* bilateral orchiectomy: noun; surgical castration
* Please watch the discussion below sponsored by the Institute of Public Affairs (Australia). The 43 minutes are an introduction to the other side in the greenie energy debate.
***************
Are we engaging in a civilization-wide bilateral orchiectomy? At this point in time, it certainly seems so. What I call a civilization-wide castration is actually our attempt to no longer be productive. It’s practically a reversion to the Stone Age. How? We are gutting our ability to maintain our standard of living by first destroying the energy that powers it and by secondly convincing us that it’s the right thing to do. In true totalitarian fashion, robust debate on the subject is killed so only one message – the approved one – gets through by open indoctrination in the schools and the censoring of alternative viewpoints. It’s one part a Soviet school system and second part Inquisition. The result is misery.
The heavy-handed censorship blankets many topics, everything from racial disparities to climate change to transgender ideology. There’s only one approved opinion on these issues so that view must no longer be treated as opinion but as fact. Take the fate of the UK’s Maya Forstater, an accomplished tax consultant and women’s rights activist. She fell afoul of the thought police by saying sex is “real, important, immutable, and not to be conflated with gender identity.” Out of the woodwork emerged the chronically over-sensitive who claimed they were “harmed”. She was dismissed by her employer, the think tank Center for Global Development.
She didn’t blithely accept the punishment but sued. The initial tribunal ruled against her when it announced that her views were “not worthy of respect in a democratic society.” A High Court judge later reversed the decision on appeal. She was given a reprieve, but that didn’t end thought control throughout the western world. “Not worthy of respect” is imposed everywhere.
The groundwork for censorship was laid in the K-grad schools. Kids have been imbued with the theology of the green cult from age 5, if not before on Sesame Street. Apocalyptic climate change is said to be happening, fossil fuels are the principal perpetrator, and “renewables” and “sustainable” enter the lexicon in the form of forests of windmills and expanses of solar panels. No logic, empiricism, or questioning is taught or expected of the pupils, or exposure to another point of view.
I am a retired teacher but still remember the State of California mandating recycling initiatives on the part of every school district in the early 2000’s. As part of it, my high school established an environment student club which, among other things, peddled paper and plastic recycling boxes to every classroom. Most teachers complied, I didn’t. Why? I asked of the students to give me logically and empirically valid reasons for doing it. They responded with the usual litany but when challenged couldn’t take the conversation beyond the rudimentary talking points. I actually used them as guinea pigs in front of my class to illustrate a functioning example of logic and empiricism. I simply asked them to prove it. They couldn’t. Adult others in the movement could probably make the case, but the kids merely expressed propaganda but showed no inkling of being able to practice logic or empiricism, both deductive and inductive reasoning.
This is what we are producing: kids without functioning brains. And kids without functioning brains turn into adults without . . . . The scientific method can’t function without a healthy skepticism. Robust debate can’t either. The mental stultification is happening on the climate change front to the detriment of our long-term prospects.
The whole subject is discussed in an atmosphere purposefully starved of another point of view. If fossil fuels are so bad, what’s the alternative? Windmills and solar panels? Hydrogen, the tides? Any gambit is trumpeted for a while, till the reality sinks in. Right now, wind and solar is the latest faddish panacea. But what happens when the wind stops and the sun is on the other side of the planet or hidden by a blanket of clouds? Simple question, but nothing but crickets. Unstated to the kiddies is the backup maintenance of steamed-up fossil fuel and nuclear plants, or the long anticipated second coming of batteries. Have these evangelists of apocalyptic climate change ever conjured the mental picture of the reality of huge forests of windmills, seas of solar panels, and the massive warehouses of batteries dotting the countryside like so many Amazon distribution centers? Mind you, the massive battery collectives don’t exist, and the financial and environmental costs of trying to make them is monumentally prohibitive. It’s a scandal.
Thomas Sowell was famous for saying, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” What are the trade-offs for the humongous pursuit of “renewables” and the eradication of fossil fuels? Why, of course, it’s prosperity! Greenie energy is unworkable and hugely expensive. At the end of the day, the trade-off is an increase in the number of people below the poverty line.
Go figure. We’re educating and unthinkingly clawing our way back to the early 19th century.
RogerG
Read more here:
* The travails of Maya Forstater is recounted in “Cancel Culture Harms Us All”, Madeleine Kearns, National Review, 4/24/22, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/cancel-culture-harms-us-all/