We must defend our access to energy

Every living thing needs access to energy – food, light, and warmth.  But the U.N. is plotting to limit our access to energy.  A study of human history shows what a grave threat this poses to all of us.

Our distant ancestors were hunter-gatherers.  They killed and ate wild animals, which provided much of their energy needs.  Solar energy warmed their days and gave life to the herbs, roots, and fruits they gathered and to the grasses and shrubs that sustained their prey.  Sunlight reflected from the moon allowed them to hunt and fish during moonlit nights.  The sun and moon dominated their world, so naturally many of them worshiped these heavenly bodies.

The invention of stone and wooden weapons and tools increased their access to energy – hunting and gathering were more efficient with tools.

The discovery of how to control fire multiplied man’s access to energy.  Fire provided heat and light and could be used to clear vegetation, fight enemies, and trap wild animals.

Hunter-gatherers need access to land, preferably free from competitors.  This led to the development of territory with defined and defended property boundaries.  Property rights are thus an essential ingredient to provide guaranteed access to food and energy.

Some hunters discovered they could harvest more food by maintaining their own tended plots of crops and vegetables and protecting domesticated goats, pigs, cattle, and sheep from wild animals and poachers.  Farms with fences allowed humans greatly increased access to the solar energy collected by plants and processed into human food by domesticated animals.

The long experiment with collective and tribal farming showed that individual farmers with secure property rights produce more food and are better at protecting the long-term value of their land.  Tribalism and open-range grazing are key factors in the recurring famines in Africa.

Farmers soon realized that land with good soils; reliable water supplies; and warm, moist climate produces more food.  A warrior class emerged to acquire and defend the tribe’s exclusive long-term access to these fertile fields.

Some tribes discovered they could trade their surplus food, tools, or weapons for other goods in scarce supply.  This free trade increased their access to food and energy.

Trade requires transport, and the use of oxen, horses, donkeys, mules, and camels for transport was a great boost to trade.  The horse in particular allowed humans to hunt, to patrol, and to defend a far larger territory.

The discovery of how to smelt metals from ores using charcoal provided another great leap in human access to energy.  Metals made better ploughs, spears, swords, shields, and digging forks.

But the giant leap for mankind was the progressive discovery of how to use that black shiny rock called “coal” – first in campfires, then to smelt ores and, in a great energy leap, to power steam engines.  Soon thousands of water pumps, factories, locomotives, traction engines, ships, and electric generators were being driven by coal.  Mankind gained access to an almost unlimited supply of energy via heat, light, and motive power wherever it was needed.

The discovery of that other marvelous hydrocarbon, petroleum, gave humans access to a powerful source of portable energy.  Tractors, trucks, and buses replaced wagons, coaches, horses, and bullocks, releasing more energy for humans.

This access to cheap, reliable energy created widespread prosperity.  Families became smaller, and people took more interest in conserving their heritage and environment.

Try to picture our world before we gained access to hydrocarbon energy – there was limited energy from wood, sun, wind, and water, but there were no trains; electricity; motor vehicles; appliances; hi-rise buildings; hi-tech hospitals; or the millions of products produced by reliable electric-powered mining machinery, smelters, refineries, fabricators, and factories.  Famine and poverty were common occurrences, and there was little concern for welfare, culture, or the environment.

Cities that were choking in smog from open fires and boilers were also rescued by electricity – “the clean-coal-by-wire.”  And in another bit of environmental serendipity, burning of these buried hydrocarbons is returning carbon dioxide to Earth’s carbon-deficient atmosphere to support more plant growth all over the globe.  We and the entire biosphere should celebrate having more CO2 in the atmosphere.

The harnessing of nuclear power then gave mankind the key to almost unlimited power for as long as people have enough sense to use it safely.

Earth’s growing human and animal population depend, more than ever, on maintaining this hard-won heritage of resources, rights, inventions, and infrastructure.  It is what ensures future access to reliable, affordable food and energy.

Today the biggest threat to human well-being is the global war on carbon being run by climate-scare/sustainability zealots.  They are trying to undermine and reverse centuries of discoveries and legal heritage.

But they know there is no practical possibility that we can reliably energize our world with the green energy of our ancestors, even if we smothered the surface with windmills and solar shades.  Their secret dream is to destroy urbanized and industrialized humanity; ban private property and free trade; close the mines, factories, farms, and fisheries; tear down the fences and dams; and return the decimated human race to rationed, taxed, and globally controlled dormitories and urban playgrounds.


This is what these enemies of humanity really think:


"Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the
equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun."
 — Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University

"Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse?  Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?" — Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme

"We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and ploughed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land."

"My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world."

— Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

"My vision is for a country, a society, a world where we don't use any coal, oil, or natural gas because we have zero-emissions electricity in huge abundance...."

— Dr Alan Finkel, 
Australia’s new green government-appointed “Chief Scientist”.



These foes of freedom and their clandestine controllers are planning to forge the green chains of a global government for humanity in Paris next month.

They must not succeed.

We must defend our right to develop and use our own land, resources, and property to produce abundant, reliable, and affordable energy and food.

Tell our politicians: “Sign NOTHING that we can’t get out of in Paris in December.”

More Background Reading:

More Quotes from the Enemies of Humanity:

http://carbon-sense.com/2012/11/13/goreham-quote-resource/

http://carbon-sense.com/2015/04/27/exposing-the-green-agenda/

Disclosure: Viv Forbes has tertiary qualifications in the sciences and extensive experience in the food and energy industries – coal, oil, gas, cattle, sheep, and government service.  He was founder of the Carbon Sense Coalition and with his wife Judy breeds cattle and sheep on natural pastures at Rosevale in Queensland.  He is a non-executive director and small shareholder in a small coal exploration company.

Acknowledgement for title: I must acknowledge my late friend Petr Beckmann from Colorado, who for many years distributed a great energy newsletter called “Access to Energy.”  This newsletter is now owned and distributed by Art Robinson: http://www.accesstoenergy.com/

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