Inspiration and Sacrifice

I’m not an inspirational person. I doubt I ever could be. I’m short-tempered, I worry too much, and I’m quiet and introverted (i.e. anti-social to the lampshade of the head crowd - extroverts).

In other words, nobody is going to make a movie about me.

It would be worse if I were to suddenly come down with a rare terminal disease or handicap. Angry people bemoaning their fate do not make for inspiring movie subjects.

There are many movies about inspirational people overcoming hardships, the most famous of which is probably The Miracle Worker, which tells the story of Helen Keller. There are many others, of course, including:

My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown, the story of an Irish man born with cerebral palsy, who could control only his left foot, but who grew up in a poor working-class family and became a writer and artist.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the tale of journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a massive stroke that left him with locked-in syndrome. He wrote the entire book by blinking his left eyelid, which took him two months, working 3 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Me? I am sitting up here in a cottage in Ontario during the Canada Day/Independence Day week in a crappy mood because there’s no A/C. It’s too hot, there are too many people, the bugs are biting, and the internet sucks.

Nope, I’m not an inspiration. I have some consolation, though. At least I’m not European.

In Canada, if I owned this place, I could run out and get an air conditioner and eliminate one of my problems. Getting rid of the bugs and people would probably require carpet bombing the area with napalm, and I think that’s still illegal.

Europeans are not so lucky.

As I write this, the official tally in Europe has the heat-related death toll at 5,606. Statistical modeling suggests the true death toll from the late-June heatwave has already exceeded 20,000 people.

Contrast these numbers with the US. While this year’s numbers are not yet out, last year the US saw 2,394 heat-related deaths. For the entire year.

A/C is a lifesaver! So why won’t more Europeans adopt it?

Europeans restrict and resist air conditioning due to a combination of high energy costs, strict historic preservation laws, architectural challenges, and deep-rooted environmental values.

I’m not going to take issue with the architectural challenges or historic preservation laws - though you’d think a portable unit would address both concerns. I do, however, have a problem with “environmental values.”

Note: high energy costs can be grouped into “environmental values” because decisions based on climate change are what are driving those costs.

Are high energy costs and high heat-related death rates necessary? Well, it depends on where you stand regarding climate change.

I know it exists. I’m old enough to have lived through winters in the 70s and 80s and know that winters are a lot milder than they used to be. I just don’t lose much (any) sleep over it because I know that the solution is more technology, not more government. The only way out is through - unless you’re willing to depopulate the planet (i.e., kill a lot of people).

Europeans, or at least the ones making the decisions, are of a different mindset. They believe if we don’t make drastic changes, the world is doomed. The predictions are certainly scary. According to environmentalists, the Arctic summer sea ice will completely melt in 2000, 2013, 2016, 2020, and between 2027 and 2030 - stay tuned for an updated date next year.

You know who also changes dystopian predictions when the predicted date passes? Cultists.

Why are so many Europeans dying from the heat? Because the climate cultists are killing them to “save the world.” There’s another word for killing to stave off an environmental concern. The word is “sacrifice.” European climate cultists are sacrificing citizens.

They’re not the first to think human sacrifice will save them:

The Aztecs cut open the chest and extracted the still-beating heart of victims because they feared the stopping of the sun, catastrophic droughts, and famines.

The Incas practiced Capacocha—the ritual sacrifice of children—during or following major environmental disruptions. They selected physically perfect children, walked hundreds of miles to high Andean Mountain peaks, drugged them, and then left them to freeze to death in the extreme cold, suffocated, or killed by a heavy blow to the head, then buried in ritual tombs.

Did it work? About as effectively as European climate laws work at stopping climate change. But at least the Aztecs and Incas got a show.

Here’s my proposal to the Europeans: legalize A/C, select 5000 Europeans at random, and throw them into a volcano (It seems like the most poetic approach).

It won’t do any good, but you could still say you’re fighting climate change (cultists will believe anything after all). As an added bonus, you could stream it pay-per-view into people’s homes (ala Eurovision ) and use the proceeds to subsidize their electricity bills.

The same number of people would die, but at least you’d all be comfortable in the summer.

About the Author

Phil is a freelance writer, Canadian Navy veteran, and classical liberal. He has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he writes on politics, individual rights, free speech, and whatever else catches his fancy.

📰 Hoist the Black Flag — politics, rights, and free speech
😄 Schrödinger’s Chicken — because sometimes you just need to laugh

If you enjoyed this piece, the single best thing you can do is hit the like button — it costs nothing and tells the algorithm this is worth sharing. After that, a restack puts it in front of readers who might never have found it otherwise.

If you’d like to support the writing directly, subscribing or buying a coffee goes a long way. Either way, thank you for reading — it genuinely matters.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.