By Jessica CORBETT

An analysis released Tuesday by a trio of groups highlights how Big Oil has cashed in on various crises over the past year—including the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the global climate emergency—while enriching wealthy shareholders.

“Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”

The new report from BailoutWatch, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen explains that there are two main tactics that fossil fuel giants use to benefit investors: “First, they repurchase shares of their own stock and retire them, reducing the number of shares outstanding and driving up the value of each share remaining in investors’ hands.”

“Second, they increase dividends, the quarterly payments investors receive for owning shares,” the report continues. “Oil and gas dividends, historically bigger than other sectors’, have spiked in recent months, outstripping every other industry group.”

“Amid high gas prices and war in recent months, oil and gas companies have kicked both tactics into overdrive,” the groups found, based on reviewing public statements and securities filings from the 20 largest U.S.-headquartered fossil fuel corporations.

During the first two months of 2022, “seven companies’ boards authorized their corporate treasuries to buy back and retire $24.35 billion in stock—a 15% increase over all of the buybacks authorized in 2021,” the report states. “Six of those decisions came in February 2022, after Russian warmongering lifted stock prices. The total since the start of 2021 is $45.6 billion.”

The analysis also reveals that in January and February, 11 companies raised their dividends—”often extravagantly”—and notes that “nine were increases of more than 15% and four were increases of more than 40%.”

“Six companies have begun paying additional dividends on top of their routine quarterly payments, including by implementing new variable dividends based on company earnings—a way of directing windfall profits immediately into private hands without any possibility of investment, employee benefits, or other uses,” the document points out.

“So far in 2022, these companies have started paying out an initial $3 billion in special windfall dividends,” the report adds. “Four of these companies—Pioneer, Chesapeake, Conoco, and Coterra—announced variable dividends beginning August 2021, as prices began to rise.”

Chris Kuveke of BailoutWatch said in a statement that “Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”

“Two years after winning multi-billion dollar bailouts from the Trump administration, these newly flush companies are pocketing billions from an international crisis, and they don’t care how it affects regular Americans,” Kuveke added.

As Public Citizen researcher Alan Zibel put it: “Big Oil executives are reaping windfall profits while accelerating the climate crisis and sticking consumers with the bill.”

Zibel also acknowledged efforts to blame President Joe Biden for rising prices, rather than industry profiteering.

“The oil industry and their allies on Capitol Hill falsely claim that the Biden administration’s acceptance of mainstream climate science is stifling investment in the domestic oil industry,” he said. “But the industry’s actions show that they are intently focused on funneling cash to their shareholders rather than lowering prices for consumers.”

According to Lukas Ross, climate and energy program manager at Friends of the Earth: “This is a master class in war profiteering. Oil and gas companies are feeding off humanitarian disaster and consumer suffering in order to reward Wall Street.”

“Oil companies drove us into a climate crisis and are now price gouging us to extinction,” he warned. “Congress and President Biden must take action by passing a windfall profits tax to rein in Big Oil’s cash grab.”

The new analysis follows the introduction of multiple bills targeting Big Oil’s windfall profits, including a proposal spearheaded by Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) designed to crack down on such behavior in all sectors, not just the fossil fuel industry.

Sanders on Tuesday morning held a hearing to call out how corporate greed and profiteering are fueling inflation. During his opening remarks, the chair took aim at Big Oil specifically while listing some examples.

“Yesterday, at a time when gasoline in America is now at a near-record high at $4.17 a gallon, guess what?” Sanders said. “ExxonMobil reported that its profit from pumping oil and gas alone in the first quarter will likely hit a record high of $9.3 billion.”

“Meanwhile,” he added, “Big Oil CEOs are on track to spend $88 billion this year not to decrease supply constraints, not to address the climate crisis, but to buy back their own stock and hand out dividends to enrich their wealthy shareholders.”

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations plans to hold a hearing Wednesday titled “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.” Top executives from BP America, Chevron, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, Pioneer Natural Resources, and Shell USA are set to appear before the panel.

commondreams.org

“Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”

-Matthew 7:20

On January 17, President Xi Jinping delivered remarks to the annual Davos Summit where a coterie of billionaires with larger than life aspirations for reshaping the world into a new techno-feudal dystopia conglomerated for several days of self-congratulatory speeches and networking.

As could be expected, Xi’s speech garnered a fair bit of hysteria from many nationalists across the Trans Atlantic who are obviously not reacting well to the ugly fact that their governments have been hijacked and their lives threatened by a very sociopathic supranational entity that wants to reset the clock on human civilization.

One particular nationalist news outline named LaRouche PAC- historically supportive of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), took the occasion of Xi’s remarks to suffer an uncomfortable meltdown with a January 22 editorial authored by Robert Ingraham stating:

“Xi’s speech was reprehensible. Despite the references to ‘global cooperation’ and ‘win-win,’ his remarks can only be read as a veiled attack on Donald Trump and an unambiguous endorsement of the Davos agenda. He endorsed ‘holistic’ environmentalism, carbon neutrality, and a ‘complete transition to a green economy.’ He endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, praised free trade and condemned protectionism. He expressed effusive admiration for the COP26 agenda, as well as the WTO and WHO. Perhaps, most disgusting was his strong praise (twice in his speech) of the United Nation’s genocidal policy of ‘sustainable development.’ “

Although LaRouche PAC was but one of many news outlets decrying Xi’s speech as proof of China’s complicit role in the WEF’s Global Great Reset, I decided to direct the thrust of my defense of Xi to this organization for two reasons.

• They otherwise represent many very good ideas which I sincerely believe could play an important role in putting out the fires engulfing civilization… as long as they don’t self-sabotage by giving into simple-minded populism when it matters most.
• The author of the editorial has conducted some of the best historical research I have ever read which should have inoculated him from making the sorts of inexcusable errors in judgement which will do great damage to the minds of his own readers, his organization, and the cause of truth more generally.

Perhaps my words are harsh, but I hope to demonstrate in the following response, that I am absolutely serious in my claim that the author is misguided in his analysis of China’s motives.

Claim 1: “China Supports Decarbonization and is thus Evil”

For those who have come to discover that COP26 de-carbonization targets are actually driven by an intention to dismantle industrial civilization (and the means of sustaining modern population levels), congratulations. You have earned an intellectual edge to cut through misinformation lacking in those cave dwellers who still wish to believe that Greta Thunberg, Prince Charles and Bill Gates are climate experts or that the world will end in a hellish oven in 12 years unless we radically alter our collective behavior and shut down industrial civilization pronto.

To those who have stepped out of the cave on this issue, Xi’s public remarks have certainly drawn some confusion. Does the Chinese President actually support the “globalist” depopulation agenda? Does he support the dismantling of advanced industrial civilization?

If we focus on those actions beyond the mere surface words used by Xi at Davos, the answer is a resounding “no”.

Eurasian vs Trans Atlantic “Decarbonization”

China’s approach to “decarbonization” and “sustainable development” are very different from those dominant in the NATO-Five Eyes cage on numerous levels. Unlike the western occupied states who are being told to brace for a reduction in living standards, production, and even ownership of possessions under a new age of scarcity, China’s “green agenda” is geared towards hydrocarbon development with a focus on natural gas, coal, oil and nuclear.

In terms of China’s robust nuclear power sector (which emits zero CO2), theirs is the only nation currently utilizing EVERY single third and fourth generation reactor design existent including molten salt thorium, and fast breeder reactors with more advanced initiatives to break through to practicable commercial fusion than any other state.

While China is also a leading investor in so-called “renewable” energy including windmills and solar panels, unlike the Trans Atlantic community, they have not made their capital-intensive industrial productive bases reliant on these low intensity, unreliable and expensive forms of electricity, preferring to use “green” energy principally for residential consumption.

It is also no secret that China has become the world’s primary user of concrete, steel, iron, and other minerals vital for building large scale megaprojects emblematic in the evolving Belt and Road Initiative.

Claim 2: “China Supports TPP and is Thus Evil”

To say Xi “is pro-Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)” is beyond simplistic.

As Pepe Escobar explains extraordinarily well, there is a fight over who will shape the rules of globalization 2.0.

The globalization 1.0 that has run rough shod over the world for 50 years is dead in the water waiting only for the immanent snap to break the ship apart like a new Titanic being pulled into the dark abyss. This collapse is not actually a flaw in the system as many conjecture, but was in fact always designed to be a time bomb from the moment the dollar was floated off the gold reserve in 1971 to the current systemic bubble breakdown.

The question is thus not ‘WILL the system collapse’ but rather: WHO will shape this new system and upon WHAT operating system will its rules be based?

Will it be an open system capable of creative growth and self-directed improvement or would it be a closed system defined by the assumed immutable laws of entropy and diminishing returns? Would the system be zero sum (win-lose) or would the whole be more than the parts (win-win)?

The Obama-era TPP which Trump rightfully killed in 2016 was nothing but a blatant economic assault onto both the Peoples’ Republic of China specifically the Sovereign Nation State system generally. This assault was premised on several factors:

1. A) Binding all TPP-member nations of the Pacific into a top-down NAFTA-like system controlled by London and Wall Street.
2. B) Giving corporations the right to sue nations directly for breaking the rules of TPP’s version of “free trade” (which in truth were never free as multinational private interests like those coordinating through such outlets as the World Economic Forum were always working to stay in control).
3. C) Cutting off China from its neighbors since the pre-2016 version of TPP always excluded China.

