But here is the part we often overlook. The pendulum doesn’t gently reset. It swings back with a furious, violent overcorrection, often spilling buckets of blood in the process.
Currently, and in many facets of life, we are pulling the pendulum to its breaking point, and I am of the firm opinion, we are a long way from being prepared for the rebound!
I believe it will be no different with one of our society’s biggest problems. The big bogeyman of the 21st century, Climate Change.
Humans are the only species arrogant enough to believe that “change” is an error rather than a feature. We treat a shifting climate like a modern bogeyman, yet the Earth’s own history is a repetitive cycle of the swinging pendulum, violence and restoration.
For millions of years, the planet has breathed in CO2 and exhaled ice ages. Deserts were turned green, then left barren; seas rose, then retreated. This built-in self-correction happens with or without our permission.
On our planet, everything tends to self-correct over time. Nature has a built-in mechanism that seeks balance. This has been happening for millions of years and will continue to happen, with or without our input.
In nature, change is constant! It happens every day, it is just we seem either too busy or have been duped into believing falsehoods to notice. We humans are the only ones who seem to have a problem accepting this fact of life and suffer immense anxiety because of it.
It’s important to understand that change is inevitable. Change is relentless. Expecting otherwise is unrealistic. In fact, it is madness.
But what we are seeing and what is being pursued by activists and political groupings is a “green” agenda that promises salvation but, in truth, looks like delivering disaster. The green agenda has been pursued with a reckless haste, ignoring the facts, ignoring history and ignoring practical reality!
Many, if not most, environmental policies are driven more by profit and wealth than by genuine ecological concern. Carbon offsets are seen as a scam or “bookkeeping trick.” It should be of massive concern for New Zealand to see overseas corporations buying up productive hill country farmland just to plant pine forests for carbon credits. Since these trees are never intended for harvest, they aren’t managed like traditional forests, effectively locking away land solely for corporate greenwashing.
What seems like a good cause, a just cause, is achieving the opposite effect. People would generally choose a cleaner and better option if it were equally as good as the other possibility and if they weren’t coerced into it. Forcing our hand, handicapping the economy, production, and energy supply because of an ideology we are clearly not ready for isn’t helping.
Making people’s lives harder, more expensive, and more miserable under the guise of protecting the planet is never going to cultivate an eco-friendly mentality.
It will only turn people against “green” principles. Instituting regulatory pressures and fanciful ideas that have no foundation in reality will never bring about a lasting change.
If you want a cautionary tale, just look at Germany. They recklessly shuttered their nuclear plants over “green” concerns, only to find themselves back at square one. Instead of a cleaner future, they were forced into a heavy reliance on Russian energy and actually had to reopen coal mines and plants just to keep the lights on. It’s a total backfire — achieving the exact opposite of what was intended!
While Germany’s nuclear exit was a deliberate ideological choice, the UK’s current crisis is one of timing and aging infrastructure. Since the Fukushima disaster in 2011, the UK has led Europe in reactor shutdowns, with 18 units taken offline. Although the government has an ambitious expansion programme, the immediate reality remains a fleet in retreat, leading to a decade-high reliance on energy imports and fossil fuel backups.
What will happen when the world massively turns to renewables, especially solar power? Solar panels so dependent on Chinese manufacturing, and something goes geopolitically wrong? We well know that can happen on the whim of a powerful county’s leader!
Lacking any self-sufficient solutions, we will not freeze to death, nor will we shut down our factories. We will revert to technologies far dirtier because we will be forced to! Surely that will be inevitable?
Solar roads, a roadway system that uses specially designed photovoltaic panels, instead of traditional asphalt, to capture sunlight and generate electricity had long been touted as the possible miracle solution to the world’s energy crisis. Being less disruptive than wind turbines and can be built atop existing infrastructure.
Hold on, take a look at the world’s flagship solar road project! The Normandy Road in France.
The Normandy Road was proven to be a failure after only two years of operations, with the road only producing around half of the power originally estimated, and engineering issues with the road itself leading to 100m of the road falling into disrepair, and being demolished!
But get this, the Normandy Road, opened early 2017, was only 1km long, was only a single lane of a proposed two-lane highway and cost US$5.7 million to build!
I have written previously about Ivanpah Solar Electric Generation – https://nominister.wordpress.com/2025/10/13/renewable-energy-mmm-let-me-think-about-that/
Ivanpah and its innovative technology was going to make America a world leader in solar energy generation! Ivanpah, despite federal and state support, never exceeded 75% of its planned electricity output! A US$2.2 billion, renewable, solar energy failure!
