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A Nice Conspiracy

Entry 2386, on 2025-02-22 at 22:40:51 (Rating 4, Politics)

I love a good conspiracy. Of course, I know most conspiracies are pretty silly, and can easily be shown to be likely to be false, but others are true, and sometimes they can be quite important. So maybe the biggest global conspiracy around for many years now is that climate change is a hoax.

So do I think climate change is fake? Well, no. I have debated climate change deniers on several occasions and I think the evidence I have found is good enough to conclude it is real, at least as an interim conclusion. But the bigger question is: what about the political response to it, is there a conspiracy there?

Maybe there is. The usual solution to climate change is to reduce carbon emissions, mainly by reducing the use of fossil fuels. But this is a classic "tragedy of the commons" situation, where the best response for each individual is to ignore the rules, but when everyone does that, it is worst for everyone.

In this context, we could reduce the effects of climate change if every country used less fossil fules, but assuming everyone else does use less, the best response for an individual country is to continue using those fuels and enjoy the economic benefits. One country won't effect the overall situation much, as long as the others do their part, but can still enjoy the advantages burning those fuels give.

Of course, the key action is for that rogue country to convince the rest of the world that they should continue with their economically damaging, but presumably environmentally advantageous, activities. You might say they need to indulge in gaslighting.

If we look at the world the way it is now we might see this in action, and that's the conspiracy. China has been accused of pushing climate change ideology on the Western world, especially Europe, while building lots of new coal fired power plants itself. It's refusing to "play the game".

Look at charts of changes in CO2 emissions by different countries, and it is obvious that the US, Europe, and the rest of the Western world, have been reducing the amount of CO2 they release for years now, at the same time China is vastly increasing theirs. Of course, it's not just China, because India is also bad, but China is the biggest problem.

Here are the numbers. Since the year 2000, China has increased it's emissions by over 200%, India by about 150%, the US reduced theirs by 10% and Europe by 16%. And here are the actual numbers: China produces about 31% of total global CO2, the US 14%, Europe (minus Russia) about 6%, and New Zealand less than 0.1%.

At the same time, many economies are struggling while China's is progressing quite well (apart from a recent slow down).

China has been caught encouraging climate change and other environmental activism in countries like Germany. Why would they do this? Do they care about the environment? If they do, why build all those new coal fired plants? Or maybe they want to gain an advantage over other countries, by encouraging them to sabotage their own economies. That seems to make a lot more sense: it's classic gaslighting.

It goes beyond climate change too. The Western world has been plagued by self-loathing and self-doubt for years. If you want to destroy a culture, attack it from within, or let it attack itself from within. This clearly seems to be what is happening.

It's a great conspiracy and I think it has at least an element of truth. And while we are on the subject of conspiracies originating from China, what about COVID? The response to COVID has also been incredibly damaging to many countries. I think the virus did come from that lab in Wuhan (a conclusion also reached by the CIA). It seems unlikely that it was released deliberately, because why would you do that next to a lab working on that technology and draw attention to it, but an accident was just as damaging.

Of course, China suffered from the effects of COVID as well as the rest of us, but on balance you could say it gained. And why was the opinion that the virus came from that lab labelled as misinformation originally, and why were people who shared that view shut down? It was not only an opinion worth discussing, but also the most logical conclusion given the facts. I mean, what conclusion should we have reached when a new virus appeared right next to a lab doing research on that exact technology?

It all sounds fairly serious, doesn't it? Destruction from within can be a lot harder to combat than an external attack, but attitudes can change and that does seem to be happening now, mainly thanks to Trump and Musk. We will still get climate change, but we always were going to get it anyway, but at least we might have an economy working well enough to allow us to cope with it.

It's a nice conspiracy, isn't it?

Comment 1 (7825) by EK on 2025-02-23 at 17:27:29:

Yes, interesting food for thought.

Comment 2 (7826) by Jim Cable on 2025-02-24 at 08:02:03:

I'm not a climate change denier, but I'm still far from being convinced that the situation isn't a natural occurrence, with changes in the Earth's orbit being likely to be more of the reason than the woke flutterers of today's ardent belief that it's all due to "carbon emissions."

I've read many different attributions, but the most convincing for me is the 172-year cycle of the Earth heating-up and cooling-down which seems most likely by far. Given today that NZ tertiary education is premised more upon teaching "what to think" rather than "how to think", it's no surprise that so many of our bleating experts are all gargling the same panic-stricken tune.

Conspiracy? Undoubtedly - but whether the end-result of the impact of substantial minus-quantities of cerebral matter will make any difference, I really don't know.

Unlike Chicken-Licken, I don't think the sky is falling - there are just many more inepts and incompetents on the ground.

Comment 3 (7827) by OJB on 2025-02-24 at 08:46:05:

EK. Yes, it is interesting. Sometimes things which appear to be clear conspiracies can be explained when you know the details, so who knows whether there is any merit in this one. I suspect it is part of the story, but not the whole story. My thought is that we need to be suspicious of all political activist groups, because they often are being manipulated or supported by nefarious groups.

Comment 4 (7828) by OJB on 2025-02-24 at 08:50:26:

Jim Cable. There is some evidence that climate change is due to human activity, especially when analysing carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, which indicate it is from the combustion of fossil fuels, so I am more on the side of warming almost certainly being real, probably of human origin, but being totally unconvinced about the recommended methods of tackling it.

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