Climate and the Money Trail
F. William Engdahl
Climate. Now who wudda thought. The very mega-corporations and mega-billionaires behind the globalization of the world economy over recent decades, whose pursuit of shareholder value and cost reduction who have wreaked so much damage to our environment both in the industrial world and in the under-developed economies of Africa, Asia, Latin America, are the leading backers of the “grassroots” decarbonization movement from Sweden to Germany to the USA and beyond.
Is it pangs of guilty conscience, or could it be a deeper agenda of the financialization of the very air we breathe and more?
Whatever one may believe about the dangers of CO2 and risks of global warming creating a global catastrophe of 1.5 to 2 degree Celsius average temperature rise in the next roughly 12 years, it is worth noting who is promoting the current flood of propaganda and climate activism.
Green Finance
Several years before Al Gore and others decided to use a young Swedish school girl to be the poster child for climate action urgency, or in the USA the call of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a complete reorganization of the economy around a Green New Deal, the giants of finance began devising schemes for steering hundreds of billions of future funds to investments in often worthless “climate” companies.
In 2013 after years of careful preparation, a Swedish real estate company, Vasakronan, issued the first corporate “Green Bond.” They were followed by others including Apple, SNCF and the major French bank Credit Agricole.
In November 2013 Elon Musk’s problem-riddled Tesla Energy issued the first solar asset-backed security. Today according to something called the Climate Bonds Initiative, more than $500 billion in such Green Bonds are outstanding.
The creators of the bond idea state their aim is to win over a major share of the $45 trillion of assets under management globally which have made nominal commitment to invest in “climate friendly” projects.
Bonnie Prince Charles, future UK Monarch, along with the Bank of England and City of London finance have promoted “green financial instruments,” led by Green Bonds, to redirect pension plans and mutual funds towards green projects. A key player in the linking of world financial institutions with the Green Agenda is outgoing Bank of England head Mark Carney.
In December 2015, the Bank for International Settlements’ Financial Stability Board (FSB), chaired then by Carney, created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), to advise “investors, lenders and insurance about climate related risks.” That was certainly a bizarre focus for world central bankers.
In 2016 the TCFD along with the City of London Corporation and the UK Government initiated the Green Finance Initiative, aiming to channel trillions of dollars to “green” investments. The central bankers of the FSB nominated 31 people to form the TCFD.
Chaired by billionaire Michael Bloomberg of the financial wire, it includes key people from JP MorganChase; from BlackRock–one of the world’s biggest asset managers with almost $7 trillion; Barclays Bank; HSBC, the London-Hong Kong bank repeatedly fined for laundering drug and other black funds; Swiss Re, the world’s second largest reinsurance; China’s ICBC bank; Tata Steel, ENI oil, Dow Chemical, mining giant BHP Billington and David Blood of Al Gore’s Generation Investment LLC. In effect it seems the foxes are writing the rules for the new Green Hen House.
Bank of England’s Carney was also a key actor in efforts to make the City of London into the financial center of global Green Finance. The outgoing UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, in July 2019 released a White Paper, “Green Finance Strategy: Transforming Finance for a Greener Future.”
The paper states:
One of the most influential initiatives to emerge is the Financial Stability Board’s private sector Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), supported by Mark Carney and chaired by Michael Bloomberg. This has been endorsed by institutions representing $118 trillion of assets globally.”
There seems to be a plan here. The plan is the financialization of the entire world economy using fear of an end of world scenario to reach arbitrary aims such as “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”
Goldman Sachs Key Actor
The omnipresent Wall Street bank, Goldman Sachs, which spawned among others ECB outgoing President Mario Draghi and Bank of England head Carney, has just unveiled the first global index of top-ranking environmental stocks, done along with the London-based CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project.
The CDP, notably, is financed by investors such as HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, American International Group, and State Street Corp.
The new index, called CDP Environment EW and CDP Eurozone EW, aims to lure investment funds, state pension systems such as the CalPERS (the California Public Employees’ Retirement System) and CalSTRS (the California State Teachers’ Retirement System) with a combined $600+ billion in assets, to invest in their carefully chosen targets.
Top rated companies in the index include Alphabet which owns Google, Microsoft, ING Group, Diageo, Philips, Danone and, conveniently, Goldman Sachs.
Enter Greta, AOC and Co.
At this point events take on a cynical turn as we are confronted with wildly popular, heavily promoted climate activists such as Sweden’s Greta Thunberg or New York’s 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal.
However sincere these activists may be, there is a well-oiled financial machine behind promoting them for gain.
Greta Thunberg is part of a well-connected network tied to the organization of Al Gore who is being cynically and professionally marketed and used by such agencies as the UN, the EU Commission and the financial interests behind the present climate agenda.
As Canadian researcher and climate activist, Cory Morningstar, documents in an excellent series of posts, what is at stake is a well-knit network that is tied to US climate investor and enormously wealthy climate profiteer, Al Gore, chairman of Generation Investment group.
Gore’s partner, ex-Goldman Sachs official David Blood as noted earlier, is a member of the BIS-created TCFD. Greta Thunberg along with her 17-year-old US climate friend, Jamie Margolin, were both listed as “special youth advisor and trustee” of the Swedish We Don’t Have Time NGO, founded by its CEO Ingmar Rentzhog.
Rentzhog is a member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Organization Leaders, and part of the European Climate Policy Task Force. He was trained in March 2017 by Al Gore in Denver, and again in June 2018, in Berlin. Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project is a partner of We Don’t Have Time.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who made a huge splash in her first days in the US Congress for unveiling a “Green New Deal” to completely reorganize the US economy at a cost of perhaps $100 trillion, is also not without skilled guidance. AOC has openly admitted that she ran for Congress at the urging of a group called Justice Democrats.
She told one interviewer:
I wouldn’t be running if it wasn’t for the support of Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress. Umm, in fact it was it was these organizations, it was JD and it was Brand New Congress as well, that both, that asked me to run in the first place. They’re the ones that called me a year and a half ago…”
Now, as Congresswoman, AOC’s advisers include Justice Democrats co-founder, Zack Exley.
