Pushing Back on the Green Agenda

Hi and welcome to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today we're talking about the green agenda and And how it's funded and what to do about it. Now, this show is brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. Swan Bitcoin is putting on a conference, Pacific Bitcoin. This will be the biggest Bitcoin only conference ever. It's going to be on November 10th and 11th, 2022 in LA, California. Hang out with thousands of Bitcoiners from around the globe. They've already got a really big speaker lineup ready, and you can catch them on the main stage. You can ask questions and hang out at the conference and events throughout the week. This is optimized for Opportunities and high fives. This will be just one main event of an overall LA Bitcoin Week, which we-- which will be full of educational opportunities, meetups, coworking, and parties throughout the week. So come and join us. It's in November this year. P A C Bitcoin dot com. If you're in the Bitcoin mining world, go and check out Brains dot com. That's Brains with two eyes. They have content on their blog that teaches you about Bitcoin mining and energy. They also have an insights dashboard that you can use to keep track of what's going on in Statistics as well as profitability calculations, and of course, they have Brainz OS Plus. This is custom firmware that you can install on your ASIC machine. Check the site to know if your model is supported, but it can give you much better energy efficiency, and there are people getting twenty percent better joules per tera hash, and you can use the auto-tuning feature, as well as being able to pay zero percent pool fees if you're using Slush Pool with Brainz OS Plus. So that website is brains dot com. Remember, it's important to keep your keys secure and- With CoinKite, you can get the Coldcard. This is a very well recommended and highly renowned Bitcoin hardware wallet or signing device is the new term, and you can use this now to secure your coins without touching the computer. And so what you can do is use an SD card to move that information back and forth, so you can initialize that wallet and plug it into the wall, not to the computer, and you can set up the wallet. It'll write, you'll write down the twelve or twenty-four words, and then you'll transfer that data into your computer using Wallets like Specter, Sparrow, Electrum, or others. It's a really great way to improve your security in Bitcoin while also learning about how it works. So go and get yours at CoinKite dot com and use the code Livera for a discount. So my guest today is Ben Pile. He is writing for Climate Resistance and he's got his blog as well as a YouTube where he is commenting and analyzing what's going on in the world of the green agenda and the ESG people. So I think this will be an interesting conversation and seeing as the- The energy and Bitcoin worlds are colliding, Ben has a useful perspective and insight. Ben, welcome to the show.

Oh, thanks, hi, I'm Stephan,

great to be

here.

Yeah, Ben, so I've been following your work, I enjoy it, I think you do a lot of great work in terms of challenging the green agenda and some of your written work as well as I have seen, a couple of your YouTube videos as well. So do you wanna just tell us a little bit about yourself just briefly in terms of what your focus is nowadays and in terms of what you're writing And speaking about.

Yeah, well, the, the green agenda is this quite a broad thing, and in the past, I think there was much more of an interesting discussion about what the green agenda was, and it was, sort of looked at the his-history of the green movement and, and was quite sort of clear about trying to get to the bottom of what kind of world greens want to create. But, in the two thousands, I think that sort of- I, I say it sort of descends to science, right? That, that people were very interested in what science says, and skeptics and people who wanted to sort of a-ask questions about the green agenda were, were harried into accepting science as the only vehicle for, for that discussion. Now, okay, we, we can have the technical debates about how much climate change is, is, is happening and, and what its causes are and what the consequences are, and those are very extremely important things to, to discuss. but, but there's a gap in the market, so to speak, for that old, more old-fashioned view of looking at environmentalism and the green agenda as a political thing, aside from its technical and scientific claims. So, that's why I started writing on, that many- It took the form of a blog, and then, and then later on, writing a few more articles with different people. I've been producing a few videos, and, and for a while, I worked for Godfrey Bloom, who, I think you've, you've interviewed before. It was great fun to work with and who brought lots of ideas to the, to the criticism of the green agenda, and he, he was very sympathetic to that view as well. And, and what I think what he says, the green, the green issue is a political dynamic,

to unpick what Green cl- what Green's claim, 'cause it's not just like Greta saying, how, you know, how, you know, people are dying, that's the, the whole truth of the matter, and that so therefore something must be done to stop all these people dying. I, I say, if you look not far beneath the surface, surface, they want to reorganize society, and it's not clear to me that that's gonna produce any environmental benefit whatsoever, even if climate change is happening, even if quite radical climate change Happening. The, as, as other people have said, I think maybe they said it too forcefully in this respect. Group, they're green on the outside and red on, in the middle, you know, they're, they're communists in this green camouflage, which is a fair enough criticism, and, and be-- people shouldn't be afraid of making that. But I think, I think there is mo-more complexity to it than that, but, you know, we, we can't take their word for it, and we can't take scientists' word for it that they're just acting

