The battle for freedom and opportunity is never finally won.

This week, The Spectator writes Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick:

James Delingpole talks to Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact. Shame on the publishers who rejected the book.

…

‘The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology,’ says Plimer, and while his thesis is not new, you’re unlikely to have heard it expressed with quite such vigour, certitude or wide-ranging scientific authority. Where fellow sceptics like Bjorn Lomborg or Lord Lawson of Blaby are prepared cautiously to endorse the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) more modest predictions, Plimer will cede no ground whatsoever. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory, he argues, is the biggest, most dangerous and ruinously expensive con trick in history.

And as it happens, I just finished Nigel Lawson’s An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming. From the Afterword:

Much has happened over the year that has elapsed since this book was first published, and all of it has served only to reinforce its main thesis. That thesis, in a nutshell, was and remains the proposition that, even if the current majority view of the science of global warming is correct, the policy response we are told we must urgently adopt, of drastic curbs on global carbon dioxide emissions, makes no sense: it is both economically damaging and politically unattainable.

Lawson explains that, far from denying the science, he thinks it prudent to act as if it were correct, planning for adaptation. He does, however, touch on the science, showing that:

• The science is neither certain nor settled.
• Global warming is not happening right now.
• Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

Now, I am not ready to take a position on climate science, nor to condemn climate alarmism as the new anti-capitalistic religion (as Lawson does), but it seems that a person concerned with the prosperity and well-being of humanity should take a critically rational look at the science and the suggested policy response. Lawson refers to a survey of climate scientists, two thirds of whom agreed that anthropogenic global warming is supported by the science, in which only 8% thought ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ was ‘the most pressing issue facing humanity today’. Whether we should accept the present policy response must therefore be a question worthy of debate, even among mainstream climate scientists.

For a critique of the science, I suggest Jo Nova’s The Skeptics Handbook and The Manhattan Declaration. For alternative perspectives on the associated environmental question of resource depletion, I recommend these videos on the arithmetic of growth and this essay on Oil and the Doomers’ Dire Predictions. You may also enjoy this Climate Quiz.

If we are serious about human progress, about promoting prosperity for the world’s poor, we must be rational. Reason shows that the route to social progress is unhampered cooperation between independent, interdependent people. It would be better if governments got out of the way, if poor nations industrialized and if we anticipated spontaneous adaptation if and when necessary.

A good speech from George Osborne:

We should not be satisfied with turning back the clock to how things were before the crisis, or we risk simply pumping the bubble back up.

That would mean failing to understand a crucial insight that has become increasingly clear – that the model of economic growth pursued over the last ten years is fundamentally broken.

We can no longer rely on cheap borrowing from China and the rest of Asia to fund our standard of living.

The drivers of change we have depended on – housing, banking and rising Government consumption – cannot be relied upon to drive growth in the decades ahead.

In short, you cannot build lasting prosperity on a mountain of debt.

via The Conservative Party | News | Speeches | George Osborne: A New British Economic Model .

Today, I discovered and I am delighted to recommend Pitstop-Racing of Brize Norton.

This is a proper workshop, where you can not only get your suspension set expertly for your own style, you can meet the mechanic and have a conversation about camber, toe-in and understeer. This may not matter to you, but if you are a driver, it will.

The inside shoulders of my winter tyres were chamfered when they came off, suggesting too much toe-out or camber. It’s now set to the maximum toe-in within manufacturer’s limits and the whole is set to my preference. And all for £57.

I got the impression that this is an owner-managed business, which may go some way to explaining why I got exactly what I wanted at a reasonable price from a person obviously interested in engaging with his customer.

A rainy Sunday game of Trivial Pursuit provided the claim that bananas are the fourth most important food commodity after rice, wheat and maize in terms of production value. This UN report confirms the fact.

And that reminded me of an article in the Journal of The Institute of Economic Affairs, Fair trade is counterproductive – and unfair by David R. Henderson. In the article, Henderson writes:

There is a Fair Trade mark for bananas as well as for coffee [the focus of the article]. As I noted earlier, to have your product qualify for Fair Trade, you must not use genetic modification. That could matter a lot for bananas and in a negative way.

Henderson then explains Dan Koeppel’s Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World:

• The banana is threatened with extinction.
• Two generations ago, Gros Michel was the most common variety.
• Gros Michel was wiped out by Panama disease.
• Cavendish is now the most common variety but it too is threatened.
• Genetic engineering is the best hope for a hardy banana.
• If genetic engineering succeeds, there is a strong chance people will not — or will not be allowed to — eat GM bananas.
• The genes which scientists are trying to insert are common.

Bananas? Seems amusing, right? We could live without them? But Koeppel claims that in many parts of the world, bananas, more than rice or potatoes, are what keep hundreds of millions of people alive.

