Back Off, Oh Masters of the Universe

Hello everyone. I'm going to read to you today a piece I wrote for the Telegraph in the UK. I'm reading it because sometimes, rather than speaking spontaneously, it's necessary for me to craft my words with as much care as I can manage, especially when dealing with things that are pushing the limits of my conceptual ability.

Let's say writing is the deepest form of thinking, and sometimes I need to rely on it. And so that's why I'm reading it now. The next issue is how I'm going to read it. So I've written a number of these news pieces, let's say commentaries, recently.

And people have objected; some people have objected to my tone. I'm often dealing with things that I would say frighten me, to take on to some degree. They're big issues, and they're contentious.

And so a handy source of impetus and power—I mean motive power—in such situations is to harness a certain degree of outrage and anger that also fuels my spirit. I suppose in some sense when I'm writing these articles, it would be easier in many ways just to sit on the couch and read a Stephen King novel.

But I have to get up the energy, and maybe I do that by relying to an untenable degree on wrath, which is a cardinal sin in some regards. Now it's not like there aren't things that are worth being irritable about, but I thought what I would do today as an experiment is to attempt to read this in the most calm and understanding manner that I can, despite its rather pointed message.

And so I'm trying to get the tone right, you know, and I'm paying attention to the feedback I'm getting from friend and foe alike, let's say, and modifying my approach as a consequence. And so this is an attempt to modify it yet again in the hopes of attaining something better.

And here we go. Deloitte is the largest professional service network in the world, headquartered in London. It is also one of the big four global accounting companies, offering audit, consulting, risk advisory, tax, and legal services to corporate clients, with a third of a million professionals operating on those fronts worldwide.

And as the third largest privately owned company in the US, Deloitte is a behemoth with numerous and far-reaching tentacles. In short, it's an entity we should all know about, not least because such enterprises no longer limit themselves to their proper bailiwick—profit-centered business strategizing, say—but consciously or not, have assumed the role as counselors to globalists whose policies have sparked considerable unrest around the world.

If you're seeking the cause of the Dutch agriculture and fisheries protests, the Canadian trucker convoy, or before that, the rise of the so-called yellow jackets in France, the farmer rebellion in India a few years ago, the recent catastrophic collapse of Sri Lanka, or the energy crisis in Europe and Australia, you can instruct yourself by the recent pronouncements from Deloitte.

While not directly responsible, they offer an insight into the elite group think that has triggered these events into the cabal of centralizing globalist utopians, operating in the media, corporate, and government fronts, wielding a nightmarish vision of environmental apocalypse. Outlandish claims.

In May of this year, Deloitte released a clarion call to precipitous action, trumpeting the climate emergency that currently confronts us, called "The Turning Point: A Global Summary." It is a stellar example of the kind of thinking characteristic of the European Union's bureaucratic overreach that generated Brexit—a very good decision on the part of the Brits, in my view, and one that is now threatening the very survival of that self-same EU.

The report opens with two claims: first that the storms, wildfires, droughts, downpours, and floods around the globe in the last 18 months are unique and unprecedented—a dubious claim—and implicitly that the science is now at a point where we can say without doubt that experts can and must model the entire ecology and economy of the planet and that we must modify everyone's behavior moving forward, by hook or by crook, to avoid what would otherwise be the most expensive environmental and social catastrophe in history.

The Deloitte models posit that climate impacts could affect global economic output and offer the following figures: that unchecked climate change will cost us $178 trillion over the next 50 years—that's $25,000 per person. To put it in human terms, who dares deny such facts stated so mathematically, so precisely, so scientifically?

Let’s update Mark Twain’s famous dictum: there are lies, damned lies, statistics, and computer models. Computer model does not mean data, and even data does not mean fact or real world. Computer model means, at best, hypotheses posing as mathematical fact.

No real scientist ever says, “Follow the science,” yet this is exactly what bodies such as the EU consistently pronounce, pushing for collectivist solutions that often and inevitably do more harm than good. Solutions in sovereignty—what might we rely on instead to guide us forward in these times of accelerating trouble and possibility?

Valid authority rests in the people. Truly valid structures of authority are local, not centralized, for reasons of efficiency and emergency. This must not become the generation of yet another top-down Tower of Babel that will not solve our problems, just as similar attempts have failed to solve our problems in the past.

Ask yourself: Are these Deloitte models, which are supposed to guide all the important decisions we make about the economic security and opportunity of families and the structures of our civil societies, accurate enough even to give those who employ them any edge whatsoever, say in predicting the performance of a stock portfolio—one based on green energy, say—over the upcoming years?