The “TPP 2.0” to which Xi is referring is only “TPP” in name.

In regards to its operating system, this version looks more like an extension of the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) launched in 2020 as the largest trade deal in history involving 15 Pacific nations representing 30% of the world’s population.

Does it involve free trade? YES. Is this version of free trade being used to justify the imperial rape of poor nations? NO.

Free Trade Governed by What Intention?

It should be an obvious fact that much evil has been done behind the cover of “free trade” since Adam Smith wrote his infamous Wealth of Nations in 1776.

From opium wars, to potato famines, to repeated Indian genocides, to modern cases of pillage under globalization, British “free trade” has often been used as a means to get nation states to turn off their security systems while bandits robbed them naked.

The difference between the Chinese vs Anglo-American versions of free trade comes down to INTENTION.

Where the Anglo-American variants were designed to destroy national development, the Chinese (or earlier U.S. Hamiltonian System) variations are inextricably tied to the industrial improvement of all participating nations. Where one intends to divide, conquer and destroy, the other intends to unite, cooperate and create. Big difference.

One might here scream: “YOU CAN’T KNOW INTENTIONS!”

As Jesus once responded to the question: “you will know them by their fruits”. A materialist would not know how to process this, but anyone looking at world history would quickly recognize that in politics, using words that make your intention transparent will nearly always undo your objectives. We love John F. Kennedy’s robust candor, but his murder after only 1000 days in office resulted in the destruction of many great goods which a more wise and savvy statesman like Benjamin Franklin would never have permitted to occur.

Let me say it one more way: sometimes bad men committed to bad acts use good words and sometimes good men committed to good acts use bad words. How do you know their intention or goodness? Not through their words, but through their fruits.

China’s Hamiltonian Fruits

China has provably pulled over 800 million souls out of abject poverty while the unipolar system of empire has only created decades of starvation, poverty and war. China has launched trillions of dollars worth of productive long-term credit through state-owned banks tied not to speculating on debts, but building actual infrastructure both within their own nation and internationally.

Where our western system is entirely dependent on hyperbolically increasing rates of speculative/fictitious capital, the Chinese system is premised on PHYSICAL systems of production and value. An Evergrande bubble popping in the west would be an atomic force of destruction, whereas in China, it is an extremely containable aberration.

IF the LaRouchePAC-affiliated author attacking Xi actually read the original works of economist Alexander Hamilton (which the author professes openly to have done), he would know that the American System which he espouses is not intrinsically against free trade, nor is it always pro-protectionism.

What Did Hamilton Create?

The point Hamilton made in his reports to congress of 1791 was that every bankrupt, undeveloped state of the new nation were condemned to disastrous internal division and chaos. During its first 7 years, America was a financial wreck waiting to be retaken by the British Empire. Each state controlled its own economic priorities, currency issuance and none of the 13 states even had free trade among each other making it not much of a union at all.

This lack of unity among the early confederacy made the formation of common action impossible. Without a power of common action, there was no weapon sufficient in power to do battle with the highly centralized globally extended financier oligarchy centered in the heart of London.

Hamilton solved this crisis by federalizing the many local unpayable state debts incurred during the war and converting them into assets of a new national banking system that began issuing credit for comprehensive national infrastructure goals. Although each state lost some of its personal liberty “to do whatever they wanted”, trade barriers were broken down, a national currency was launched and this quantum leap allowed the young nation to not only survive but thrive. Under Hamilton, debts were no longer usurious inflation machines, but rather self-liquidating “national blessings” serving the interests of the entire people. China’s tendency to cite Hamilton in their state-news coverage is also not a coincidence on this point.

In the first several decades of the Hamiltonian program, America’s population grew four-fold, technical knowledge, industrial productivity, interconnectivity and inventions grew in leaps soon challenging the world’s largest empire.

Mr. Ingraham might be surprised to know that Hamilton was not a dogmatic supporter of tariffs, supporting free trade as long as it was shaped by a unifying intention to develop the many parts of the whole to their fullest industrial and creative potential. This was the essential purpose of the General Welfare clause of the Constitution including the important Article I Section VIII.

Hamilton’s later follower Friedrich List (who coined the term “American System of Political Economy” in 1828) used this system to unite a disjointed Germany under a “Zollvereine” (aka: custom’s union) driven by free trade among the regional divergent states for the first time in history. Under List’s program, national credit tied to internal improvements (rail, canals, new industries and pure science) launched Germany into the modern age.

Wherever this system was applied (including 19^th century Russia) population growth improved in quantity and quality, harmonious relations between the member states improved, oligarchism lost its hold onto its hosts and creative change governed the self-perfectibility of the increasingly open systems.

These were good fruits.

British Free Trade, like “Globalization 1.0” ALWAYS used nice words, but bore rotten fruit.

Wherever it was applied, British Free Trade destroyed economic sovereign nation states, crippled long-term planning, dismantled the regulation of private capital, and always divided to conquer.

Adherents to this system indoctrinated across Anglo-American Ivy League universities found themselves assimilated ever more into myopic money crazed fiends incapable of seeing a whole beyond their local self-serving identities… which was just the way an oligarchical elite running the system like a nightmarish video game always wanted it.

Claim 3: “Xi Spoke Well of WTO and is Thus Evil”

The World Trade Organization (WTO), much like the UN Charter, has many fine words and rules of economic conduct embedded in it. IF said rules and words were followed, neither organization would do any harm to anyone and might in fact do quite a lot of good.

The problem isn’t with the nice words promoting healthy competition, fairness, or freedom to trade.

The problem is found in the MINDS of those forces who wrote many of those rules with the intention of breaking them.

WTO rules, much like the British demands for national obedience to free trade that kept the tiny island in the dominant alpha position over the majority of the world during the 19^th century, were meant to be believed by credulous victims, but were always understood to be just another tool of colonialism and slavery by those shaping the Great Game.

In this sense, the WTO of 1999 has much in common with Adam Smith’s 1776 Wealth of Nations.

Does Adam Smith extoll the virtues of evil or promote the right of a hegemon to control the weak?

Not at all.

One would find many laudable words in his text and if the world was truly an equal playing field of nations living together aspiring for improving their quality of life and without any internationally extended financier oligarchy, then one would be hard pressed to find anything wrong with it at all.

The problem, as Ben Franklin, Hamilton and many of the most potent founding fathers understood (or Friedrich List afterwards), is that Adam Smith was just a political hack who never actually believed anything he himself wrote. As historian Anton Chaitkin points out in volume 1 of Who We Are, Adam Smith was directly tied to the inner echelons of the British Empire and had been groomed for years by none other than Lord Shelburne himself before publishing his Wealth of Nations (not coincidentally the same year of the U.S. Declaration of Independence).

Smith and his oligarchical masters in London always understood that they were the true owners of his “hidden hand” which they wished their victims believed were the “magical ordering principles” of the unregulated marketplace.

BRI-oriented free trade zones as we have seen applied in the past seven years are shaped by the intention to build real measurable infrastructure and industrial powers among all participating states. Whether we look at the Africa-China Free Trade Agreement, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, China’s RCEP, China-EAEU deals or China-South America free trade agreements, we see the opposite of anything done during the dark years of the British Empire or post-JFK age of imperial capital. Rather than looting and debt slavery, we have seen the largest explosion of industrial growth, large scale infrastructure, manufacturing and education pop up wherever these treaties have been applied. The intention is just very different from anything seen in the age of globalization 1.0.

China knows that if the UN Charter and WTO rules can be actually enforced for once, within the context shaped by the $3+ trillion Belt and Road Initiative, then globalization 2.0 becomes governed by rules that are fundamentally anti-oligarchical, pro-population growth, pro-nation state, pro-cooperation and anti-depopulation.

Good fruit.

Claim 4: “Xi said good things about WHO and COVID Cooperation and is thus Evil”

A final word must be said about Xi’s World Health Organization/pandemic response remarks.

It may not be popular to state this, but I’m going to do it.

To date, China still has not fully purged the transhumanist-oriented west leaning fifth column set into motion during the 1980s under the reign of Soros’ agent Zhao Ziyang.

During Zhao’s period of influence over China’s government, vast infusions of transhumanists, monetarists and technocrats shaped China’s modern deep state. Many of these parasites were thankfully flushed in phases starting in 1989, again in 1997, and with the most recent purge launched with Xi’s ascension in 2012 with over 1.5 million officials nailed on corruption charges to this day.

Despite these purges, there is still a World Economic Forum/Anglo-American presence felt within certain quarters, seen most clearly in “the Shanghai Clique” centered around former President Jiang Zemin and his coterie of western leaning billionaires like Jack Ma who have at various times made attempts to subvert China’s economic sovereignty.

Russia also suffers from its own deep state problems built up during the Gorbachev-Yeltsin years.

