Utopia, you are standing in it!

Some eighteen months ago, I wrote here on “Money as a Social Construct“. Most civilizations over the millennia have found it expeditious to move from simple, immediate barter of physical objects like cows to some system involving “money”. But what is money? Wikipedia gives the following standard definition:

Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given socio-economic context or country.Themain functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value.

For convenience, the “thing” used as money is best if it is portable and durable and of limited amount. Gold and silver have historically served these purposes. Even though these are physical objects, their actual value in usage (e.g. how much gold does it take to buy a cow) is arbitrary. Its value…

The Martian (2015) Director: Ridley Scott

Alone on a deserted planet, Matt Damon plays Mark Watney in Ridley Scott’s wonderful adaptation of Adam Weir’s celebrated 2011 science fiction novel of the same name. In the year prior Matt Damon also played a stranded astronaut in a surprise appearance in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. The Martian is a eminently enjoyable and enlightening survival-in-space story. When a sudden storm strikes a scientific crew on the surface of Mars in the year 2035 (filmed in the desert terrain of Jordan), its lead botanist Mark Watney is believed to be dead and abandoned by his fellow crewmen aboard the Ares III. When he awakens from the storm, Watney returns to the crew’s rudimentary shelter where he begins devising complex plans for his own survival –growing potatoes using the nutrients from human excrement and Martian soil, while searching for some method…

In our latest blog we’re returning to the ‘Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700’project. Since late September, we’ve been working with the University of Oxfordand theCentre for Intellectual Historyat the University of Oxford to put togetherseries of blogs that explore European Parliamentary Culture.The series is focused on the Early Modern period – roughly 1500-1700 – but they have ranged more widely, seeking to bring in some scholars of the more recent past to provide different perspectives and insights that might stimulate new thinking. We’re reposting some of the blogs here, with thanks to the CIH and to our colleagues who have commissioned, edited and authored the blogs. To find out more about the exciting programme of work and conferences over the coming year, head to the CIH website.

This blog was originally published on 29 September, written by the History of Parliament’s director,

Bjørn Lomborg: the Skeptical Environmentalist.

When it comes to assessing the costs, risks and benefits of environmental policy Bjørn Lomborg has always tried to provide balanced, detailed analysis supported by facts and evidence. The economic choices we make – about allocating scarce resources to unlimited wants – should – as Lomborg consistently points out – be made taking into account all of the costs weighed against properly measured benefits (see our post here).

When it comes to renewable energy policy, however, fundamental economic doctrine has been simply thrown to the wind.

The wind industry and its parasites tout spurious and unproven benefits in terms of CO2 emissions reductions – reductions which cannot and will never be delivered by a generation source delivered at crazy, random intervals that adds nothing to the entire Eastern Australian Grid hundreds of times each year – and which, therefore, requires 100% of its…

Vladimir Putin’s march across Ukraine has wrecked plans to slash man-made carbon oxide gas emissions with net-zero targets.

Remember a month or so back, when the most pressing challenge was the apparent need to tame global weather using endless subsidies for billions more solar panels and millions more giant industrial wind turbines?

When fossil fuels were anathema, and nuclear was the emissions-free generation source that dare not speak its name?

Suddenly. Oh, so suddenly, those who pretend to lead us are talking an entirely different game.

Placating the doomsday crowd with cheap talk about cheap renewables has been displaced by the need for hard talk about truly affordable power; affordable, simply because it is always and everywhere, reliable.

Terence Corcoran takes the same point a little further in the article below.

Putin blows up NetZero and the green reset
Financial Post
Terence Corcoran
2 March 2022

There can be no…

Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, (April 1, 1815 — July 30, 1898) was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. Later created Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg

In 1847, Bismarck, aged thirty-two, was chosen as a representative to the newly created Prussian legislature, the Vereinigter Landtag. There, he gained a reputation as a royalist and reactionary politician with a gift for stinging rhetoric; he openly advocated the idea that the monarch had a divine right to rule.