Exley was an Open Society Fellow and got funds from among others the Open Society Foundations and Ford Foundation to create a predecessor to Justice Democrats to recruit select candidates for office.
The Real Agenda is Economic
The links between the world’s largest financial groups, central banks and global corporations to the current push for a radical climate strategy to abandon the fossil fuel economy in favor of a vague, unexplained Green economy, it seems, is less about genuine concern to make our planet a clean and healthy environment to live.
Rather it is an agenda, intimately tied to the UN Agenda 2030 for “sustainable” economy, and to developing literally trillions of dollars in new wealth for the global banks and financial giants who constitute the real powers that be.
In February 2019 following a speech to the EU Commission in Brussels by Greta Thunberg, then-EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, after gallantly kissing Greta’s hand, appeared to be moved to real action. He told Greta and the press that the EU should spend hundreds of billions of euros combating climate change during the next 10 years.
Juncker proposed that between 2021 to 2027, “every fourth euro spent within the EU budget go toward action to mitigate climate change.”
What the sly Juncker did not say was that the decision had nothing to do with the young Swedish activist’s plea. It had been made in conjunction with the World Bank a full year before in September 26, 2018 at the One Planet Summit, along with the World Bank, Bloomberg Foundations, the World Economic Forum and others. Juncker had cleverly used the media attention given the young Swede to promote his climate agenda.
On October 17, 2018, days following the EU agreement at the One Planet Summit, Juncker’s EU signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Breakthrough Energy-Europe in which member corporations of Breakthrough Energy-Europe will have preferential access to any funding.
The members of Breakthrough Energy include Virgin Air’s Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Alibaba’s Jack Ma, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, HRH Prince Al-waleed bin Talal, Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio; Julian Robertson of hedge fund giant, Tiger Management; David Rubenstein, founder Carlyle Group; George Soros, Chairman Soros Fund Management LLC; Masayoshi Son, founder Softbank, Japan.
Make no mistake. When the most influential multinational corporations, the world’s largest institutional investors including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, the UN, the World Bank, the Bank of England and other central banks of the BIS line up behind the financing of a so-called green Agenda, call it Green New Deal or what, it is time to look behind the surface of public climate activist campaigns to the actual agenda.
The picture that emerges is the attempted financial reorganization of the world economy using climate, something the sun and its energy have orders of magnitude more to do with than mankind ever could—to try to convince us ordinary folk to make untold sacrifice to “save our planet.”
Back in 2010 the head of Working Group 3 of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Otmar Edenhofer, told an interviewer:
…one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”
Since then the economic policy strategy has become far more developed.
Originally published at Global Research
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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No comment, just posting one side of the rhetoric:
Most of these Global Warming fanatics are just batshit crazy.
And the lunatics are taking over the asylum.
Not often I find anything to disagree with Jonathan Cook about – but I think he has taken the Greta koolaid. 1. There are man made environmental destructions. No argument there. Dodo’s, Giant turtles, carrier pigeons, big ‘game’, Cod, Whales, Tuna, Sharks … Bees, insects …air pollution, urban planning disasters, Flu viruses … smoking, drinking, cocaine, vaping…Nuclear waste, toxic waste, poisoned water… Etc etc Almost all of it can be laid at the doorstep of the Anglo Imperialists who came out of Europe over the last 500 years – can we deny that? 2. That Empire is threatened and needs a new rallying point to maintain and expand any further – so the rich can get richer and fuck the poor. The whole of full spectrum narrative manufacturing machinery has been set rolling on this their next 50-100 year project. Cory Morningstars work and revelations may be bunkum – but… Read more »
DoneGroaning: “Friday 11 October, 2019”
Must mark the date on my calendar. Oops! it was yesterday:
The Nobel Peace Prize 2019 was awarded to Abiy Ahmed Ali “for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.”
Who??
Never heard of him till he ‘won’
May be a well deserved one. For a change. Hope Greta ain’t too upset and continues sailing.
Looks as if the committee got my message🤤
Dungronin, never heard of him either. The only reason I looked up the latest No Peace Prize was to check your prediction. As for Eritrea, the AZC are stirring up a war there to match their war in Yemen: two sides of the same strategic “choke point” (the Bab-el-Mandel Straits) for control of world shipping.
“That is all you know, and all you need to know” — Keats.
Any day now, one of those awfully concerned “green” NGOs will issue a report stating that, after vast intensive scientific investigation, it has been conclusively proved that global warming’s true cause lies in public services, “bloated” wages given to workers, too high taxes on the rich, all socialist parties everywhere, books by Marx and Engels, insufficient patriotism, lack of respect for tradition and Godlessness. The only cure will be the reinstatement of Dickensian working conditions, elimination of education beyond Bible studies and a Malthusian reduction of the population to take us back to those good old pastoral days.
we are ALL under attack
from a duplicitous government and an undemocratic elite
try asking your MP about EU Military Union
ben wallace the blue peter minister of defence implies he hasn’t got a clue – about anything …. tralala
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-4th-october-2019
Worth book marking this vid of Thunberg and Attenburgh lending their ‘brands’ to the WEF campaign.
[Cory M asks why is this not on Greta’s Twitter feed ? – How many skoolstrikers and XR peeps have seen this? ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=178&v=CMOEcUPGi9c
It is truly bizarre how in your face this all is, and how people who have written- literally for decades, about corporatisation of environmental movements are able to ignore the brazen sell out taking place right now.
[From Medialens article :] ‘People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! […] How dare you pretend that this can be solved with business-as-usual and some technical solutions.’ Consider the above linked vid and the extract from Greta’s recent speech at the UN here. Consider the ridiculous statement by Jonathan Cook in his article defending the Greta : ‘Thunberg is not Wonder Girl. She will have to navigate through these treacherous waters as best she can, deciding who genuinely wants to help, who is trying to sabotage her cause, and which partners she can afford to ally with. She and similar movements will make mistakes. That is how social protests always work. It is also how they evolve.’ How can she… Read more »
Excellent point all. I hadn’t seen your comment before posting my own above!