Unlike China which has maintained national controls of banking, Moscow’s technocratic deep state still enjoys more influence over their Keynesian-infested liberal central banking system which is closely linked up to Russian big pharma giants (see: Sberbank as one of many instances).

Unlike North America or Europe, China has always provided alternative COVID remedies that do not simply fixate on vaccines or shutting down their economy on behalf of computer models. China’s use of hydroxychloroquine-zinc and various eastern medicine treatments have been provided from the get-go to great effect resulting in a 0.6% covid death rate compared to America’s. China has made it clear that it has no idea if COVID emerged out of one of the 200+ Pentagon connected biolabs, or if a future genetically targeted creation will be released onto their society as was outlined in blood curdling detail in the 2000 PNAC document Rebuilding America’s Defenses. What is clear is that since January 2020, they have responded to COVID as if it were a possible war scenario.

Just as in the case with Russia, we have seen numerous clashes between various regional powers and the federal government on the issue of mandatory vaccination protocols.

Unlike most western governments whose federal institutions have become the primary enforcers of tyrannical vaccination mandates (vs. regional/state government resistance), the opposite pattern is seen in both Russia and China.

In these Eurasian states, it is the federal government that has principally intervened against the tyrannical excesses of local authorities cattle herding their citizens.

The leaders of both Russia and China are fighting not only for the survival of their own civilizations but something much bigger than themselves. Moreover, they not only intend to emerge from this fight alive, but in a dominant position as the system crumbles and globalization 2.0 is brought online.

It is hard for some Americans to accept the fact that their beloved republic has fallen to a fascist coup. It is hard to accept that Donald Trump may not have the moral or intellectual capacity to do anything about this, and it is hard to accept that the USA does not currently have the internal fortitude to change itself without a broader global change being forced upon it externally by nations of Eurasia.

Sometimes the truth is a bitter medicine. But a bitter medicine that saves the patient is always better than a sugar-coated poison.

The author can be reached at matthewehret.substack.com

A miracle appears to be happening, as the multibillionaires of the World Economic Forum (WEF) appear to have grown consciences.

As if by magic, it appears that these gold collar elites no longer yearn for profit and power as they once had. As COP26 closes up its 12 day annual ceremonies, leading WEF-connected figures like Prince Charles, Jeff Bezos, Mario Draghi, Mark Carney and Klaus Schwab have announced a new system of economics that is based on virtue over profit!

According to the COP26 website, “95 high profile companies from a range of sectors commit to being ‘Nature Positive,’ agreeing to work towards halting and reversing the decline of nature by 2030.”

Prince Charles has boasted that he has coordinated 300 companies representing over $60 trillion to get on board with a global green transition, and after meeting with the Prince on November 2, Jeff Bezos announced his new $2 billion Earth Fund to protect nature’s ecosystems with a focus on Africa. Even Prime Minister Mario Draghi has joined Mark Carney on this new green path, as both men have moved beyond their old Goldman Sachs money worshipping days and embraced a better destiny. At the Nov 1 G20 Summit, Draghi embraced Prince Charles’ Green Markets Initiative and threw Italy’s full support behind the de-carbonization initiative.

The Prince himself (who also happens to be the nominal creator of the Great Reset Agenda launched in 2020), spoke as an enlightened statesman saying to the world’s leaders “as the enormity of the climate challenge dominates peoples’ conversations, from news rooms to living rooms, and as the future of humanity and Nature herself are at stake, it is surely time to set aside our differences and grasp this unique opportunity to launch a substantial green recovery by putting the global economy on a confident, sustainable trajectory and, thus, save our planet.”

Among the new array of financial mechanisms which we see being brought online in this war against humanity involve Bezos’ new Earth Fund, and Sir Robert Watson’s Living Planet Index (unveiled in 2018 at the World Economic Forum) and the new Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG) which seeks to turn global ecosystems worth an estimated $4 quadrillion into financial equity controllable by new private corporations (dubbed “natural asset companies”).

On its website, the IEG stated: “In partnership with the New York Stock Exchange, IEG is providing a word-class platform to list these companies for trading, enabling the conversion of natural assets into financial capital. The NAC’s equity captures the intrinsic and productive value of nature and provides a store of value based on the vital assets that underpin our entire economy and make life on earth possible… In 2021, we began seeking regulatory approval to bring the first natural asset transactions to the capital markets. Our vision is to bring to market hundreds of Natural Asset Companies representing several trillion dollars’ worth of natural assets.”

These new companies will become the stewards of new protected zones across the globe which the UN demands encapsulate 30% of the earth’s surface by 2030 and much more by 2050.

Is this time to rejoice, or is something darker at play?

To answer this question it is worth asking: Does this new virtue-driven order have anything to do with lifting people out of poverty or ending economic injustice?

Sadly, it is designed to do very much the opposite.

As we are coming to see, and as statesmen around the world are beginning to point out, this new order has more in common with oligarchical obsessions with controlling human cattle, and less to do with actually preserving the environment. The thousands of tons of CO2 emitted by private jets at Davos and COP26 represents on small aspect of this disingenuity.

Obrador Calls out the Game

On October 30, Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador called out this new virulent form of colonialism while presiding over a ceremony in celebration of the ongoing construction of the $6.7 billion high-speed Maya Train now being built in the southern regions of Mexico. The project which would dramatically uplift living standards in Mexico by driving the growth of industrial and infrastructure production has fallen far behind schedule due in large part to vast legal battles led by indigenous groups who have been used as proxies by foreign interests to defend Mexico’s ecosystems. In many of the legal cases opposing the project, the argument has made that since several species of insect, fauna and even some leopards will be affected by the new railways, then the project must be ground to a halt and buried.

In his remarks to a journalist inquiring into the rail project, Obrador said:

“One of the things which they [the neoliberals] promoted in the world, in order to loot at ease, was the creation or promotion of the so-called new rights. So, feminism, ecologism, the defense of human rights, the protection of animals was much promoted, including by them. All these causes are very noble, but the intent was to create or boost all these new causes so that we don’t remedy—so that we don’t turn around and see that they were looting the world, so the subject of economic and social inequality would be kept out of the center of debate….The international agencies which supported the neoliberal model, which is a model of pillage where corporations grab national property, the property of the people—these same corporations financed, and continue to finance, environmentalist groups, defenders of ‘liberty.’ ”

Many people have been confused over these remarks since they cannot conceptualize how neoliberal monetarists that have parasitically driven the new age of pillage under globalization would also support such ‘new rights’ groups outlined by Obrador.

For nations of the global south who feel resentment that their rights to support their people by having their lands and resources kept off limits, they are told not to worry, since streams of money will be showered upon them from on high. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of monopoly money will be sprayed onto the developing sector as rewards for remaining undeveloped. If that isn’t sufficient, then carbon exchange markets will be set up so that poor nations can sell their un-used carbon quotas to private polluting companies (perhaps the same companies controlling the African cobalt mines which seek a monopoly in controlling the renewable energy sector). That is another way they can make money which at least can keep them warm at night as kindling since the world’s poor will not have to worry about having nature-killing hydro electric dams mucking up their pristine environments.

Even in the west where Biden’s 30×30 executive order has been signed into action, farmers will be offered money to stop grazing on soon-to-be protected lands, while a supposedly grassroots-based WWF-connected American Prairie Reserve (with a $160 million endowment) can be seen pushing a program designed to take 5000 square miles of grazing land in Montana out of use and converted into a pure ecosystem.

As President Obrador has alluded to, today’s billionaire-funded conservation movement simply seeks to take earth’s ecosystems out of bounds of any human economic activity under a new global feudal system of controls.

Even the indigenous populations which such billionaires profess to admire as role models for global “good behavior” are being monetized by these new green indices, with monetary values being placed not only on keeping land and water untouched, but also the very cultural ecosystems of indigenous groups around the world receiving dollar values which wealthy green financiers will somehow be able to invest into. To the degree that such immutably fixed patterns of indigenous lifestyles remain unchanged by the toxic pollution of modern technology or infrastructure, the more these eco-assets will be worth for whomever professes to invest in them. This may not be scientific but it is sick.

The term ‘feudal’ is in no way used for hyperbolic purposes, as we can see a stark parallel to the 12^th century Europe, except that today’s aspiring feudal lords manage such companies as Blackrock, Vanguard, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and State Street and seek to punish all serfs from infringing on properties which only the nobility may control. Blackrock alone manages over $9 trillion in assets and $21.6 trillion in technology platforms and along with Vanguard is fast becoming one of the largest real estate owners in the USA with Bill Gates having recently become the largest owner of American farmland.

The Deeper Imperial Roots of Conservationism

With this vast imperial landgrab in mind, one should not be surprised to discover that the modern conservation movement actually finds its origins not in Greenpeace activists fighting poachers as mythmakers have cooked up, but rather in the bowels of the British Empire. It was this empire that innovated “nature conservation” regions in India during the late 19^th century specifically to keep the poor of India under control after having destroyed India’s once powerful textile sector. The practice was applied across India during the greatest density of famines struck southern India in 1876 killing tens of millions. It was amidst this darkness that British Imperial overlords took the opportunity to create “The Imperial Forestry Department’ in 1876 putting two fifths of India’s lands under “protection” and off limits to humans. This ensured no starving subject could use the protected zones which they had relied upon for survival for decades for food, or water.

