Libertarians, Fossil Fuels, and Energy Self-Sufficiency

After the bumptious ruckus of the recent Libertarian convention, which I'll assume is the norm for every single Libertarian gathering ever, I found myself delving a bit more into the dominant school of thought amongst the "freedom loving" Mises Caucus, which has in recent memory controlled the direction of that movement.  

The devotees of Austrian economist Bubba Jo Mises have come to define American libertarianism, and...what?  

No, wait.  That's not his name.  Got that wrong.   

It's "Ludvig Van" Mises, which of course makes me think of Alex Delarge's obsession from A Clockwork Orange.  The depth of libertarian passion for Mises and his theories runs pretty much as deep, but it's...peculiar.  I have no beef with Mises, but his acolytes seem to have become something rather peculiar.

Like, say, in the absolute and fervent assertions of the Mises Institute on the subject of fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels, they argue in a series of essays apparently written for gullible children, are the very bulwark and foundation of all human freedom, and without fossil fuels, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are well nigh impossible.  Woe, woe to us should we ever forget this fundamental truth about the nature of human personhood.

Those who deign to suggest otherwise are "Green Tyrants," who are looking to place you and your loved ones in the authoritarian hellhole of renewable energies.  Wind is slavery!  Solar is serfdom!  The purpose of the environmental movement is nothing more nor less than domination, and globalism, and sadness.

This is all more than a little faintly insane, a bizarro world inversion of the self-evident truth.

Let's say you value your independence, that you desire to be as vigorously self-sufficient as humanly possible.  Which serves the cause of your freedom more: solar and wind, or fossil fuels?  Which makes you dependent on outside systems and interests, and which allows maximal self-reliance?

Wind and solar are infinitely renewable natural resources.  They are easily and freely accessible to anyone with even a modest plot of land.  My own home, for instance, would produce sufficient energy from a solar array to meet all of my energy needs.  That would include 90% of my transportation. 

Is that energy as cheap and energy dense as gasoline?  No.  It's not.  But through thrift and prudence, it'd do.

Fossil fuels provide only the illusion of individual liberty.  They rely upon sprawling and complex systems of production infrastructure and profit-seeking corporate bureaucracies, all of which work hand-in-hand with government.  They are also, as often as not, a resource produced directly and in the service of state power.  In some instances, like Norway, those states are respectful of individual liberties.  In most instances, they are not.  Even a fool knows this.  Only the delusional deny it.

What we also know is that these systems are the very farthest thing from resilient.  If even one element of a vast global supply and production chain fails, fossil fuels become scarce or vanish entirely.  In a crisis, when those systems are compromised, they cannot be trusted.  I mean, all you have to do is hack the billing system of a provider, and Americans panic, and every gas station on the East Coast is suddenly without fuel.  Lord, that was dumb...but illustrative.  Or when, after a Category 1 Hurricane, the very center of the entire American oil industry was suddenly a sweaty mess of argumentative Texans sitting in their SUVs and pickups, waiting in lines for gas so long they'd have embarrassed the Soviets.

For homesteaders and preppers and others who value their freedom, the choice is obvious.  Panels and windmills and water turbines, people.  C'mon.

Beyond this, there's the impact of fossil fuel use on climate.  This is a libertarian concern, because our planetary weather systems impact local ability to produce food.  If you destabilize that system, you take away the freedom to reliably grow crops and provide for yourself and your family.  Saying: we wish to be locally resilient, we wish grow and produce food, and do not want the greed of the elite to destroy our right to freely enjoy the fruits of creation?  

This ain't oppressive, unless by "oppressive" you mean "repressing the right of the powerful to take the freedoms of the average human being."

For any libertarian who is actually libertarian, rather than a patsy for oligarchs, state powers, and corporate interests, this is all rather obvious.  

Fossil fuel provides a form of freedom, true.  But it is one that comes at a cost, a cost that must be acknowledged and carefully considered.

China, America, and Climate

There are things about the American response to China that make little sense to me.

On the one hand, sure, they're not a republic.  I prefer the liberties of speech, movement, and action that are for now still my birthright as an American.  As frustrating as the squabulous ruckus of democratic process might be, there's still much to be said for the protection of individual liberties.  The forcible suppression of religion and ethnic minorities is morally unworthy.  The silencing of those who hold a society to account for injustices and corruption leads only to rot and failure.

Yet most of America's beef with China seems to be economic, which is simply absurd.  Sure, the Chinese are now a global manufacturing powerhouse, supplanting the vastly weakened American industrial base.  Sure, most of that capacity once belonged to us.  But why did that happen?

Remember in 1992, when the Chinese invaded America and took all of our factories by force?

Of course not.  China didn't steal our industry.  American CEOs did.  Wall Street did.  Eager to plump up profit margins and fatten their own absurd salaries, folks like Tim Cook at Apple simply shipped America's industrial might to China.  The Chinese weren't about to say no.  I mean, why would they?  Can you blame them?  For them, it was all win, because they're playing the long game.

I mean, we know they are.  Chinese leadership isn't thinking about the outrage du jour, third quarter profits, or fretting about vacillations in poll numbers.  I mean, why would they care about poll numbers?   Ahem. 

They're looking to what they feel will benefit China not just ten years from now, or twenty five years from now, but a hundred years from now.

Which is why it's instructive to look at how they're approaching the climate crisis, and engagement with renewable energy.  

We Americans are in a reactionary cycle, pushing back against electric cars and solar and wind.  I'll admit that electric cars are a silly solution.  I mean, sure, they're quiet and fast, but dude.  Efficiency, thy name ain't "car."  Buses and trains and a functioning public transportation infrastructure are exponentially more efficient and sustainable.  Back when America was rising to its mid-twentieth century economic height, that's how we got around.  It was at least a viable option, which it is not now in America.  

The opposition to solar, wind, and other renewables?  It's borderline psychotic, and an ideological dissonance.  If you can draw power from the sun that falls on your own land, why is this a bad thing?  If the wind that rustles through your trees can light your home, why would we have beef with that?  Why would we want less efficient bulbs and toilets?  And why are we so programmed to desire large, energy-hogging homes and cars?  Since when were thrift and ingenuity problems for conservatives?

Yet here we are.

The Chinese aren't on the same course.

The Chinese are building electric cars, sure.  But they're going all in on the whole thing.   Unfettered by legal constraints or...paradoxically...environmental regulations, they're building a vast high speed rail network.  They're turning their newfound industrial might to the mass production of solar panels in unprecedented quantities, so many that industrial concerns in the West are up in arms about anti-competitive practices.  It's a battle they've already won, as 80% of the world's solar is produced in China.  They're preparing for a harsher climate.  They're also preparing for the era when fossil fuel supplies are fading.

They're not competing with us.  At this point, we're not even playing the same game.  

Do certain Americans assume this is because they're "woke?"  They're Marxist, which is why I'd rather not live in China, but the CCP is Chinese first.  China is on many levels deeply conservative, which is why...after some naive initial missteps...the communist party there has survived.

They are preparing, with the vision of a culture that spans millennia, for a future that will come.

And we are not.