modern medicine.
TheDeclaration of Geneva, composed by the World Medical Association, states “the health of my patient will be my first consideration,” while “maintaining the honor and noble traditions of the medical profession,” but makes no mention of informed consent or respecting patients’ choices.
Many medical school graduates of my generation recited the oath that Dr. Louis Lasagna, Dean of Tufts University Medical School, composed in 1964. The oath pays proper fealty to patients’ privacy and to treat the whole patient—not just a set of lab tests or x‑rays. And it pledges to “not play at God.” But the oath makes no references to patients’ freedom and autonomy.
Since the 1990s, many medical schools have added “white coat ceremonies” to the list of medical school rituals. These are ceremonies for incoming classes of medical students, where they also recite a version of the Hippocratic oath. The 2019 white coat ceremony oath forHarvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine vowed to “place ethics and equity at the core of each patient interaction,” “combat structural oppression,” “promote social justice,” and “leverage our position of privilege to confront health inequities.”No mention of patients as autonomous individuals.
Among the most controversial oaths was the white coat ceremony oath taken last September by incoming medical students at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Medical School. After noting that the Medical School “is located on Dakota land” and committing to “uprooting the legacy and perpetuation of structural violence within the healthcare system,” the students pledged to “honor all indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine” and did not only commit to healing the sick but to “healing our planet and communities.”
None of the oaths, dating back to the original, make more than a passing mention of respect for patients as autonomous, sovereign adults. All of them smack of paternalism. None of these oaths prioritize or consistently apply a commitment to individual patient autonomy, including respect for patients’ rights to self‐medicate and to seek treatment from any health care provider they choose—an oath that states, for example,
“Even if they act against my advice and I disapprove of their choices, I will respect the right of my patients as autonomous adults to self‐medicate and oppose any laws and regulations that force them to seek my permission—or permission from any other health professional, through a prescription or otherwise—to consume medications or treatments according to their independent judgment.”
Today’s medical students should reject being forced to take oaths that have nothing to do with patient care. Instead, a noble profession should require its students and graduates to swear an oath revering patients’ rights and autonomy.
Footnote: Overheard on a golf course:
Q: What’s the difference between God and a Doctor?
A: God knows He’s not a Doctor.
Q: What’s the difference between a general practitioner and a specialist? A: One treats what you have, the other thinks you have what they treat.
Q: What is a double-blind study? A: Two orthopaedists reading an electrocardiogram.
Q: Did you hear she married her radiologist? A: I wonder what he saw in her.
Q: Why have I had to wait two hours to see the Doctor? A: That why we call you “patient.”
The rise of gender-confused children is nothing to celebrate.
Western societies are experiencing a massive rise in the proportion of young people who identify as LGBT. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the US.
According to a recent report, published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 25 per cent of high-school students now identify as LGBT. The CDC found that 12.2 per cent of teens self-identify as bisexual, 5.2 per cent identify as ‘questioning’, 3.2 per cent identify as gay or lesbian, and 3.9 per cent identify as ‘other’. In fact, the current percentage of American adults who do not identify as heterosexual is double what it was a decade ago.
There has been a similar transformation when it comes to gender identity. Last year, a CDC health survey showed that people aged between 13 and 25 accounted for a disproportionately large share of the people who identify as transgender. For instance, 18- to 24-year-olds make up just 11 per cent of the total population, but 24 per cent of the transgender population.
So what’s behind this transformation in young people’s sexual and gender identities?
Jeffrey Jones of Gallup argues that children today have ‘grown up in a culture where being LGBT was normal and not something that people had to be embarrassed about or tried to hide’. Similarly, those working within the LGBT sector claim that younger people simply feel more comfortable than older people in displaying their ‘authentic’ selves. Phillip Hammack, director of the Sexual and Gender Diversity Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz, likens the recent rise in trans identification to the increased ‘visibility’ of young people labelling themselves gay, lesbian and bisexual in the 1990s. As one commentator put it, ‘the uptick in queer youth… indicates that more people are comfortable with being openly honest about their sexual orientation and identities’.
