THE DEPRIVATION IS THE POINT.

The usual suspects have flown in the usual executive jets to another climate crisis conference, this time in Dubai.  Hot Air's Beege Welborn describes the gathering as "They Might Want You to Eat Bugs, But They Would Prefer You Weren't Here at All."  She elaborates.

It turns out the most elite, richest, and privileged geniuses among us have very thin skins when it comes to the peasants using their own self-congratulatory recordings to eviscerate their big plans and mock them mercilessly.

But the fact of the matter is, they don’t like us very much and would be thrilled to have fewer of us both to control and despoiling their precious Gaia. Life would be better all around.

Proponents of the idea that the world would be a better place sans a significant amount of the current population have a name unto themselves – it’s “Malthusians.”

Hyperbolic? Perhaps. In that right-populist Hot Air?  Definitely.  But wrong? 

Let's see what the folks who seek to inspire change for the common good are saying.  The Sultan of Abu Dhabi, who is also head of the sultanate's oil company, noted, "Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phaseout of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves."  Which is spot on.  But it's insufficiently enlightened.

Other recent research has warned that rich nations must completely halt oil and gas production by 2034 to give the world a 50% chance of limiting warming to the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement.

Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, told The Guardian that Al Jaber's response to Robinson was "extraordinary, revealing, worrying, and belligerent."

"'Sending us back to caves' is the oldest of fossil fuel industry tropes: it's verging on climate denial," said Hare.

Al Jaber's comments, which he says have been misrepresented, were seen as further confirmation that he is ill-suited to lead a climate summit given his simultaneous role as the top executive at one of the world's largest fossil fuel firms. A Global Witness analysis released over the weekend found that ADNOC is on track to become the second-largest oil producer in the world by 2050, and Al Jaber has been accused of using his position as COP28 president to pursue oil and gas deals.

It's easier to question the sultan's motives than to engage the substance.  Are there ways to provide cheap, comfortable living to people that don't involve fossil fuels?

Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at Oil Change International, said in a statement that "strong support from the leaders' summit to address fossil fuels in the final COP28 agreement is a promising sign, but it is just good enough."

"Leaders must raise their ambition above a phase-down, and agree to immediately stop new fossil fuel expansion, and build a fast, full, fair, and funded phaseout of all fossil fuels while rapidly phasing in renewables," said Ioualalen. "Contrary to the COP28 president's assertions, the science is abundantly clear that warming will continue as long as we keep producing and burning fossil fuels."

Do they involve nuclear power?  If so, that's the wrong kind of change.

Climate campaigners scoffed Saturday at a 22-nation pledge to triple nuclear power capacity by mid-century as a way to ward off the increasing damage of warming temperatures, with opponents calling it a costly and "dangerous" distraction from the urgent need for a fossil fuel phaseout alongside a rapid increase in more affordable and scaleable renewable sources such as wind and solar.

Apparently a known technology that can replace fossil fuels in power generation, at scale, is not as good as emergent technologies that still show scant promise.

While the document claims a "key role" for nuclear energy to keep "a 1.5°C limit on temperature rise within reach" by 2050 and to help attain the so-called "net-zero emissions" goal that governments and the fossil fuel industry deploy to justify the continued burning of coal, oil, and gas, critics say the false solution of atomic power actually harms the effort to reduce emissions by wasting precious time and money that could be spent better and faster elsewhere.

"There is no space for dangerous nuclear power to accelerate the decarbonization needed to achieve the Paris climate goal," said Masayoshi Iyoda, a 350.org campaigner in Japan who cited the 2011 Fukushima disaster as evidence of the inherent dangers of nuclear power. Nuclear energy, said Iyoda, "is nothing more than a dangerous distraction. The attempt of a 'nuclear renaissance' led by nuclear industries' lobbyists since the 2000s has never been successful—it is simply too costly, too risky, too undemocratic, and too time-consuming. We already have cheaper, safer, democratic, and faster solutions to the climate crisis, and they are renewable energy and energy efficiency."

When word of the multi-nation pledge emerged last month, Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and co-founder of The Solutions Project which offers a roadmap for 100% renewable energy that excludes nuclear energy, called the proposal the "stupidest policy proposal I've ever seen."

