brazza
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Looks like Truss’ gamble payed off. She managed to get the BOE to finance her recession. In fact … the dollar’s fall in the last few days suggests the Fed may be indirectly buying UK gilts. She must have figured that if Italy is too big to fail, all the more so the UK! Contagion to the US would be instantaneous.
how is that NOT going to create scarcity which will ultimately boost gold prices? G7 leaders seem to have collectively lost their minds. Did Covid (or, more likely the vax) turn them into idiots?
“But the higher prices Russia can now command for its oil and gas mean its revenues, which flow almost directly to the Russian government through state-dominated companies, have risen even while sanctions and export restrictions bite. Russia has effectively caught the EU in a trap where further restrictions will raise prices further, cushioning its revenues despite the best efforts of EU governments.” Guardian
It was indeed a cunning trap … one that all but 27 people saw several months ago. In fact some of us wondered what on earth could make Germany go along with it. US troops and bases in their almost disarmed country perhaps?
From a different perspective, this war has impeded fertiliser use, reduced fossil fuel availability, and choked natural resource supply lines. That’s more efficient than any eco-strategy we’ve ever considered.
I agree with much of your essay; not with what comes across at times as determined contrariness. Yes, youngsters are probably not thoroughly informed, and they likely don’t get the implications of their rhetoric on their life-styles; their dependence on energy-guzzling smart-phones for one. But I am thrilled with what a 16-year with intellectual integrity, with an acute sense of priorities, and inability to compromise has achieved. (… and may her Asperger’s drive her on).
I might wonder at the Dutch historian’s true motivations for his Davos shenanigans, but Greta seems to me one of those genetic freaks of nature that ecosystems tend to produce under severe stress – a pure catalyst. Davos may not be a setting you’d consider but … put yourself in the mind of a hard-headed 16-year-old looking for the right knee to kick, and you can’t argue it was an important step in mobilising over a million youngsters from Karachi to Kazakstan. And … I don’t think her success was strategically planned, but rather born of her sense of urgency – I rather think she took a crazy step out of frustration, and on a hope and a prayer.
I’m not so naive as to believe the kids will come up with the magic wand that will resolve this mess, but I do feel that it is by engaging with an effort to deal with this existential impasse that mankind will come face-to-face with its own failings, and ultimately make some dramatic shifts in our own relationship with the planetary ecosystem we are largely unconscious parts of. And it may come too late to change the outcome, but perhaps not too late to grow into more conscious life-forms.
Here’s a quote from Ms Thunberg in answer to criticism, which strikes me as characteristically to the point, and suggests she’s advocating for a much more thorough transformation than clean energy alone. She feels (unlike you) that political, educational, economic … etc. change will come as a result of mankind focusing on developing clean energy, rather than as a consequence.
“People keep asking me ‘What is the solution to the climate crisis?’. They expect me to know the answer. That is beyond absurd, as there are no ‘solutions’ within our current systems.
“We need a whole new way of thinking. The political system that you [adults] have created is all about competition. You cheat when you can because all that matters is to win. That must come to an end.”
P.S. And … I appreciate your work, and your daily aggregation of stimulating material! It may be disagreement with you that nudged me over the line to sign-up and engage, after years of passive reception, but I wouldn’t have bothered had I not gotten to appreciate your thinking over several years.