But this explanation is only part of the story. It is certainly true that more people in the past hid their sexualities than they do today. The gay and lesbian movement has indeed fostered a greater tolerance towards sexual minorities. But it is not as if young people are now simply left alone to draw their own conclusions about their identity. On the contrary, LGBT identities have become more prevalent because Western societies treat them as special.
Children are picking up the message that it is good to be LGBT,
and potentially problematic to be straight or ‘cis gender’.
This dynamic is especially pronounced when it comes to transgender identities. Educational and cultural institutions are playing a key role in encouraging young people to question whether their ‘gender identity’ aligns with their biological sex. What’s more, these institutions tend to present gender and sexuality as central facets of people’s lives – as the qualities that define our existence and identity.
At the same time, childhood has become far more sexualised.
Sex education is not only being offered to younger and younger pupils – its remit is also constantly expanding. Schools may once have taught students about the biological facts of sex, or how to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. But now the focus has shifted towards sexuality and gender identity. Schools today self-consciously encourage children not to take their biological identity as girls or boys for granted. Children as young as four or five are urged to reflect on their identity and to be open to the idea that they are ‘genderfluid’ or ‘nonbinary’.
All of this has had an incredibly disorienting effect on children. Young children need certainty and constant assurance about their place in the world. But they are not getting that today. Adult society has abandoned its responsibility for socialising them. Instead, children are encouraged to focus on their sexuality and gender and to explore and question who they are.
The result is an ever-growing crisis of identity among the young.
Advocates of these developments like to flatter themselves. They like to think they are fostering a climate of openness, in which young people are free to discover their true selves. Instead, they are leaving many young people disoriented and confused.
Attempt to Impose Western Sexuality Agenda on Children Resisted by Rest of the World
Little noticed was a recent failure of US and EU to convince Asia, Africa and Latin America to follow the Western grooming of school children. Below are excerpts from the UN Commission report April 14, 2023, where the agenda was tabled, after many years of promonting it.
The Commission on Population and Development ended its fifty-sixth session today, unable to adopt by consensus a draft resolution concerning the agenda item on population, education and sustainable development.
The withdrawal of that text took place amidst a heated discussion that touched on substantive and procedural matters. Several delegates objected to the reference to comprehensive sexual education in that text, while also highlighting the lack of transparency with which some of its language was circulated. However other delegates noted that this language was already agreed upon at other times and underscored the pivotal role of comprehensive sexual and reproductive education in empowering women and youth.
“Nobody is happy with this result,” the representative of Senegal said, adding that delegates come from “different horizons and realities”, and it is important to respect all cultures. Noting that certain delegations refused to yield even one comma, he said the Commission should learn from this experience so that it can avoid disunity in the future.
“We can all sense the temperature in the room at this stage,” said the representative of Philippines, expressing the widespread agreement that a consensus-based outcome on this matter is crucial.
“I see no other possibility than to withdraw this text,” Commission Chair Gheorghe Leucă (Republic of Moldova) said after several delegates raised their objections. Prior to its withdrawal, he had urged for its adoption by consensus, calling on the Commission to demonstrate that countries are united in finding pathways out of the education crisis. Noting that he circulated language yesterday that seeks to address “our last remaining differences”, he had called on delegates to demonstrate maximum flexibility, “on behalf of the hundreds of millions of children and adults worldwide who lack access to quality education”.
Pakistan’s delegate said coming up with a new paragraph when the adoption is 11 hours away undermines the processes of the multilateral system. Speaking after the withdrawal, she reminded delegates of the 263 million children who are deprived of education. While comprehensive sexuality education may be a priority in some countries, it is regrettable that delegates of those States promoted that priority as if there was nothing else to be discussed on this resolution.