Now, let’s have a look at the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada. Crescent Dunes was a US$1 billion project and was the first commercial concentrated solar power plant to use molten salt energy storage to provide energy day and night. Excess thermal energy was stored in the molten salt to be used to generate power during the evening hours and when direct sunlight is not available. As such, the system eliminated the need for any backup fossil fuels.
As with many trailblazing energy technologies, Crescent Dunes faced massive technical failures in its storage tanks and could not compete with the falling costs of traditional solar panels. These problems initially reduced generation but then caused a shut down in 2020,
If we push beyond our good intentions too quickly and aggressively, we risk undoing the progress we’ve made and face extreme consequences.
“…the pendulum doesn’t gently reset. It swings back with a furious, violent overcorrection, often spilling buckets of blood in the process.”
In 2022, the corporate world was theatrically virtue signalling its way toward “Fossil Future” divestment. Today, those same industries are quietly scrambling for excuses to delay net-zero goals as they realize that modern life is impossible without hydrocarbons.
Ominously, most governments are incapable to see the pendulum is already beginning its return journey.
This law of the pendulum isn’t just environmental; It is the fundamental heartbeat of the economy. When we artificially suppress traditional energy production and mandate transition through subsidies rather than innovation, we risk a well of economic antipathy.
History shows us that whenever a society tries to “game” the average, the market eventually breaks. We are currently witnessing a massive, artificial distortion of the global energy market. By strangling investment in fossil fuels before a sustainable replacement is created, we risk an insufficiency of supply. Inflation then acts as a tax on the poor and the middle class that is beginning to see “green” as a synonym for “rip off”
This is overcorrection in action!
When the cost of living reaches a certain threshold of pain, do you think the public vote for “sustainability?” No, they will vote for whoever promises to turn the lights back on and bring the prices down, regardless of the environmental cost!
Then we see the “buckets of blood” in the form of a political and economic lurch back toward the most primitive, high-carbon energy sources simply because we tried to leap across a chasm we hadn’t yet bridged appropriately or sustainably.
The market, like the universe, eventually liquidates those who ignore its fundamental truths!
Pee Kay writes he is from a generation where common sense, standards, integrity and honesty are fundamental attributes. This article was first published HERE
I believe it will be no different with one of our society’s biggest problems. The big bogeyman of the 21st century, Climate Change.
Humans are the only species arrogant enough to believe that “change” is an error rather than a feature. We treat a shifting climate like a modern bogeyman, yet the Earth’s own history is a repetitive cycle of the swinging pendulum, violence and restoration.
For millions of years, the planet has breathed in CO2 and exhaled ice ages. Deserts were turned green, then left barren; seas rose, then retreated. This built-in self-correction happens with or without our permission.
On our planet, everything tends to self-correct over time. Nature has a built-in mechanism that seeks balance. This has been happening for millions of years and will continue to happen, with or without our input.
In nature, change is constant! It happens every day, it is just we seem either too busy or have been duped into believing falsehoods to notice. We humans are the only ones who seem to have a problem accepting this fact of life and suffer immense anxiety because of it.
It’s important to understand that change is inevitable. Change is relentless. Expecting otherwise is unrealistic. In fact, it is madness.
But what we are seeing and what is being pursued by activists and political groupings is a “green” agenda that promises salvation but, in truth, looks like delivering disaster. The green agenda has been pursued with a reckless haste, ignoring the facts, ignoring history and ignoring practical reality!
Many, if not most, environmental policies are driven more by profit and wealth than by genuine ecological concern. Carbon offsets are seen as a scam or “bookkeeping trick.” It should be of massive concern for New Zealand to see overseas corporations buying up productive hill country farmland just to plant pine forests for carbon credits. Since these trees are never intended for harvest, they aren’t managed like traditional forests, effectively locking away land solely for corporate greenwashing.
What seems like a good cause, a just cause, is achieving the opposite effect. People would generally choose a cleaner and better option if it were equally as good as the other possibility and if they weren’t coerced into it. Forcing our hand, handicapping the economy, production, and energy supply because of an ideology we are clearly not ready for isn’t helping.
Making people’s lives harder, more expensive, and more miserable under the guise of protecting the planet is never going to cultivate an eco-friendly mentality.