I can’t express how disappointed and disgusted I was upon discovering Cook’s article on Consortium News. I was a big supporter of Jonathan Cook before this. I found him to be solid. I was happy to see that a few other commenters (but a minority) were not bedazzled by Cook’s status as a solid progressive (until this) and had some critical remarks. One commenter was Daniel Lazare. I don’t know whether that was the author and frequent contributor to CN who goes by that name, but I responded to his remark (which I was happy to see included a favorable mention of Cory Morningstar’s research) with a simple “Thank you!” and it, along with the other comments I attached to Cook’s article, never appeared. Is CN going establishment? There’s no end to the betrayal. Progressives who pay attention know about many of the traitors. Gilbert Achcar, a fascist who masquerades… Read more »
Jumping jellybeans Arby! – we’ve been reading the same things. I knew Achcar was an imperialist gatekeeper years ago – that whole Jacobin/DSA/now defunct ISO crowd are: ‘wolves in socialists clothing’. You can add our frequent troll Louis Proyect to that list. There’s a socialist group here in Australia called Socialist Alternative who are closely linked to the Jacobin – DSA crowd. Complete pseudo fake left. Won’t go near them with a 100 foot barge pole. Yeah, read that peice by Ben Norton at The Grayzone = excellent = one of my go too trustworthy sites. Was quite dumbfounded by Jonathan Cook also. I didn’t even finish his article on Greta Thunberg etc, just went WTF? And exited it. Any ‘socialist’ or ‘progressive’ that promotes R2P is absolutely neither in my opinion.
Sadly, Jonathan Cook is now one of those sell-outs, too: https://consortiumnews.com/2019/10/01/greta-thunberg-the-consolation-of-doubt/
I had some respect for the guy back in the day when he was one of the few who wasn’t afraid to call out the fake-news Guardian. But I guess he just couldn’t resist the charms of Davos Girl.
All this is pure astro turfing by Soros, mega billionaires, Wall Street, The City, and global corporate interests, to promote the quack pseudo religious cult of Global Warming in their own interests. There is a lot of money to be made out of these mega boondoggles. Al Gore trousered a cool $500 million out of the short lived Chicago Climate Exchange. But that is mere chicken feed. 40% of the $21 trillion US economy consists of Wall Street Wide Boys peddling pieces of derivatives toilet paper and pretending they are worth billions. They are salivating over the prospect of trillions more from peddling Global Warming Hot Air Certificates, like Tetzel and his medieval Papal Indulgencies. Soon everybody will need the endorsement of Little Greta and her well heeled backers and wire pullers, and this will be available (at a price) for anyone who wishes to avoid the wrath of the… Read more »
Sums it up nicely.
Follow the money trail and the puppet strings…. Correct again Mark, and many are falling for the Pied Piper routine. Unquestioning. As usual. But hey, think of all the Trillions to be made by those already obscenely wealthy elites. $$$. Nothing much changes, aye.
Mark, you mean 48 minutes?
They got nowhere with Omran Daqneesh (dirt covered cutie sitting on a bus or something). His father stepped in and put his foot down. Malala Yousafzai’s parents were too uneducated (despite the father’s having been a teacher) to understand the fakery around everyone’s rushing to attach themselves to Malala. I don’t know what she’s doing today, but I do know that she got off to a terrible start. Bana al-Abed, as Eva Bartlett and Barbara McKenzie report, was used. How she is faring today I don’t know. It’s frightening, but nothing new, the way people use children, whether they are in developed or undeveloped countries and whether or not their parents are educated. Derrick O’Keefe, who helped Malalai Joya write her (good) book, wrote an article comparing the West’s treatment of Malala Yousafzai and Tamimi Ahed that does a lot to show how those unprincipled exploiters operate.
Thanks for that. I couldn’t remember that bint’s name. I knew it was M something, Malaria or something.
I know nothing of climate change. The questions I would like answering are:
“Is this going to stop farmers poisoning our land?”
“Will it save all/any threatened species?”
“When are they going to actually ban Deisel motors?” (I note a new British designed/built 4×4 has been announced, I assume it’s deisel. It’s called the “Grenadier”…..(bangs head on table)
I don’t care about Greta’s lack of carbon footprint on her journey to New York. I want the same coverage of the fact that a crew of 5 had to fly there to bring the boat back.
Finally!!!!! The Democrats have come come up with a solution and…..possibly a new slogan.
https://youtu.be/QHq82F8n6jw
What else is left for the plutocrats and the oligarchs.
Lets commodify the environment. One can always smell a rat when the msm get on board. Further more a damn insult to any erudite individual. Until we as individual do not instigate a paradigm shift what is the point in having mass demonstrations and using children to promote ur next ponzi scheme.
Mass consumption and the corporatization of all aspects of our lives and the fact that using such emotive arguments with regards to environmental degradation of our society is only giving the elites more fuel in pursuing their agenda of the next phase of their fascistic reality(Technocracy).
Post Scriptum: Wake up
Docius in Fundem : Don’t buy into their propaganda and consume less and don’t support the BORG
What is really unfortunate about this article, is the spin is so damn obvious to debunk the climate emergency that is real. Of ____ing course the banks and every other capitalist pig will do their best to capitalize on the situation. Unfortunately (and of course you will see it on this thread) the troglodyte deniers that there is any problem whatsoever, or that it is just solar cycles and other such nonsense will jump on this article and say see? See? Al Gore Al Gore Al Gore!!!!!!
You’re missing the point. Even if global warming itself is for real, if the proposed ‘solution’ to it is fake, then what good will it do? It’s just as good as doing nothing anyway, don’t you see?
How will giving trillions to Soros and Goldman Sachs “save the planet?”
And unlimited power to the Green Taliban to regulate every aspect of our lives?
It is now impossible for this country to have a steel industry because of the extortionate cost of “green” energy boondoggles.