Jacobson said the plan to boost nuclear capacity in a manner to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis "will never happen no matter how many goals are set" and added that President Joe Biden was getting "bad advice in the White House" for supporting it.

In comments from Dubai, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said that while he agrees nuclear will be a "sweeping alternative to every other energy source," but claimed that "science and the reality of facts" shows the world cannot "get to net-zero by 2050 with some nuclear."

Numerous studies and blueprints towards a renewable energy future, however, have shown this is not established fact, but rather the position taken by both the nuclear power industry itself and those who would otherwise like to slow the transition to a truly renewable energy system.

The way to speed the transition, though, is for the people to go away.  Stan Cox thinks he's stopping "fascism," but he's really confirming what Kurt Schlichter has warned us.

[T]oday, the nation’s anti-democracy, fossil-fuel-loving political minority appears more determined than ever to gain enough power to turn us into a sweltering autocracy. We have just 11 months left to stop them.

But now, suppose for a moment that do succeed and thwart MAGA extremists’ attempt to gain power over the federal government’s three branches. The road from there to bold climate policies, and many other urgently needed measures, will remain as rough and twisty as ever. Groundswells of public pressure will still be required to convince the timid souls on Capitol Hill to defy corporate resistance and enact strong, effective policies. And even then, it will be a long, hard struggle.

With a straight face, he endorses fascist measures to see off the fascists.

Especially with a goal like eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, laws will have to be protected from repeal for decades, and policies pursued with little or no interruption. That will require defeating anti-climate, anti-democracy forces in the Electoral College every four years while relegating them, through fair-and-square elections, to a permanent minority role in Congress. With that, we would essentially be living in a one-party state. Would we still be calling ourselves a democracy?

Before addressing that question, let’s step back and have a look at why sweeping governmental intervention in the national economy is necessary in this greenhouse century, and what it will take to achieve it.

But it's all For Your Own Good, don't you see?

Reducing emissions will require ever-lower caps on the extraction and use of oil, gas, and coal, along with deep transformation of our built environment and transportation systems. The phaseout of fossil fuels will have to be so rapid that the buildup of renewable energy capacity won’t be able to keep up: the country will have to operate on a much leaner energy diet. Therefore, adaptation will require the allocation of energy and material resources toward meeting society’s basic needs, rationing of fuels and electricity, provision of universal basic services, and other policies.

Needless to say, such an array of policies would constitute a dramatic intervention of federal power into the economy and society—dramatic, but not unprecedented. From 1933 through 1945, Washington took actions just as drastic, and on a similar scale. Such steps were widely viewed as necessary in the face of the tandem existential emergencies the nation faced during those years: the Great Depression and World War II.

Isn't that special? The Moral Equivalent of War, only it goes on forever, and who knows how many "other policies" might be necessary?  When somebody tells you who he is, believe him.

The United States was able to enact and implement those policies partly because the government was under one-party control. Throughout those dozen years, President Franklin Roosevelt and Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress generally accepted that drastic measures were necessary and carried them out.

Disagree? Tango Sierra, and prepare to be deplorable-shamed, or carted off on a tumbrel.

Though far from a majority, they speak for tens of millions of people, and one of the two major political parties is enthusiastically advancing their cause. They would probably consider themselves disenfranchised under any future government that carries out a multi-decade, irreversible phaseout of fossil fuels. I confess that my heart wouldn’t bleed for them at all. Minorities who advocate regressive policies that have been rejected by the national majority do not and should not get their way. For example, I suspect that millions of Americans also would like to return to the days of racial segregation, but that’s not going to happen.

Neither, let us commit ourselves, should one party rule by self-anointed environmentalist wackos be the policy.

In a way, the federal government under ecologically sound majority rule would become a photographic negative of notorious state governments like those in Florida and Texas that have come under one-party MAGA control. Where would such a government lie, then, along the spectrum from pluralistic democracy to autocracy?

Noplace that is any good.  Tell you what, Stan.  You demonstrate that more sustainable way of living with solar and wind power alone at your house and a diet of bugs, and tell us how that's going, rather than attempting to impose your Moral Equivalent of War on everyone else.