In this newsletter:
1) Electric cars from China are filling Europe's streets
Clean Technia, 31 January 2023
2) China doesn't need to sell a single car in the US to dominate the American electric car market
Business Insider, 26 January 2023
3) Biden vs US allies: Europe embarks on subsidy race it can’t win
Politico, 1 February 2023
4) Cindy Yu: Biden's climate agenda is rupturing the Western alliance
The Spectator, 1 February 2023
5) India says energy security more important than climate agenda
Bloomberg, 31 January 2023
6) Net Zero Britain: Fears grow over fate of 800 jobs at British Steel
Financial Times, 1 February 2023
7) John Kerry's secret CCP negotiations probed by GOP Oversight chairman
Fox News, 2 February 2023
8) James Freeman: Murphy’s Law of Alternative Energy
The Wall Street Journal, 1 February 2023
9) And finally: Jordan Peterson vs Klaus Schwab: who will ‘rule ze vrold’?
Spectator Australia, 1 February 2023
Full details:
1) Electric cars from China are filling Europe's streets
Clean Technia, 31 January 2023
As they watched Western automakers being dragged kicking and screaming into the electric era, Chinese industrialists saw an opportunity, and they seized it.
Xpeng announced its first deliveries to Norway in October 2020. Around the same time, John Voelcker, a seasoned auto reviewer, drove the company’s P7 electric sedan, and pronounced it pretty darn good—it had “perhaps 75 percent of the features and capability of a Tesla,” and at the time, carried about 50 percent of the price tag. (That may no longer be the case, thanks to Tesla’s recent price cuts, but the Chinese brands’ prices are still tempting.)
Two years later, Chinese EVs from Xpeng, BYD and MG are common sights on the streets of Oslo (to say nothing of models from Volvo and Polestar, both owned by Chinese firm Geely).
As every China-watcher knows, the country’s strong push into electrification is not just about cleaning up choking air pollution—it’s also about muscling into the global auto industry. China has been building decent cars for many years, but most buyers, including Chinese ones, seem to prefer more prestigious brands such as Mercedes and BMW (and, for obscure reasons, Buick). However, as they watched Western automakers being dragged kicking and screaming into the electric era, Chinese industrialists saw an opportunity, and they seized it.
A Chinese car may never have the pizzazz of a Porsche or the trendiness of a Tesla, but there are a few billion buyers down there in the budget segments, which Western EV-makers are still mostly ignoring. Lunch is on the table, and who will eat it?
One of those sounding the alarm is Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares, who spoke with Automobilwoche at CES 2023 in Las Vegas. “The price difference between European and Chinese vehicles is significant,” he said. “If nothing is changed in the current situation, European customers from the middle class will increasingly turn to Chinese models.”
Tavares apparently sees the EU’s emissions regulations as part of the problem. “Regulation in Europe ensures that electric cars built in Europe are about 40 percent more expensive than comparable vehicles made in China,” he said, adding that the region’s auto industry could suffer the same bleak fate as the European solar panel industry.
Tavares sees two ways forward: protectionism, which wouldn’t be popular with German automakers, who do a lot of business in China; or a pitched battle. “If you keep the European market open, then we have no choice: we have to fight the Chinese directly. And that applies to the entire automotive value chain.”
However, “that would inevitably lead to unpopular decisions,” by which he surely means job cuts and the relocation of factories to lower-cost regions. “If nothing is done in the European Union, there will be a terrible fight,” he said.
Full story
2) China doesn't need to sell a single car in the US to dominate the American electric car market
Business Insider, 26 January 2023
Even if others catch up, China will continue to dominate global EV sales this year. Industry watchers think a move into the US could be imminent.
The Chinese electric vehicle market is huge and growing — and that success has many wondering what's next.
About 27% of new vehicle sales in China last year were electrified (either pure EVs or hybrids), says advisory firm Automobility. And given the number of Chinese buyers, those sales made up about two-thirds of the global EV market.
Despite COVID lockdowns, other headwinds impacting consumer sentiment and the economy, and government EV subsidies phasing out, it's an exciting time for the Chinese auto industry, bolstered by the country's long-standing and inimitable EV supply chain.
EV companies like Geely, Xpeng, Li Auto, NIO, and more are gaining traction. Their market share in China rose 17% in 2022, while that of non-Chinese automakers dropped 11%. (Firm BYD alone sold nearly 1.8 million battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids in China last year — surpassing Tesla's 1.3 million worldwide.)