In terms of simply putting my cards on the table I’ll say that I have grave concerns about human impacts on not only climate, but on our collective devastation of eco-systems globally, and our continuous poisoning of air, land and water, and our own bodies. All of these issues seem of rather clear and pressing importance as human populations grow and our endless growth capitalist madness continues. This said, to credulously believe that the uber-capitalist class that has been profiting decade after decade through the organized destruction of earth’s very habitability, has suddenly been brought to heel by a 16 year old girl is – well – unimaginable from my vantage point. These are the same array of global forces who didn’t bat any eye while a half-a-million Iraqi children died under their sanctions, but now they feel shame? Just as I don’t doubt the sincerity of Greta, or the… Read more »
I agree with Gary, this not a simple choice between right and wrong but a hard choice between two rights (or two wrongs). Firstly, it is right to fight against the wanton destruction of the natural environment by “Capitalism red in tooth and claw.” Secondly, anything written by Engdahl must be taken very seriously; if Engdahl says a Conspiracy of Capitalists are paying a Bana-girl to cry, “Save the Planet”, that is probably right as well.
I think Zionist strategy in British-occupied Palestine is a good guide in this situation: “We shall fight for the Environment as though there were no Capitalists promoting it; and we shall fight the Capitalists as though they were not promoting the Environment”.
“…Juncker had cleverly used the media attention given the young Swede to promote his climate agenda.”[ above],a practice made famous by Saul Alinski![ RIP]
Ben, never heard of him but here is a quote from WikiPedia:
“Lest we forget where mythology leaves off and history begins (or which is which), the first radical who rebelled against the establishment and won his own kingdom: Lucifer.”
Of all those listed as advisors on climate issues, only Swiss Re has any business being there. Swiss Re is a huge reinsurer against weather disasters and has many decades of detailed data on natural events which cause insurance claims to be made. They will have developed sophisticated financial models to ensure that their indurance premiums are correctly adjusted to adverse event frequency and ferocity. So they probably have some basis for saying they know what they are talking about.
All the rest of them are merely muscling in on the latest way to rig markets…
Yup, they will not give up the scam, first, whom invented the Co2 scam, find that out where it all began, and then you will know, in Britain, Thatchers regime about Nuke ind. and to get rid of competition of the cheeper coal, they invented CO2, or particles, etc, clouding our sun, before the IPCC desided the sun dont have jack shit to do with earths temp at all, and you idiots stil belive the AGW nonsense, polution, etc to agricultural monocultures, the shit list is long but non of this have anything to do with AGW, they are just more thrown into the same bucket as AGW to have, eh… something to say, about eh…. the envirioment, and biodiversitys, when in Western Norway, Smøla an windmill park have since it started chopped down over 100 White taled eagles, an 747 siced bird, something they dont want to talk about… Read more »
Extinction Rebellion are not just the latest con/mind control, they’ve also been conjured up because the global economy is about to crash again. The criminals/psychopaths who rule us know that the pitchforks will really be out this time. Solution: the Greta nonsense; or if that doesn’t work, World War Three.
The biggest problem here, as I see it, is getting a majority of people to understand that the world is controlled by complete psychopaths.
Frankly, I think it’s more complex than some convoluted conspiracy of big capital, if that’s possible. I think especially young people, are looking aghast at what we’ve done with their inheritance and this makes them vulnerable. After all, apparently some 7.5 million demoed on Friday around planet. True, most of them in the so-called developed world. The questions to ask I think is whether the people/institutions behind XR consciously exploited the fears of the young simply to make money or was it more Machiavellian, a conscious decision to divert the fears away from challenging capitalism. After all the capitalist classes of the Anglo-American empire think nothing of engineering the complete extermination of entire cultures, Libya especially comes to mind because it was the richest nation in Africa deliberately turned into a slave auction. I am not surprised by even the most outlandish actions of the pirates. They are capable of… Read more »
Barovsky, I’ll beg to differ in some respects.
The younger generations are born into a world that they think is totally normal. This is totally natural, because they have no direct experience ocf the world before they existed.
People like you and me (and I’m assuming that you’re a ‘getting-on-for-old bar steward’ like me) understand the post-war consensus, and how, for a brief time, the plebs were given half a chance.
All gone, all destroyed, by Thatcher and Reagan and all the psychos who followed them.
The only thing left now is revolution; and it’s started to happen in France.
“They follow the news, such as it is, on FB or Twitter, even XR.” I don’t know what XR is. Anyway, I would agree with someone who praised parents for feeding their kinds ‘highly nutritious’ Twinkies and to give as examples of news deep State entitites like Facebook and Twitter is alarming.
edit: As usual, I meant “wouldn’t,” not “would.”
Sorry, XR = Extinction/Rebellion. As to the rest, I fail to comprehend. Twinkies? Okay, it depends how they interact with either FB or Twit, as to whether they get news or fake news. Off Guardian, Grayzone, all the independent news are available on both platforms. True, they’re censoring some indie, or at least ‘anti-American et al, stuff, but if I go through my selection on my Twitter feed, virtually all the info sources I get via email or RSS, are in the Twitter feed, if I so choose. I don’t know if OG editors go through their stats to get a sense of who is reading here, but I use WordPress (though not self-hosted) like OG does, so I know what of stats they have access to, at the minimum and I bet that just like my user list (about 400 signed recieve posts), I hazard a guess that very… Read more »
I knew that! It was the context (apple, pear, brick sort of thing). Ext Reb isn’t a social network!
“…I fail to comprehend.” Okay.
Exactly. And notice how, unlike with Greta the Davos Girl, the media almost completely ignore the gilets jaunes in France! It appears that some revolutions are just more telegenic than others.
Exactly!
Younger folks demonstrate easily. They are easily emotionally aroused but are usually less than fully informed. When I was at college 30 years ago, 21 year olds were demonstrating on leftie issues before applying for jobs with big corporate employers.
It will be same now.
Some things never change.
I read your comments with interest.Rewards are changing!
The majority of people are far too ignorant to understand that Democrat & Republican bankers control Congress, and that Congress writes the plans for the psychopaths so that the psychopaths can distract us all from reading the plans that Congress signed into law when we were all too busy infighting on Internet to even notice.
The Bible warns all to beware of tricksters smiling like a friend yet William Jefferson ‘I did not have sex with that woman Monica Lewinski’ Clinton was smiling profusely when he signed the legislation to repeal the Great Depression era led Glass-Steagall Act in front of global televised viewership during his tenure in the Whore House of ill repute.
