According to elites, we mortals need merely 75 gigajoules of energy, aka 75 million Newton-meters per year, to “have a good and healthy life.” Can you tell us what 75 GJ of energy looks like, Jeff? Well, this is the Energy Rant! Sheeyah!
- Six hundred gallons of gasoline, or 11.5 gallons per week for a year.
- 4 MWh or 21,400 kWh – a typical home in Wisconsin uses roughly 12,000 kWh before electrification
- 16,500 Big Mac combo meals – includes Big Mac, medium Coke, and medium fries. That’s 45 meals per day
- Calories burned by cyclists for 5 Tours de France[1]
- 177,000 miles of running[2] – Run Forrest, run!
- 100 miles of over the road trucked freight[3]
You people in Florida will only be able to keep cool in your home and maybe run your refrigerator for a few months. According to the math above, you don’t need to drive, fly, use a computer, or entertain to be happy. That’s interesting because I attended two large conferences this year – AESP’s Annual Conference in Nashville and PLMA’s 45th Conference in Baltimore. Attendees were overjoyed to see each other in person. How do I know this? I know this through verbalized expressions of elation from multitudes of people, including keynote speakers.
Americans use about 4x the energy per capita than we need for a “good and healthy life”. I can only conclude that we are drunk with happiness. One reason for 4x the energy consumption is the productivity of modern life. For instance, seventy percent of the population farmed in 1840, and a century ago, it was chopped to about 30%, and now only about one or two percent of the population feeds us. We live in cities, and we scatter about to find jobs and places we like to live. Getting together for anything (e.g., conferences) includes a lot of energy. Whereas, back in the day, the only people folks knew were the locals. I am sure that had social benefits, but other costs, like access to the best treatments for disease.
Indeed, later the NPR article, most of which I hadn’t read before my rant above, indicates that transportation energy consumption is the big difference for “wasteful” countries like the US. Countries that lack electricity are like the US, circa 1840. Is the energy consumption difference a surprise?
Beware Happy Talk
Speaking of “a good and healthy life,” an outfit called the World Economic Forum knows better, and they say that in the future, you will own nothing and be happy. Think about that for just a wee bit. If you own nothing, somebody else runs your life. Instead of owning, you will rent whatever you need, per the WEF. CBS News recently reported that housing rent increased 20% year over year. See how that plan is working? It concentrates wealth for the few and delivers a roadmap to serfdom for everyone else.
The right to own property is so critical to freedom that the founders considered the right to own property as an inalienable right. “Pursuit of happiness” was chosen by Thomas Jefferson over “property” because of slavery (property at the time) and to expand the intent to cover “freedom of opportunity.” The pursuit of happiness does not include taking from or controlling the masses by either force or chicanery. Force is easy to see; chicanery, not so much.
Open Debates of Ideas, Please
I believe “the way” is paved with free will and debate, which is under assault by combinations of large corporations in cahoots with governments and global institutions like the WEF. It’s called the regime. Trust me; they don’t have the individual’s interests in mind. For example, search the web for “hedge funds buying homes” and you will find that the uber-wealthy are driving the housing market and charging exorbitant rents. They are also buying farmland, making it unaffordable for family farms, and impossible for newcomers to get started in the industry. Other examples include big tech, big box, big online retail, and big fast food. Do you think they cared about our health and well-being during the lockdowns? They made a killing!
Now consider Elon Musk’s hostile takeover bid for Twitter, the echo chamber of the regime. Musk states that Twitter is (was) the “de facto town square” and that it is “very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech.” You may be thinking, who cares? This is about billionaires in a power struggle for wealth and control. It’s a lot bigger than that, and I think Musk has the right intentions on this.
Echo chambers suck. A couple of years ago, I canceled my subscription to The Wall Street Journal for the first time since college because they were censoring reader comments so strictly that it was first boring and then maddeningly frustrating. They lured me back with a $4 per month offer, and they overhauled their comment section to be much freer – as a result of multitudes of reader complaints. Users left Twitter for the same reasons I left the WSJ. That hammered Twitter’s stock price and made it a ripe takeover target. The regime is fighting back with all its might to preserve its narrative-setting platform, Twitter.
Think about it. Civil debate is necessary for change, like decarb in a free society. Civil debate does not exclude radically different ideas or “misinformation,” a word that is severely overused to discredit opposing views or evidence that eventually turns to fact. Thought, opinion, and ideas need to be debated as part of diversity and inclusion from all sides.
[1] 300 W x 3 hours/stage x 21 stages x 200 cyclists
[2] 100 calories per mile
[3] Six miles per gallon using gasoline – close enough for demonstration