It will only turn people against “green” principles. Instituting regulatory pressures and fanciful ideas that have no foundation in reality will never bring about a lasting change.
If you want a cautionary tale, just look at Germany. They recklessly shuttered their nuclear plants over “green” concerns, only to find themselves back at square one. Instead of a cleaner future, they were forced into a heavy reliance on Russian energy and actually had to reopen coal mines and plants just to keep the lights on. It’s a total backfire — achieving the exact opposite of what was intended!
While Germany’s nuclear exit was a deliberate ideological choice, the UK’s current crisis is one of timing and aging infrastructure. Since the Fukushima disaster in 2011, the UK has led Europe in reactor shutdowns, with 18 units taken offline. Although the government has an ambitious expansion programme, the immediate reality remains a fleet in retreat, leading to a decade-high reliance on energy imports and fossil fuel backups.
What will happen when the world massively turns to renewables, especially solar power? Solar panels so dependent on Chinese manufacturing, and something goes geopolitically wrong? We well know that can happen on the whim of a powerful county’s leader!
Lacking any self-sufficient solutions, we will not freeze to death, nor will we shut down our factories. We will revert to technologies far dirtier because we will be forced to! Surely that will be inevitable?
Solar roads, a roadway system that uses specially designed photovoltaic panels, instead of traditional asphalt, to capture sunlight and generate electricity had long been touted as the possible miracle solution to the world’s energy crisis. Being less disruptive than wind turbines and can be built atop existing infrastructure.
Hold on, take a look at the world’s flagship solar road project! The Normandy Road in France.
The Normandy Road was proven to be a failure after only two years of operations, with the road only producing around half of the power originally estimated, and engineering issues with the road itself leading to 100m of the road falling into disrepair, and being demolished!
But get this, the Normandy Road, opened early 2017, was only 1km long, was only a single lane of a proposed two-lane highway and cost US$5.7 million to build!
I have written previously about Ivanpah Solar Electric Generation – https://nominister.wordpress.com/2025/10/13/renewable-energy-mmm-let-me-think-about-that/
Ivanpah and its innovative technology was going to make America a world leader in solar energy generation! Ivanpah, despite federal and state support, never exceeded 75% of its planned electricity output! A US$2.2 billion, renewable, solar energy failure!
Now, let’s have a look at the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada. Crescent Dunes was a US$1 billion project and was the first commercial concentrated solar power plant to use molten salt energy storage to provide energy day and night. Excess thermal energy was stored in the molten salt to be used to generate power during the evening hours and when direct sunlight is not available. As such, the system eliminated the need for any backup fossil fuels.
As with many trailblazing energy technologies, Crescent Dunes faced massive technical failures in its storage tanks and could not compete with the falling costs of traditional solar panels. These problems initially reduced generation but then caused a shut down in 2020,
If we push beyond our good intentions too quickly and aggressively, we risk undoing the progress we’ve made and face extreme consequences.
“…the pendulum doesn’t gently reset. It swings back with a furious, violent overcorrection, often spilling buckets of blood in the process.”
In 2022, the corporate world was theatrically virtue signalling its way toward “Fossil Future” divestment. Today, those same industries are quietly scrambling for excuses to delay net-zero goals as they realize that modern life is impossible without hydrocarbons.
Ominously, most governments are incapable to see the pendulum is already beginning its return journey.
This law of the pendulum isn’t just environmental; It is the fundamental heartbeat of the economy. When we artificially suppress traditional energy production and mandate transition through subsidies rather than innovation, we risk a well of economic antipathy.
History shows us that whenever a society tries to “game” the average, the market eventually breaks. We are currently witnessing a massive, artificial distortion of the global energy market. By strangling investment in fossil fuels before a sustainable replacement is created, we risk an insufficiency of supply. Inflation then acts as a tax on the poor and the middle class that is beginning to see “green” as a synonym for “rip off”
This is overcorrection in action!
When the cost of living reaches a certain threshold of pain, do you think the public vote for “sustainability?” No, they will vote for whoever promises to turn the lights back on and bring the prices down, regardless of the environmental cost!
Then we see the “buckets of blood” in the form of a political and economic lurch back toward the most primitive, high-carbon energy sources simply because we tried to leap across a chasm we hadn’t yet bridged appropriately or sustainably.
The market, like the universe, eventually liquidates those who ignore its fundamental truths!
Pee Kay writes he is from a generation where common sense, standards, integrity and honesty are fundamental attributes. This article was first published HERE
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