Even if others catch up, China will continue to dominate global EV sales this year, according to GlobalData.
So naturally, industry watchers think a move into the US could be imminent.
"What happens in China will not stay in China," said Bill Russo, CEO of advisory firm Automobility. "If you have that kind of supply chain, that kind of position on the chess board, then why wouldn't you take that internationally?"
Chinese EV-makers have advantages — but it's complicated
Chinese automakers would have a number of advantages in the US, chief among them the relatively low cost of their cars compared to American makes.
"There's a difference between people's allegiances to their country and what they buy at the store," Russo said. "One thing that's absolutely universal is people buy affordability."
And after all, Japanese, Korean, and European automakers have had plenty of success in the US: Toyota was the country's top-selling brand in 2021.
On the other hand, the Inflation Reduction Act's EV tax credit rules mean that vehicles manufactured in China won't qualify for the US-final assembly requirements that could earn electric car-buyers a $7,500 credit.
Political sentiment and having to battle entrenched companies in a mature market are also barriers.
"By far the biggest obstacle is politics," Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu told Insider. "You have a lot of anti-China sentiment."
"If they can somehow overcome that, I think a lot of Chinese auto companies would love to get a crack at the market."
BYD, for example, has a focus on global expansion, but those sentiments and recent developments with Tesla have put those plans on pause. "They're very hesitant to expand because of this."
China already has plenty of booming business
Even if it doesn't dominate the US car-buying market, China can play a starring role by leaning on its control of so much of the global EV battery supply chain, including raw materials, processing, cell manufacturing, and more.
China controlled about 75% of all battery cell manufacturing capacity and 90% of battery anode and electrolyte production in 2022, according to BloombergNEF. As it stands, US automakers like GM and Tesla have been reliant on companies in China, like giant CATL, for their battery needs.
Even as the US shores up more minerals extraction here and the US battery-making industry grows, much of these materials are still sent to China for processing, and China is still expected to control a majority of the production capacity in 2027, per BloombergNEF.
"The automotive industry, in the early part of the 21st century, has been dominated by foreign brands," Russo said. That has shifted, as "Electrification leveled the playing field."
Politico, 1 February 2023
The European Union presented its industries with a counteroffer to a massive U.S. subsidies plan Wednesday, in an effort to keep burgeoning green industries inside the bloc.
The problem? It's fighting a bidding war it can't win.
The European Commission's President Ursula von der Leyen presented Brussels' plans to counter the U.S.’s $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a green-tax credits initiative that Brussels fears could drive business across the Atlantic. The EU's response, called the Green Deal Industrial Plan, wants to make it easier for sustainable companies to access tax breaks, redirect cash toward clean-tech industries and relax state aid rules.
“We have to give an alternative to the offers they get from abroad,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday about the EU's domestic industrial firms. “We want this industry to stay here and to prosper here.”
But the plan already faces major criticism, for two reasons: It's largely drawing from existing, not new, funding lines; and it risks casting smaller EU countries against big powers Germany and France over fears that the bulk of subsidies will benefit the latter two.
It means the EU with its new initiative still lacks the fire power to fight back against aggressive U.S. subsidy sprees — and the U.S. knows it.
“The EU is making a sensible move for the green transition,” one U.S. official said. “But firms will decide for themselves where the most attractive green business environment is.”
Europe's old money
The Commission’s recommendations that member countries repurpose funds from existing financial frameworks to finance the effort are being met with skepticism from observers.
“Fresh money is what we need,” Renew MEP Valérie Hayer said. “If we keep using money that's already on the table to face both our traditional priorities and brand new, extraordinary challenges ahead, we will fall short.”
In terms of cash lifelines, the Commission is turning to unspent funds from its €800 billion recovery package and wants tax breaks for green firms under its REPowerEU alternative energy fund, which repackaged €220 billion in unused loans with a €20 billion top-up in new grants. Another option is the bloc’s private investment framework, InvestEU, the Commission said.
"The Commission proposal amounts to little more than old wine in new bottles,” center-right lawmaker Markus Ferber said. “The grand new industrial plan is essentially the Commission’s 2023 work program squeezed under a new headline. It is predictably disappointing.”
But EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis claimed the bloc was not merely “reshuffling existing money,” describing the €20 billion in grants under the RePowerEU package as “fresh money on the table.”
The latest repackaging of existing funds comes after the bloc’s last attempt at a subsidies race with the U.S. — the Chips Act, presented in February 2022 — backfired. The EU’s headline €43 billion figure for the plan was outdone by the U.S.’s $52 billion splash on its own CHIPS and Science Act, while large parts of the EU’s package came from national and private investments. The EU-level contribution of €3.3 billion drew ire for being redirected from existing programs.