The Nazi embrace of both Anglo-American funded science of eugenics on the one side and the Reich’s embrace of nature conservationism were also not unconnected. Herman Goring, who served as Minister for German Forests believed in a poisonous worldview that held that: 1) nature is pure and thus good due to its pure unchanging natural order while 2) humanity is impure and thus un-natural due to our aspirations for progress. This dangerous equation resulted in seemingly innocent programs launched by the Fuhrer and Goring to cleans the German ecosystems of all foreign and thus un-natural fauna and flora in order to return the forests of Germany to their supposedly pure pre-industrial states. The worship of nature was an integral part of the new master race and the weeding out of impurities extended itself to human genetics following racial theories advanced by British eugenicists and anthropologists.

Julian Huxley’s New Eugenics Revolution

Upon Hitler’s defeat, the repackaging of eugenics took the form of British Eugenics Society Vice President Julian Huxley’s outline in the founding Manifesto for UNESCO where he said:

“At the moment, it is probable that the indirect effect of civilization is dysgenic instead of eugenic, and in any case it seems likely that the dead weight of genetic stupidity, physical weakness, mental instability and disease proneness, which already exist in the human species will prove too great a burden for real progress to be achieved. Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”

Putting this new eugenics into practical action took on many heads of a hydra in the post WWII years. The particular hydra head most relevant to the thrust of this article took the form of another project Julian created in 1948 called the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) followed soon thereafter by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1961 which he co-founded alongside two misanthropic princes named Philip Mountbatten and Bernhardt of the Netherlands.

Between 1959 and 1962 Julian had risen to become president of the British Eugenics Society and had put the finishing gloss on a new field of scientific misanthropic theology which he dubbed ‘Transhumanism’ alongside a Jesuit collaborator named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

If you haven’t guessed, Transhumanism was merely another form of re-packaged eugenics serving the spiritual needs of a new priesthood of elitist social engineers that would be expected to manage the gears of a new technocratic feudal machine. This neo-paganism is not intrinsically different from the cultish beliefs of the Nazi Thule society of the past which gave spiritual direction to the members of Hitler’s government.

The neo-Malthusian revival that these eugenicists would spearhead through the end of the 1960s took the form of a new array of international organizations which incorporated systems analysis, and cybernetics, which aimed to control nation states and ecosystems alike. This took the form of the World Economic Forum’s early embrace of the Club of Rome’s computer models outlined by Aurelio Peccei (and incorporated into Schwab’s second official Davos meeting in 1973). These new models aimed to impose fixed immutable limits to humanity’s growth potential beyond which no technology or scientific discovery could ever penetrate. The fact that these same multibillionaires managing the overhaul of the world economy as it transitioned into a neo-liberal looting operation were simultaneously funding the growth of this new array of “new rights” groups led by a growing armada of non-governmental organizations, ecology protection and human rights groups is not a coincidence.

Today’s involvement of both Julian Huxley’s WWF and IUCN (no renamed Conservation International) as partners with the Intrinsic Exchange Group should not make any honest lover of nature in any way comfortable.

Much more obviously remains to be said both about the history of conservationism, and how it is being used once again to conduct a new age of population control, or how it has been used to disrupt large scale infrastructure projects across the world for over 120 years, or how nature reserves across the global south have supported narco terrorist groups.

However, for the time being, it is sufficient to note that the world’s developing sector is generally not going to accept being sacrificed on the altar of a new Gaia cult managed by a priesthood of Davos billionaires. Based on the momentum we see being driven by the Greater Eurasian Partnership, the Belt and Road Initiative and ambitions from Latin American and African leaders to finally break free of centuries of imperial manipulation, it is becoming increasingly obvious that COP26’s utopic computer models are increasingly breaking down when confronted with the reality of humanity’s creative power to leap outside of the fixed rules of imperial games when a true crisis moves us into action.

The author delivered a presentation on this topic which can be viewed here.

At the recent semi-successful United Nations COP26 conference on climate change there was an unexpected revelation that the U.S. and China had engaged in some thirty virtual meetings on the subject over the past year. Their decision to “jointly strengthen climate action” was very welcome from the environment point of view, and even more welcome because it demonstrated that Washington and Beijing could actually get along in one aspect of international relations. It also raised the question as to whether they could ever sit down together and discuss the equally pressing problem of looming conflict.

When U.S. climate envoy John Kerry announced the agreement he acknowledged that although “the United States and China have no shortage of differences” it seemed that “on climate, cooperation is the only way to get this job done.” In this, however, he seemed to be taking a different track to President Joe Biden, who played into the ever-welcoming hands of Washington hawks on November 2 when he castigated Presidents Xi and Putin for non-appearance at the COP gathering. This, he declared, was a “big mistake” and contrasted with the fact that “we showed up” but “they didn’t show up… It is a gigantic issue and they just walked away. How do you do that and claim to have any leadership mantle?”

It is barely credible that the President of the United States would state that the Presidents of the world’s other most important countries are not effective leaders. The BBC’s record of his diatribe is disturbing, as it demonstrates a desire for confrontation rather than a genuine preparedness to calm things down. He said that “the fact that China is trying to assert, understandably, a new role in the world as a world leader — not showing up, come on.” He continued by declaring that Russia’s wilderness was burning while President Putin “stays mum” about the problem. He did not know, or deliberately ignored the fact that, as the BBC reported, “before Mr Biden’s speech Mr Putin virtually addressed a meeting on forest management at the COP26 summit on Tuesday, saying that Russia takes the ‘strongest and most vigorous measures to conserve’ woodlands.”

There was little surprise that as COP26 was drawing to a close, President Xi warned against a return to “Cold War-era” divisions when it was made known that he and President Biden would meet on November 15. He said plainly that “attempts to draw ideological lines or form small circles on geopolitical grounds are bound to fail,” and China’s Ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, expanded on the subject at a function in Washington of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, saying that China “always bears in mind the fundamental interests of the people of both countries and the whole world, and handles China-U.S. relations from a strategic and long-term perspective”.

Most people are aware that China has a long-term view on its place in the world, and even President Biden, in his message to the gathering, declared that “from tackling the Covid-19 pandemic to addressing the existential threat of climate crisis, the relationship between the U.S. and China has global significance. Solving these challenges and seizing these opportunities will require the broader international community to come together as we each do our part to build a safe, peaceful and resilient future.” He did not, however, place any emphasis on bilateral negotiations, which was left to President Xi, who wrote that “China-U.S. relations are at a critical historical juncture. Both countries will gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. Cooperation is the only right choice.”

President Xi’s desire that China should get together with the United States specifically to plan a joint way ahead for a peaceful future has not been echoed in Washington where, as reported by the Straits Times, “the White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that Washington and Beijing had ‘an agreement in principle’ to have a virtual summit before the end of the year.” Her explanation was that “this is part of our ongoing efforts to responsibly manage the competition between our countries,” while stressing that it was “not about seeking specific deliverables.” In other words, don’t let anybody get their hopes up that Mr Biden would pursue collaboration that will lead to improved bilateral relations. He might not go so far down into the insult sewer as to reiterate his previous public declaration that Mr Xi doesn’t have a “leadership mantle”, but it is unlikely there will be long-term substance.

It is not surprising that Mr Biden is reluctant to compromise, because the Pentagon and its associates have already notified the world they consider China to be menacing and that the United States should “meet the pacing challenge presented by the PRC’s increasingly capable military and its global ambitions”.

In its November 3 Report to Congress, the Pentagon details “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” and presents the Pentagon’s case for continuing to expand the U.S. military and acquire even more staggeringly expensive weaponry. As the New York Times reported, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said that China “is clearly challenging us regionally, and their aspiration is to challenge us globally… they have a China dream, and they want to challenge the so-called liberal rules-based order.” The Washington Post noted the Report’s concern about China’s global vision, in that it “already has established a military base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. To support its goals, it wants to build more facilities overseas and is considering more than a dozen countries that include Cambodia, Pakistan and Angola. Such a network could interfere with U.S. military operations and support offensive operations against the United States.”

The Pentagon’s warning that China’s establishment of a military base in a foreign country constitutes a threat is absurd to the point of risibility, especially in the context of the U.S. military footprint which extends to “750 military base sites estimated in around 80+ foreign countries and colonies/territories.” Further, it is calculated that the U.S. spends more on its military than the combined defence budgets of eleven major countries : China, India, Russia, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and Australia.

It is not surprising that William Hartung and Mandy Smithberger wrote in TomDispatch on November 9 that “The arms industry’s lobbying efforts are especially insidious. In an average year, it employs around 700 lobbyists, more than one for every member of Congress… A 2018 investigation by the Project On Government Oversight found that, in the prior decade, 380 high-ranking Pentagon officials and military officers had become lobbyists, board members, executives, or consultants for weapons contractors within two years of leaving their government jobs.” And of even more concern for the workings of democracy it is sinister, in the words of Dan Auble, that “defence companies spend millions every year lobbying politicians and donating to their campaigns. In the past two decades, their extensive network of lobbyists and donors have directed $285 million in campaign contributions and $2.5 billion in lobbying spending to influence defence policy.”