Not that I am a Bible thumper but the majority in power only do the bidding of banks. And banks collect psychopaths by the dozen daily everywhere in the Western world.
MOU
If I’d have been in doubt about supporting the sentiments of this article, seeing a renowned Israeli war crimes apologist take issue with it helpfully confirms which side of the line I should be on. The long and short of my thoughts on the issue would be – why is this the one item on the agenda which isn’t being manipulated? The entire news media knowingly tells fundamental lies all day, every day, but this is the one time I have to believe it or else apocalypse? Why is the solution always to deny a reasonable standard of living to normal people worldwide not the dismantling of the capitalist system which is causing the destruction? Lets say for a second that world leaders and the global media aren’t a set of self congratulatory, lying psychopaths and that everything we hear about climate change and global warming is true. If all… Read more »
Hmmm…. perhaps it’s more a case of us giving up what we’ve stolen (are stealing) and sharing it with the millions we’ve exploited for centuries, coupled to a radical transformation of our economies. The rich world still consumes the vast majority of the planet’s resources.
Check out the term ‘voluntary simplicity’. http://simplicitycollective.com/start-here/what-is-voluntary-simplicity-2
You just gave me an idea. How about people rotation? There is student exchange, house swapping and with it the wife, too. So why not swap entire countries? In order to get the required experience, hamlets would be first. A hamlet in Burkina Faso changes with a hamlet in Leeds for a year. Then a place like Timbuktu with Austin, Texas. And so forth. All by boat of course. I am sure it would be a win win situation – if not for different reasons than one would presume.
Like the folks from Timbuktu screaming “Get me the … out of here!” Or the people from Austin asking “Could I stay a little longer?”
As always just a thought – this time inspired by you. Thank you for that.
“All those people in Africa and Asia etc who are on the cusp of obtaining a reasonable standard of living via the capitalist system” – eh?
Northern, you only have to look at how the presstitutes and the Establishment handle any given issue/story to get a good idea of what’s really going on.
Extinction Rebellion are obviously totally manufactured rollocks, but sadly many useful idiots have been sucked into it.
Extinction Rebellion never address real issues; and perhaps the most pertinent of them is that capitalism is the complete opposite of environmentalism; ie, unless we completely change our free market way of doing things the world we live in will be completely trashed in not so many years time.
I won’t even mention Fukushima (and neither do Extinction Rebellion).
Environmentalism can be approached using capitalism, you know.
It is just that lefties used it as a bandwagon focus.
“Environmentalism can be approached using capitalism, you know.”
No, I don’t know. Explain how to me. No problems with a multi-part post if one succinct post isn’t enough.
One simple question:
If armageddon can be achieved in 12 years, how on earth did we survive the last 15,000 years?
The answer: Armageddon will not occur in 12 years, as natural self-balancing systems have multiple back up systems to prevent runaway change.
Runaway change does happen every time we get an Ice Age, of course.
I have twice now heard MSM commentators suggesting that democracy will prove unequal to the task of combating climate change. I forget who said this first it might have been someone on Channel 4. The second was Greg Dyke on Sky. Rightly or wrongly I view man-made global warming as a con trick and so question the purpose of such a hoax which is probably the greatest ever perpetrated.
Articles like this attempt to shed light but I suspect the truth is yet more fundamental: In essence the dismantling of democratic systems worldwide.
That is exactly what is being driven day in day out!
My first response to the global warming ‘movement’ was to recognise the signature of a scam and leave it. It persists through the last 30 years or so despite persistent failures of its computer modelled forecasts. But post truth politic has no concern for facts – because it can always generate alternative facts (sic). The top down dictate is obvious (to me) excepting its targeting of sympathies cultivated and nurtured as the Environmental movement which had and has legitimacy in calling toxic corporate plunder to account – as well as in uncovering better ways to live with nature instead of enslaving, exploiting and laying waste – which of course extends to people as well as to the biosphere or environmental context of our life. The corporate capture of governments and all institutions of influence isn’t corporations as such, but the opportunity of technologism and great wealth to effectively reconfigure regulatory… Read more »
They often do take advantage of our noblest ideals in order to drum up support for evil acts. How many times, for example, have they told us that we’re about to bomb/starve some poor, defenseless little country for the sake of ‘human rights’ or ‘democracy’. See how it works?
Yes – it is often seen that people present the opposite of their deeper fears or convictions – which may or may not be allowed into conscious thought. Illusions can be needed to offset an otherwise overwhelming loss of self. The survival urge may be base and blind binary – but it is also a deep support through great struggle in adversity towards coming through with a basis for survival. The ‘mind’ of survival subjugates all else to its ‘goal’ – which is set in the eradication or undermining of assigned adverse or rival threat. Any means that serves is given support and if more birds can be killed with one stone then the development of great cunning becomes the way of nested levels or layers of deceit. It all comes naturally to an unnatural fixation in scarcity fear, competition and control – and generates scarcity by its attempt to… Read more »
Given that the Central Bank Fractional Reserve Banking System in the Western Banking empire is insolvent, bankrupt, and down for the count, it seems reasonable that the Central Banks & bankers consolidate with Climate Change Green Bonds lest they end up in receivership to be liquidated. Everyone involved in Financial Intelligence has know for over a decade that time is quickly running out on the Western Banking System reset. The Green Bond Ponzi Scheme is a global attempt to attain ‘economies of scale’ off of the investment. Without ‘economies of scale’ the ever incompetent central bankers cannot reap outsized monetary gains and grow their portfolios exponentially in order to place world growth on the same growth trajectory as they has with Residential Real Estate Mortgage Backed Securities. And without more Asset Backed Securities in the Residential MBS sector & Commercial MBS sector there is no more betting space in the… Read more »
Engdahl is not a climate change skeptic. He is a climate change denialist just like Donald Trump.
https://www.sott.net/article/398476-The-Dark-Story-Behind-Man-Made-Global-Warming-Those-Who-Created-It-And-Why
Lou, that may well be so but it doesn’t make his observations any the less relevant. It’s like I said, two issues are conflated here and neither excludes the,other. and the reason is obvious: the fundamental issue is capitalism, climate change is one of the symptoms of capitalism’s insatiable appetite to consume, to destroy. what do they call it? Creative destruction.