The state aid dilemma
Relaxing state aid rules will allow EU members to funnel billions into green industries. The renewable energy sector and efforts to decarbonize industrial processes will benefit the most as part of the new temporary crisis and transition framework.
But after three years of loosened emergency-subsidy rules in the wake of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, some national governments are concerned that a further opening of the floodgates would drive cash to the bloc’s richest nations — Germany and France — and claim that the EU’s economy faces an uncertain future.
“State aid for mass production and commercial activities can lead to significant negative effects including the fragmentation of the internal market, harmful subsidy races and weakening of regional development,” the governments of Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden said in a paper sent last week and obtained by POLITICO.
The EU’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager on Wednesday also highlighted how Germany and France had accounted for nearly 80 percent of state aid approved under emergency subsidy rules. “European countries are not equal when it comes to state aid,” she said.
Full story
4) Cindy Yu: Biden's climate agenda is rupturing the Western alliance
The Spectator, 1 February 2023
Atrade war is brewing between the United States and its closest allies. When Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal markets commissioner, pulled out of a summit with US officials just before Christmas, he complained that the agenda ‘no longer gives sufficient space to issues of concern to many European industry ministers and businesses’.
A few days before, Emmanuel Macron cornered senator Joe Manchin in Washington DC. ‘You’re hurting my country’, the French president told Manchin. The senator was given a similarly frosty reception at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Germany’s Olaf Scholz and Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel accosted him caustically.
The Europeans are upset about Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), written by Manchin’s office, which commits $370 billion (£300 billion) to clean energy projects based in North America.
Quite how that reduces inflation is an open question. The IRA is the biggest green subsidy in US history, intended to bolster America’s eco-industries against China’s growing dominance by cutting Chinese firms out of various green supply chains.
In the process, however, the new Act has also cut out friendly nations which don’t have trade deals with Washington. The EU, South Korea, Japan and, lately, the UK all furiously complaining that the legislation violates the spirit of free trade between nations. Their barely concealed suspicion is that they’re being written off as collateral damage in the ongoing trade hostilities between Beijing and Washington; that, when it really matters, president Biden is just as happy as his predecessor to put America first.
For these countries, the biggest sticking point in the IRA is the multi-billion dollar carve out for the electric car industry. Between 2010 and 2020, a quarter of the world’s EVs were made in the EU and only 18 per cent in the US. Yet, to fully access the money made available under the new Act, EVs need to be produced or assembled in North America, and the critical minerals which go into the battery must be partially mined, processed or recycled in the US, or in a country with which the US has a free trade agreement. Seventy per cent of the EVs sold in the States wouldn’t qualify – such as those made by South Korea’s Hyundai, currently second only to Tesla in the US market, since it has no US factory (one in Georgia will become operational in 2025).
Others are excluded because of their use of Chinese batteries. The non-compliant EVs will be up to $7,500 (£6,000) more expensive than the ‘Made in America’ alternatives.
It’s understandable that the Biden administration fears China’s lead in renewables. Widely scorned for being the planet’s biggest polluter, the country has nevertheless become the world’s largest producer of wind and solar energy. And Chinese firms now control 80 per cent of the battery-making capacities for EVs. According to industry analysts, Chinese companies will be leading battery production in Europe within a decade. They’re already vital in the supply chains of Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz, among others.
China’s own electric car makers are getting good too. The market-leader, Shenzhen-based BYD, now sells more than Tesla. BYD and its peers have made it a priority to take on more foreign markets, so expect to see them in European showrooms soon. Wealthy companies in wealthy countries are gunning for net zero and Chinese renewables companies are all too happy to help meet the demand.
Under the IRA, these companies must now think twice before getting into contracts with Chinese firms. Some car manufacturers are licking their lips at the Biden administration’s largesse, which they intend to tap into by moving supply chains state-side. But that’s bad news for Europe, the U.K. and elsewhere.
By trying to hollow out China’s renewables lead, the US is sucking production, investment and research out of friendly nations. ‘If you’re somebody who has an early-stage technology and want to prove it to then develop a business, it may be now that you’ll think “I’ll go over to the US”’, said Lord Adair Turner at the UK’s Energy Transitions Commission this week.
Already, BMW has announced a $2 billion (£1.6 billion) plant in South Carolina. Swedish battery maker Northvolt is delaying its investments in Germany in favour of crossing the Atlantic; it’s a similar story for British electric van start-up Arrival, which has shelved plans for a UK factory. More companies are likely to follow the money.
