Thread by @shellenberger

The United Nations is using a talking dinosaur to urge poor African nations to not use fossil fuels while providing information to global elites about which airports in which they can land their private jets for next week’s climate change meeting

Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, & other elites flew to UN climate talks in 400 private jets to send a message. The message isn’t just that they’re richer than you, nor that they’re more moral. It’s that the rules that apply to us don’t apply to them

news.com.au/technology/env…

Everybody misunderstands what’s happening. Defenders of the climate elite say “face time” is crucial, but that’s obviously nonsense because UN climate talks are between governments, not billionaires, are totally voluntary & irrelevant to how nations decide energy and food policy.

Similarly, it’s misleading to think the climate elect are being hypocritical. They’re not. They’re behaving in ways that are totally consistent with their view that they are fundamentally better than ordinary people

We are seeing a reversion to pagan (Roman) values in real time

The idea that “all men are created equal” is super recent in human history, and there were always questions about how long such an idea could last. The idea is deeply counterintuitive to billionaires, ruling elites, and their hired fluffers, eg, the PMC, diplomats, journalists

The pandemic ostensibly required elites to follow yet another set of universal rules, but it was too much for them. They happily dined & danced, maskless, in violation of their own rules, knowing at some level that they could be caught. They didn’t care.

We misunderstand the elites. We think they’re embarrassed. And sometimes they are. @GavinNewsom had to apologize. Imagine the horror! But most of them flaunt their special status. They knew perfectly well they’d be dinged for flying private to climate talks. They didn’t care.

Just look at Prince Harry and Meghan. Even as they work tirelessly to deny poor African nations oil & natural gas, they fly private. They know perfectly well the tabloids will criticize them for it. They welcome the criticism because it reminds everyone who is on top.

https://twitter.com/shellenbergermd/status/1454537012271190021

It’s understandable that we find their behavior confusing. Again, they’re not like us. We think, “All men are created equal!” They don’t. Deep down they worry we might really believe it, and seek to hold them accountable for things like paying taxes, or not having sex with minors

We misunderstand what they want. We focus on their words, “We want to save the climate!” when we should focus on their behaviors. Flying private is the least of it. Their main goal is to make energy and food scarce and expensive, and most of all to keep Africans down.

The climate elite have been spectacularly effective. They diverted billions in public & private money from abundant energy to scarce energy, triggering the current global energy crisis.

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/how-climate-…

It’s true that expensive oil makes jet-setting more expensive, but that’s a small price to pay for increasing domestic and global inequality. Everybody knows that increasing the price of energy and food hurts the poor the most. Why do you think the climate elite love doing it?

Of course, the elite justify making energy & food more expensive for “environmental”reasons, but that’s obviously wrong. Emissions decline when natural gas is cheaper than coal. Forests and grasslands return when unproductive farmland is abandoned, and poor farmers move to cities

The elites of course hate it when those things happen, which is why they never talk about them. Readers of the NY Times don’t know that US emissions declined 22% from 2005-2020 for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with climate policy. And they’d deny it if they were told

Elites reject the fact that we reduce pollution by making clean energy cheap, and save nature by making farming more productive, because those things also make all people richer, and their goal, consciously or unconsciously, is to *widen* inequality, not reduce it.

Climate change is the perfect issue for elites because it offers a way to control energy and food policy at a global level. I used to think UN talks, shareholder campaigns, etc we’re symbolic, but the energy crisis, and efforts to deny Africa fossil fuels, prove they’re effective

"Stop funding gas in Mozambique"

"Cutting funding to our Country and our gas projects will condemn us to energy poverty for the next decades."

probably just a coincidence

Meanwhile

As the worlds' richest people fly by jet to sit in coal-powered conference rooms in Scotland to discuss ways to deny reliable energy to poor nations in the name of climate change, African leaders are uniting to fight "coercion" by Malthusian hypocrites.

news24.com/fin24/economy/…

"Our continent collectively... is made to bear the brunt for polluters. We are being pressured, even compelled, to move away from all forms of fossil fuels, including resources such as gas... [a] key resource for industrialization" — South African Energy Minister @GwedeMantashe1

"We've noticed with interest that when Britain, China, India, Australia ran into [an] energy crisis, they all appealed to coal to give them energy. You will notice that, but when they talk to us they say, 'Stop using coal immediately.'"

Fact check: True

One of the rich nations pushing hardest to deny poor nations cheap and reliable energy is Germany.

Germany is, at this very moment, replacing its zero-emissions nuclear plants with coal. In the name of protecting the environment.

https://twitter.com/BjrnPeters3/status/1458396702784770052?s=20