Taken from Bank of England report
Terry Ettam
The lazy days of summer serve a useful purpose. If one can escape the hustle and bustle of the world, everything will become clear in a few weeks. it works. Try it if you can; clear your mind and get out of the fight. Upon returning, it seems possible to see a forest rather than trees, gradually rejoining the flow of information from higher levels of disconnection.
For me personally, it also helps to disconnect from the energy world and travel to places far away from the energy centers to take the pulse of people who have nothing to do with energy.
Having said that, we might be shocked to realize how little people know about energy. Of course, this shouldn't be shocking. This is a huge and complex topic that few people fully understand.
It’s not unreasonable to ask our leaders to have a better grasp, but it’s frightening that they don’t. We see senior policymakers and geopolitically important figures/organizations/policymakers enacting suicidal energy policies (there are hundreds of examples, but take Germany’s decision to shut down much-needed nuclear power plants).
The reason leaders are so eager to throw common sense out the window and embrace energy-ignorant policies becomes abundantly clear when talking to ordinary citizens about the topic on everyone’s lips—the weather. Maybe it's a Canadian thing, but it's an unavoidable topic and right there, right away, the wheels come off. Climate messaging has been so successful that in the public eye, any weather deviation is evidence of man-made climate change. News coverage fueled the phenomenon. It was so draining; being distracted talking about the weather ruined my zen and I ran away.
This attitude is so pervasive that everyone seems to forget that heat waves/droughts/floods have been around since ancient times, and many ancient events were much worse than today's events. But as we all know, once pop culture instills something in someone’s head long enough and loud enough, it becomes fact (former Trudeau government boss Catherine McKenna, a climate alarmist, famously was recorded explaining to acquaintances in a bar that this worked: “Just say the same thing louder and louder, and eventually they'll believe it.” (An Eastern Canadian lawyer who's not stupid explained to me that climate change is very serious now, The Earth is actually heating up from the inside, which is why explosives can't remove it, she explains.
It's easy to point the finger at the general public and declare “they're all stupid,” I hear that a lot, but that's a little unfair. They are as ignorant about energy as most people, and when it comes to alarmist messaging, well, when the government itself engages in scare tactics at the highest levels, such as when federal leaders wildly suggest that extreme weather is their final What can be done is through government policy control, and many people just sigh and accept it, and they go with the flow.
The media machine craves attention and loves chaos, fear, and flash. It encourages us to hate by focusing on inciting events. It encourages us to take a stand, be angry, and feign innocence—“What? We? Biased? That’s outrageous. We even have fact-checkers!
Yep…about that…CBS News reports on the idea of ”tips not being taxed.” In June 2024, Trump proposed the idea of eliminating taxes payable on tip income. CBS News reported on Twitter: “Former President Donald Trump's vow to end taxes on tips will cost the federal government up to $250 billion over 10 years, according to a nonpartisan watchdog group. ”
Two months later, in August 2024, Kamala Harris somehow proposed the exact same policy, and CBS News reported on her theft thusly: “Vice President Kamala Harris is rolling out a new policy position, saying she will work to eliminate the tip tax for service and hospitality workers.
They don't even care anymore. No shame, no self-reflection, no hesitation. It's pure peacock feathers.
While there are crazies on both sides, the difference is that right-wing crazies are right-wing crazies, and CBS News is CBS News.
While it's a generational thing to think that this era has never been so crazy, it's hard to put today's weirdness into any historical context. “News” is a relatively new phenomenon, less than a century or two old, so it is a living object that is constantly changing as communication capabilities change and we become more interconnected at the speed of light. Fifty years ago, we either waited for a daily or weekly newspaper to find out what was going on in the world, or listened to a nightly television show that selected stories for us and read them aloud in a soothing voice.
We were told what news organizations could dig up or report on, when the ability to cover larger events on the other side of the world was almost non-existent. Great reporters do a great job of talking to people who witnessed or participated in events, and politics reports on what people know about politicians' doings that people may not know much about at all. In fact, those politicians also operate in a huge information vacuum.