Really say a lot of the debate and the online discussion is this idea of, "Oh, the science is settled, and therefore now we need to do all these economic central planning things." And there's not enough of a discussion about the political and economic ramifications, because just because the science says certain things doesn't necessarily mean this is the economic answer, because they're very different, aren't they? Yeah,

they're, they're very, they're very different. And so, I mean, my, one of my favorite examples is, I mean, they're, they're, they're so keen on banning They've put banning the car far ahead of, of delivering any, any sort of anything that can sort of reduce CO2 emissions in a, in a, in any meaningful way, right? So, and they sometimes pretend they're a like-for-like replacements of cars like EVs, right? But EVs are gonna cost people the, the better part of a, a, a year's salary, perhaps more for quite a lot of people. A lot of people depend on, like, the economics of car ownership, certainly in the UK, probably elsewhere as well, are such that I can pick up, or I could pick up, before the green, agenda really started going, I could pick up a, a second hand car, maybe ten, maybe even fifteen years old, for, for maybe a week's wages, maybe two weeks wages, right? And then I could, you know, I could get it legit, I could get it roadworthy for, for, for not very much money, and, and that would, that would enable my whole family transport. So someone who's got a couple of young kids, they've got a couple, they've maybe got elderly parents

You know, they, they could have transport, and it could be their holidays as well, let's not forget the leisure, opportunities that are created for, or almost nothing in historical terms, just a few, you know, just a few weeks' worth of work. And so denying that opportunity to people is probably gonna have a much greater consequence for them than any sort of claimed, damages to their lives from storms, from, you know, e-even if you, even if you multiplied the number of storms, ten or even a hundred times perhaps, that's unlikely to interfere with their lives in any, any meaningful way. But the Greens, I argue, are worse than climate change for people, because now that family can't take its children to, to its sports activities and to its social events. It can't go and visit grandma at the weekend because the public transport is always going to be far too expensive for most people to afford on a regular basis. It, it means they can't take their relatives to hospital and other appointments. I mean, it's just very- They're imagining a utopia in which there is abundance, or they're promising a, a utopia in which there is an abundance, which as we're seeing now through prices and, and supply crises and so on, is, is just isn't going to be delivered. And so, yeah, I, I think green policy is worse than, you know, climate change policy is worse than climate change, and that's, that's the future we need to watch out for.

Very well made point. And I'm curious, Ben, as well, in terms of your focus, Or are you seeing yourself as commentating and writing about the global green agenda, would you say?

Yeah, I, I must make apologies because sometimes I do speak too much to the UK audience or too much to the European or even perhaps the anglophilia audience. I, I, I try to, to keep a balance between those things and, and-- But it's, it's very, it's very tricky when the sort of what you experience of green policy is direct, it's on your doorstep, it affects your life personally, but it very much is a global movement. It's an attempt to build institutions above democratic control or, or, or above, the, the level of, a, a nation state, such that the nation state is, essentially obliged to this sort of, to these global institutions. and so ordinary people have no access to that decision-making process. and I, I think that's, that's part of the-- that's part of what we n-need to unpick with, with green ideology and with green politics. Is that they, they've had designs for global political institutions that use the environment as the source of their political authority and ideas about how the environment is being degr- is, is being degraded as the source of their, their political authority. They've been doing that for a very long time. So if you go back to the nineteen, the late 1960s, really picking up in 1972, attempts to use simulations in exactly the same way, you know, forecast- Fostering the collapse of society, the collapse of civilization, not on climate change, but in exactly the same way that they now use climate change as the story to urge hugely significant, changes to politics and to s- to society and to the e- to the economy, w- all of which predictions, by the way, have failed. So this is an ideological movement that has survived It's the failure of its claims to truth, to, to science. It's predicted, you know, it claims, it claims to have authority in science, but all of its testable scientific claims have failed. They failed pretty early on, you know, so, so famously, people like Paul Ehrlich were, were, were saying that, that, Britain, Britain, there would be no Britain in the year two thousand, and that the India, the, India would be, would be, you know, dissolved or I, I'm not entirely sure But these predictions all failed, and they were all, they were all designed around this, the, these simulations and these prognostications. And you, you know, if you can find, if you can find it online, it's a really amazing video in 1972 at the launch of the United Nations Environment Program, which is a project of some green billionaires, almost precisely the same kind of billionaires that we've got doing this stuff now. and it looks like the, the only thing that has really changed, apart from the clothes and the quality of the cameras Because it was all shot on film. It's the issue of climate change. So you've got, you've got all the world leaders lining up, apart from the Soviet Union, incidentally, interestingly perhaps, all the world leaders standing up to say exactly the same thing. We've got n months to save the planet. We've got two years to save the planet. if we don't do it now, then we're, we're all going, we're all going to perish. That momentum towards global political institution building hasn't faded, but all-- but the story has, the, the scientific claims have. I think we gotta, we gotta be cognizant of that, we gotta remember that.