The answer is no. How do we know? Because if such accurate models existed and were implemented by a company with Deloitte's resources and reach, Deloitte would soon have all the money. That is never going to happen.

The global economy, let alone the environment, is simply too complex to model. It is for this reason fundamentally that we have and require a free market system. The free market is the best model of the environment we can generate.

Let me repeat that with a codicil: not only is the free market the best model of the environment we can generate, it is and will remain the best model that can, in principle, ever be generated with its widely distributed computations constituting the totality of the choices of seven billion people.

It simply cannot be improved upon—certainly not by presumptuous, power-mad globalist utopians who think that hiring someone to mysteriously manipulate a few carefully chosen numbers and then reading the summarized output means genuine contact with the reality of the future and the generation of knowledge unassailable on both the ethical and the practical front.

The impact of delusional thinking—why is this a problem? Why should you care? Well, the savior said, Deloitte admits that there will be a short-term cost to implementing their cure, which is, by the way, net zero emissions by 2050—an utterly preposterous and inexcusable goal both practically and conceptually.

This, by the way, is a goal identical to that adopted last week by the utterly delusional leaders of Australia, who additionally committed that resource-dependent and productive country to a 40-plus decrease by 2005 standards in greenhouse gas emissions within the impossible time frame of eight years.

This will devastate Australia, as the framers of such plans, with their “it justifies everything” emergency, know and even somewhat admit to knowing. Here is the confession couched in bureaucratic doublespeak from the Deloitte consultants: during the initial stages, the combined cost of the upfront investments in decarbonization, coupled with the already locked in damages of climate change, would temporarily lower economic activity compared to the current emissions intensive path.

The omniscient planners then attempt to justify this with the standard empty threats and promises: the suffering is certain, the benefits ethereal. Those most exposed to the economic damages of unchecked climate change would also have the most to gain from embracing a low-emissions future. Really? Tell that to the African and Indian populations in the developing world lifted from poverty by coal and natural gas.

And think, really think about this statement: existing industries would be reconstituted as a series of complex interconnected emissions-free energy systems—energy, mobility, industry, manufacturing, food and land use, and negative emissions. That sounds difficult, don't you think? To rebuild everything at once and better without breaking everything—fixing everything in a few decades in a blindly panicked rush while demonizing anyone who dares object?

And what will it take to do so? Here's the most alarming part: nothing more than, quote, “a coordinated transition that will require governments, along with the financial services and technology sectors, to catalyze, facilitate and accelerate progress, foster information flows across systems and align individual incentives with collective goals.”

A clearer statement of totalitarian inclination could hardly be penned. Certain outcomes versus predicted outcomes—the one thing the Deloitte models guarantee is that if we do what they recommend, we will definitely be poorer than we would have been otherwise for an indefinite but hypothetically transitory period.

Yet, any reduction in economic output, however temporary and necessary, will be purchased at the cost of the lives of those who are barely making it now, period. Have you all noticed that food has become much more expensive? That shelter has become much more expensive? That energy is more expensive? That many consumer goods are simply unavailable?

Can you not see that this is going to get worse if the Deloitte-style moralists have their way? How much short-term pain are you going to be required to sustain—decades' worth—your whole life and the life of your children? It's very likely for your own benefit.

Remember that and all this painful privation is not only not going to save the planet, it's going to make it far worse. I worked for a U.N. subcommittee that helped prepare the 2012 report to the Secretary-General on sustainable development.

Whether or not it was a good idea to contribute to such a thing is a separate issue. I do believe at least that the report would have been much more harmful than it was without the input of the Canadian contingent. We scrubbed away several layers of globalist utopianism and Cold War-era conceptualization and cynicism.

That was something I garnered a key and crucial insight from the several years of work devoted to my contribution. I learned that the fastest and most certain pathway forward to the future we all want and need—peaceful, prosperous, beautiful—is through the economic elevation of the absolutely poor.

Richer people care about the environment, which is, after all, all that is outside the primary and fundamental concern of those desperate for their next meal. Make the poor rich, and the planet will improve—or at least get out of their way while they try to make themselves rich.

Make the poor poorer, and this is the concrete plan, remember, and things will get worse—perhaps worse beyond imagining. Observe the chaos in Sri Lanka if you need proof. There are clearly more important priorities than costly and ineffective emergency climate change reductions.

