‘You Will Own Nothing, And Like It’ — The Real ‘Clean Energy’ Future

We’re going to build a different future with one — one with clean energy, good-paying jobs.”

That was President Joe Biden talking about the climate “crisis” and how it “is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world.”

Right about the time Biden was giving this speech, the World Economic Forum painted a picture of what Biden’s future would look like.

Suffice it to say, if you like socialism, you’ll love it. Because it involves a radical transformation of our economy that brings the end of private ownership of things like cars, phones, laptops, and other electronic devices.

The WEF article begins by admitting something that the left usually refuses to acknowledge: There aren’t enough metals around to power everything with “clean energy.”

“This transition from fossil fuels to renewables will need large supplies of critical metals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, to name a few. Shortages of these critical minerals could raise the costs of clean energy technologies,” writes Winnie Yeh, the World Economic Forum’s head of responsible sourcing.

Just how large a supply is she talking about? Even assuming that all the metals in use today are recycled, the World Bank estimates that the production of these minerals would have to increase roughly 500% by 2050 to meet the demand for “clean energy” technologies.

That means massively mining the stuff, which as we’ve pointed out repeatedly in this space, is hugely damaging to the environment — and far, far more damaging than drilling for oil.

“Mining has been called the ‘blind spot’ of the green energy transition,” Yeh writes. “On land, it has been associated with biodiversity loss, overuse of water resources, tailings waste, labor, and geopolitical issues.”

The stuff also can be mined from the ocean, but more than 100 environmental groups are opposed to deep-sea mining and more than 653 marine science and policy experts from over 44 countries have called for a moratorium on it because of the harm it would cause.

So, if raping the earth and ravaging the seas to get the minerals needed for “clean energy” are off the table, what’s left?

Ah, the global elites have the answer!

Just get everyone to give up ownership of their cars, cell phones, and other stuff that needs power to operate. If we all shared the stuff, we’d need less of it.

“More sharing can reduce ownership of idle equipment and thus material usage,” Yeh says.

Other leftists have been singing the same song. Late last year, a transport minister in the United Kingdom declared that we had to move away from “20th-century thinking centered around private vehicle ownership and towards greater flexibility, with personal choice and low carbon shared transport.”

Of course, getting people to give up their cars for the “good of the planet” won’t be easy.

And so, “to enable a broader transition from ownership to usership, the way we design things and systems need to change too,” the article says. “Introducing more of these circular models requires significant effort and changes to our current way of life.” (Emphasis added.)

(We are quite certain that the sharing part would apply only to the hoi polloi, not the elites who populate organizations like World Economic Forum.)

We can’t be the only ones who read things such as this and wonder What. Is. The. Bloody. Point??

Even if the left’s “clean energy” vision were to become a reality, the impact on global temperatures would be negligible, if there was any impact at all.

And to achieve that meaningless result, we would either have to ravage the land and oceans, or learn to live in a Soviet-style state, or some even worse combination.

In other words, there’d be widespread deprivation, a tremendous loss of individual liberty, and a massively expanded government presence — in exchange for nothing.

This is the future Biden intends to build.

We say, no thanks. We’ll keep our gas-powered cars and trucks, our cell phones and laptops, thank you very much. Because an ownership society — powered by fossil fuels — is what has produced today’s unprecedented and widespread prosperity.

We hope there are enough other people willing to say no to Biden’s future that it never comes to pass. And that 100 years from now, our heirs will look back on today and wonder why so many supposedly smart people lost their minds in the early 21st Century over a phony “climate crisis.”

Thank you to the Issues & Insights Team for sharing this original editorial. For all of Issues & Insight's original editorials, please visit Issuesinsights.com.