What Engdahl believes is irrelevant. The only question is – are his facts accurate?
Can you rebut them?
Ultimately, it does not affect his argument, or should not.
However, OffGuardian MUST be aware that the disputes about the Greta PR drive and XR have been neatly shoved into a false dichotomy of (1) associating all critiques of them woth climate scepticism/ denial vs. (2) all conviction about authentic climate science corralled into uncritical support for these movements.
It is therefore a shame to those of us (including, I presume, Cory Morningstar) that critical articles such as this one by a someone with a thin grasp on environmental science gets boosted, and the chance to challenge that false dichotomy is missed.
That’s the way the cookie crumbles in ‘identity’ politics. Just how much we do this of ourselves and how much is nudged or engineered by cunning stunts is open to debate. Environmentalism is in many respects operating as a pseudo religion and I don’t say that as a smear or blame because a sense of significance and meaning in life is crucial to all that proceeds from it. But it is fundamentally locked into materialism in which symbols for Life are sacrificed to or given specialness beyond their ecological fit i the whole. I grew up in a sense of a ‘green future’ but mine was convivial and consensual – and I increasing noted how anything that ‘mainstreams’ becomes the very thing it was initially set against. I now see a seedbed of cultivating environmental guilt by design – as a component that is joined to apocalyptic fear – to… Read more »
“Denier” is always used when the religious is disputed.
Its simply a cunning stunt by which to seem righteous while doing the very thing you accuse. Not so stunning once you see through it… I am not ‘religious’ in any sense of organised affiliation, but I am aware that ‘religious’ here is being used as a pejorative term. It’s a put down mate! So regardless what you choose to do or say – I feel to qualify the accusation of ‘denier’ as a pseudo religious pretension. But I note that to carry this off, you have to feel empowered and supported – and I feel this is what psuedo-religion does – the devil’s pact of a sense of power for a special self set over others. While corruptions of religious impulse can suffer the sometimes subtle narcissism of self-specialness – I don’t feel the impulse itself is wrong. Love of truth is not specific to science – which is… Read more »
A fear is being spread.A fear that we’re being marched into a frightfully drab socialist sameness,of…well,drabness,is an attempt to sell an overheated,under-thought notion. Who doesn’t like color and divertissement,and I cannot see this disappearing!
Then try Corey Morningstar instead: http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/
She’s a real, dues-paying environmentalist, not a “denialist”.
Agreed. I read it all. Unfortunately, I think it could have been better presented. She needs to find a good website and stick with it. And she needs to present things simply. Subjects she delves into are complicated enough already. (I will never grasp money stuff. The broad strokes I can handle. I have the same problem with James Corbett’s offerings. He’s great. But when he talks, in detail, about money matters, I sort of have to take his word for things. I wish I was better educated.) Wrong Kind Of Green and her own website are chaotic and offputting. Content-wise, Morningstar’s extensive research simply ends the debate.
Rumor has it that Trump put restraining walls around his low-lying golf courses several years ago! [ seven?].So it seems that his denial is for public consumption only!
Louis – thank you for the link. I bough the book as a result of that free chapter (in your link) – and a very informative read it is too. As for Trump’s utility for smearing ‘populism’ – note that Extinction Rebellion is not assigned the term – its a much overused tactic – and denying is something you clearly know about because you do it under the guise of a communication. Consensus denial is a powerful lever to those who wield it – but all actions have consequences. Sometimes I chance things in MSM that are almost revealing truths that cannot be publicly said – but in a frame of plausible deniability. Most fake news is recognisable a legal document and an advert in one. Selling its payload under a plausible legal deniability. Engdahl documents recorded facts. He does not – in his book – go into whether or… Read more »
Talk about putting the cat amongst the pigeons! On the one hand, Engdahl is known as a climate change skeptic but on the other, he (along with others) has correctly identified the ‘green capitalist’ credentials of Extinction/Rebellion (XR) et al. Is it a question of making hay whilst the sun continues to shine? I note also, as a slight aside, that in this essay, Engdahl has modified his views somewhat, in that he no longer says that there’s no such thing as climate change: “Whatever one may believe about the dangers of CO2 and risks of global warming creating a global catastrophe of 1.5 to 2 degree Celsius average temperature rise in the next roughly 12 years, it is worth noting who is promoting the current flood of propaganda and climate activism.” It’s a real dilemma, for us lefties anyway, for on the one hand, it’s obvious that big capital… Read more »
They are collectively in a state of panic. They went past ‘desperation’ when the New York Federal Reserve increased their balance sheet to a point of no return.
Good post.
MOU
Thank you for that link, it sounds very interesting. A while ago I read Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by David Montgomery. Its central thesis should be obvious from the title: treat your soil recklessly, and your civilization shall be short lived. The book looks at civilizations over the course of the last three millennia or so and is able to show strong correlations between declines in soil fertility and the onset of collapse. It should be obvious, but bears repeating because it is so overlooked in the mass media and in politics. I’m unsure how aware XR and Thunberg are of this sort of thing. A choice quote from the book: Across the planet, moderate to extreme soil erosion has degraded 1.2 billion hectares of agricultural land since 1945–an area the size of China and India combined. One estimate places the amount of agricultural land used and abandoned in… Read more »
Precisely! And what goes for the soil, goes for everything else that capitalism consumes! It’s take, take, take, everything until there’s nothing left.
Toby; Barovsky: I’m as intrigued as everyone to see what XR go public with next week (from the 7th). Following on from another species extinction report published tomorrow on ‘Extinction Britain’. I do know that many I’ve met privately know capitalism is the problem. And Hallam was right: capitalism is collapsing into the financial derivatives blackhole – starting in the repo markets two weeks ago. Coming out with the public demand to end capitalism is probably not smart in a major institutionalised capitalist country right now. Consultation has been centred around ‘Deep Adaptation’ – which includes appropriate finance; appropriate technology; climate justice; energy justice; and agricultural (food and biodiversity) justice. Tomorrows report will showthat it is agriculture – ahead of climate change – that is responsible for species extinction. Our favourite animal – the hedgehog – down 95%! I used to see them every night. I have only seen 1… Read more »
So when pray?
