(Last) Weekly Roundup: The Naked Hellscape Of Net Zero Edition

It sure is hard out here for a hillbilly conspiracy theorist nowadays, ain't it? No matter how bat-you-know-what crazy your completely nutcase theory might be -- there's a pedophile island visited by Presidents! The United States directly supported gain-of-function coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute! The Chamber Of Commerce organized a secret coalition to subvert the 2020 election! -- it almost immediately turns out to be true, either in whole or in part. Heck, even the oft-ridiculed trope about "the chemicals in the water are turning the frogs gay!" turns out to have some serious research behind it.

If you clicked the last link, you'll see that Atrazine doesn't turn male frogs gay, in the commonly understood sense of the word. Rather, it emasculates most of them and turns a percentage of the rest into female frogs. This rather nice distinction would be enough to earn the Gay Frogs Claim a "False!" from the plagiarists at Snopes or a "Pants On Fire!" from Politifact. Much of the "fact-checking" you see done in today's media is reliant on such fine-grained examination; see this note on HR 1 as an example.

I mention all of this because you're about to see a rather disturbing document that purports to show how the British Government will manipulate public opinion to accept everything from eating bugs to staying in their homes while the elite continue to travel at will. The fact-checkers are already hard at work trying to separate the authors of this document from the Government -- but in this case, they are likely to fail.

The Brits took this Net Zero document down off the main government site, but not before it was archived. The Independent states this about the authors of the paper: "The Behavioural Insights Team, also known as the 'Nudge Unit', is independent of government but partly owned by the Cabinet Office. A government spokesperson said: 'This was an academic research paper, not government policy. We have no plans whatsoever to dictate consumer behaviour in this way. For that reason, our Net Zero Strategy published yesterday contained no such plans.'" The paper itself is less willing to distance itself from government, stating:

The Behavioural Insights Team, also known as the Nudge Unit, is a social-purpose company. Originally set up at the heart of the UK government, we are now a global company with offices around the world.

There are plenty of websites, including ZeroHedge, taking selective quotes from the Net Zero document. I'd suggest instead that you simply read it in its not overly sizable entirety, or at least skim it. In its broadest sense, the document argues that policymakers should set "ambitious" goals related to climate change. Those goals should then be manipulated into reality through a concerted, coordinated effort to change the choices available to British subjects. Eventually, all aspects of life in the United Kingdom will have been completely revamped in a manner that produces "net zero" CO2 emissions.

It's worth noting that even as the British Government prepares to ban combustion-engine cars in 2030, China is openly stating that their CO2 emissions will continue to increase every year from now until 2030 before slowly tapering off to Net Zero in 2060, which is a nice way of saying "never", since very few of the people involved in these decisions will be alive to see the effect of their policies at that point. It's also not easy to see how all of the behaviors discussed in the document will lead to Net Zero; there is a strong element of takin' over all of Stone Mountain to these goals and strategies, because while it is easy to see how the standard of living, and even the standard of human dignity, will be reduced by carrying them out, the actual carbon-emissions reduction seems to be an afterthought.

As an example: It's obvious how a mandatory EV strategy will cripple travel, reduce personal mobility, and make it even easier to tax and restrict individual citizens, but not so easy to figure out how it will lead to Net Zero in a country that still sources 60% of its energy from burning something. One wonders just how important that latter part is. Perhaps not at all, because it would be intensely pleasurable just to impose one's will on the general public, regardless of the merits attached to said imposition.

In any event, it seems obvious what will happen in the future regarding the strategies laid out in this Net Zero document. At first, ridicule will be used against people who take those strategies at face value -- they're nutjobs! Then we will move to denial -- these things couldn't happen! Then a little equivocation -- just they're happening, but not exactly like the nutjobs predicted! Finally, an accountability-free accounting -- yes, we're doing it that way, it's been done that way, but so what?

(For those of you keeping score at home, we're in the the second-to-last stage of the above cycle with regards to the "conspiracy theory" that Fauci's NIH funded coronavirus research in Wuhan. A year or from now, CNN will take a moment to mention that yes, COVID-19 was deliberately developed in a lab under American funding and direction, then inadvertently released into the wild, but so what?)

Over the next eight years, British subjects will no doubt see every single recommendation and tactic from the Net Zero document put into practice. Some of them will complain: hey, isn't this just like that document from 2021, the one that the conspiracy theorists said would be put into effect? By then, it will be a yeah, and so what? situation. Imagine being a Brit in 2030. You can't buy a real car, can't fly without demonstrating a "good reason" to do so. Can't eat meat, can't buy or own anything that hasn't been exhaustively evaluated for "carbon virtue". Meanwhile, your counterparts in China are riding the wave of an all-time high in carbon consumption.

Here's a new conspiracy theory I just made up: the whole Net Zero thing is actually a devious 4-D chess strategy from the horrible evil racists who don't want to see the UK become a majority-immigrant society. Their plan is to make living in Brtain so miserable that people no longer want to claim asylum in the sceptered isle. The people who have already arrived will throw up their hands and head back home to Syria or whatever. This is basically the same strategy used to halt Caesar's second invasion. It could work again! Let's not underestimate the impact of not having enough "dirty energy" to keep British homes warm in the winter. "Cool Britannia" could have a whole new meaning! Don't forget, you read this conspiracy theory here first. Now go out and spread it before it turns out to be true!

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For Hagerty, I reviewed a BMW, raced a Radical, and imagined a very different kind of 1970 Chevrolet.