America’s allies face a sour truth: access to the Chinese market will only become more expensive as Washington ups the protectionist pressures to force them to decouple from China; at the same time, they risk losing indigenous companies, investments, and know-how to the US. All of this, some bitterly complain, while Washington still expects their help to counter China’s growing power. Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, has accused the US of tipping into a Chinese-style industrial policy ‘right before our eyes’ while the South Koreans are labelling it a ‘betrayal’.
Washington probably didn’t expect this level of bitterness. At Davos, senator Manchin told journalists: ‘I didn’t know it would be this intense, to be honest with you’.
So what can Brussels or Seoul do? Threats to appeal to the World Trade Organisation fall empty as Washington continues a Trump-era boycott of the organisation that has paralysed its appeals process. Biden could ease the pain by giving friendly nations an exemption, something that the US Treasury has signalled it’s looking into.
But the episode has triggered the EU’s own protectionist instincts – the Commission is now seriously looking into loosening state aid rules ‘to give our answer, our European IRA’, says Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission’s president. This could include funding new tax credits with money left over in the EU’s €800 billion (£650 billion) Covid relief fund.
The IRA has fired the starting gun on a global, green subsidy race. Some in Britain are agitating for Westminster to join – the Confederation of British Industry warns this week that the UK is falling behind for lack of state funding, while Labour claims to have drawn up plans of borrowing £28 billion a year for a ‘Green Deal’ for this purpose.
Whatever happens, this episode seems to confirm an uncomfortable suspicion for those in Brussels, Seoul and beyond: that, though the US is rallying supporters in a global contest against China, it will still sell out its allies when American interests are at stake. Perhaps the most effective counter to ‘America First’ is for others to put themselves first — and spend accordingly.
5) India says energy security more important than climate agenda
Bloomberg, 31 January 2023
The country, one of the world’s largest producers of coal, has often countered demands to curb use of the dirtiest fossil fuel, arguing it is key to its energy security and economic development. The war in Ukraine saw energy rise to the fore of the agenda for developed nations, many of which revived use of coal after supplies of Russian oil and natural gas shrank.
“The behaviour of European nations in 2022, eminently understandable, demonstrates the return of energy security as a prime requirement for countries,” according to India’s Economic Survey, tabled in parliament Tuesday. “Therefore, it stands to reason that it would be no different for developing economies too.”
Developing economies are being asked to shoulder the burden of a global transition to green fuels, despite their lower contribution to accumulated emissions compared with developed nations that prospered on the back of “unrestricted use of fossil fuels,” the Economic Survey said. The document, presented a day before the annual budget, is an account of the government’s performance and ambitions for various sectors of the economy.
The arguments reflect the country’s stance at the COP27 summit in November pushing for a discussion on fossil fuels, instead of coal alone, and to hold rich nations to account for their use of natural gas and oil.
Besides energy security, potential job losses in the fossil fuels supply chain — from coal mines to refineries — is another issue India is concerned with. State-run miner Coal India Ltd., the country’s biggest producer of the fuel, is among the nation’s largest corporate employers, with a headcount of almost 242,000 employees. Hundreds of thousands more work at other mines, oil wells and processing facilities.
While experts have said clean energy can generate more jobs, the Economic Survey said it “seldom works out so smoothly in practice.”
Full story
6) Net Zero Britain: Fears grow over fate of 800 jobs at British Steel
Financial Times, 1 February 2023
Although the company, which is owned by China’s Jingye, has not yet started formal consultations on the potential job losses, workers were informed of the proposals at a meeting on Wednesday afternoon, union officials told the Financial Times.
British Steel was unavailable for comment.
The company employs about 4,000 workers in the UK, the majority working at its Scunthorpe site, which operates two of Britain’s remaining four blast furnaces.
British Steel’s coke ovens and 300 related jobs are under review, according to union officials, while uncertainty remains over the future of another 600-900 posts across the operations.
Jingye and India’s Tata, the owner of Tata Steel UK, which owns the Port Talbot works in Wales, are in talks with the government over a combined £600mn support package to help them upgrade their blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces with lower carbon emissions. The offers are contingent on further investment from both companies and a guarantee over jobs up to 2030.
News of the looming job cuts prompted consternation and disappointment within the government on Wednesday. Ministers had hoped that the offer of generous state intervention could prevent major closures or job losses.