And as you say, there have been many catastrophic predictions made for decades now, and these people seem to not lose credibility over it. So they make this crazy prediction, and even well-known politicians, so even in the US, AOC has made this prediction that, "Oh, it's- You know, I can't remember, it was something very catastrophic that it's gonna happen in twelve years, by twenty thirty, you know, and, and then that date will, will roll around, and why are they not losing credibility? Is it that they aren't being challenged on this, that nobody's criticizing and saying, "Wait a minute, you said this, you know, on-- in two thousand and eighteen, you said this, but now it hasn't happened by now," or "You said this back in two thousand, and it hasn't happened by now, what gives?"

Yeah, well, Sort of ultimately set themselves up as the source of authority and credibility, right? So, and, I mean, you, you can't just declare yourself the, the, the source of all authority, o-of, of course. But there is, and it's, it's hard to give a number to it, but there are just immense resources available to that, to that movement. I mean, it's unstoppable because it's-- I mean, the United Nations Environment Program, as I mentioned in 1972, was, was, was, bankrolled Essentially by the Rockefellers. I don't get conspiratorial about it, but it was, it was the likes of them, Morris Strong, who was a Canadian oil tycoon, who was very much this sort of global political player who, who, who went around, sort of forming all the, all, all the agreements. So, a-and even today, a lot of the research I've done shows that, that- There would be no green movement whatsoever anywhere in the world without the backing of really, really, really, wealthy individuals, and only a couple of dozen of them, right? So, so, so for-- I mean, the, the, the, the biggest one we, we've come across so far is Jeff Bezos, who has given, who's created this Earth Fund of, of, I think, ten billion dollars through which he, he, he funds, various NGOs. And, and so behind every big outfit that's lobbying In every single government at every single level, the lo-local governments, we found people, we found staff being placed in local council, you know, senior parts of local, local government, offices being placed by NGOs, right? To sort of deliver, I don't know, you know, anti-car policies, and this is in Britain, the same is true in the states where, billionaires such as, Mike Bloomberg, you know, very much an anti-fossil fuel guy, and- Ninety car guy, you know, he, he, he uses a lot of his money to tell you that you can't drive, or, or that, this city or that city should become car-free, but he has got two helicopters and three or four private jets. You know, so, so there, there is an awful lot of money coming from these billionaires who's, billionaire philanthropists. Who think they've got a better idea about how society should be organized than, than anyone else. Now, I, I'm careful here. I don't think it's a grand scheme of billionaires, you know, like the guy in, The Simpsons, the, you know, sort of the, the, the arch type of villain. I just think that they want to secure their-- Mr. Burns, yeah, yeah. Mr. Burns, that's it. Yeah, yeah. I, I don't think-- I think that they just want to secure their legacy, because there are these

BlackRock and, and, and, and the others that, that, that, that, that are behind, that, that, that, you know, these fortunes that billionaires have, have amassed, which make, makes them slightly different from their predecessors. And I, I, I just think they're, they're vanity projects essentially. And there isn't-- but there is a, there is a sort of movement that has, that has developed to service that, that need, that desire. essentially, you know, in, in, a few hundred years ago it would have been statue builders Now it's this sort of ecosystem of NGOs that depend in turn on the bene-benevolence of, of, of bil-billionaires, right? So they say, "Well, we'll, we'll, you know, we'll, we'll help you solve this global problem, this intractable global problem, and everyone will remember you as this, this amazing man who, who saved the planet." I think, I think that's the real dynamic rather than necessarily plots. But in, into the bargain, and I, I would point it out, the likes of- Bloomberg made huge amounts of money out of lo-lockdowns and, and a lot of the, a lot of the adjacent policy agenda, the, the climate agenda. And so I think we need to look at that. And if it's not a distraction from, from your question, I point out, I, I, you know, I made a, a video recently which looks at a couple of billionaires in fact, it was Sir British billionaire, Christopher Hohn, and, and, and Mike Bloomberg, who, who financed the ESG movement. you know, which is this sort of, group of shareholder lobbyists. And I, o-over that time, over, over the, over the, you know, the mid 2010s to the end of lockdowns, they increased their portfolios by this extraordinary amount of money and, and they were, they were very active in persuading companies, well, not persuading, forcing companies to adopt ESG policies and, and, and at the same time, were, were running campaigns that sort of, pushed investors towards ESG, in ESG products. So, so I, I, I think there is an element of profit making in, in that too. So I'm not ruling that out either. So I'm, I, so I'm saying on the one- On one hand, statue building, and on the other hand, it's just great investment, or it was a good investment to,