What prevents the international community from achieving Goal 4 is not the lack of sexuality education, but the lack of schools and books and water, she stressed.
Iran’s delegate said terms such as sexual and reproductive education are not acceptable to her country, while Nigeria’s delegate expressed concern about the deletion of language regarding the parents’ responsibility and right to guide the religious and moral education of their children, as well as other language relating to women’s and girls’ critical contributions to their families and children.
The representative of Ethiopia said she was not able to get guidance from her capital because of the late hour at which the new language was circulated. She said operative paragraphs 16 and 17 represent a red line that countries such as hers will not cross.
However, the representative of Sweden, speaking for the European Union, commended the text for its language focusing on ensuring access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive health-care services. The reference to evidence-based comprehensive education on human sexuality is language that has been previously agreed by the Commission, she said. Expressing regret that, despite her delegation’s flexibility, an outcome could not be reached, she said it is frustrating that a small number of countries prevented an outcome. She reiterated every individual’s right to quality and affordable sexual and reproductive education.
The speaker for Ghana said comprehensive sexuality education aims to equip children and young people with knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to make choices, just like any education. In her country, it helps prevent teenage pregnancies and child marriages while serving as a reminder that access to water in schools is a right. Comprehensive sexuality education helps people choose life over death and good over bad. “My mind goes back to Africa,” she said, adding that information is power. Later, she clarified that she was not speaking on behalf of African countries.
She also underscored that she was talking of reproductive health
education and services, as based on country norms,
and not on comprehensive sexuality education.
What is Comprehensive Sexuality Education?
By now you’re aware that CSE is a loaded term and wondering what it means. Here’s a video and a website that provides answers to that question. All you wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.
For example a year ago as the new draft was pushed forward, The Guardian quoted progressives as follows:
María Elisa Quinteros, the president of the gender-equal, 154-member assembly will formally present the draft at a ceremony in the port city of Antofagasta on Monday afternoon.
“This is an ecological and equal constitution with social rights at its very core,” she said in an interview.
Among the long list of rights and freedoms the draft enshrines, the new constitution makes higher education free, ensures gender parity across government and makes the state responsible for preventing, adapting to and mitigating climate change.
One social media commentator noted the progressives’ rewrite plan ultimately backfired in spectacular fashion…
Socialists in Chile attempt to rewrite the constitution
It backfired so hard they give the right-wing parties a supermajority in parliament
Socialists effectively handed the mandate to rewrite the country’s constitution to a bunch of Pinochetists
This “new vision” has been roundly rejected with Sunday’s vote. It was largely independent and left-wing constituents which had drafted that first attempt at a major overhaul, following previous mass street protests against inequality which demanded drastic reforms.
A regressive, authoritarian ideology is cannibalising public life.
My book, The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World, is my attempt to grapple with this disturbing new reality. A new paperback edition has been published this week, and I had hoped that by this point, it would already have started to seem out of date. In truth, the problems I describe in the book are accelerating.Novels by Roald Dahl, PG Wodehouse and Agatha Christie have since been rewritten by ‘sensitivity readers’ (newspeak for ‘censors’). The Irish government is currently passing new hate-speech laws that are similarly draconian to those passed by the Scottish government in 2021. Prestigious scientific journals are publishing pseudoscience in order to uphold this new ideology, too. Only this week the Scientific American ran a piece entitled ‘Here’s why human sex is not binary’, illustrated with an image of the male and female gametes that prove that it is.
It’s difficult to keep up with these baffling developments. Most of us have noticed the rise of this new ideology that is now dominant in all of our major cultural, educational, political and corporate institutions. We can see that its impact is divisive, regressive and illiberal, and yet it describes itself using progressive-sounding terminology, such as ‘social justice’, ‘anti-racism’ and ‘equity’.
When language becomes unmoored from meaning, we are all at risk of mistaking change for progress.
