The ‘Black Death’ in Europe (c.1346AD-1353AD) was estimated to have killed off between 30% to 60% of the existing population. Without getting into the weeds it would be simple to assume that there was a commensurate 30%-60% reduction in that continent’s use of energy products. If you’re dead you don’t have an overwhelming need to heat yourself or cook food.
Again, without getting into the weeds, it seems that the underlying philosophy behind the green eco-fascist movement (also secretly called de-growth [see here]) is to decrease the overall use and application of energy. During the Black Death there was a massive decrease in the amount of energy used; the same might reasonably be said to be true and assumed during the Green Death.
I’m trying to avoid those weeds again but to pursue the reasoning the biggest difference between the Black & Green Deaths is that the existing population is not “expected” to decrease or die, or voluntarily commit seppuku or Islamic jihad. Just the energy needs to go. If the population decreases, well that’s just Malthusian realities at work.
That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence, That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and, That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice. [Thomas Robert Malthus, 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population, in Oxford World’s Classics reprint. p 61, end of Chapter VII]
So now would be the time to play the ‘Riddle Me This’ game. If the need for energy remains constant because millions of people are not dying, but the available energy is decreased, what happens? Well, what Britain is expected to experience, and the Spanish continue to suffer through, is the inevitably of economics [see here] concerning supply and demand. For the poor British folks this means massively more expensive energy with supply decreasing across the country. The Green Death.
The irony for those de-growth eco-fascists we spoke of above? Well, only the (hated) rich people will still enjoy the use of energy. Those much-better poor people (whom those eco-fascists, de-growther’s love), may be forced to turn off their electric lighting apparatus, otherwise known to free individuals as ‘lights’, after 8PM? Perhaps.
You know, for the common good. The common, you know…
You know. You know. You know…
Life, liberty & the non-pursuit of socialism 