When John D. Rockefeller died in 1937, he was reputedly the richest man in the world.
At his funeral were many of his employees as well as a large contingent from the press.
Spotting Rockefeller’s chief accountant in the crowd, a young journalist from The Washington Post approached the accountant after the funeral.
“Weren’t you Mr Rockefeller’s accountant?” enquired the journalist.
“Yes, I was,” replied the accountant.
“Tell me,” whispered the journalist, “How much did he leave?”
“All of it,” whispered the accountant.
Rockefeller built Standard Oil, amassing (in today’s money) a $400bn fortune. He treated wealth as ‘life’s purpose’, crushing anyone who got in his way. In later life he admitted that his early greed was ‘demonic’.
Napoleon conquered all of Europe for political glory, crowning himself ‘Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Rhine, King of Spain and King of Holland’.
For sporting glory, Lance Armstrong admitted to doping in seven consecutive Tour de France wins.
Examples of the pursuit of beauty and body-building image are too numerous to list.
Those who seek personal glory and those who seek financial opportunity are often frequent bedfellows. As are a good many cosy relationships between businesspeople and governments.
The French have a saying, ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’ – the more things change, the more they remain the same.
The Bible, for example, recounts the incidence of a riot in Ephesus in 55AD.
The Apostle Paul had been preaching the gospel, and a number of people were converted to Christianity causing a drop in trade for the local idol-makers.
“About that time there arose a great disturbance … A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there. He called them together, along with the workers in related trades, and said: “You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. There is a danger that not only our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.” (Acts 19:23–27)
Classic rent-seeking.
In recent times, Climate Change and its handmaiden Renewable Energy have become man-made idols and, like Rockefeller and Demitrius, anyone or anything standing in their way is crushed.
A good example of Renewable Energy being like ‘gods made by human hands which are no gods at all’, is so-called ‘green hydrogen’.
In 1975 – 50 years ago – during the 94th Congress, the US House of Representatives held the first of two investigative hearings on the subject of hydrogen – ‘its production, utilization, and potential effects on our energy economy of the future’.
The hearing was chaired by Congressman Mike McCormack, who claimed hydrogen ‘had the potential of playing the same kind of role in our energy system as electricity does today’.
In 2003 – 22 years ago – economist Jeremy Rifkin, published The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth.
In that book, Rifkin claimed that ‘Globalization represents the end stage of the fossil-fuel era. Turning toward hydrogen is a promissory note for a safer world’.
Then-President George W. Bush bought into the vision. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, he said, ‘With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome the obstacles associated with taking hydrogen-fuelled automobiles from the laboratory to the showroom so that the first car driven by a child born today (2003) could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free’.
According to the US Bureau of Statistics, there were 4,089,000 children born in the United States in 2003.
Now aged 22, not one of them has bought a hydrogen-fuelled automobile.
A few months after his speech, the Bush Administration announced a collaborative effort with the European Union for ‘the development of a hydrogen economy’, including the technologies ‘needed for mass production of safe and affordable hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles’.
Hydrogen is indeed abundant, but it is not a source of energy. Like petrol or electricity, it must be manufactured. Which, in energy terms, is very expensive (it takes three units of electrical energy to produce two units of hydrogen energy). In other words, it requires a lot of electricity to make a small amount of hydrogen that is hard to handle, difficult to store, and expensive to use.
And yet, despite all that has been known for the past 30+ years, in 2019, South Australia’s politicians pumped hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money into green hydrogen schemes.
In its Renewable Hydrogen Action Plan, the Office of Hydrogen Power announced ‘500,000 tonnes of green hydrogen would be produced annually by 2030’.
It has just been shut down.
If we want a strong enough economy that can build a strong military that can defend us against looming regional threats, then our politicians need to abandon their obsession with man-made idols such as climate change and renewable energy.
Swedish Statesman Axel Oxenstierna summed up the situation this way, “Behold my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.”
That was 1640 – nearly 400 years ago.
Plus ça change …