You recall how the Covid lockdowns began. It was a soft and slow drumbeat that began in late January 2020, with growing amounts of panic and a faster tempo, increasing for several weeks. The US President and the UK Prime Minister resisted extreme reactions. Most governments did and so did most public health authorities.
The drum pounding became earsplitting in late February. Faced with an incredible barrage, finally Boris Johnson and Donald Trump gave in. They got out in front of the problem and lowered the boom: stay home, essential/unessential, no flights, no parties, stop your consumerist ways. Just sit alone and be sad. Both came to regret this choice but, by then, others were in charge.
The experts and institutions were everywhere, seizing the moment. The CCP, WHO, CDC, Imperial College London, Fauci, Birx, CNN/NYT/MSNBC, and on it went, everyone telling us the same thing daily. Those who asked questions were shouted down, shamed, throttled, cancelled, deleted. It felt like we were surrounded on all sides by lies and liars, marionettes and mushbrains, sycophants and spooks.
Six years later and nearly to the day, this new attempted lockdown seems to be going the same way, not concerning infectious disease but energy use. Isn’t it remarkable how the officially recommended methods of managing these completely different realms bear so much in common? They both come down to restricting your liberty, rationing your consumption, redirecting your attention, and shouting down critics.
The Iran War kicked off the price spike but it was uncanny how a machinery was so quickly put in place to instruct everyone of what to do. The panic about how to respond is intensifying. The crisis is without precedent, they say. We have to try new approaches, dramatic ones.
Suddenly, this institution called the International Energy Agency holds new prominence in world media. Founded in 1974, it’s an NGO associated with OPEC. It has no hard but only soft power – like the World Health Organization, with whom the IEA shares a similarly authoritative branding.
There is a new Fauci too. The head of the IEA is highly decorated and universally praised Dr. Fatih Birol. Though he has never worked in industry, any more than Fauci had seen patients in decades, Dr. Birol is said to be the world’s top expert and works closely with China on its supposed “energy transition.” Indeed, sporting an honorary doctorate from Imperial College London, he has been a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering since 2013.
Concerning the release of new energy reserves, Birol is nonplussed: “supply-side measures alone cannot fully offset the scale of the disruption.”
Remarkable isn’t it? New script, same play, new actors for the same roles, overlapping protocols, nearly identical tempo of acceleration and dynamic of acoustics in the media. Around the world, countries are imposing price caps, consumption rationing, indoor temperature controls, and shorter work weeks as a prelude to full-on stay home orders. They haven’t come to the US yet but they are spreading in Europe and the UK, as people panic about prices.
Clearly, they say, we need to flatten the curve once again. Temporarily. Just until we get the problem under control. We just need to buy time. After all, we’ve never dealt with anything like this. Clearly the long-term solution, they say, is a full switch to “renewables” but that cannot happen all at once.
Inspired by the manner in which governments were able to control communication and people during the Covid crisis, the IEA advises the following:
- Work from home where possible. We’ll be back to languishing at home and consuming entertainment through laptops. IEA comments: “Displaces oil use from commuting, particularly where jobs are suitable for remote work.”
- Reduce highway speed limits by at least 10 km/h ( 6-7 miles per hour), which is really nothing more than a method of creating annoyance. The IEA says “lower speeds reduce fuel use for passenger cars, vans and trucks,” but that is not always true. Slower traffic that disrupts flows creates more stop/start situations that cause more gas consumption.
- Encourage public transport. That exhortation has been the prattle of planners for half a century. Not everyone can do this of course and a mandate like that will cause many just to stay home. In this case, IEA is probably correct: “A shift from private cars to buses and trains can quickly reduce oil demand.”
- Alternate private car access to roads in large cities on different days. Now we are getting somewhere: imposed rationing allocated by arbitrary conditions. It would require a massive policing effort, one that is without precedent. IEA comments: “Number-plate rotation schemes can reduce congestion and fuel-intensive driving.”
- Increase car sharing and adopt efficient driving practices. This is easily done in the same way police enforce HOV lanes. You cannot drive alone. You must have other passengers if you are going to be out on the road. IEA comments: “Higher car occupancy and eco-driving can lower fuel consumption quickly.”
- Efficient driving for road commercial vehicles and delivery of goods. That’s it: the old essential/nonessential divide. Commercial deliveries are allowed because we have to live somehow but driving to the park for a picnic or visiting friends and families is not.
- Divert LPG [Liquefied Petroleum Gas) use from transport. Preserve propane for “essential needs.”
- Avoid air travel where alternative options exist. This is already happening by default. Flight bookings have doubled in price. Airport security lines were running 4 hours until Donald Trump intervened. People miss flights or simply bail out and go home. IEA comments: “Reducing business flights can quickly ease pressure on jet fuel markets.”
- Where possible, switch to other modern cooking solutions. Earlier we saw a demand to save propane for cooking but here we see that this is not recommended either. We are supposed to switch to electric appliances. IEA comments: “Encouraging electric cooking and other modern options can reduce reliance on LPG.”
- Leverage flexibility with petrochemical feedstocks and implement short-term efficiency and maintenance measures. This advice is directed toward energy plants to switch from one source to another to conserve oil. This suggestion reaches deep into industrial planning and would require draconian enforcement.
There are features of this plan that surely remind you of what we went through just a few years ago with Covid.
Most people today have never heard of the IEA but the same was true of the WHO just six years ago, until it became a controlling force in our lives. At one point, Internet censorship was so intense that YouTube announced that it would not permit any video that contradicted the advice of the WHO. That really happened. The same could happen here as well. Only IEA-approved posts on social media, for example.
None of these measures will reduce the price of oil, gas, or anything else. What you don’t consume, someone else will. This is the whole point of rationing, to make sure that resources flow to uses deemed essential and away from those deemed unessential.
Notice too how Trump himself was used in this operation in the same way he was in 2020: told that he has the perspicacity and power to do what no man has done before, he leapt into war with Iran, assured that it would be over quickly. Now we find out that the now-dead religious leader was a figurehead. Iran’s deep state is as large or larger than the US’s, and it had long prepared survival contingencies, including the closing of the Strait of Hormuz.
To be sure, all this could end in a matter of days or weeks. If peace dawns in the Middle East, the Strait of Hormuz is opened, and refining capacity grows, the price will fall. The Transportation Safety Authority could come back to work and the lines fall. Or perhaps Iran implausibly capitulates and begs for mercy. Normalcy would return. Prices go way down.
Or maybe no one can stop this, just as when the Covid caper spread to 194 locked down nations and elected leaders had no power to stop it. Deeper, larger forces were at work that made entering hell look and feel inevitable.
We seem to be headed into another lockdown situation under different excuses, a different goal, but the same methods and protocols. People must suffer so that elite powers can have a free hand in redesigning global functioning to keep us safe, keep us fed, and keep us warm. After all, the CCP for whom Dr. Birol has long consulted – and Imperial College London that showered him with emoluments – points the way.
This is also six years later. We know the game. Millions do. The courts have ruled against the censorship. Few authors are willing to step forward to defend the Covid period. The perpetrators are in hiding. The level of resistance is much more intense than it once was and we have many new institutions that reflect the learning that took place, preeminently Brownstone Institute.
But should new lockdowns hit, don’t forget to wash your hands, wear your mask, and accept your jab. Whoops, we mean: minimize your gas consumption, use your microwave not your gas stove, regard yourself as essential or unessential, and take no unessential trips. Even if they don’t manage to pull it off this time, we know the game.
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