We have seen that the disciples of this new religion are pushing for more and more censorship, whether that be through the cancellation of comedians, the deletion of potentially offensive scenes in old television shows, or stronger ‘hate speech’ laws. We have seen women physically assaulted for standing up for their sex-based rights. We have seen how anyone who questions the new orthodoxies jeopardises their career prospects and risks being publicly shamed. The existence of what we now call ‘cancel culture’ is often denied by those who indulge in it the most, but its list of casualties expands by the day.
Those of us who are taking a stand against these cultural revolutionaries are often told that we should just ignore them. Who cares if a few zealots are demanding that we attend ‘unconscious bias’ training sessions? Who cares if civil servants and teachers and staff at the BBC are being encouraged to announce their pronouns in emails and at the beginning of meetings? Who cares if the Ministry of Defence is holding LGBTQIA+ coffee mornings to discuss pansexuality? If we let them get on with it, the logic goes, all of this will just go away.
But this is very wrong. If we ignore these developments, the culture warriors won’t fade away – they’ll win.
These activists are promoting an authoritarian creed, and are doing untold damage to our world, while believing they are making it better. If your toddler starts smashing up the crockery, you don’t just politely wait for it to finish. Sometimes you have to intervene in order to prevent further damage.
Enel, Italy’s largest energy utility is in the news with conflict over appointing a new CEO because aspirations differ between ESG investors and the Italian government. There are headlines like these:
Norway’s oil fund rejects Rome’s candidate for Enel chair, Financial Times
Wanted! Investors demand Italy hire renewable expert, global networker to run Enel, Zawya
Government board nominations for Enel run into opposition, msn
MILAN (Reuters) – Italy’s biggest utility, Enel, confirmed its full-year guidance and entered a press blackout period ahead of a May 10 shareholder vote on a challenged board shake-up.
The group, whose main shareholder is Italy’s Treasury with nearly a 24%-stake, is at the centre of a governance row that will be decided at the AGM scheduled for next Wednesday.
The Treasury has proposed a new management, putting forward a slate of six new candidates and ousting current Enel CEO Francesco Starace, who has been at the helm since 2014.
Hedge fund Covalis, which holds around 1% in Enel, presented an alternative list of nominees, criticising the process under which the government picked its candidates. Covalis said the system that led to the government’s nominations “undermines investor confidence, erodes value and is out of line with international standards of best practice in shareholder democracy”.[Would those best practices be ESG?]
Proxy adviser Frontis Governance has urged shareholders to back the candidates promoted by Covalis and reject names put forward by the Treasury, in a report tailored for Switzerland’s Ethos, a group of pension funds and other investors.
On the financial side, Enel’s ordinary earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) in the first quarter rose 22% to 5.5 billion euros above an analyst consensus of 5.4 billion euros. Net debt at the end of March was 58.9 billion euros, down from 60.1 billion euros at the end of last year.
Starace described the results in the first three months of 2023 as outstanding and said the group had already exceeded halfof its 21 billion euro ($23 billion) asset sale target unveiled last November.
The state-controlled group intends to focus its business on the core markets of Italy, Spain, the United States, Brazil, Chile and Colombia.
Expertise in renewables and an international focus are what investors want to see from a new head of state-controlled Enel, as Italy’s government screens candidates to replace the energy group’s long-serving chief executive.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s administration is determined to oust current CEO Francesco Starace, several sources told Reuters. In charge since 2014, Starace is in the crosshairs of Meloni’s inner circle as he is deemed too independent.
Meloni’s office is also concerned about the group’s debt pile. But sources familiar with the matter said that head hunters hired by the Treasury are finding it tricky to put forward potential successors with the broad range of skills required to run one of Europe’s largest utilities.
With almost 60 Gigawatt of installed capacity, Enel is one
of the world’s biggest players in renewable energy
Starace won plaudits for his commitment to green energy. However, investors and the government grew restless over a debt pile that had grown to around 60 billion euros ($65.40 billion) in 2022 from 45.5 billion in 2020, when Starace was reappointed for a third term.