to, to fund green NGOs. It's a good point you make, and I think it's interesting because there's one angle of just when it's a government mandate, right? So governments are regulating and saying, "No, it must be this much renewable or this much wind and solar, and we don't like coal and natural gas as an example." but there's another critique which is saying, "Oh, well, it's actually the market, right It's not even government regulation, it's the market deciding. But in reality, there's this weird dynamic where there are these big funds or big, money management companies, the Black Rocks, the Vanguards, the State Streets of the world, where they- Essentially, because so many people are stacking in ETFs, basically they're buying ETFs, these large companies get a big say into what happens in the companies they invest in, because they typically get a seat at the board, or they may say, "Okay, and then this person can sort of dictate how the company grows or what investments and projects get taken up." And so it's really interesting because- For years, we've heard almost the op- the opposing argument as well, right? So you hear this argument from the green people as well. They say, "Oh, look, for so long it's been the oil companies who are funding the propaganda against the science and won't, won't the people just listen to the scientists because they're saying we need to stop the emissions and decarbonize and all of these things?" but it's very easily forgotten that there's all this money in the green world as well, isn't there?

Yeah, absolutely. And, and to, to-- I the, the use of corporate governance, so to speak, as, as, as in reality pol- government policy. I mean, the, the, the UK government is completely complicit in using the financial markets to, to, execute what it couldn't deliver by legislation, right? So the, the, and, and you can see that in the Bank of England, which were-- which, I, I could go into the work of the Bank of England to develop ESG metrics, particu- particularly focused on the E- So as to starve, I mean, it's explicit, it, you, you know, that the intention to, to, to use the financial markets to restrict capital to fossil fuel companies is a explicit goal. They did, but because they knew if they passed a, a law saying, "Thou shalt not buy petrol," or that, that prohibited the market, then they would just be out of office within, a few weeks. But if it's sort of done, organized on the basis of the market, exactly as you'd said, then, then, then- It's my money, my choice, you know, and so it's all these people making their own investment decisions, not people who have been prodded into, into making these decisions. And I, I think there's an investor in the States who's just set up a new fund which is gonna counter this, that's gonna say, that's gonna say, unfortunately, I've forgotten his name, like

Ramaswamy, I think, right? So it's like this idea of, I can't remember the exact name of the company, but that's also, that's one Street and the Black Rocks of the world are controlling a lot of companies, but the irony, that this is the point he's making, is that basically they are pushing companies in a direction that the underlying investors of those funds wouldn't agree with. So as an example, you might just be a firefighter or a policeman or something, and your pension money is being invested by the Vanguards, Black Rock, State Street, and some of these other fund managers, and they're driving it in this very greeny ESG direction, but you, the average guy on the street, didn't want that That you just wanted to be able to buy a cheap car, as you said, to be able to take your family out or to feed your family, to drive to work. And so there's this big injustice there that, I think a lot of the Zoom class, laptop employee, the people who can just work on their laptops and work online, they don't see that because they don't have enough of a connection out to the real world and people who are actually, you know, doing the jobs that are not just on a laptop.

Yeah, and that really speaks to your, to the other point exist, right? So the, the, the, the guy, I think you used the example of the firefighter and he's got his pension or, you know, in Brit- in Britain, there's a lot of people who worked in the public sector who, who, who had, these funds and they were approached by like the likes of Greenpeace or, or, or someone saying, "Hey, all of your pension, for all of this pension fund is in, Exxon and BP and Shell and you, you've got to divest, otherwise everyone's gonna, everyone's Put it to the, they put it to the fund holders, they say, "Well, well, should we move, should we move this into, should we move all the money into an ESG companies? " And so your firefighter there may be saying, "Well, hold on, this sounds a bit shonky to me, but what, what's gonna happen is that he's gonna be overwhelmed by all of the, or either all of the other members or some of the organizations that intervene in that process. So these are, these organizations, the green organizations, funded by the interests we've number of them who, who will, who will just sort of overwhelm that criticism. There is no counter, there are no counter movements that exist funded by big oil, right, to provide individuals, ordinary people, with the information about what ESG is and, and how it will or will not help to solve the climate crisis. So, so that guy is completely on his own and the, the story of the, o-oil funded denial machine or, you know, or proper- Aganda machine, whatever, is, is, is just a, is just a, a myth and a lie. I mean, if you, you look into it, a, a number of those organizations have, have made these claims, and they've pretended to, you know, they've, they've claimed to have done research linking conservative think tanks to, to interests like the Koch brothers or so, or something. And it, and, and then it just amounts to these dribbles of money, you know, maybe a, a, a few hundred thousand for a, a year for a, you know For a range, you know, for, for, for that think tank's range of outputs, whereas, if you, if you count the money that's available to green NGOs that g-- and the, the green, it's just orders of magnitude greater. I, I mean, at least three orders of magnitude greater. There's absolutely billions funding the, the climate change movement to intervene in the market in this way, and there isn't anything on the other side. It's, it's, it's, it's totally asymmetric Metric,

of course. Yeah. And,

I think that's, that's gonna have cons-- economic consequences.