Good luck to Mr Biden. Let us hope that he will sacrifice popularity for peace and that he will bear in mind the words of his illustrious predecessor President Eisenhower, sixty years ago, that “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Indeed it has risen. But the world would benefit enormously if Joe Biden terminated its ascent by coming to terms with China and Russia.

The Indigenous Missionary Council’s (CIMI) annual report on violence against indigenous communities in Brazil in 2020 illustrates an expansion of human rights violations committed during Jair Bolsonaro’s second year of his presidency. Under the guise of the coronavirus pandemic, land exploitation continued while indigenous communities benefited from no state protection.

Increased illegal incursions into indigenous territory by miners, loggers, farmers and hunters contributed to the spread of Covid19 among indigenous communities, which resulted in 900 deaths – a loss in terms of indigenous history, memory and culture.

Furthermore, the Brazilian government’s encouragement of land exploitation, in particular the legal proposals to open up indigenous territory to industrialization, contributed to an increase in violent clashes over territorial rights, with an increase of 174 percent in 2020 over 2019.

Equally important, and in line with the previous statistics, is an increase in the number of indigenous people murdered in 2020, when compared to 2019, with 182 and 113 people killed in these respective years. Last year’s tally represents a 61 percent increase over 2019. Additionally, 304 cases of violence were recorded in 2020, in comparison to the 277 cases documented in 2019.

In 2020, heritage related crimes amounted to 1,191 cases, while suspended demarcations of indigenous territory remains a key component of Bolsonaro’s presidency with 64 percent of territory still awaiting identification.

Bolsosnaro was one of the world leaders purportedly committing to halt deforestation by 2030, but his track record indicates otherwise, particularly when reports called out the deterioration of Brazil’s environment. The intimidation exhibited towards institutions and agencies is also reflective of the violence employed towards indigenous communities in Brazil, whose indigenous status is ridiculed by the government and who are the last standing frontline in between the rainforest and Bolsonaro’s exploitative politics.

How does Bolsonaro, for instance, seek to reduce deforestation when agribusiness is one of Bolsonaro’s main electoral bulwarks?

At the COP26 conference in Glasgow, indigenous representatives highlighted the Brazilian government’s contradictions. “If there is no protection of indigenous territories and rights, there will also be no solution to the climate crisis, because we are part of that solution,” Sonia Guajajara, head of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (ABIP), declared.

This is one core issue where Bolsonaro is intentionally failing, for profit. A recent report illustrates how indigenous reserves in Trincheira have been targeted by invaders who destroyed 20 hectares of forest area and planted grass, paving the way for additional pasture area and affecting 18 indigenous reserves. According to Global Forest Watch, this year’s deforestation in Brazil is already over 72 percent higher than the same period in 2020. Josiane Tavares dos Santos, leader of Trincheira, described the destruction as “becoming an island in the middle of farms.”

Clearly, the EU for example has failed to heed indigenous warnings. Commenting on Bolsonaro’s pledges to end illegal deforestation during a meeting with foreign affairs and environment ministers, EU Vice President Josep Borrell stated, “The will is there, because the ministers know that it will be good for Brazil to put an end to illegal exploitation of the Amazon Rainforest.”

In 2019, EU firms were among those benefiting from Brazil’s illegal logging business – an issue which ought to be investigated as part of the bloc’s complicity in abetting both the Brazilian government and illegal deforestation.

It is only the indigenous communities, however, who are clarifying the importance of their inclusion in political decision-making with regards to the environment. The international community makes an erroneous distinction between indigenous communities and their environment. CIMI’s report should serve as an eyeopener in terms of how indigenous communities require political protection, but the world would prefer to dissociate, thus associating politics with businesses and destruction with the humanitarian paradigm.

The failure of the UN’s COP26 conference in Glasgow was spectacle of hypocrisy befitting of a moribund ruling class. These kinds of antics harken back to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, where its decadent ruling class was deadly out of touch with the causes of growing decentralization and dissatisfaction in the periphery. And so taking our historical analogy further, we may begin to unwrap an epochal catastrophe which today’s elite now faces.

The transition from the Roman imperial system, through the Carolingian period, into to the system of medieval Europe, saw a continual decentralization of power, and the evolution of slaves and serfs into land-owning peasants.

Boris Johnson arrives at COP26 by private jumbo jet ready to tackle other leaders on emissions

This economic decentralization was connected to localized power structures. Roman forts thereby formed the basis of the medieval system of castles, and the relative weakness of these lords and little kings correlated to an improvement in the rights and economic power of what became the small land-owning peasantry.

Therefore a method of re-introducing an element of centralization to these structures, to the Vatican in Rome, was the development of the Church and the refinement of its system of tithing from individual offering to an imposed and required tax, enforced by law and collectively. Significant theological and metaphysical questions and dissimilarities aside, here’s what’s critical:

The carbon tax system is a mystical system that cannot be justified by material sciences or concerns, and instead sits as a type of ‘new religion’ that the historical centres of capital have rolled out to justify a type of tithing upon increasingly sovereign and decentralized corners of the world.

Payment of tithing, like the carbon tax system, is an ideological project to maintain powers of a moribund economic system, after the decline of the physical structures of imperialism that held together the old empire.

The various carbon tax systems, (cap and trade CAP/ETS, etc.) are little more than a rehashing of a tithing system.

Like with the Church’s control over the scribes and monasteries, the new carbon cult relies upon its monopoly over the inherited centers of knowledge creation and distribution, to create a parallel reality which requires a payment into something which cannot be rationalized in either scientific or economic terms.

Likewise, one could argue that the influence of abstracted aims of the Church lent towards the management of high unemployment and inflation caused by this tithing tax, through the calling of crusades and counter-rational measures for dealing with plagues, which tended to account for the premature deaths of countless ‘worthless eaters’.

This very much parallels the gross neo-Malthusian solutions proffered by the elites in our day and age.

The amazing part of this? The entire catastrophe today can be avoided if planned obsolescence was eliminated as an economic practice.

It doesn’t matter where one stands on climate science – even a true believer would be forced to see the logic in eradicating planned obsolescence if the aim was carbon neutrality.

Paying tithe from Bishop Roderik’s work ‘The Mirror of Human Life’ – wood cut, 15th century Varga Domokos: Magyarország virágzása és romlása. Móra, Budapest, 197 , p 58

Carbon Reduction as Cover for a Sinister Depopulation Agenda

The fundamental issue driving the COP26 population reduction scheme which parades as ‘carbon reduction’, therefore, is the hard problem of overcoming planned obsolescence. This single issue, almost more than any other, is definitive proof that there is no real concern for the environment, and that the ruling class is purely focused on population reduction and the suppression of actual 3D printing and eradicating a real Fourth Industrial Revolution.

That last point may come as a surprise to many, who are following the talking points of Klaus Schwab and company, at the World Economic Forum, who have incorporated these terms into their neo-Malthusian agenda.

They use these words so that we cannot understand them, so we will not look right where they are hiding their real meanings and implications – in their mouths.

So in place, they use the words and phrases – 4IR, 3D printing, IoT – but in actuality they are trying to subvert these while other technologies, entirely coercive and centralizing in nature, are rolled out onto the suffering faces of the masses.

As we have shown in our work on planned obsolescence, nowhere is the subject of planned obsolescence directly confronted – either in Schwab’s “Covid-19: The Great Reset” (in fact the opposite is proposed), nor is it confronted in the SDG Agenda. There is an oblique reference to repairable products and longer product lifespans only on page 62 of the 250 page manifesto. This adds justification to our charge that among the points of the ‘Great Reset’ is a serious reduction in human population.

Global Fight-back – The UN and Beyond

The same technologies to create the three industrial revolutions in the imperial core, were later used by developing countries, to grow and improve their physical economy. But these efforts were conducted in fierce opposition to the centrally directed model of modernity; a centralism coming from the financiers of the City of London and conducted through the geopolitics of the so-called Washington Consensus.

While accurately understanding some of the mutually shared concerns among and between nations, the Agenda 2030 solutions offered stem from the same kind of thinking, and from the very same actors, which produced the problem itself. Why would anyone trust these solutions?

Again, there is nothing profound or rhetorical in that question. The right-thinking leadership of many developing countries entirely understands that point. They are frustrated by the gas-lighting that comes from this globalist institutions which enforce austerity measures which breed corruption and poverty, all while preaching that these same countries haven’t done enough to increase transparency and fight poverty.

Real sovereignty for the so-called global south is intimately tied to two related factors: import substitution industrialization using 3D printing, and a physical economy based in automated production of super-long life goods. This must up-end the present planned obsolescence paradigm with its intentionally shortened PLC (product life cycle). A functional bridge between here and there, is an increased focus on regional trade, which encourages regional cooperation and enlarges spatial conceptions of the sovereign towards a growing multipolarity.