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Thinking about the pressures on capitalism — or rather, on the interventionism that passes for capitalism today — and on the alternative which was most comprehensively implemented, I discovered this scholastic recipe for chaos and failure from Bukharin:

Under communism people receive a many-sided culture, and find themselves at home in various branches of production: today I work in an administrative capacity, 1 reckon up how many felt boots or how many French rolls must be produced in the following month; tomorrow I shall be working in a soapfactory, next month perhaps in a steam-laundry, and the month after in an electric power station. This will be possible when all the members of society have been suitably educated.

via Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky: The ABC of Communism – Chapter III : Communism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

As one who has not long studied Marxism, it is frankly amazing that Bukharin was hailed by Lenin as “a most valuable and major theorist of the Party” when he wrote such impractical nonsense. Here’s another taste, expounding on what we know as “from each according to his ability to each according to his work” and “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs”:

The communist method of production presupposes in addition that production is not for the market, but for use. Under communism, it is no longer the individual manufacturer or the individual peasant who produces; the work of production is effected by the gigantic cooperative as a whole. In consequence of this change, we no longer have commodities, but only products. These products are not exchanged one for another; they are neither bought nor sold. They are simply stored in the communal warehouses, and are subsequently delivered to those who need them. In such conditions, money will no longer be required. ‘How can that be?’ some of you will ask. ‘In that case one person will get too much and another too little. What sense is there in such a method of distribution?’ The answer is as follows. At first, doubtless, and perhaps for twenty or thirty years, it will be necessary to have various regulations. Maybe certain products will only be supplied to those persons who have a special entry in their work-book or on their work-card. Subsequently, when communist society has been consolidated and fully developed, no such regulations will be needed. There will be an ample quantity of all products, our present wounds will long since have been healed, and everyone will be able to get just as much as he needs. ‘But will not people find it to their interest to take more than they need?’ Certainly not. Today, for example, no one thinks it worth while when he wants one seat in a tram, to take three tickets and keep two places empty. It will be just the same in the case of all products. A person will take from the communal storehouse precisely as much as he needs, no more. No one will have any interest in taking more than he wants in order to sell the surplus to others, since all these others can satisfy their needs whenever they please. Money will then have no value. Our meaning is that at the outset, in the first days of communist society, products will probably be distributed in accordance with the amount of work done by the applicant; at a later stage, however, they will simply be supplied according to the needs of the comrades.

Where to begin a critique? “The applicant” for products? I think perhaps we should bear in mind the madness of this system when we lament our present circumstances.  We should remember that even in Bukharin’s peculiar dreams, repression was essential:

For a long time yet, the working class will have to fight against, all its enemies, and in especial against the relics of the past, such as sloth, slackness, criminality, pride. All these will have to be stamped out. Two or three generations of persons will have to grow up under the new conditions before the need will pass for laws and punishments and for the use of repressive measures by the workers’ State. 

Peston calls this the “new capitalism”.  This seems to be all about government overseeing big business and public policy-makers directing business.  Not much “new” about this idea, Robert.  It’s called corporatism.  And they tried it in 1920s Italy and elsewhere.

via Douglas Carswell MP.

It seems that, from generation to generation, we must keep explaining why government and big business should not be entwined.

We have had a crisis of global statism. It’s time to try capitalism, a sustainable capitalism of free people, a capitalism that has been sought for nearly a hundred years:

The answer must be, I am sure, that we have been in a fair way of failure,—tragic failure. And we stand in danger of utter failure yet except we fulfil speedily the determination we have reached, to deal with the new and subtle tyrannies according to their deserts. Don’t deceive yourselves for a moment as to the power of the great interests which now dominate our development. They are so great that it is almost an open question whether the government of the United States can dominate them or not. Go one step further, make their organized power permanent, and it may be too late to turn back. The roads diverge at the point where we stand. They stretch their vistas out to regions where they are very far separated from one another; at the end of one is the old tiresome scene of government tied up with special interests; and at the other shines the liberating light of individual initiative, of individual liberty, of individual freedom, the light of untrammeled enterprise. I believe that that light shines out of the heavens itself that God has created. I believe in human liberty as I believe in the wine of life. There is no salvation for men in the pitiful condescensions of industrial masters. Guardians have no place in a land of freemen. Prosperity guaranteed by trustees has no prospect of endurance. Monopoly means the atrophy of enterprise. If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government. I do not expect to see monopoly restrain itself. If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it; what we have to determine now is whether we are big enough, whether we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own. We haven’t had free access to it, our minds have not touched it by way of guidance, in half a generation, and now we are engaged in nothing less than the recovery of what was made with our own hands, and acts only by our delegated authority.

Mises.org reports on false confidence in the state to guarantee stability, and…

Moreover, as many commentators have remarked, guaranteeing large financial firms from failure will bring calls for regulating them still more tightly. This is an old story: past political interventions create the reasons for new ones.

The present financial turmoil is really a failure of global statism. Socialism has failed once again. Let’s try capitalism.

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