Will rising anger over energy, economic and immigration chaos prevent the UK and EU from committing suicide?
“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” economist Herb Stein often observed.
“Come MPs and prime ministers, please heed the call,” Bob Dylan might sing about Europe. “Don’t stand in the doorway. Don’t block up the hall…. For the times they are a-changin’.”
Or at least may be changing – not only in Europe but across the globe.
Europe’s ruling elites opened their countries’ borders to millions of unvetted, largely Third World, often Islamist migrants with little interest in assimilating – and gave them free lodging, food and medical care (paid with other people’s money), and an official blind eye to rising crime and molestation of women.
In 2023, except in Luxembourg and Slovakia, the number of immigrants coming from outside the Union exceeded the number of immigrants from other EU countries, some by nearly 100 percent. European societies, cultures, economies and civilization could face existential transformation.
In Britain, Union Jack flags were outlawed, while Palestinian flags were applauded. UK “subjects” were arrested for expressing outrage, while immigrant criminals went free.
Politicians have been too afraid of being labeled racist to address the migrant crimes and disruptions – or too reliant on expected new or future voters to challenge them, even as native populations are assaulted, robbed, raped, stabbed and murdered. But recent events have brought things closer to the boiling point.
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A disabled man was nearly decapitated. A young man was stabbed, then handcuffed and allowed to bleed to death because his assailant falsely claimed the victim had used racist slurs. Police arrested a girl for brandishing an axe to protect her 12-year-old sister from a would-be migrant rapist.
A little boy “landed in” a crocodile pit, where he was mauled. Police and media refused to say he’d been thrown into the pit or provide the attacker’s name or ethnicity.
The recent Rape Gang Inquiry Report finally reveals horrors that politicians, media, police and hospitals had suppressed for decades. Perhaps 250,000 working-class British girls (as young as eleven) were systematically befriended, “groomed,” sexually assaulted, raped, and trafficked to the Middle East. Many were raped by scores, perhaps even hundreds, of mostly Pakistani men.
“Mostly peaceful,” but sometimes incendiary, protests have become the language of citizens whose voices have too long been ignored. “The battle outside is raging.”
As Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer released more than 13,000 accused Muslim rapists with warning letters and no jail time. Just 23 months after his landslide victory as Prime Minister, he was forced to resign.
Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage wants to take Starmer’s place and has called for immediate general elections, but ultra-progressive wealth-redistributionist Andy Burnham wants to be ordained the next PM.
The Spanish government intends to legalize 500,000 illegal migrants (applications for legal status already exceed 1 million), on top of 7.3 million foreigners already living in Spain. Not only will this deliberately overwhelm conservatives in future elections. It also opens the door for all of them, including radical Islamists, to travel throughout the visas-not-needed Europe-wide Schengen Zone.
Sweden responded to its growing rape and organized crime crisis by adopting “sustainable immigration” policies that reduce the number of undocumented and low-skill immigrants, make it harder for family members to join immigrants already in Sweden, and offer $34,000 voluntary return-to-home-country grants. In Denmark, refugee residence permits now last only one to two years, and refugees must wait eight years before applying for permanent status, show they are fluent in Danish and have held a full-time job for several years. Alternative fűr Deutschland is challenging groupthink and policies in Germany. Other countries are also implementing reforms.
Of course, immigration is hardly the only source of unrest, even though more immigrants mean more travel, more energy and food consumption, and building more housing – all of which contribute to the alleged “climate crisis” … and to rising prices for all these necessities.
However, the real problem is that energy policies based on eliminating fossil fuel (and nuclear) power have made heating and electricity prices the highest on earth, crippled Europe’s economy, cost millions of jobs, exported entire industries to nations with cheap energy and labor, and killed thousands who couldn’t afford to heat or cool their homes properly. Indeed, 47 million people – more than 10 percent of Europe’s population – cannot afford to heat their homes.
EU policies have also resulted in millions of acres being blanketed with habitat-smothering solar panels, bird-and-bat-butchering wind turbines, and endless transmission lines.
Recognizing what’s happening across the pond, President Trump pulled the United States out of UN climate organizations, the Paris climate agreement, annual climate conferences, net zero policies, and the Obama-era Endangerment Finding.
Most European leaders remain obstinately dedicated to battling climate change, making the calamitous transition to expensive, heavily subsidized, weather-dependent wind and solar power, and “leading by example” to “save the planet” – regardless of how that impacts their constituents, how angry and mutinous they’ve become or how meaningless their “example” is.
In emerging economies and developing countries across the globe, the only noticeable energy transition is from wood and dung to oil, gas, coal and (small modular) nuclear power plants. These countries want abundant, reliable, affordable electricity, and the homes, cars, living standards, schools, factories, clean water, nutritious food, air conditioning, stoves and ovens that we enjoy in the USA.
They want to end the squalor, disease and early death that still afflict their people.
They know China is building new coal-fired power plants every week, and China and India together now account for one-third of all “carbon” (carbon dioxide plant food) emissions worldwide.
Those attending the just-ended SB64 climate meeting and upcoming COP31 event have no interest in translating “clear, measurable targets” into “immediate action” through “shared responsibility, strong cooperation and determined implementation” via “investments” in the new “global green economy.”
They’re attending to advance their demands for trillions in “reparations” for “climate damages” allegedly inflicted by developed nations – and the right to develop as they see fit, not as the UN and EU tell them. They’re unlikely to get more than a pittance in reparations, but they will chart their own destinies.
Despite EU and UK efforts to block access to all but “approved” and “accurate” information, Europe’s native poor and still-working classes are increasingly aware of all this. Immigrant costs and crimes may be the most immediate and obvious flash points. But destructive energy policies are also roiling things.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change can host COP gabfests until the cows come home. But the events, the UN and EU themselves, and the endless junk science and fearmongering they spew have become increasingly irrelevant.
The natives are increasingly restless, unsubservient, outraged at their ruling classes, and ready to replace the current authoritarian system. The status quo cannot go on forever.
The order is rapidly fading. The first one now will later be last. For the times may be a-changin'.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.
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