I’ve already indicated: 40 years ago …if it were up to me. But it is not up to me. Very broadly: there are two types of people. The minoritarian – who know that there can be no infinite growth in a finite system – probably before they ever read it as a statement. And the majoritarian – who take alternative facts and construct narrative parallel realisms – that have no index or truth-value in the real world system. Such constructing of parallel idealistic and ideological realisms is purely political. Which will always stand counterfactually opposed to reality. So there will never be a right time. Those who know, already know. Those who think they know – who are ‘in charge’ by dint on numbers – will have to come to their own conclusions. Facts do not matter: and never will. Narrative matters. The deep structure of the narrative is what… Read more »
Whew!
Apologies, Barovsky. I didn’t see your comments here before making my own.
You are right on the money with what you say.
No problemo RobG and thanks. I might add that I was involved so-to-speak with XR from last October via conversations and exchanges of ideas. Like many, I had high hopes until I started digging.
People are deceived easily, because they can easily be deceived.
Because they are already running under self-deceit. Hence they can say ‘people are deceived easily’ – as if talking about someone else!
No offence of blame intended – but I see deceit as part of the nature of the mind by which we think we think alone.
I would love to respond to that, but it would certainly end up being too voluminous. There are however a few voices that help in the detection and transcending of such deception. Krishnamurti is one of these voices. A thorough study of his works will open up a path to understand why a lot of people can be easily deceived and some not so much. My remark was pertaining those who are easily deceived and thus invite to be deceived.
That most of them never looked for, or found an answer to the question “What am I?” and “Who am I?” is part of this equation. Having found the answers to these questions will also shed light on the truth, that everything being one, is not necessarily the view of a large part of mankind.
The opening of the capacity to watch our own thought and its emotional result is the awakening from its tyranny.
Indeed and well met.
I found most interesting the sessions with Krishnamurti, where he introduced the topic of ‘thinking together’ and how difficult it was/is to grasp what he was talking about.
Truth is understood from with truth. David Bohm and Krishnamurti collaborated in this work. Bohm (Wholeness and the Implicate Order) understood that all the kings horses and all the kings men can never put Humpty together again. Real relationship is of course not what we have learned and been trained to engage in – and its substitute is a protected separation that needs maintain the separation – not least in the attempt to regain unity or regain freedom or resolve The Problem, or eradicate the Evil. We do experience synchrony or ‘one-mindedness’ as thoughtless – but not thought rejecting – alignment in unified purpose. That the ‘mind’ interjects immediately after to restate what happened in its own terms is our willingness to listen there! Unified purpose – rises whole from a transparency to being. This comes naturally in our joy. Private or unshared agenda always contains a dissonant element because… Read more »
corrected typo: Truth is understood from withIN truth. Anything else is ‘about’ – as a mind of structure in comparisons. That is a set or cast of mind in image and concept. Defining truth is the imagination of stepping out of being in order to contain or frame the ‘open flow or movement within being’. No one therefore has any proprietary patents of truth – but on behalf of all, everyone has full rights to being themself. Aligning true is not sacrifice of anything but illusions – which we may resist if we are attached and invested in them – and so when I hear a call to sacrifice I hear the worship of false idols by which to forfend disaster or gain favour. It isn’t the Call to joy – but the call to war. I reversed the usual sense of power there in giving war a little ‘c’… Read more »
I am just now listening to Alan Watts. The key to understand Life is the ‘I’ and the key to understand the ‘I’ is Life. The Ego however tends to interfere into the process due to the fear of dissolution. Even though dissolution is becoming part of something else, something larger than the Ego. It is symptomatic and telling that in all this climate hysteria one aspect is always missing: the bigger picture. The fact that humanity will come and go. But as the individual has troubles with dying at young age and can’t have death come soon enough at old age, humanity follows the same logic. With young age, it is frightened of an existence cut short. At the end of its time it will welcome the end of its cycle. Humanity is a teenager. It is clear that it does not want to let go and hang on,… Read more »
Alan Watts was the first to articulate for me what I until then had no structure of thought – or cultural preparedness – to begin to integrate. Relational intimacy came first – as the context of a critical awareness of ‘its inhibition or ‘interference’. True feeling is of an intimate recognition while emotional states are mental substitutions. That is – the feeling awareness is our native being – but emotional reactivity is a masking substitution. I feel the opportunity for humanity is the revealing and undoing of deceit – which is NOT dependent on anything but self-honesty of transparency to our being – in place of the defence complex that demands payment in death and taxes (death in life, as burden of sacrifice under a fundamental misidentification). However, fear of death (impermanence or change) presenting in act as fear of life, works our fundamental self-illusion. Trying to heal or fix… Read more »
The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change is not a scientific body: it is a political organisation. Its reports are not disinterested science, but political instructions to “policy makers”, presented as though they were science. Whenever science is mixed up with politics, the result is pseudoscience. Climate Change alarmism is pseudoscience on steroids.
“There is no time!!” creates great opportunities to win and lose money because of the hurry. While the European(!) EASAC scientists warned in Feb. 2019 that burning biomass instead of coal in power plants is resulting in more CO2, a nation like the Netherlands is today still wasting 11 billion Euro in subsidies on this hare brained scheme: https://easac.eu/fileadmin/PDF_s/reports_statements/Negative_Carbon/EASAC_Commentary_Forest_Bioenergy_Feb_2019_FINAL.pdf
A few others were at the receiving end.
Greta, who is extremely intelligent and perceptive, in her own words: Greta Thunberg 2 February · Recently I’ve seen many rumors circulating about me and enormous amounts of hate. This is no surprise to me. I know that since most people are not aware of the full meaning of the climate crisis (which is understandable since it has never been treated as a crisis) a school strike for the climate would seem very strange to people in general. So let me make some things clear about my school strike. In may 2018 I was one of the winners in a writing competition about the environment held by Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish newspaper. I got my article published and some people contacted me, among others was Bo Thorén from Fossil Free Dalsland. He had some kind of group with people, especially youth, who wanted to do something about the climate crisis.… Read more »
Do you believe a messenger teenager can get to address COP24, Davos, the European parliament, US Congress and the UN single handed? I have a bridge to sell you.