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So again, it's quite, it's quite difficult to get a global picture, As well, so I can only speak about the Ang Anglo sphere in the main. So that, I mean, there, there's been a, there's been a, like a hollowing out of democratic politics across the West. Like, so, since the Cold War, there, there hasn't been a difference between political parties, and they've, they've, there's been a historic detachment from the public. The govern- the government has sort of detached, and all, all, all political parties have, have somewhat detached from the public, and, and this, so this green agenda Agenda in the UK, and I apologize for that being British centric again. The rise of the green agenda coincides with a, with a, you know, so the green agenda is going like this. The number of people voting was falling for a long time, so, so people weren't engaged in politics and, and, and, you know, at the same time, you've got the institutions like the, the European Union being built, and you've got the UN, especially in the post-Cold War era, the UN sort of really- Really seizing the moment and, and, and sort of capturing policy agendas and political agendas. And, and I guess people just sort of thought, "Well, that's okay, the UN and you've got experts doing their job and, and you've got the, you know, the, the, the NGOs, the lovely NGOs who are just trying to make everything nice." and so, so no, no one really noticed that there was quite a fundamental political change going on. There was some degree of utopianism and quite irrational ideas were being planted in the, you know, the top strata of political establishments. And so, yeah, I, I, so I think we're seeing the fruits of that Degeneration, coming to bear now, and we're, we're, you know, so famously in Germany, not famously, i-i-in Germany now we're seeing people warning that critical industries are about to go under completely. Germany's, all, all, all but sacrificed its auto industry. of course, this is sort of marred by the-- this is the point I'm making and somewhat mooted by the fact of the war, but the other fact is that Germany chose its energy path. Right? And the-- and it was saying that it's, it could be self-sufficient in, in wind and solar PV, a- isn't able to, and Don-- Donald, this is something that Donald Trump was warning them of, I believe a few, years ago, that they were increasing their energy dependence on, on Russia. So the green agenda has hit something of an obstacle in that now European, in particular Western European countries, are unable to say that the green infrastructure that they built was not dependent Itself didn't, itself increased dependent on fossil fuel imports, right? So the, the green agenda, all it has done is, is exported manufacturing, to the east and materials production to the east, and, I mean, that's great for, that's great for people elsewhere. I'm, I'm sure it's helped lift a lot of people out of poverty in, in global terms, probably a, a, a good thing. But, but it, it shifted its energy production, elsewhere as well, and then cl- Claimed, these European countries, ac-across the board, they claimed that they had succeeded in reducing their emissions. Look, they, they, and they claim we have decoupled, resource use and economic growth, but it was just a, it was just fantasy because, as, as we can see now, you're not making anything and you're exporting oil now you're in this moment of crisis. So I think that's gonna create some realism, certainly in Europe, where they have just sort of reclassified natural gas as green energy, much- To Greta's annoyance, right? She's, she's having a little, a little

strong one. And for years after they had been going against gas for years, now they've turned it around. And I think it's very interesting you point out as well with Germany, because they had put in a massive amount of money effort into trying to go renewable, and this is now coming back. And I suppose there'll always be arguments about exactly what's caused this problem recently. They'll, they'll even with that, I think last year in Texas with the failure in- There were all these different competing stories about what was the truth of the matter, and, you know, people were saying, "Oh, see, at, at first it was blaming of the wind and solar, then it was sort of saying, 'Oh, no, the, the fossil fuels failed.' But then there was also an argument that because of all this environment, they weren't able to winterize or, actually sufficiently upgrade their grid to protect the fossil fuel energy generation. And so it's kind of, yeah, I'm curious of your view on what's going on in- Germany in terms of how much of a percent renewable did they go and what caused their problems recently?

Yeah, I can't, I can't remember the exact proportion actually, but they, but they, they were, they, they, announced the closure of their, nuclear power stations in the wake of the Fukushima, Fukushima, a-accident. Even though it, it, it actually, in, in, if you take a step back, it was a, it was a vindication of nuclear energy. I mean, that, I think that power plant is older than me. certainly, I think significantly older. I think it's a fifties or sixties design, if not, a, a, a fifties or sixties building. So, it, it, it, you know, withstood a tsunami. Yes, the top came off, but, but it, but it withstood otherwise, with I think at the last record, it, it was coming up to have it, it was, it was getting close to having, spent half a trillion euros on green energy, solar and wind, and yeah, as you say, has very little, little, little show for it, and, yeah, so, similar, similar to the, the case in, in, you, you mentioned in Texas, the problems, the catastrophe was encoded in that agenda. Like this is, as soon as you hit a bump in the road The h- the whole car falls apart, because, because that, that's the nature o-of, of green policy, I guess. Like, that, that, that you could have, you, it should have been possible to predict that, that, that there was a, a, a, a going to be a, an energy crisis caused by maybe, maybe conflict in Europe or, or maybe an economic situation or, or, or any number of things, you know, that could, that, that there should have been contingencies for. So, although, I don't That, yeah, that, that's coming, that's coming to a, a, a big, a big explosive point. and we'll see that in the ne- next few months, if not in the winter. Sure.