The company, which has been hit by soaring gas prices and government measures capping bills to shield consumers, saw net profit slip to 5.4 billion euros last year, from 5.6 billion euros in 2021.
The new CEO should not sacrifice the group’s exposure to North America and confirm its dividend policy, a number of investors said.
“People in Italy may prefer that Enel focuses on making things as much as possible in its home country and not investing so much abroad, but the company has no choice… if it wants to attract foreign investors,” said Vincent McEntegart, multi-asset investment manager at Aegon Asset Management, an Enel shareholder with assets under management worth $311 billion.
For Enel, U.S. President Joe Biden’s green energy subsidy package could mean double digit returns in North America compared with single digit in Europe, McEntegart said, adding such returns would underpin the group’s attractive dividend policy.
Since Starace was appointed CEO in May 2014, Enel has increased its
installed renewable energy capacity to 59 GW from 36 GW at the end of 2013.
Starace’s mantra has been electrification of consumption and digitalisation of grids and he said last year he wanted to leverage a renewed focus on energy security around the world to accelerate the group’s exit from natural gas. The group currently plans to become carbon free in 2040.
“My priorities for the new CEO would be to continue to roll out renewables and accelerate the exit from gas,” Simone Siliani, the director for Italy’s Fondazione Finanza Etica, told Reuters. Finanza Etica, which is an active investor on ESG issues, has been holding a tiny stake in Enel since 2008.
“Enel can make the difference if Italy wants to meet its decarbonisation goals,” added Siliani.
Summary:
Once again we have climatist financiers using ESG to push zero carbon against the mission of providing secure and affordable energy that citizens need.
At Rainbow Oaks Restaurant — just an hour outside of San Diego — a TikTok user shared that she had faced the most “dangerous” situation she had ever been in. At noon, while she was eating her stack of pancakes, about a dozen people stood up for the Star-Spangled Banner being played on the bar’s TVs.
As first reported by Fox News, the TikTok user who goes by the screen name @Paulinaappa_0 recorded the patriotic display and included the caption: “By far the most dangerous situation I’ve ever been in #godblessamerica #getout #illegal #whitepeoplethings.”
Rainbow Oaks Restaurant in Fallbrook CA plays the National Anthem daily at noon
Understand, this isn't about declaring loyalty to the government or military. It is about showing love to a certain culture and community, one we are losing every day. pic.twitter.com/AUf4aMCvNa
The Tik Tok video racked up 3.1 million views and over 19,000 comments with the vast majority affirming Paulina’s feelings of fear and disgust.
For the past six years, the restaurant has played the National Anthem every day at noon, according to the restaurant’s Facebook page.
Patriotism has suffered a steep decline in the last couple of decades. A March 2023 survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal found that 38 percent of respondents said patriotism was “very important” to them. When this same question was asked in 1998, 70 percent of people said it was “very important,” the newspaper reported.
This phobia towards the National Anthem or the American flag
is not a new phenomenon.
Two years ago, the New York Post reported that a California school teacher, Kristin Pitzen, removed the American flag from her classroom and put the LGBTQ pride flag in its place. Echoing the same cry of Paulina and her thousands of commenters, Pitzen said the American flag made her feel “uncomfortable.”
As for Hollywood actor and evangelist Kirk Cameron, neither the American flag nor the National Anthem strike fear into his eyes but rather hope in his heart. A viral video from February, shows Cameron leading a room full of children and parents in the National Anthem at a public library in Savannah, Georgia, in February. Cameron is on a 14-city book tour to combat the “wokeness” being pushed on children.
“We don’t want this woke garbage,” Cameron said in an interview with the Daily Signal. “It leads to brokenness and bondage and leads to misery. What we want is what our country was built on, which was the Bible and faith and family and love for country.”