Bjorn Lomborg's work, among others such as Marion Tupy and Matt Ridley, has demonstrated that other pressing problems could and should take political and economic priority from the perspective of good done per dollar spent. Money could and should be spent, for example, to ensure the current health and therefore future productivity and environmental stewardship of currently poor children in developing countries.

For example, how about attending to remediation of the actual world of pain and deprivation of such children, rather than saving the hypothetical world and the hypothetical world of future children in abstraction? Stirrings of revolt—citizens are waking up to this; Dutch farmers and fishermen are rising up, Canadian truckers are pushing back, and such protests are spreading and increasing in intensity as they should.

Why? Because Deloitte consultants and like-minded centralists are pushing things too far. It will not produce the results they are hypothetically intending. This agenda, justified by emergency, will instead make everyone poorer, particularly those who are already poor.

This use of emergency force will instead make the lives of the working men upon whom we all depend for our daily bread and shelter more difficult and less rewarding. Finally, this use of emergency force will also make the environment worse, not better.

Why? If you wreak your temporary economic havoc to eventually remediate the world, those whom you sacrifice so casually in the attempt will descend into chaos. In that chaos, they will then, by necessity, turn their attention to matters of immediate survival and in a manner that will stress and harm the complex ecosystems and economies that can only be maintained with the long-term view that prosperity and nothing else makes possible.

Critics of my view will say we have to accept limits to growth. Fine—accept them personally. Abandon your position of planet-devouring wealthy privilege. Join an ascetic order, graze with the cattle, or if that's too much—and it probably is—then purchase an electric car if you want one.

But no diesel-powered emergency backup vehicle or electric power generator for you. Buy some stock in Tesla—that's probably the best bet on that front. But you don't approve of the likes of Elon Musk, do you?

Stop flying. Stop driving for that matter. Get on your bike instead in your three-piece business suit in the winter if you dare. I’ll splash you with icy and salty slush as I drive by in my evil but warm Ford Bronco SUV and help you derive the consequent delicate pleasure of your own narcissistic martyrdom.

Save the planet with your own choices, but quit demanding that the rest of us blindly follow your dictates. Quit demonizing and castigating us merely because we don't just happily cede to you all the extant power.

We're not evil just because we don't believe that you are omniscient. We're not evil just because we don't want you to assume omnipotence and omnipresence too. There is simply no pathway forward to the green and equitable utopia that necessitates the further impoverishment of the already poor, the compulsion of the working class, or the sacrifice of economic security and opportunity on the food, energy, and housing front.

There is simply no pathway forward to the global utopia you hypothetically value that is dependent on force. And even if there was, what gives you the right to enforce your demands on other sovereign citizens equal in value to you?

An alternative solution—a better way forward—would be to prioritize the problems that beset all of us on this still green, functional, and increasingly abundant planet, with the requisite focus and attention demanded of a true political class elected by the people, capable of and willing to look at everything—trying to fix where necessary, trying to maintain as much freedom and autonomy as possible, and stop simply capitalizing narcissistically on the mere appearance of action, knowledge, and virtue.

We should obtain true cooperative consent from those affected—farmers, truckers, working-class people who have turned an irritated desperation to figures such as Trump—and work with them rather than forbidding them with your power or improving them so they will be finally worthy of your time and attention.

Help replace dirty energy with clean if you must, but do it on your own dime and make sure that the results are cheap and plentiful. If you want to help the poor and the planet, the warning bells are ringing. Listen to them before they turn into sirens.

We will not advance without resistance through the straits of your enforced privation. We will not allow you to steal and destroy the energy that makes our lives bearable and that produces our food and shelter and housing and the sporadic delights of modern life just to address your existential terror, particularly when it will fail to do so in any case.

We will not allow our children to be criticized first for having the temerity to merely exist and then deprived of the prosperous and opportunity-rich future we strive so hard to prepare for them.

We remain unconvinced that your frightened and self-congratulatory moralizing and intellectual pretension, ignorance of the limits of statistics, and misuse of arithmetic— we do not believe, finally and most absolutely, that your declared emergency and the panic you sow because of it means that you should now be seated all necessary authority.

So leave us alone, you centralizers of power, you worshipers of Gaia, you sacrificers of the wealth and property of others, you would-be planetary saviors, you Machiavellian pretenders and virtue signalers objecting to power all the while you gathered around you madly.

Leave us alone to prosper—or not—as a result of our own choices, as a result of our own actions in the exercise of our own requisite and irreducible responsibility. Leave us alone, or reap the whirlwind and watch the terrible destruction of what you purport to save in consequence.