Instead of focusing on this very obvious solution to a whole range of problems which are, generously speaking, fairly represented in the UN Agenda 2030 goals, we are being corralled down a path which unjustifiably focuses on climate change. But critics like Vance Packard in ‘The Waste Makers’ (1960) already saw the problem, and the solution.

We are therefore in a race towards next-generation productive technologies, like localized 3D printing (3DP) which ultimately work against globalized production, against interdependency, and the supply-line security problems, like war, that comes along with it.

The underlying rationale of globalized production, is the exploitation of low wage labor and the maintenance of endemic global inequalities. But as techniques of production improve, and more materials can be synthesized, the twin drivers of this paradigm – low-wage production and raw material extraction – are overcome together.

Ending planned obsolescence vs. ending climate change, represent two different paradigms. The first is connected to a forward looking paradigm reflective of a real and sustainable 4IR, and the second is a cynical ruse not only to limit the rational development of the physical economy, but also human horizons.

The synthesizing of materials eliminates the ‘carbon emissions’ produced by the entire present model of resource extraction, including those emitted by hundreds of millions of workers who generate otherwise unnecessary emissions upstream and downstream, globalized supply-lines, while the carbon footprint for material synthesis will ultimately be smaller. And this much matters only if a real problem is carbon emissions, which is arguable at best.

In other words, we can eliminate those emissions without eliminating the human beings, and moreover, without limiting the quality of life they enjoy. To the contrary, overcoming artificial scarcity in its present form would see a great improvement in quality of life and life expectancy.

And so the focus on improving hyper-efficient methods of globalized distribution is missing the point, if relatively equivalent investment into R&D can get better results in the arena of material synthesis. Synthetic materials are based on polymers which are stronger and longer-lasting than natural or regenerated materials, and lend towards longer lasting products.

What is more efficient than the most efficient delivery system? Not having to distribute it at all.

Nations are not Bound to Agenda 2030 by Force of Treaty

Are most UN member states really ‘all in’ with the climate change game? The vast majority of countries tied into the IMF/UN system of neo-colonialism, are simply waiting out the clock, as alternatives such as BRICS grow against the petro dollar.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), known also as Agenda 2030, use the language of post-colonialism to reinforce a new kind of neo-colonialism. The system behind this push being so-called ‘sustainability’ is what is actually unsustainable, and so developing countries see they simply need to bear with it until it finally implodes.

A lot of unrelated environmental concerns have been collapsed into ‘climate change’. And climate change has been dogmatically tied to carbon emissions. The primary issue then deals with carbon emissions, therefore, even though it is just a single goal (goal 13) among the 17 goals of Agenda 2030.

Seeing the UN graphic below, we can see that the following goals are actually all important matters: 6 (Clean water and sanitation); 7 (Affordable and clean energy); 9 (Industry, innovation and infrastructure); 11 (Sustainable cities and communities); 12 (Responsible consumption and production); 14 (Life below water); 15 (Life on land).

And so it’s of peculiar interest that 13, climate action (which is merely carbon emissions), is the guiding logic behind all of these, when in fact it is failure to address goal 12 (Responsible consumption and production) which represents the entire economic, social, and environmental cancer of this age, a danger so clear and present and yet rooted so deeply in this paradigm, that the IMF cannot propose a solution that can tackle this.

Goal 12 – responsible consumption and production – is the foundation of all the other goals, if we are to take them seriously. Not goal 13 – climate action – as that in fact goes in the opposite direction. This point will be underscored.

All of this seems so terrible, so why did the majority of UN member states sign on? In fact, Agenda 2030 is not a treaty, it is non-binding and not a criteria for UN membership, and its provisions are not enforceable through the mechanism of treaties between sovereign states. Rather, it was reached ‘by consensus’, whatever that means. What has been constructed as Agenda 2030 presents an outline at best, using input from many UN member states, of what they ‘could’ agree to someday.

Therefore, many countries will make their own sovereign announcements about reaching this part, or that part, of the various goals. This will receive a lot of press, much of it misleading, because these were decisions these countries make on their own. Many of these already overlap with their own national agenda (poverty reduction, clean water, gender inclusiveness). But they do so on their own accord, and this point is critical.

Predatory multinationals like to use provisions on 2030 to place the spectre of global governance and shared goals as justification for policies which undermine the economic and sovereign foundation of developing countries.

But the 17 goals of Agenda 2030 (SDG) represent merely a ‘plan of action’, which countries are not obliged to separately from various accords and treaties which they might presently or later agree to, or which multinationals may attempt to unilaterally impose as a condition of trade, (often backed by the IMF) but which carry their own names and legal details.

Many of the concerns that these goals address are the right ones for countries to be focusing on, and therein lies the rub. Just like with the 4IR, Agenda 2030 turns these on their head, and cynically misdirects them towards a neo-Malthusian genocide.

The ugly truth about cap and trade, and all similar schemes to enforce this globally, is that they do not really reduce carbon emissions, if most other factors remain the same. Among the other factors required for this scheme to approximate ‘working’, is to reduce population size. Note that this is not to reduce the rate of population growth, but to reduce the total human population in absolute terms.

In other words, at the heart of the 17 SDG for 2030, the primary source of carbon footprints are human beings.

Overcoming this Paradigm’s Problem

Just like with the human development indexes, and broader economic concerns, Agenda 2030 seizes upon legitimate concerns for the environment, human exposure to carcinogenic materials, birth defects, and clean air and water.

But these become subsumed under the heading of global warming (or, in explaining cooling spells, ‘climate change’), in such an incoherent way that one cannot speak about the legitimate concerns without being forced to answer for climate change.

Innovations that potentiate a 4IR, like 3DP, contain much potential. But there are already existing solutions to the production/income and distribution/purchase cycle plaguing humanity in the face of the rapid automation process underway.

These solutions are as simple as using higher quality parts to substitute the ‘planned to break’ parts in already existing products, all other factors of production being left untouched.

Indeed, we hold that while there are hypothetically limits to growth, the biggest limitation at present is limited thinking about what growth looks like and what new possibilities and discoveries it holds.

Taken together, we can see that overcoming the wastefulness of economies of scale is not the problem which the elite’s conception of Agenda 2030 is aimed at. They want to preserve some type of system of subsidized commodity production, perhaps making products less sturdy, and commonly shared through a drone-delivery rental system.

This would decrease product lifespan while also requiring less goods to be produced, connected to the rental system and a lower total human population.

In some tenacious balance between population reduction and flimsy rental goods, the WEF proposes that this will result in a net decrease in carbon emissions. In looking at the second part of that balance, we can conclude that the population reduction must be significant in order to justify the net reduction claim.

Instead, we maintain that ‘two heads are better than one’, that the increase in human population has a multivariate, non-linear effect towards improvement not only of the human experience, but its positive interrelation with the entire noosphere.

The author can be reached at FindMeFlores@gmail.com

By Whitney WEBB

On Wednesday, an “industry-led and UN-convened” alliance of private banking and financial institutions announced plans at the COP26 conference to overhaul the role of global and regional financial institutions, including the World Bank and IMF, as part of a broader plan to “transform” the global financial system. The officially stated purpose of this proposed overhaul, per alliance members, is to promote the transition to a “net zero” economy. However, the group’s proposed “reimagining” of international financial institutions, according to their recently published “progress report,” would also move to merge these institutions with the private-banking interests that compose the alliance; create a new system of “global financial governance”; and erode national sovereignty among developing countries by forcing them to establish business environments deemed “friendly” to the interests of alliance members. In other words, the powerful banking interests that compose this group are pushing to recreate the entire global financial system for their benefit under the guise of promoting sustainability.

This alliance, called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), was launched in April by John Kerry, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change; Janet Yellen, US Secretary of the Treasury and former chair of the Federal Reserve; and Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance and former chair of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada. Carney, who is also the UK prime minister’s Finance Advisor for the COP26 conference, currently cochairs the alliance with US billionaire and former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg

GFANZ Leadership; Source: GFANZ

On its creation, GFANZ stated that it would “provide a forum for strategic coordination among the leadership of finance institutions from across the finance sector to accelerate the transition to a net zero economy” and “mobilize the trillions of dollars necessary” to accomplish the group’s zero emissions goals. At the time of the alliance’s launch, UK prime minister Boris Johnson described GFANZ as “uniting the world’s banks and financial institutions behind the global transition to net zero,” while John Kerry noted that “the largest financial players in the world recognize energy transition represents a vast commercial opportunity.” In analyzing those two statements together, it seems clear that GFANZ has united the world’s most powerful private banks and financial institutions behind what it sees, first and foremost, as “a vast commercial opportunity,” the exploitation of which it is marketing as a “planetary imperative.”

John Kerry in conversation with CNN’s Christine Amanpour at COP 26. Source: CNN

GFANZ is composed of several “subsector alliances,” including the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative (NZAM), the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA), and the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). Together, they command a formidable part of global private banking and finance interests, with the NZBA alone currently representing 43 percent of all global banking assets. However, the “largest financial players” who dominate GFANZ include the CEOs of BlackRock, Citi, Bank of America, Banco Santander, and HSBC, as well as David Schwimmer, CEO of the London Stock Exchange Group and Nili Gilbert, chair of the Investment Committee of the David Rockefeller Fund.