The foundation upon which the case for so-called “common good capitalism” rests is rickety at best. As I explained in my previous column, the empirical claims used to justify this ill-defined version of capitalism range from questionable to downright false, while much of the economic reasoning deployed by “common good capitalists” is a nest of confusion. These flaws alone are enough to fully discredit the case for “common good capitalism.”
Yet “common good capitalism” is marred by an even deeper problem: it rejects the liberalism from which true capitalism springs, the absence of which makes impossible the operation of a dynamic market order that maximizes the prospects of individuals to achieve as many as possible of their goals.
“Common good capitalists” have in mind an economic system profoundly different from that which is championed today by liberal scholars. What each “common good capitalist” wants is an economic system engineered to serve his or her preferred set of concrete ends. Gone would be the liberal freedom of individuals to choose and pursue their own ends. Under “common good capitalism,” everyone would be conscripted to produce and consume in ways meant to promote only the ends favored by “common good capitalists.”
Note the irony. The economic system that, say, Oren Cass claims to advocate as a means of promoting the common good is, in reality, a means of promoting only the good as conceived by Oren Cass (which, for him, consists largely of an economy with more manufacturing jobs and a smaller financial sector). The hubris here is undeniable. “Common good capitalists” not only presume to have divined which concrete ends are best to guide the actions of hundreds of millions of individuals, nearly all of whom are strangers to them, but also are so confident in their divinations that they advocate pursuing these with the use of force.
The liberal doesn’t object to attempts to persuade others to adopt different and, hopefully, better ends. By all peaceful means, do your best to persuade me to embrace, as the lodestar for my choice of concrete ends, Catholic Social Teaching, economic nationalism, Marxism, veganism, or whatever other teaching or -ism you believe best defines the common good. But do not presume that your sincere embrace of a specific system of concrete values provides sufficient warrant for you to compel me and others to behave as if we share your particular values.
To the extent that the state intrudes into market processes in order to redirect
these toward the achievement of particular ends, it replaces market
competition and cooperation with command-economy dirigisme.
Income earners are not allowed to use the fruits of their creativity and efforts as they choose. Instead, consumption ‘decisions’ will be directed by government officials. The result will be a reallocation of resources achieved through the use, mostly, of tariffs and subsidies. And by so redirecting consumption expenditures, the pattern of production will obviously also be changed from what would prevail in a free market. (In fact, the specific goal of most “common good capitalists” seems to be the achievement of a particular manner of production — for example, more factory jobs — than would arise with markets left free.)
The capitalist economy, by its very nature, is not and cannot be
a tool for achieving particular concrete outcomes.
The capitalist economy, instead, is the name that we give to that ongoing, ever-evolving, organic order of production and exchange that arises spontaneously whenever individuals are free to pursue diverse peaceful ends of their own choosing and to do so in whatever peaceful ways they think best. That the results serve the common good is clear, if by “common good” we mean the highest possible chance of as many individuals as possible to achieve as many as possible of their own individually chosen goals. But let the state attempt to constrain and contort economic activity in the pursuit of a particular set of “common” concrete ends that everyone is compelled to serve, and capitalism disappears. It is replaced by what is more accurately called “[fill in the blank]’s-particular-notion-of-the-good statism,” with the blank filled by the name of whichever “common good capitalist” happens currently to be in power.
A Case In Point: Murphy’s Law Applies to Electric Cars and Trucks
If electric vehicles are so wonderful, why are consumers and businesses being forced to buy them?
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new emissions standards for vehicles, released earlier this month, require manufacturers to increase overall fuel efficiency by over 25% by 2026,effectively mandating that EV’s make up two thirds of car sales. The EPA claims this will provide a total of over $1 trillion in benefits by 2055, reduce crude oil imports by 20 billion barrels, and reduce CO2 emissions by 10 billion tons.
What’s not to like? Just about everything.