She got to address these by invitation, not by some obscure conspiracy.
And how many 15-or-16 year-olds get invited to address Davos or the UN? Not too many. That’s another clue that the Greta Phenom is hardly a ‘grass roots’ affair.
Suppose a group of manipulated mouthy brats decided to play wag from school and make a nuisance of themselves to demand an immediate end to immigration or an immediate Brexit. It would be straight down the headmaster’s study for six of the best.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/interview_greta-thunberg—i-am-not-manipulated-/45144174
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/9/26/20882958/greta-thunberg-climate-change-trump-attacks-right-wing
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a29236192/greta-thunberg-criticism/
Politics is a blood sport, Greta. You placed yourself in the red meat category for Journalists worldwide. If you confront worldwide media as red hamburger meat you will be raked over the coals on the political Barbeque until you are well done, or burned.
Always remember that when it comes to global media they are like McDonalds and advertise how many burgers they have sold.
You are merely yet one more nothingburger that got burned over the coals of journalism worldwide. In brief, suck it up, Buttercup.
P.S. Adults have been attempting to educate youth for millennia, my dear. Children are not adults, Greta. When you become an adult you will realize that children are not legislators, or government bureaucrats with tenured jobs.
Smoke more marijuana, Greta, but don’t bogart that joint.
MOU
Why do the oil companies fund both global warming scientists and scientists who say it’s overblown?
They hedge their bets: flip the coin and tail they win, head they win.
They do the same with Democrats and Republicans, Tory and Labour etc.
And banksters fund both sides of wars.
Banksters fund both sides so that they hedge their bets on getting shot, hung, or suicided by one side or the other. Banksters think financial returns instead of winning wars. Banksters make the wars to distract populations when they want to rob banks.
MOU
Oil companies know enough to hire ‘left’ & ‘right’ wing so-called ‘scientists’. It’s how you win NOT how you play the game, Hope.
MOU
To set, frame and direct the narrative. The expansion of networks of influence that extended from Rockefeller et al effectively run the world – beneath appearances of life on the surface. Oil/energy is a primary choke point – along with money supply. Choking back on population as well as industrialisation. Be aware that insider deals enable the selling out of one’s apparent allegiances. Energy control worldwide is part of the goal.
So, all the above is “Bad?”
Only if the threat of climate change is not real.
Climate is LONG range weather over large or global areas. Our experience is experience is weather – unless we shift to a different climate – in which we can experience weather in that framework – ie; Arctic, Tropical, Temperate, Desert, Ocean, Mountain etc. Changing weather patterns – (including extreme events linked to climate alarmism as political agenda) – is periodic and documented. (Tony Heller is clear on setting the record straight about such records). Larger changes such as ice ages and warm periods between are considered as global climate and are also periodic. So with that out of the way – don’t forget that both weather and climate along with our whole experience of existence is CHANGE. The nature of which is a kind of ordered chaos or chaotic order – from the perspective of the mind of the wish to predict and control. Whether that which always changes is… Read more »
Obfusction.
You mean obfuscation.
But you merely assert a negative dismissal without any basis for doing so.
This is the same as climate alarmism – where natural change is weaponised as a fear agenda by which to target environmental and deeper existential guilt as human self hate and denial for global human sacrifice.
There is a choice – but guilt and fear obfuscate the true choice by framing in a conflicted identity that cant let anything new in – because fear of change is engaged in stamping on the face of the future.
Hence a failure of ability to think is running as a strategy of defence – or in my terms as a protection racket.
If by all the above is bad – you were talking of Engdahl’s article – it is within a much bigger history of dominion, plunder and deceit that you are clearly unaware of.
What we are experiencing and what climatologists are measuring and finally understanding with analytical accuracy is not “natural change” but rather, clearly human-caused destruction of a wide range of natural stabilizing phenomena. So yes, you are obfuscating the truth.
I don’t obfuscate – I refute. The zealot has no capacity to listen or hear anything but their ‘truth’ and assert it as The truth – and a jealous and vengeful god at that. I’m on board with human destructive intent and actions – particularly with regard to pervasive toxicities, biocides, pharmaceutical poisons, and adulterates junk foods – the list can go on and on. But the corporate evasion of the true environmental concern is the same tactic as the Banksters use – as extremely clever deceits running through insider networks of grossly undue or overwhelming influence. I am experience the weather – but also in some measure the toxic dump of a corrupted and corrupting false thinking that works deceit. THAT I experience as a fast declining consciousness to groupthink. Except it isn’t a group process of arriving at thought but being TOLD what to think. The institutions and… Read more »
Healthy skepticism is good, but your many assumptions about science are just wrong. The scientific method does not adhere to political ideology. Here’s a good source that presents a mountain of evidence from peer-reviewed journals: https://guymcpherson.com/climate-chaos/climate-change-summary-and-update/
I think you are reading by comments about captured or corrupted science as if I am taking of Science. I am all for a true and just transparency and accountability. You will not find that more than lip service in Skepticism – which is by definition open to considering that it may be wrong by willingness to question, challenge and uncover more evidence or information, is now being used as a mask for cynicism – which is hate for life – and loves to project the belief in no recovery as a superior intellectual position of asserted fact. Conviction under hate and guilt works a negatively polarised gullibility to align in anything that supports its sense of control – not command – of life. This is the ‘outsourcing’ or diversion and false flagging of unowned hate so as to either dump it on others – or justify active attack as… Read more »
I left a sentence about lip service unfinished – but it reads correctly and meaningfully into the term ‘skepticism’. That I then show is a masking of ‘reasonable acceptability’ among peerthink.
I’ve seen all of these arguments before, made by those who try to discredit scientists by presenting an alternate false reality that disregards the evidence. They’ve been refuted here: https://skepticalscience.com/