Notably, another Rockefeller-connected entity, the Rockefeller Foundation, recently played a pivotal role in the creation of Natural Asset Corporations (NACs) in September. These NACs seek to create a new asset class that would put the natural world, as well as the ecological processes that underpin all life, up for sale under the guise of “protecting” them. Principals of GFANZ, including BlackRock’s Larry Fink, have long been enthusiastic about the prospects of NACs and other related efforts to financialize the natural world and he has also played a key role in marketing such financialization as necessary to combat climate change.

As part of COP26, GFANZ— a key group at that conference—is publishing a plan aimed at scaling “private capital flows to emerging and developing economies.” Per the alliance’s press release, this plan focuses on “the development of country platforms to connect the now enormous private capital committed to net zero with country projects, scaling blended finance through MDBs [multilateral development banks] and developing high integrity, credible global carbon markets.” The press release notes that this “enormous private capital” is money that alliance members seek to invest in emerging and developing countries, estimated at over $130 trillion, and that—in order to deploy these trillions in investment—“the global financial system is being transformed” by this very alliance in coordination with the group that convened them, the United Nations.

Proposing a Takeover

Details of GFANZ’s plan to deploy trillions of member investments into emerging markets and developing countries was published in the alliance’s inaugural “Progress Report,” the release of which was timed to coincide with the COP26 conference. The report details the alliance’s “near-term work plan and ambitions,” which the alliance succinctly summarizes as a “program of work to transform the financial system.”

The report notes that the alliance has moved from the “commitment” stage to the “engagement” stage, with the main focus of the engagement stage being the “mobilization of private capital into emerging markets and developing countries through private-sector leadership and public-private collaboration.” In doing so, per the report, GFANZ seeks to create “an international financial architecture” that will increase levels of private investment from alliance members in those economies. Their main objectives in this regard revolve around the creation of “ambitious country platforms” and increased collaboration between MDBs and the private financial sector.

Per GFANZ, a “country platform” is defined as a mechanism that convenes and aligns “stakeholders,” that is, a mechanism for public-private partnership/stakeholder capitalism, “around a specific issue or geography.” Examples offered include Mike Bloomberg’s Climate Finance Leadership Initiative (CFLI), which is partnered with Goldman Sachs and HSBC among other private-sector institutions. While framed as being driven by “stakeholders,” existing examples of “country platforms” offered by the GFANZ are either private sector-led initiatives, like the CFLI, or public-private partnerships that are dominated by powerful multinational corporations and billionaires. As recently explained by journalist and researcher Iain Davis, these “stakeholder capitalism” mechanism models, despite being presented as offering a “more responsible” form of capitalism, allow corporations and private entities to participate in forming the regulations that govern their own markets and giving them a greatly increased role in political decision making by placing them on an equal footing with national governments. It is essentially a creative way of marketing “corporatism,” the definition of fascism infamously supplied by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

In addition to the creation of “corporatist” “country platforms” that focus on specific areas and/or issues in the developing world, GFANZ aims to also further “corporatize” multilateral development banks (MDBs) and development finance institutions (DFIs) in order to better fulfill the investment goals of alliance members. Per the alliance, this is described as increasing “MDB-private sector collaboration.” The GFANZ report notes that “MDBs play a critical role in helping to grow investment flows” in the developing world. MDBs, like the World Bank, have long been criticized for accomplishing this task by trapping developing nations in debt and then using that debt to force those nations to deregulate markets (specifically financial markets), privatize state assets and implement unpopular austerity policies. The GFANZ report makes it clear that the alliance now seeks to use these same, controversial tactics of MDBs by forcing even greater deregulation on developing countries to facilitate “green” investments from alliance members.

The report explicitly states that MDBs should be used to prompt developing nations “to create the right high-level, cross-cutting enabling environments” for alliance members’ investments in those nations. The significantly greater levels of private-capital investment, which are needed to reach net zero per GFANZ, require that MDBs are used to prompt developing nations to “establish investment-friendly business environments; a replicable framework for deploying private capital investments; and pipelines of bankable investment opportunities.” GFANZ then notes that “private capital and investment will flow to these projects if governments and policymakers create the appropriate conditions,” that is, enable environments for private-sector investments.

In other words, through the proposed increase in private-sector involvement in MDBs, such as the World Bank and regional development banks, alliance members seek to use MDBs to globally impose massive and extensive deregulation on developing countries by using the decarbonization push as justification. No longer must MDBs entrap developing nations in debt to force policies that benefit foreign and multinational private-sector entities, as climate change-related justifications can now be used for the same ends.

BlackRock CEO and GFANZ principal Larry Fink talks to CNBC during COP26. Source: CNBC

This new modality for MDBs, along with their fusion with the private sector, is ultimately what GFANZ proposes in terms of “reimagining” these institutions. GFANZ principal and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, during a COP26 panel that took place on November 2, explicitly referred to the plan to overhaul these institutions when he said: “If we’re going to be serious about climate change in the emerging world, we’re going to have to really focus on the reimagination of the World Bank and the IMF.”

Fink continued:

They are the senior lender, and not enough private capital’s coming into the emerging world today because of the risks associated with the political risk, investing in brownfield investments — if we are serious about elevating investment capital in the emerging world… I’m urging the owners of those institutions, the equity owners, to focus on how we reimagine these institutions and rethink their charter.

GFANZ’s proposed plans to reimagine MDBs are particularly alarming given how leaked US military documents show that such banks are considered to be essentially “financial weapons” that have been used as “financial instruments and diplomatic instruments of US national power” as well as instruments of what those same documents refer to as the “current global governance system” that are used to force developing countries to adopt policies they otherwise would not.

In addition, given Fink’s statements, it should not be surprising that the GFANZ report notes that their effort to establish “country platforms” and alter the functioning and charters of MDBs is a key component of implementing preplanned recommendations aimed at “seizing the New Bretton Woods moment” and remaking the “global financial governance” system so that it “promote[s] economic stability and sustainable growth.”

As noted in other GFANZ documents and on their website, the goal of the alliance is the transformation of the global financial system, and it is obvious from member statements and alliance documents that the goal of that transformation is to facilitate the investment goals of alliance members beyond what is currently possible by using climate change-related dictates, rather than debt, as the means to that end.

The UN and the “Quiet Revolution”

In light of GFANZ’s membership and members’ ambitions, some may wonder why the United Nations would back such a predatory initiative. Doesn’t the United Nations, after all, chiefly work with national governments as opposed to private-sector interests?

Though that is certainly the prevailing public perception of the UN, the organization has for decades been following a “stakeholder capitalist” model that privileges the private sector and billionaire “philanthropists” over national governments, with the latter merely being tasked with creating “enabling environments” for the policies created by and for the benefit of the former.

Speaking to the World Economic Forum in 1998, Secretary General Kofi Annan made this shift explicit:

The United Nations has been transformed since we last met here in Davos. The Organization has undergone a complete overhaul that I have described as a ‘quiet revolution.” . . . A fundamental shift has occurred. The United Nations once dealt only with governments. By now we know that peace and prosperity cannot be achieved without partnerships involving governments, international organizations, the business community and civil society. . . . The business of the United Nations involves the businesses of the world.

With the UN now essentially a vehicle for the promotion of stakeholder capitalism, it is only fitting that it would “convene” and support the efforts of a group like GFANZ to extend that stakeholder capitalist model to other institutions involved in global governance, specifically global financial governance. Allowing GFANZ members, that is, many of the largest private banks and financial institutions in the world, to fuse with MDBs, remake the “global financial governance system,” and gain increased control over political decisions in the emerging world is a banker’s dream come true. To get this far, all they have needed to do was to convince enough of the world’s population that such shifts are necessary due to the perceived urgency of climate change and the need to rapidly decarbonize the economy. Yet, if put into practice, what will result is hardly a “greener” world but a world dominated by a small financial and technocratic elite who are free to profit and pillage from both “natural capital” and “human capital.”

Today, MDBs are used as “instruments of power” that utilize debt to force developing nations to implement policies that benefit foreign interests rather than their own national interests. If GFANZ gets its way, the MDBs of tomorrow will be used to essentially eliminate national sovereignty, privatize the “natural assets” (e.g., ecosystems, ecological processes) of the developing world, and force increasingly technocratic policies designed by global governance institutions and think tanks on ever more disenfranchised populations.

Though GFANZ has cloaked itself in lofty rhetoric of “saving the planet,” its plans ultimately amount to a corporate-led coup that will make the global financial system even more corrupt and predatory and further reduce the sovereignty of national governments in the developing world.

mintpressnews.com

By Joe LAURIA

President Joe Biden is at the Glasgow climate summit, carrying with him a 30-year U.S. history of presidents and Congress having taken halting measures to combat the growing threat of climate change. As the world’s second largest emitter of climate-change causing greenhouse gases, the U.S. has fallen woefully short.

Starting in 1992, Congress has passed or considered only 13 major pieces of legislation in regard to global warming.