In March 1848, Prussia faced a revolution (one of the revolutions of 1848 across Europe), which completely overwhelmed King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The monarch, though initially inclined to use armed forces to suppress the rebellion, ultimately declined to leave Berlin for the safety of military headquarters at Potsdam. Bismarck later recorded that there had been a “rattling of sabres in their scabbards” from Prussian officers when they learned that the…

We learn of the first thirteen popes from Irenaeus of Lyons, who documented their colorful mythology from Peter to Eleutherius. This was a time of great paranoia for Christians following the Great Fire in Rome and the subsequent Neronian nightmare as well as a resurgence of violent persecutions under Emperor Domitian (AD 81-96) who promoted a delusional form of self-deification, dominus et deus or “master and god,” and began torturing the new religion once again. This was the context in which the fevered Book of Revelation was likely written –a text which gleefully celebrates the downfall of Rome and subversively refers to Jesus as a “King” in contrast to the Roman Emperor. The Emperors Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius are generally remembered as more tolerant rulers, however the crowds in Rome still raged for more bodies to fill the ongoing circus festivals. Two of the most important Christian leaders were…

Nothing focuses thinking on energy policy like not having heat, light and power on tap.

With Europe now hostage to its aggressive Eastern neighbour – thanks to a maniacal obsession with intermittent wind and solar and the need to back it up with oil and gas – policy wonks of all descriptions have started talking about energy supplies in the present, rather than the future, tense.

The reason for the recent uptick in the intensity of thought isn’t difficult to find: if Vlad turns off the gas tap, large tracts of Europe will be plunged into freezing darkness, particularly the Germans, who, years ago, committed to killing off their reliable nuclear and coal-fired power plants.

Now, though, faced with the reality of actually trying to rely exclusively on wind and solar, even Germany’s Greens are talking about maintaining their ability to produce coal-fired and nuclear power for the foreseeable future…

The following are some notes I cobbled together upon reading John Julius Norwich’s 2011 single volume history of the papacy Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy. The book is a delightful survey of this most curious and enduring institution –the papacy– offering erudite and concise summaries of key moments in the unfolding character and history of the papacy. I also used Diarmaid MacCulloch’s 2009 work of popular history, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years as a reference as well. After recently completing a survey of the kings and queens of England using several different sources (including Winston Churchill’s History of English Speaking Peoples) I decided to turn my gaze toward that other present-day monarchical tradition spanning two millennia. How is it that a religion which venerates the “meek” and the “poor in spirit?” has managed to elevate a supreme pontiff who governs the faithful like a global…

Wind and solar advocates keep carping that ‘coal is dead’, as if thermal power generation had gone the same way as the dodo and flared trousers.

This wouldn’t be the first time an obituary has been published way to early. Mark Twain noted that reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated. So too, coal-fired power.

Thermal coal prices are off the charts, with record demand driving record prices: Australian thermal coal prices recently hit $US$400 ($548 a tonne), with prices still on the rise.

True enough, the ex-KGB lad with his sights set on crushing Ukraine has played his part. But, so too has the West’s suicidal obsession with chaotically intermittent and heavily subsidised wind and solar. In Europe, Germany in particular, the harsh reckoning of foolishly locking themselves into reliance on Russian oil and gas has caused a major rethink about their attempt to run on sunshine and…

Like a jilted bride, wind and solar have lost all love and favour as Europe scrambles for reliable and affordable energy.

Now it seems that the only inevitable thing about the ‘inevitable transition’ is that when people are forced to choose between electricity delivered reliably and affordably and the purportedly clean and green kind, they couldn’t care less about where it comes from.

Even Germany’s Greens have backflipped on their policy to kill off its nuclear and coal-fired plants; all of a sudden infantile ideology has given way to necessity and sound engineering.

Who would have thought that a modern Stalin would herald the end for chaotically intermittent wind and solar?

Hitherto the model was fairly simple: Europe would ditch its reliable and affordable generation systems; squander billions of euros on subsidies to inherently unreliable wind and solar; and use Russian oil and gas to run highly inefficient gas…

When debating big issues such as the size and scope of government, I like to think that facts matter. Maybe I’m being naive, but people should look at evidence before deciding whether to make government bigger or smaller.

And with Biden proposing a big expansion in the size of the welfare state, this is why I regularly compare the economic performance of the United States and various European nations.

After all, if we’re going to make America more like Europe, shouldn’t we try to understand what that might mean for the well being of the citizenry?

With this in mind, I want to share this tweet (based on this data) from Stefan Schubert at the London School of Economics.

The obvious takeaway is that the average person in the United States enjoys much higher living standards (more than 50 percent higher) than the average person in…