and just turning back to UK politics as well, obviously where you're based. What are your thoughts on Boris Johnson's, let's say, tenure and his thoughts around net zero? Because I think he was, even though being a conservative, he unfortunately cowed out a little bit and went for the whole green policy. So what are your views on, what he was saying? Did it make any sense at all?

that, I think that's a better example of what I was just trying to say actually, because there are, there are greens now trying to say, "Oh, he's, he's, he's been ousted because he's, You know, he turned a blind, blind eye to sleaze in his party and, you know, he broke the rules and, and, and this, and that's why he's lost the, the confidence of the party and the, and the public. Whereas people perhaps more on my side of things are saying, well, look, he's backed the green agenda, and now people are facing extraordinary rises in, in bills, like thr-three or four times the amount for energy that we were paying a few years ago, and it's, you know, that was already an increase. So So, so he, he, he's very much to most people's view, he has very much put a globalist green agenda ahead of the public's interest. You know, he said, he claimed we were gonna be the Saudi Arabia of wind. You know, he said, "Green is great, green is good, green is right." You know, he was-- This was really ma-- very much the flagship policy of Boris Johnson, who's a man who, who wasn't content to have just delivered what everyone knew he was there to do, which was- Deliver Brexit. He's a man who needs very expensive grand projets to identify himself with. He needs, he needs totems to himself. Again, it's a statue thing. I, I, you know, it speaks to his vanity. So, you know, in the, in the, in the discussions I've been having with people and the debates and the arguments I've been having with people, I've been, I've been pointing out, look, if he, if he had, if he had just done what he was supposed to have done and delivered Brexit and actually,

So the, the, yeah, that's fine. Yeah. He, he, if, you know, if he'd have not gone ahead with net zero, there's a very good chance he would have had the support of a lot of the public, and that would have been enough To have, have, for him to have survived the, the attacks on him from within his own party, from within the establishment media, and, and within parliament. So, so, but he, he put his all of his capital, as it were, in pretty much just the continuity agenda. You know, he, he-- and, and it shouldn't be difficult to understand, for, for a man like him, that, that people had had enough of the e- You for more than just the fact of the EU, it wasn't just like, it wasn't an arbitrary distaste for the EU because it was a, the EU, it was that we were bored of-- or so more than bored, we, we, people were, fed up with being, with technocracy, with being, being, having our interests, put second to political projects, great big political projects, and, you know, the, the people's interests not being met by ordinary politics. Six. So, he, he, he could have done very differently, and, but, but I don't think any politician is gonna learn that lesson. certainly not his successor, and certainly not from within the Conservative Party. I hope I'm wrong. I hope to God that in a few weeks' time, someone who understands that the green agenda is dangerous and toxic to their own career will turn up. I can only hope.

Of course. And it's also interesting to see that politicians are obviously- Not a fan of them, but, they are trying to have their cake and eat it too in many cases. So previously, if we looked back a few years ago, they would be explicitly telling us, "Hey, we're trying to stop fossil fuels," or "Hey, we're trying to make it more expensive," "Hey, we're trying to make fossil fuels," you know, and even, I think Joe Biden, even maybe one or two years ago, was saying, "Yeah, we're gonna end fossil fuels." And now they're going to turn around and then, in More oil for us, and, you know, they're, they're, they're trying to sort of, on one hand, they caused this problem, and on the other, now they're trying to sort, sort of, paper it over for now while still maintaining the overall green agenda.

Yeah, it's a crisis of their own making, and it's, it's amazing to see. I mean, Joe, Joe Biden's something else. I mean, it's the whole, it's the whole collapse in microcosm, and he's, he's-- I think he was even trying

You know, where you fill up. He was trying to say that they were responsible, and then, and then, he's blaming, I think, even blaming the public at some one point, and, and, and just this desperate search for, for blame and for oil, and, and there was Macron explaining to him that his sort of jaunts around the world are gonna be, are not gonna, are not gonna result in any more oil or, or, or, you know, or, or gas. and so there's this, it's, yeah, a to the, to the, to the reality of what they've created. I, I mean, I, I don't want, I don't want it to sort of be too Joe-centric either. I think it's denial across the board. Y- you know, this is a slow-motion car crash.

Of course. And I think in some ways, it's what we've seen in recent months is reality catching up with these people, because there's only so much green propaganda that they can put out, and there's only so much cost of living and inflation crisis that people will take. And I think probably a good example to chat about now and to get your thoughts as well is, you're seeing, the Dutch farmers, right? We're seeing this big protest going, and it's in response to, it's, it's almost like the everyman is rising up against the globalist people who are trying to say, "No, you know, we wanna control how you produce things," but these people are rising up and saying, "No, we're not having it."

