By Ramesh Thakur at Brownstone dot org.

On 27 May 2022, Carl Bildt, the former prime minister (PM) of Sweden, wrote: 'The pandemic offers important lessons for managing future challenges, particularly climate change', which 'warrants urgent attention.' In chapter 12 of Our Enemy, the Government, I described ten points that climate change and pandemic management policies have in common on their respective agendas:

1. The claim to represent The Science on the basis of an artificially manufactured scientific consensus;

2. A mismatch between abstract mathematical and computer models and hard data and evidence;

3. The deliberate spreading of fear and panic in the population as a means to grab attention and spur drastic political action;

4. In order to sustain the scientific consensus, the exaggeration of supporting evidence, discrediting of contrary evidence, silencing of sceptical voices, and marginalisation and mockery of dissenters;

5. The enormous expansion of powers for the nanny state that bosses citizens and businesses because governments know best and can pick winners and losers, yet in practice, a record of overpromising and underdelivering;

6. Framing the agenda as primarily a moral crusade and dissent and noncompliance as immoral;

7. Widening inequality between the laptop class 'everywheres' and the working class 'nowheres,' or the 'have yachts' versus the 'have nots;'

8. Hypocrisy, meaning the mismatch in the behaviour of the exalted elites who preach to the deplorables the proper etiquette of abstinence to deal with the emergency, and their own insouciant exemption from a restrictive lifestyle;

9. The disconnect between industrialised and developing countries in responsibility for the crisis and the distribution of costs for addressing it;

10. The rise of the international technocratic elite in a de facto alliance with national governing, bureaucratic, scientific, and corporate elites.

The World Court Delivers a Weighty Opinion

A recent pronouncement from the World Court adds another link to the chain that connects climate change to pandemic management policies. International organisations are taking over an increasing range of functions from the governments of states, posing a threat both to national sovereignty and to democracy with national bureaucrats working in tandem with international technocrats - the lanyard class - to overrule citizens' choices.

With unelected and unaccountable judges displacing elected governments as the real rulers, judicial overreach is emerging as a threat to the democratic nation-state.

Over the past two decades, climate activists have essentially adopted a smug 'We've won' tone on a three-part 'scientific consensus' on adverse impacts of rising CO2, human activity being primarily responsible for the rise in emissions, and the imminence of climate catastrophe without urgent drastic action.

All three parts have come under attack in recent times. Many serious scientists have always been sceptical of the 'Science is settled' claim on the unique rise in harmful emissions caused by the fossil-fuel driven industrial revolution. More and more have begun to speak out on the growing panic over a climate emergency. Their response to climate catastrophisation can be summarised succinctly as 'Rubbish!,' albeit expressed in more polite and scientifically neutral language.

The doom merchants have a three-decade long catastrophic record on predictions of catastrophes. The World Climate Declaration issued two years ago has been signed by 2,000 experts from 60 countries.

In the meantime, there's been public awakening, rising resentment, and firming opposition to the questionable assumptions, significant harms, and outright futility of climate targets encapsulated in the slogan Net Zero - in an age when slogans are mistaken for sound and fully costed policy.

Consequently many Western governments have begun to backtrack, none more so than the Trump administration that also recognises the strategic folly...