eugyppius on the transition: Part 2

On the CO2 fixation, the stupid/evil debate and how it will all end

eugyppius is one of the biggest stars on Substack. In itself, this means little in this day and age but in his case the reputation is genuinely well deserved. In a cacophony of mis-and dis-information, runaway emotions, and eagerly nurtured mental problems, eugyppius is a rare voice of sanity and reason, not only on energy topics. Yet because of my regrettable fixation on energy topics, it was these that I asked him about. Enjoy.

You can also find him on X here.

5. How did CO2 emissions become the biggest problem of the EU, worth directing all available resources to it, and then some?

This one I think has a fairly simple answer: The EU is part of the international postwar political order, and represents at base the nation state scepticism that emerged after the great wars of the early 20th century.

This entire world of supranational politics is ever in search of issues that might justify its existence, and of problems which only an international order can solve. Climate change is ideal for this purpose, and so it has become the guiding obsession not only of the EU, but of other international bodies like the UN, and of globalist lobbying operations like the WEF.

I think there is some hope here, as the obsession with global warming appears to be a product of the end of the Cold War and the "unipolar moment" of unchallenged liberal American hegemony.

As we enter a multipolar world, in which America is opposed by Russia and China, different principles of Western international organisation will emerge – above all the necessity of defence against these rival powers. The deindustrialising demands of the climateers, which are primarily appealing in a world without major geopolitical competition, will become accordingly less attractive. 

6. Among transition sceptics, there are two main opinions about those pushing said transition. One is that they are clueless idiots. The other is that they know very well what they’re doing and have a certain agenda involving depopulation and impoverishment for as many people as possible. What is your opinion?

This is an important question. I tend to reject the view that there is a hidden depopulation agenda; as I said before, 'population bomb' concerns were active in the early stages of environmentalism, but have largely been abandoned because of their incompatibility with the broader liberal worldview.

At most, globalists like Bill Gates want to ease Africa across the demographic transition so that their population peaks at a a slightly lower point after 2050, but there's no consistent policy focus on depopulation in general, and anyway climate policies are primarily targeted at wealthy first-world nations, where native populations are already in decline for other, more organic reasons.

There are many forces active within climate ideology, the most important of which are simple careerist incentives. The climateers, over decades, have established a robust institutional base, upon which the careers of thousands and thousands of different activists, technocrats, academics and ideologues depend.

Their immediate goals are to achieve more security, more funding, more influence and more positions for their institutions; actually reducing CO2 emissions is a distant secondary concern by comparison.

The result is a whole range of policies which seem deeply irrational from the outside, but which have a clear internal purpose for all the individuals involved. This kind of institutionally mediated irrationality is pervasive in Western politics, and is not confined to climate change; we see it wherever special interest influence networks drive policy. 

Of course, once you have a massive political apparatus like the climate change behemoth up and running, it attracts other forces. There is no shortage of opportunists and subsidiary grifting operations associated with the climateers, and ideological orthodoxies – where correct answers are predetermined – have their own way of attracting intellectual mediocrities and conformists who enjoy supporting whatever the party line happens to be.

It's not improbable that, buried in this tangled mess, there are some conspiratorial actors, including geopolitical rivals and economic competitors. Germany is right now working very hard to promote climate anxiety across other EU nations, for example. This is not merely an ideological campaign, but an effort to maintain competitive advantage by imposing the same ruinous policies on the entire economic zone. 

7. You’ve argued that the current crop of politicians in government in Germany are rather stupid and ignorant, and that’s putting it mildly. We can see this stupidity and ignorance – including of fundamental physical facts – well represented elsewhere as well. How did we come to this?

For a long time now, the developed Western world has experienced a diffusion of power, out from the ranks of the political arm, into the state bureaucratic institutions, the press, academia and the corporate sector.

Today, state actions are shaped not only by elected politicians, but by an ever-growing horde of civil servants, NGOs, philanthropists, think tanks, journalists, nebulous stakeholders, intellectuals, advisory bodies and corporations.

The precipitous decline in the quality of politicians reflects their increasing unimportance and their growing role as mere conduits for policies that are developed elsewhere. A historical parallel would be the emergence of mentally feeble or child rulers among the Merovingians and the Fatimids, as court advisors seized power for themselves.

Could this mean we are witnessing the sunset of professional politics and what would be the implications of that, do you think?

I'm not sure. The political changes that the Western political order has experienced since the middle of the 20th c. have been substantial – perhaps even cataclysmic – but they've been entirely informal in nature.

That is, the 'managerial' or 'administrative' state, at least in its Western incarnation, emerged via the voluntary expansion of social and cultural relationships from the political establishment outwards, rather than through legal or constitutional reforms.

The external forms and orders of liberal democracy have therefore persisted, albeit in a hollowed out state. Professional politicians still have a formal role to play in this new world: They perform liberal democracy for the public, and increasingly that's all they are – mere performers.

So perhaps the sunset has already happened, while we were paying attention to other things. It seems to me that the primary implication of this new political style is the disempowerment of ordinary voters.

They can elect different parties into parliament, but increasingly all this amounts to, is choosing which communicative strategies – which performers – are to accompany the predetermined programme. 

8. How do you think the transition affair will end for the EU in general and for Germany in particular?

I fear I already anticipated some of this question in an earlier response. The two scenarios, I think, are either that 1) the climate brigade gradually revise their approach and seize on some less catastrophically stupid metric to manage, or 2) their political influence is steadily attenuated, permitting them to retain their CO2 radicalism. Either way, I suspect that climate change in its current configuration is already in the early stages of decline, and we see hints in both directions.

The growing interest in restricting meat consumption may speak in favour of 1). Here the concern is not merely CO2 emissions from industrialised agriculture, but also methane. The focus on personal consumer habits has much greater mobilisation promise than technocratic energy policy schemes, and has been a mainstay of environmentalism from the beginning.

It's also significant that the influence of third-worldist philanthropy enterprises continues only to grow. It's not inconceivable that the climateers begin decamping to the third world with various energy leapfrogging schemes, while promoting plant-derived meat products and insect consumption in the West.

As horrible as that sounds, it would be much more workable, to the extent that it would move the realisable goals much closer to home, while banishing the impossible fantasies to foreign regions which are out of sight. 

As for 2), it's notable that the Greens have taken a very heavy beating in Germany since the energy crisis, with critical appraisals appearing even in our overtly pro-Green press.

They've found themselves in a position similar to that of Covidians like Health Minister Karl Lauterbach in 2021 – besieged by their crazy Zero Covid base on the one side, because the eradication of a virus via masks and vaccines is impossible, while weathering attacks from an ever-growing sceptical opposition on the other side, which every tepid move to satisfy the radical Covidians only further inflamed.

During the recent uproar over Green-supported heat pump legislation in Germany, Economics Minister Robert Habeck found himself the victim of an identical dynamic. The attacks came not only from the political opposition, but also from his own Green base, who found the attenuated legislation to be a joke in light of their stated goals.

It's also worth mentioning here that climate ideology is self-limiting, to the extent that it is a political pathology of prosperity and prosperity is something that climate policies promise sooner or later to do away with. It's especially incompatible with economic distress and is always pushed into the background by novel catastrophes, including, most recently, the pandemic and the Ukraine war.