I ho- I hope so, yeah. There's Canadian, Canadian truck drivers too, Very similar in constitution to the Dutch farmers and, and of course, the yellow vests in France, were the sort of precursor to all of this. And, I mean, I, I hope they just get what they, they demand, because, the, the idea of the, of it turning into revolutions is really ugly, you know? I, so, and, and, and protracted protest movements are just not good for anyone. I mean, I think it was really, really damaging to France, but you, in the case of, the- The Dutch farmers, they're talking about the legislation causing the closure of up to thirty percent of Dutch farms. So, I, I mean, there are lots of ideas about what, what's behind that, including land grabs and, and, and, you, you know, attempts to force people off the land and, and return it to nature. But the, the, but then, but this is making a lot of people have nothing to lose. And, and so the explosive nature of that seems to have escaped the likes of Biden when they, when they go off. And, and this is an interesting point I make, I think, is that whereas the targets that are made, so we're gonna reduce CO2 emissions, or in the case of Holland in this case instance, we're gonna move-- reduce nitrogen, emissions by, by so much. A-a-as you were saying before, these come with all these sort of, well, aren't we, aren't we making the world great? Aren't we making the world wonderful? the, the-- and it will have, it will create green This, that, and the other. so, so they sell all these upsides to the public on the back of this agenda. They say this is gonna be, this wonderful new, new green economy, but only the targets are legally enforceable, right? So, so only-- so you don't, you don't get any of the job, you don't get an organization saying, "You promised us a hundred thousand green new jobs, so we're gonna take you to court, UK government or Dutch government, and in-- and force you to make these

is green organizations, in the case of Holland, I think it was the-- it's called the, the environment, the, the mobilization for nature, I think it was called, th- they took the, the, the, the Netherlands, government to court to force them to implement the nitrogen emissions reductions. This is, this is environmental lawfare, and, and, you know, we see this a lot, climate lawfare, and it's them that's forcing the government's hands, 'cause in many re- Sense is the governments don't necessarily want that level of confrontation, but those governments have set the targets. They were lobbied to set those targets by the same organizations that take them to court for not, enforcing those, those, those, it's a bit like the way the, the, the market is used to governance. It's the, it's the, the other side of that, 'cause, you, you see sort of, just as every sort of contract has to be legally enforceable, you see the market sort of create Creating these things, and then there's always the, there's always the iron fist in the background saying, "If you, if you don't, if you don't commit to these, these, agreements, then we're gonna smash you." And, and so, I'm probably straying from your point, but the reality of the political ideology has be-is being made, what it, what kind of world it wants to create and how it wants to create it has been made very clear in, in three very significant countries, in, in, in Canada and Holland and in France and they've used the state to try and, and stop those protests. But so gosh, I, I, I hope that it causes some reflection before those strikes or those, you know, those protests become much wider and start to cause real damage to, to society. Of

course. On the topic of just wind and solar and the viability, sustainability, actually economic sustainability of this kind of energy Energy. I've seen all kinds of different critiques of, what's going on in terms of wind and solar and how it's being mandated in certain ways or, as we were saying, you know, in an ESG way it's being mandated. I'm curious if you have any critiques on them or anything around, battery technology or things like this that you would wanna highlight.

Yeah, wind, wind and solar are, are sort of, just imagined to be green by this, this move. And, but, but, and there's, there's an amazing clip of Boris Johnson And with his former chancellor in, go- visiting this sort of very kind of fashionable, probably ESG-rated energy retailer in the UK called Octopus. They've also got to have these sort of silly postmodern names. Like, why, why would you, why would you, why would you get a, go to an energy company called Octopus? It's, it's, it's, it's kind of, kind of weird. Why not the energy company should be sufficient, right? So they've, they're already very fancy pants. They've got a lot of marketing, they've got The sort of design of, about them. and they, and they were sort of extolling the, the, the virtues of these, smart meters. and they were saying, well, you can, you can use these, smart meters to help you reduce the amount of, energy you use and to, use your appliances when energy is cheaper. So they're gonna get time-of-day pricing. So the more demand there is and the less energy is being produced by wind turbines, the higher the price is gonna go. So if you're poorer, you're gonna be on, your, your, your smart meter is gonna beep when electricity is, is rises above a certain threshold. And that's it, you may not be able to have a shower before you go to work, may not even have your lights on, because there's no guarantees as to what the price is gonna be. So it's all very well and good to talk about these great big ways of producing electricity, but ultimately, it's taking us back to the point in time at which your life, your whole- The whole day, what you do is, is organized around the weather, which is hardly the twenty-first century in, in, in, you know, as I'd imagined it when I was ten or something. And, and, and, and that's the reality that's not explained to people. The, the Bor-Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak say, "Isn't it amazing? You can plug your char- your, your, EV, if you can afford an EV, you can plug your EV in, and then the smart meter will automatically turn on the charger at two o And when no one's using energy, the reality of course is that at two o'clock in the morning, all of those smart meters are gonna be competing for any surplus energy that is on the grid, and so the price isn't gonna go beneath a certain point. So, so it, it, they haven't seen any of it through, they haven't thought anything through. Lots of people have been pointing it out to them, lots of critics in, in, in the press and, and, not enough think tanks, but organizations in, in Britain such as Global Warming Policy Foundation have been pointing This out to them for a long time, but there is no representation of those arguments at the sort of wider intergovernmental level, or the global level, and contemporary politicians are pretty much indifferent to that kind of criticism or debate. They don't really wanna have the argument, they just- They just want the, they just wanna appear in nice little, cute little videos on Twitter with the, with the trendy energy company saying we're saving the planet and we're doing this, you know, our policy agenda is doing these great things, if you see what I mean?

