RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/04/climates

“The bottom line of politically correct thought on the matter—the thought that we must collectively do something drastic now to prevent climate change in the future—is so full of holes that it brings the overall sanity of mankind into question. For what it is worth, one possible theory is that mankind (or at least that fraction of it that has become both over-educated and more delicate as a result of a massive increase of its wealth in recent times) has managed to remove the beliefs of existing religions from its consideration—and now it misses them. As a replacement, it has manufactured a set of beliefs about climate change that can be used to guide and ultimately to control human behaviour. The beliefs are similar to those of the established religions in that they are more or less unprovable in any strict scientific sense.”

Whether we should do anything now to limit our impact on future climate boils down to an assessment of a relevant cost-benefit ratio. That is, we need to put a dollar number to the cost of doing something now, a dollar number to the benefit thus obtained by the future generations, and a number to a thing called “discount for the future”—this last being the rate at which our concern for the welfare of future generations falls away as we look further and further ahead. Only the first of these numbers can be estimated with any degree of reliability. Suffice it to say, if the climate-change establishment were to have its way with its proposed conversion of the global usage of energy to a usage based solely on renewable energy, the costs of the conversion would be horrifically large. It is extraordinary that such costs can even be contemplated when the numbers for both the future benefit and the discount for the future are little more than abstract guesses.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chevron-keeps-winning-its-leftist-foes-keep-losing/

There is always a latest chapter in the Legal Fraud of the Century, which is the story of a determined leftist environmentalist cabal’s attempt to shake down of Chevron for many billions over bogus claims – adjudicated in a bribed and perjury-ridden Ecuador courtroom — that the energy company (via Texaco, which it purchased in 2001) had devastated rainforests and forced cancer upon the locals when drilling for oil in the South American country in previous decades.

American courts have ruled that the shakedown – masterminded by Steven Donziger – was a criminal RICO operation. The subsequent wreckage of his cabal (an excellent description of such is Kevin Williamson’s 2014 NR piece on how its nefarious role in the case crushed Patton Boggs) is vast, but like Monty Python’s Black Knight, the disbarred attorney continues to hop the globe seeking a court or international tribunals that will order Chevron or a local subsidiary to fork over the penalty determined by the corrupt Ecuador court.