Today, it is fully open. We saw everything. At least we do this in the West, not so much in totalitarian countries, but even there we can observe a lot. We're focused on everything, including live flight trackers doing their thing on social media at every turn, and we can see graphics of every trip Taylor Swift's jet takes over the course of the year (yes Yes, she has two racks, apparently, and a little) I have no reason or passion to get into trivia).
We also see an endless evaluation of government policy, how it came about, how it was enacted, how it was implemented, how it worked, as never before in our history. The feedback loop is constant and detailed, and while the information is sometimes distorted for ideological purposes, most analysis does tend to zero in on what actually happened, taking out most of the spin.
We can see the roots of much of today’s craziness. There's a sense at a high enough level of thinking that some well-educated, well-financed people decided to take some very big structural steps to put the world on a better path. A gift from God to central planning, this global celebrity fully embraced radical—and I do mean radical—change as a prerequisite for human existence. (For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that meeting climate goals will require a rapid and unprecedented rewiring and rebuilding of nearly the entire world. They offer no advice other than “do it or you all perish” and that's enough For the folks at the World Economic Forum to pool billions of dollars and buy off the best politicians possible.
Full of oats, delusions of greatness, and a blank checkbook/chequebook – our Western leaders – because they don't understand the cold reality of how to run a successful economic enterprise – go bankrupt and want to go down in history as visionaries This changed the trajectory of modern life as we know it. They burned bridges – there’s no going back, no second-guessing (any second-guessing is now considered “misinformation” or “disinformation”).
What we see around us is the devastation caused by their failure on so many levels, and we don't really know what to do about it. We have become accustomed to accepting that “experts” know what they are doing and that capable hands will guide us through whatever difficulties fate throws our way. We look to the simplified world of pop culture for explanations because the cold reality of things is too difficult to understand and we don’t want to spend time trying to figure it all out.
We are still human, and it would be foolish to expect a solid foundation for complex topics that the media relentlessly distorts to suit fear.
Yes, of course there are complete idiots, across the political spectrum and beyond. Please feel free to fully discount. Luckily, let’s be honest, no matter what our political beliefs, they’re usually not hard to spot, which is why trying to restrict free speech is a fool’s game.
On the other hand, it looks like the world's attention will be focused on the upcoming US election, which is going to be so scary and crazy that it'll be hard to get into December without a case of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Something to remember when things get so crazy that they seem unreal (and if you think this is hyperbole, consider Russia’s war on Ukraine, a war fought with tanks and bombs, death and endless heartache The real wars, which sadly are often not true) don’t even make the front pages, pushed aside by the madness in the US, UK, Middle East, Africa…).
We are in a chaotic time and people don’t know where to turn. Most people are led to believe that they are fundamentally bad, either because of their consumption choices, their preference for “what was good before,” or their belief system does not fully align with the dominant narrative.
As a wise friend recently pointed out, when people are in trouble, they look for a “savior.” They seek stimulation from outsiders because the “inside,” the swamp, is letting them down and leaving them disoriented. Remember, Trump is a symptom, not the cause. Many, many people, perhaps most, are willing to overlook his over-the-top antics because he represents a hope that can only come from the outside. As proof of this point, consider these quotes from surprising sources—John Lydon of Public Image Ltd., Johnny Rotten, formerly of the Sex Pistols , the ultimate punk of all punks, said of Trump: “He's a completely unpleasant guy, no question about it. But he's not a politician, and I hate politicians! Let them all die. I'd rather have A lunatic…a real estate mogul. As long as we continue to enforce dogma, the world will not go on.
Whatever happens in the next year or two, we will find a new equilibrium, just like the world after World War II. What that will look like is a good question, but there will be some stability.
perhaps. What on earth do I know. Good luck.
Because you are reading this on an energy website and may be curious about this, rest assured that no matter what you hear on the radio, the future of energy providers is as strong as ever. Whatever happens, energy will be the industry of last resort.
What the world desperately needs—energy transparency. There were also a few laughs. Learn about the end of fossil fuel madness,Can be found in Amazon Canada, Indigo.caor amazon.com.
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