The first step by Congress was in 1992 to ratify the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which committed parties to take action against global warming and prepare the ground for future agreements. In signing the treaty, then U.S. President George H.W. Bush said, “The United States fully intends to be the world’s pre-eminent leader in protecting the global environment.”

But the history since that has been anything but. It started out promisingly enough. That same year, Congress added a renewable energy production tax credit to the 1992 Energy Policy Act, which proved critical in expanding electricity production through wind turbines.

However, five years later the U.S. Senate blocked participation of the U.S. in the 1997 Kyoto agreement with a non-binding resolution saying the U.S. should not enter any agreement unless developing countries were held to the same level of commitment to reduce emissions. The resolution also said the U.S. should stay clear of agreements that “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States…”

It was unrealistic to hold developing countries to the same standards as the big emitters, like the U.S., which have been spewing climate changing gases into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. The U.N. Framework Agreement calls for developed nations to pay the developing world, from which many resources that made industrialism possible were stolen, to allow them to develop in an environmentally sustainable way.

In other words, the countries that became rich off the land of the poor nations, need to pay restitution in the form of allowing industrialization in the global south to proceed in a way that doesn’t depend on fossil fuels. So far the industrialized north has fallen far short of providing the agreed U.N. target of $100 billion annually from 2020 to the south.

W. Blocks Kyoto

Sunlight through clouds and lookout view of Ginkaku-ji (Temple of the Silver Pavilion) and T?gud? from above, Kyoto, Japan. (Basile Morin/Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the 1997 Senate resolution that blocked participation in the Kyoto Protocol, the Bill Clinton administration signed it. But it was never sent to the Senate for ratification. In 2001, President George W. Bush said the U.S. wouldn’t join the protocol. It has never been binding on the U.S.

Between 2003 and 2007 Congress three times tried to pass the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 but failed each time. The Act would have introduced a mandatory cap and trade system for greenhouse gases from the electricity, transportation and manufacturing sectors, making up 85 percent of U.S. emissions.

In 2007, Congress at least established a Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which requires various economic sectors to report annual amounts of carbon dioxide emissions.

With the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, a comprehensive climate and energy bill was sent to Congress by the White House. The House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 by just seven votes, but it was not passed by the Senate. The failed Act would have created a cap-and-trade system of greenhouse gases across the U.S. economy.

Four other major pieces of legislation introduced in Congress in 2009 and 2010, which would have included a cap on emissions, failed to become law.

These bills were defeated for the most part by Republican legislators whose major concern was the effect on profits for the energy sector. A number of Republican lawmakers openly expressed their disbelief that human activity causes climate change.

What the US People Say

People vs. Fossil Fuels protest, White House, Oct. 12, 2021. (Frypie/Wikimedia Commons)

Sixty percent of U.S. people think that oil companies are to blame for global warming and want them to be held to account for lying about it, according to a poll released last week.

The respondents were split between Democrats and Republicans, with 89 percent of the former saying climate change is real, while only 42 percent of Republicans believe it is. Thirty-six percent of Republicans deny climate change, according to the poll conducted by YouGov for The Guardian, Vice News, and Covering Climate Now.

Overall, 70 percent of Americans accept global warming and 60 percent said oil and gas companies were “completely or mostly responsible” for it.

Three times more Democrats than Republicans said oil and gas companies lied about the existence of climate change and their part in creating it. Just under half of Republicans surveyed said oil and gas companies had done nothing wrong. In all, 45 percent of Americans said oil and gas firms lied about causing climate change and should be held to account.

The U.S. population in general is three times more likely to deny climate change than many other countries, such as Britain and Japan. A recent survey of climate scientists showed that 99.9 percent agreed that global warming is caused by human activity.

Congress’s Continually Sputtering Efforts

U.S. Capitol. (Johnny Silvercloud/Flickr)

In 2012, a Clean Energy Standard Act was introduced in Congress but it has never gone to a floor vote.

Four years later, a Climate Solutions Caucus was formed in the House of Representatives to educate House members on “economically-viable options to reduce climate risk and protect our nation’s economy, security, infrastructure, agriculture, water supply and public safety.” It was the first caucus of its kind after 20 years of Congress engaging in climate policy.

After Democrats regained control of the House in 2019, a number of climate initiatives were announced, including a Green New Deal resolution in both houses (which has so not come close to passage) and the formation of a Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in the House, which issued a major report on policy recommendations.

The Senate in 2019 also created its first Climate Solutions Caucus. It took them 29 years from Congress’ first climate action.

And it took until December 2020 for Congress to pass its first major climate package in 13 years. It includes tax credits and directs the Environmental Protection Agency to make phased reductions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) over a 15-year period.

Biden has introduced a bill in Congress this year that would spend $555 billion on ambitious climate change policies, but it is being held up by a single Democratic senator as Biden addresses the Glasgow climate summit.

Empty-Handed in Glasgow

(Pacific Community)

Biden arrived at the global climate summit in Glasgow lacking Congressional approval of his ambitious $555 billion climate bill that could undermine his effectiveness in persuading other world leaders to take serious action to prevent a looming climate catastrophe.

Biden’s plan includes grants, tax cuts and other policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, which Biden has called an “existential threat.”

The money would make it easier for Americans to buy electric cars, build wind turbines, and install solar panels. Key reforms of the electric industry to the tune of $150 billion were stripped out of the bill by Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), a rebel within Biden’s party who has held up numerous legislative initiatives from the White House.

With the Senate evenly split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans every Democratic vote is essential to pass Biden’s legislation. As Aaron White wrote in an article republished in Consortium News on Oct. 24, “Manchin made $500,000 last year from a coal company owned by his son and takes in more fossil fuel cash than any other senator.”

The lack of congressional support for his climate agenda is bound to increase skepticism of other world leaders when Biden tries to convince them in Glasgow to commit to zero net emissions by the year 2050. Scientists say the earth’s temperature cannot rise above 2.0 degrees by then to avoid catastrophe. The Glasgow summit is being portrayed by some climate scientists as humanity’s last hope.

As the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, failure by the U.S. to make binding commitments to reduce those gases in domestic legislation makes it harder for Biden to convince other larger emitters, like China and India, to make similar commitments. Biden has acknowledged that “the prestige of the United States is on the line” in Scotland.

The Glasgow conference is being seen as the most important climate summit since Paris in 2015. Then U.S. President Barack Obama signed the accord committing the U.S. to reductions, but the agreement is not legally binding on signatories, the way domestic U.S. legislation is.

Former President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris accord. Biden, who has focused on climate policy more than any of his predecessors (his legislation is six times greater than Obama’s climate initiative), is seeking to overcome Trump’s policies. He has signed numerous executive orders restoring climate policies that Trump removed through his own executive orders.

But a president is limited in what reforms he can make through such orders and needs Congress to pass massive climate policies, such as the $555 billion bill. With that legislation passed, the U.S. could reduce its emissions by 50 percent over nine years in relation to 2005 levels, according to the White House.

Executive Orders

Biden signing an executive order. (White House Photo)

Since 2009, U.S. presidents have signed executive orders on climate change policy that did not require action by Congress. Obama issued 263 executive orders in his eight years in office, with 35 of them related to climate change. Many of these orders helped the individual 50 states to institute their own climate policies.

When Trump became president in 2017, he quickly reversed Obama’s orders with executive orders of his own. He killed six Obama climate orders in one day within two months of becoming president. “With today’s executive action, I am taking historic steps to lift the restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion and to cancel job-killing regulations,” Trump said that day in March 2017.

Trump had come into office vowing to help the coal and oil and gas industries, which were regulated by the Obama measures, and who heavily lobby Congress. The profit motive of the fossil fuel industry is literally choking the world and making it harder for other big emitters to undertake commitments the U.S. refuses to make.

One of the Obama measures Trump reversed was the 2015 plan to limit carbon emissions from power plants. It had set the goal of reducing its 2005 levels by 32 percent by the year 2030.

Trump also pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Within days of Biden becoming president, Biden rejoined the Paris accord, stopped drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and canceled the Keystone Pipeline. He also overturned Trump’s climate executive orders.

The U.S. Record

Overall, critics have found that the U.S. has had an underwhelming record when it comes to fighting climate change, a country with a special responsibility as the second greatest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index (EPI) lists the U.S. as the 24th greenest country in the world. Denmark, Luxembourg and Switzerland are the top three. China, the world’s largest emitter, is no. 120 on the list.

According to the Climate Action Tracker, produced by Climate Analytics and the New Climate Institute, the United States has an overall climate rating of “insufficient.” It is found to be “critically insufficient” on climate financing. Its information on the 2050 net zero target is rated as “incomplete.” U.S. emissions reductions targets are rated as not making up its fair share globally.

The overall U.S. rating has improved since Biden came to office from “critically insufficient.”

A Flat Historical Trend

A look at U.S. carbon dioxide emissions over the past 30 years shows that from a rise of about 6,100 metric tons a year in 1990, to a peak of more than 7,000 metric tons in 2007, 2019 levels lowered to around 6,100 metric tons.

That means that over 30 years there has been no meaningful change in the amount of climate changing gases that the United States puts into the atmosphere.

It is an unconvincing and dangerous record for the exceptional nation.

consortiumnews.com