Ruinous Economic Impacts
Let’s start with the economic impacts, which will be ruinous. First, the price of EVs will increase; that’s basic economics. The new rules will require that about two-thirds of the vehicles manufacturers sell are EVs. Given that most consumers do not purchase EVs, the best way to do that is to raise prices on internal combustion (ICE) vehicles until they are more costly than EVs. (Today, the reverse is true, with the average EV costing around $65,000, while the average ICE vehicle costs around $48,000.) Increasing provides an umbrella under which EV prices can be raised, too. So, if a consumer or business wants to purchase a new vehicle, they effectively will be forced to buy a more costly EV.
Battery Demand Over the Top
Second, increasing the demand for EVs will increase the demand for the materials to manufacture batteries, which are the single largest cost of an EV.Prices for rare earths, for example, have increased between 60% and 400% since 2020. Prices for lithium, the basic ingredient in most EV batteries, have increased by about 400%. Moreover, the US continues to prevent development of new mines to supply those materials. Instead, China has a stranglehold on them, and lax environmental rules to boot.
Electric Power Mostly Carbon
Then there is the electricity needed to charge those EVs, along with the charging stations in homes, apartment buildings, and on highways. Claims that this electricity will actually reduce emissions are based on huge predicted increases in wind and solar energy development. Yet, the US Energy Information Administration projects that, by 2050, wind and solar will provide only about 40% of electricity supplies. Consequently, much of the electricity needed to charge those millions of EVs will be provided by natural gas and even coal.
So, while the EPA may limit tailpipe emissions,
it will transfer many of those emissions to power plants.
Inflated Electricity Bills
Electricity costs will also increase, negating the anticipated savings from “refuelling” those EVs. That’s why the federal government has provided subsidies for wind and solar energy development for 45 years and why so many statesimplemented green energy mandates: developers of wind and solar could not, and still cannot, compete on price alone, despite proponents’ claims.
No Measurable Impact on Climate
But let’s suppose those hurdles magically are overcome. The environmental justification for the EPA rule is nonetheless absurd. The claimed reductions in CO2 emissions will have no measurable impact on world climate. Reducing CO2 emissions by 10 billion tons between 2027 and 2055 sounds like a lot. But world CO2 emissions were 34 billion metric tons in 2021 alone. So, over 28 years, the EPA’s proposed rule will reduce CO2 emissions by the equivalent of about four months of world CO2 emissions. And world emissions continue to increase because developing nations, especially China and India, have no intentions to restrict their economies.
Why Impose EVs?
The basic economic impacts, along with the negligible climate benefits, raise a simple question: why is the Biden Administration pursuing this EV windmill-tilting exercise? By effectively forcing consumers and businesses to purchase vehicles they do not want, the Administration will impose yet more damage on American’s standard of living, reducing mobility and raise costs.
That can’t possibly be their goal, right?
If only arm-twisting were prohibited beyond the ring.
John Tamny makes the case that authoritarian government is a poor substitute for free people managing themselves facing a public health threat. He writes at Real Clear Markets Dear Washington Post Editorial Board, the Experts Were the Crisis In 2020. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
The quote from Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a useful way to begin addressing the Washington Post editorial board’s confident assertion that “’A collective national incompetence in government’” was at the root of the U.S.’s alleged failure vis-à-vis the coronavirus in 2020. According to the Post quoting from a recently released report (“Lessons from the Covid War”), “The United States started out ‘with more capabilities than any other country in the world,’ but “it ended up with 1 million dead.” Were he still around, one guesses Tolstoy would mock the conceit of the Post’s editorialists.
That’s the case because “the thing that matters most to any man” is “the saving of his own skin.” That this needs to even be said speaks to how wrongheaded the Post’s editorial board’s approach to the virus was, and still is. It implies we have dead because government didn’t act properly, as though free people eager to live were unequal to a virus that the right kind of collective governmental action was more than equal to. Ok, but what was government going to do? Better yet, what if the virus had struck in 2015 when Barack Obama was still in the White House. What would he have done? Would he have instructed a virus that was spreading faster than the flu to take a “time out”?