Yeah. And so I, I think it's important for everyone who is cognizant about this to talk about it and try to get more people thinking in a rational way about energy, because I really think, obviously, this is, mainly a Bitcoin-focused show, but I think it's one of those things where because of the energy use, this energy debate, Bitcoin and Bitcoiners, advocates of Bitcoin will be, will get dragged into this debate, and I think it's important that we ha-have Good arguments and actually are able to articulate why a lot of these things aren't making sense. And because, why these things aren't making sense? Because if not, then there is a risk of technologies being banned or regulated. And of course, you know, I think from a Bitcoin point of view, I think it, it still wins either way, but certainly it'd be, it'd be nicer if things are legal and understood, as opposed to being forced underground in a way, because, you know, I think it, it maybe even, like in an example Could even be just the way people are thinking about nuclear or fossil fuels energy, that because people have weird ideas about them, it's stopping our use of them. And as you were saying, it's, it's going to lead to less and less people who have access to reliable energy, and that might, that might mean instead of, young people who are growing up being able to actually study and learn things, they're now stuck without lights. Or, you know, they, they can't go and advance their knowledge and become a professional in some field or work in a certain field because they- Just lost the opportunity 'cause there was just no energy.

Yeah, and, and I, there's a, a growing sort of view from energy realists that people should look into, I think, and if you're, if you're interested in those, those arguments, that, that points out, so a guy called John Constable, is sort of doing this in for the GWP effort I just mentioned as well. And, and one, one of the things he's pointing out is that really the amount of energy that a, a society uses is a reflection of its sophistication, and that's That you, you know, you can just set fire to a, a whole tank of oil just for, you know, for laughs, and that, and that sort of registers as a more sophisticated culture or society. But that, that there is something essential to ha-- energy is economics essentially. there is a, there is a thermodynamics of the economy, and that if you've got a lot of energy, if you're using a lot of energy, the sophistication means that, you know, there's fewer people working in primary production, and there's more people doing websites, there's more Those sort of things, right? So, so it creates all of these opportunities, whereas if again, you know, you're sat around waiting for the weather to change to, to have your shower or to get ready to work or to, to charge your, your, your car, the, the reality is you're going to be forced, society is going to be forced into a less sophisticated mode of operation, so that's gonna be much more manual work and much more, you know, manual, manual labor and, and much less surplus, much less profit to go around to- Do all the nice stuff. That's, you know, all the nice things to make things that, that, that are worthwhile, to make life worthwhile. So, you, you know, I mean, Greens are easily characterized as, as hair shirts, h-- you know, sort of, very aesthetic and sort of, mean, as it were. And, you know, they've done a lot to shake off that image. They've done, they've invested a lot of money in, well, people like Greta and, you know, and videos and, and expensive PR, but there is a reality to that denying the, abundance of energy and the affordability of energy. Well, just, just look at, look to your own life and look to the benefits that it is created, like the, if you, if you've ever flown in a, you know, if you go on holiday, if you travel, if you visit, visit family in, in other countries, if you, you know, if you, if you, if you go for a day out, it all requires enormous amounts of energy, and once that's denied that, that's not-- that's denying all sorts of people further on in, in the economy that freedom and that ability too. So, yeah, I, I think, I think there's a, there's a, there's a new sort of, realism dawning on, on the necessity of energy, and that'd be great if we, if we can get that idea to hold soon enough, to stop the sort of strange utopian ideas about energy, taking

hold. Fantastic. Well, I think that's a great place to leave Leave it. Listeners, make sure you follow Ben. He's on Twitter, climb eight, the number, resistance. I'll, I'll put the links in the show notes and check out his website. It's climate-resistance dot org. Ben, thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me again, Stefan. Cheers. Show notes available at stephanlivera dot com slash three nine three. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the citadels.