Links tagged “development”

Greta Thunberg denounced world leaders for their main focus on what she called “the fairy tale of eternal economic growth.” ...Now Europe’s main scientific body, the European Academies Science Advisory Council (which comprises of the National Academies of Science of EU Member States, plus Norway, Switzerland and UK), has followed in Greta’s footsteps, hitting out against policy makers and governments who prioritise economic growth.

“Generation Greta gets it. Our focus should be on well-being and welfare, but our economic system puts all focus on growth and GDP which adds fuel to the climate and biodiversity crises.” That’s how the European Academies Science Advisory Council press release highlights the main take of its report that calls for “‘transformational’ change that is necessary if policy-makers and their public (sic) are to support the conclusions of the advocates of change.” ... Tracking happiness could be the key to beating climate change, a group of European scientists has said.

"Today, we live some 100 times better than did our ancestors at the end of the 18th century.  The luxuries that we take for granted — abundant food on demand, clean running water, electricity, electronic communications and media, advanced medical care, inexpensive clothing, home and office heating, rapid transportation, universal basic education, free libraries, and dozens of other important advances — are linked to warming temperatures that have afforded enough surplus food to support educators, scientists, inventors, technicians, physicians, and the suppliers of so many of our modern conveniences." ...

"Global food production has exploded since 1970, due in part to a favorable climate.  For the first time in human history, we live in an age during which it is not necessary for large numbers of human beings to go hungry."

C.S. Lewis: “I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in.”

Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961: “We must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."  - Eisenhower: "A government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity” and “the prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever-present and is gravely to be regarded.” 

The World Economic Forum has called for “a Great Reset of capitalism” due to COVID and to help fight climate change. Klaus Schwab said the virus has given us an “opportunity” to pursue “equality & sustainability.”  - "The world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions," Schwab explained.

Thomas Sowell: “Experts are often called in, not to provide factual information or dispassionate analysis for the purpose of decision-making by responsible officials, but to give political cover for decisions already made and based on other considerations entirely." 

“A flu d’état.” “A takeover of our supposedly democratic political process by unelected & unaccountable administrative state medical bureaucrats."

Peter Hitchens: "All the crudest weapons of despotism, the curfew, the presumption of guilt and the power of arbitrary arrest, are taking shape in the midst of what used to be a free country."

David McDermott Hughes, Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University and author of Energy without Conscience: "For a while, let’s eat a cold dinner here and there. Continuity costs too much. Climate change kills, and it kills vulnerable people first. Intermittency saves lives, and it saves vulnerable people first. Let the pause take its place in continuous climate activism...What applies in the pandemic also applies—and also with desperate urgency—in the climate crisis. We can live with some intermittency and rationing—at least until batteries and other forms of energy storage are up and running everywhere." 

"The United States has built a vast infrastructure for generating, transmitting, and consuming it—all almost entirely based on planet-destroying fossil fuels and nuclear power." - "Renewables can provide that plenitude—and already do through wind and solar farms in Texas and California—but not necessarily all the time. The sun shines at us constantly, with more energy that we can possibly use at any moment, but the Earth’s rotation puts us in shadow at nightfall. And wind, of course, can simply stop. As a result, the leading fossil- and nuclear-free sources of energy bounce from feast to famine, raising the possibility of more frequent and longer power cuts. Critics—often supporters of natural gas—say wind and solar power are “not ready.” Renewables, they warn us, pose an “intermittency problem.” ... "For those seriously concerned about climate change, the inverse—the demand for electrical continuity—may be the real problem...We ought to consider enduring much more than six hours of electrical downtime every year for the sake of transitioning more rapidly away from fossil fuels."