The "Social Cost" of Carbon

A Most Virtuous Charade

Some question whether I “believe in” or “deny” Climate Change.

I fail both tests because it doesn’t matter one jot. I’ve got news for you. We’ve got far more serious problems to fix today than wringing our hands over what may happen years or decades in the future.

Behold the “Social Cost of Carbon.” Direct, “but for” legal causation.

But don’t misunderstand. The direct “but for” causation is not Russia per se. It’s outsourcing all the dirty work so we can pretend to be civilized, enlightened, and genteel people. First world nations pretend to be too Virtuous to produce the essential energy they consume. So they outsource it to cartels and evil human beings with evil intent—the people all too willing to go along with the charade.

Nuclear Power's ability to produce low-cost, affordable synfuels and electrical energy with waste heat is the best way human beings have of breaking out of the globalized race to the bottom of the fossil fuel dregs that got us where we are. But that will take time.

In 2022, a developed nation’s refusal to produce its own own oil and gas and other energy—or at a minimum to produce one’s own Nuclear Power and Synfuels—that the rich nation directly and indirectly consumes is devilishly foolhardy, inhumane, and morally and economically reckless.

Such policies are hardly limited to Europe. In the USA, the Virtuous energy policies of Bernie Sanders and his ilk have resulted in New Englanders purchasing tanker upon tanker of crude oil and LNG all the way from Trinidad and Tobego, and the Bunker fuel to ship it nearly 8,000 km round trip—and expending hundreds of thousands—millions—of tons of excess CO2 and methane doing so—while wrecking safe and paid-off nuclear power plants all the while sitting atop some of the world’s richest shale gas resources—is objectively immoral.

The “Social Cost” of Carbon 2022-23 is lots of dead and starving people. Right now. Today. We human beings should be disgusted by this headline but I’ve not seen much pushback. It’s normalized. Look at it: “and delay climate action.” How about “and kill people,” as in starting soon? I honestly fear we’ve completely lost our common humanity.

Yellow paint and tomato soup? Rich nations who could produce the energy resources they directly and indirectly consume - nuclear power, natural, gas, oil and gas - but refuse to do so because they are too Virtuous--so they import it, easily out-compete the 50 bankrupt nations.

All I see is a whole lot of suffering, blood, and red paint. Recall the last time you were angry at a person who cut the line or got ahead of you in traffic. That's precisely what you're doing - cutting right ahead of the millions of poor in some 50 bankrupt nations.

« Qu'ils mangent de la brioche ! »

We only eat imported caviar—our fish don't have any. It’s messy work—musn’t get messy now. That would impair our Virtue.

Or perhaps more to the point in 2022:

Let Them Burn Dung

It’s the back of the line for you. My money is worth far more than yours. And the only pity I can muster has nothing to do with the fact that you won't be able to feed your children bread, much less caviar. No. It's that your poverty will "delay climate action." Heaven Forbid delaying climate action. It’s for your own good, you know, Climate Action. My Model shows there will be lots of famines by 2057. Musn’t delay. Sea level rise will overwhelm poor nations by 2074 they say. Poor people. For now, burn dung while we save you from terrible things decades from now. We musn’t get messy making our own energy—making our very own ammonia, synfuels, H2, O2, electrical energy, district heat. We are too Virtuous for that nonsense—tore all of our reactors down. Now we need all the LNG, Coal, Diesel Fuel, and Petrol for ourselves. Burn dung.

Until such time as Magic Windmills and Suncatchers are able to stop the brutal forces of Nature that will most surely come decades from now, to ravage the poorest nations of the earth, perhaps First World Nations would consider relieving the parents of the 50 poorest, bankrupt nations, from the burden of raising their children, as Jonathan Swift proposed some years ago, as a mutual public benefit.