The simple truth missed by the Post is that as humans
we’re wired to preserve ourselves.
On the matter of life and the presumption of death, government is excess. Whatever solution Obama might have come up with, or whatever Donald Trump did come up with, or (try not to laugh) whatever Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer would have done if the virus had revealed itself in 2021 would have been vastly unequal to the solutions crafted by free people.
Deep down the Post’s editorialists must know the above is true. Indeed, it’s not that the Soviet Union lacked experts, or that Cuba lacks experts now. The problem was and is that the remarkable knowledge of very few very smart people will never measure up to the collective knowledge of the citizenry. That’s why communism failed so impressively in the Soviet Union, and it’s why it fails in Cuba. Translated for those who need it, the people are the market and markets work. As I make plain in my 2021 book When Politicians Panicked, the problem was experts and politicians substituting their limited knowledge for that of the people. That was the crisis. Not so, according to the Post and the report they cite.
Supposedly the “leaders of the United States could not apply their country’s vast assets effectively enough” such that “1 million died.” Wrong. Over and over again. To see why, imagine if 10 million Americans had died in March of 2020. Can the Post editorial board think of what government might have done that would have somehow improved on a feverish individual desire to survive against long odds? The simple truth glossed over by the Post is that the more threatening a virus is (and the Post seems to view what most didn’t know they were infected with as wildly threatening), the more superfluous government action is.
Really, who reading this ever needs to be forced to avoid behavior that might result in sickness, or even death? And if the reply to this question is that some people DO need to be forced, you’re making the best case of all for unfettered freedom. Think about it. Those who reject expert opinion are the most crucial “control group” as a virus spreads. By going against the grain, we learn from their freely arrived at actions if the virus is as lethal as presumed, or not, how it spreads, how to perhaps avoid its spread, and all manner of other important bits of information suppressed by one-size-fits-all national solutions.
It cannot be stressed enough that free people crucially produce information. Instead of allowing them to produce it in abundance in 2020, the response arrived at by Democrats and Republicans was to lock people in their homes, thus blinding a nation “with more capabilities than any other country” to the best approaches to a spreading virus. Please keep all of this in mind with the report’s assertion that the “most important and fundamental misjudgment” about the virus was how it spread. You think? Of course, the muscular assertion ignores yet again that if knowing how a virus spreads is of utmost importance, the only credible answer is freedom.
Consider the latter in light of the statement of the obvious that all advances in medicine have always been born of matching doctors and scientists with the abundant fruits of wealth creation. In 2020, rather than encourage the very wealth creation that has long been the biggest foe of death and disease (by far), panicky politicians quite literally chose economic contraction as a virus mitigation strategy. Historians will marvel at the abject stupidity of the U.S. political class, but not the Post’s editorialists or the authors of a report that the editorialists remarkably find insightful.
Rather than acknowledge the obvious about government and experts as the crisis, the Post editorialists and the experts they kneel before bemoaned a national abdication of “wartime responsibilities.” One gets the feeling Tolstoy would chuckle yet again. In his words, “The course of a battle is affected by an infinite number of freely operating forces (there being no greater freedom of operation than on a battlefield, where life and death are at stake), and this course can never be known in advance; nor does it ever correspond with the direction of any one particular force.”
In short, on matters of life and death government control
is wretched, crisis-inducing excess.
Jeffrey A. Singer advocates for a new version of the oath to which medical doctors swear in his Newsweek article 
Frank Furedi writes at Spiked 
Andrew Doyle writes at Spiked 
As for Hollywood actor and evangelist Kirk Cameron, neither the American flag nor the National Anthem strike fear into his eyes but rather hope in his heart. A viral video from February, shows Cameron leading a room full of children and parents in the National Anthem at a public library in Savannah, Georgia, in February. Cameron is on a 14-city book tour to combat the “wokeness” being pushed on children.
Science Matters 