A race between "global warming" and nuclear war?
Friday, September 9, 2022 10:21 AM
It is of men, and of them only, that one should always be frightened.—Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Dear Friends + Interlocutors,
An important English scientist named James Lovelock recently passed away at the age of 103. He had the opportunity to observe many things over a long period of time and arrive at conclusions.
According to his NY Times obit, Lovelock stated, “Between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2,000 people left. It’s happening again.” He ended on a pessimistic note.
There will be a cull, according to Lovelock, but not nearly as bad as what the ice ages produced. “The number of people remaining at the end of this century will probably be a billion or less.” Currently, the world’s population is not quite eight billion.
Apparently, Lovelock at least partly bought into the dubious (to me) and over-simplistic concept of anthropogenic global warming—that is, warming is caused by man, not nature.
At the same time, he created considerable controversy among the faithful when he proclaimed that the only realistic choice for mankind going forward, if one necessarily threw out fossil fuels, was nuclear energy. The go-green, anthropogenic-warming enthusiasts opt for windmills and solar panels.
It appears that Germany—now in a tremendous self-inflicted jam for lack of Russian energy supplies—will soon nevertheless shut down its last three nuclear reactors producing electricity. Why? Go-green, wide-spread myopia combined with the overpowering urge to show solidarity with Ukraine, no matter how self-destructive.
In the meantime, Elizabeth II has passed away. I suggest this anticipated event is considerably less significant than Mikhail Gorbachev’s recent demise. Both are symbolic, but Gorbachev was a colossus in the real world.
The passing of England’s longest reigning monarch represents the last link with another age, with the defunct British Empire, of which I have been highly if selectively critical, as evinced by the home page of my website.
As for Gorbachev, he symbolizes the end of the Cold War, which he actively took part in bringing about with glasnost and perestroika. True, he was swept away by events he initiated, but managed it well. His big mistake was not getting something in writing from Washington and NATO regarding the future of Europe.
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-90-91, and hence of European communism, was a pivotal event for planet earth. In the aftermath, not just NATO but nuclear weapons could easily have been done away with by mutual consent.
If it were not for Gorbachev’s vision and Boris Yeltsin jumping on top of a tank in Moscow in August 1991 to halt an attempted communist coup, we might still be saddled with the Cold War. Instead, we are witnessing Washington inventing a new Cold War with its proxy war in Ukraine.
It must be obvious, except to certain crazed Neocons, there is no need for a new Cold War nor of nuclear weapons. I do not know what Elizabeth II thought about such matters—she was after all simply a figurehead—but certainly Gorbachev agreed with the proposition.
He hoped in the post-Cold War era, there would be an expansion of an undivided, demilitarized Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. He felt that Russia was part of Europe. Instead of NATO marching east, Russia would peacefully merge with Europe. Something along those lines.
And Gorbachev agreed with Reagan that nuclear weapons could be banned by verifiable treaties. He was right. But the unimaginative bureaucracies in Washington would not follow through. Led by the Pentagon, the CIA, weapon manufacturers and other vested interests, Washington has backtracked.
Is the race now on between “global warming”—anthropogenic or otherwise—and a nuclear war caused by NATO expansion and by related incendiary policies coming out of Washington directed against Moscow in partnership with its suicidal European vassal states? I wonder.
Another Euro-centric world war may well be in the offing. Benighted politicians in America and England have learned nothing from history. They do not have the vision of Gorbachev and Reagan. The European continent will pay the price and again be the battleground, if the misbegotten scheme now unfolding in Ukraine blows up.