Full story
Fox News, 2 February 2023
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is probing Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry's secretive negotiations with his Chinese counterparts.
Comer informed Kerry in a letter sent Thursday afternoon that the committee, under his leadership, has opened an investigation into Kerry's role in the Biden administration and, in particular, his high-level climate negotiations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). To date, Kerry has ignored information and document requests from Comer and other committee Republicans sent when they were in the minority.
"To date, you have failed to respond to any of our requests," Comer wrote to Kerry. "Yet, you continue to engage in activities that could undermine our economic health, skirt congressional authority, and threaten foreign policy under the guise of climate advocacy."
"The Committee requests documents and information to understand your role and provide necessary transparency over the SPEC and its activities," he continued. "As a member of the President’s cabinet, you should be representing the United States’ interests. Your statements, however, consistently show disregard for American national security and taxpayer dollars."
President Biden appointed Kerry to be the U.S. SPEC, a position that hadn't previously existed and which didn't require Senate approval, shortly after taking office in early 2021. The SPEC office is housed at the State Department and has an estimated $13.9 million annual budget with approval for 45 personnel.
Kerry's position gives him a spot on the president's cabinet and National Security Council. Since taking on the role, he has traveled worldwide, attending high-profile climate summits and diplomatic engagements in an effort to push a global transition from fossil fuels to green energy alternatives.
Despite the high-level role leading the Biden administration's global climate strategy, Kerry's office has been tight-lipped about its internal operations and staff members, sparking criticism from Republicans, including Comer, who have demanded transparency for such an important office.
"We are left with an insufficient understanding of your office’s activities, spending, and staffing," Comer continued. "To enable long overdue oversight of your office, please provide the following documents and information."
The Oversight Committee chairman added that Kerry has been too soft on China's human rights violations "while promoting climate negotiations that the CCP does not even appear interested in entering."
Kerry has been blasted for various comments that have appeared to downplay vast human rights abuses tied to China's green energy supply chain. After he was asked in November 2021 about how slave labor was reportedly employed by solar panel firms in China, Kerry said he had to stay in his "lane" when negotiating with Chinese officials.
Full story
The Wall Street Journal, 1 February 2023
Who could have guessed it would be so hard to replace cheap reliable power?
One might think that these would be boom times in the wind power business, with governments and giant corporations around the world competing to offer ever more generous preferences and subsidies for the intermittent energy source. But somehow this primitive means of generating power is still just not quite ready to replace the modern ones.
Part of the challenge is that politicians are finally waking up to the fact that alternative energy carries environmental costs along with the alleged benefits. In December this column noted Jennifer Dlouhy’s Boomberg report uncovering an internal warning from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist to Interior Department officials about the threat to whales posed by offshore wind development.
Now Amanda Oglesby and Dan Radel report: for the Asbury Park Press:
"A group of New Jersey mayors are calling for an “immediate moratorium” on offshore wind energy development until federal and state scientists can assure the public that ocean noise related to underwater seabed mapping, soil borings and other turbine construction activities poses no threat to whales.
The announcement followed news that another humpback whale died off of the coasts of New Jersey and New York and washed ashore in Lido Beach, New York, according to numerous reports. . . .The Lido Beach whale marks the eighth whale to wash ashore on the beaches of New York and New Jersey in the past two months, the mayors said."
So far there doesn’t appear to be any evidence linking offshore wind development to the specific whale deaths. But it’s reasonable to demand a long overdue investigation of the true economic and environmental costs and benefits of an industry that taxpayers have been assisting for years.
Despite all the help in this country and around the world, the economics of the business remain challenging. Camilla Hodgson reports for the Financial Times:
"The European wind industry has warned of continued difficulties in 2023 as high materials costs and slow approvals for new wind power projects drag back profitability, despite rising demand for renewable energy.
The latest poor outlook came from Danish wind turbine maker Vestas, which told investors on Friday that it would suffer a weaker year as the slow EU planning system and supply chain inflation depressed profits. . . .
The leading European offshore wind manufacturers “are under enormous pressure on the cost side and on the price side”, said Alessandro Boschi, head of the European Investment Bank’s renewable energy division, adding that he expected to see “further consolidation” in the sector."
Things are tough all over for windmill enthusiasts. Nikolaj Skydsgaard and Christoph Steitz recently reported for Reuters:
"Denmark’s Orsted . . . the world’s No. 1 offshore wind farm developer... announced a writedown on a large U.S. offshore wind project and an earnings forecast for 2023 that fell short of analyst estimates.
Madrid-listed Siemens Gamesa . . . the world’s biggest offshore wind turbine maker, reported a 472 million euro ($510 million) hit to operating profit due to faulty turbine components that require higher warranty and maintenance provisions."
Here in the U.S., Reuters colleagues Rajesh Kumar Singh and Abhijith Ganapavaram reported last week from Chicago:
"General Electric . . . on Tuesday exceeded expectations for quarterly earnings on robust demand for jet engines and power equipment, but gave a disappointing full-year outlook as problems persisted at its renewable energy business. . . . The unit reported a loss of $2.2 billion in 2022.GE is reducing global headcount at the onshore wind unit by about 20% as part of a plan to restructure and resize the business."
Meanwhile in Massachusetts, Colin Young of the State House News Service reported recently in the Berkshire Eagle:
"The developer behind the largest single offshore wind farm in the state’s pipeline . . . filed a formal notice of appeal to contest the Department of Public Utilities’ approval of contracts that the developer agreed to but says will no longer allow its project to be financed or built."
Why do bad things keep happening to this industry?
It’s almost as if wind energy companies are using a less advanced technology than competing power projects.
9) And finally: Jordan Peterson vs Klaus Schwab: who will ‘rule ze vrold’?
Spectator Australia, 1 February 2023
The best James Bond film plot in town was released yesterday when Canadian clinical psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson announced on Joe Rogan’s podcast that he intends to launch a new ‘global consortium’ in direct challenge to the World Economic Forum.
‘We’re trying to put together something like an alternate vision of the future – say an alternative to that kind of apocalyptic narrative that’s being put forward, at least implicitly, by organisations like the World Economic Forum.’
Peterson elaborated on his ‘pro-human’ vision during the interview which he tweeted was ‘our best conversation to date’.
While the ‘bad guys’ host their star-studded Davos forum in the Swiss Alps, Peterson wants to base his in London, although he declined to reveal what the group would be called or who would take part (just like every epic secret spy agency).
Peterson explained that his rival bid for global domination consortium would be based on asking questions rather than making demands.
‘You don’t get to impose your Utopian vision in the service of your narcissism on the poor.’
In a departure from the World Economic Forum’s anti-human, unhinged, and Mr Burns-esque preaching, Peterson said:
‘You don’t get to save the planet by making energy prices so expensive that no one poor can afford them.’ He added that he wants the consortium to be ‘human-focused and not predicated on the idea that there are too many goddamn mouths to feed and that you’re evil if you just think about having children’.
There is an obvious flaw in Jordan Peterson’s plan: he’s the good guy.
The World Economic Forum has amassed money and influence because it promises powerful individuals even more control and money. It tells businesses and politicians to collude against the people in order to devise inescapable systems which, like the gates of a mega-farm, are locked before the public milking begins.
Peterson’s vision for the world is one that empowers citizens and threatens the control of global CEOs, bureaucracies, and governments. The desire to ‘do good’ in the world is vastly outstripped by the need to ‘have more’.
Those at the World Economic Forum inhabit that thin layer of excess where they have become bored with money and instead dabble with deification, lounging around Davos discussing ways to interfere with the natural order of civilisation.
The only way for Peterson to be successful is if he opens up membership of his club to the common people – to make it the world’s most powerful consortium of citizens, small businesses, and family farmers.
Killing off the back-room influence of the World Economic Forum is going to require a revolution – a conservative uprising… Peterson might just be the man to spark things off, given he is fresh from a political win after his speaking event in Ottawa went off without a hitch.
‘Where are the 36 organisations who called for the event to be cancelled?’ He demanded. ‘There were exactly zero protesters. CBC News, have anything to say about that? No? I thought not … you pathetic lying cowards.’
Peterson hasn’t been holding back. He said earlier:
‘Those who believe that the only dynamic is power, whether they are cynical nihilists, radical neo-Marxist leftists, or ethnocentric nationalists, oppose what I am saying because they are opposed to responsibility, unwilling to shoulder the burden of courageous, truthful conduct, and hoping to elevate their moral stature by diminishing those they regard too conveniently as enemies.’
‘Apocalypse politics’ is a dangerous political tool that has enraptured our children and infested the West’s corporate circle. It’s not too late for those involved to tap out and join the masses before civilisation turns on the greedy and the powerful.
Imagine how furious the citizens of the West will be when it becomes obvious they gave up democracy, capitalism, and their human rights for a green-tinted doomsday lie…
The World Economic Forum cannot bury itself in the Swiss Alps forever.
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