Links tagged “economics”

Earlier in June, the World Economic Forum (WEF), a highly influential nonprofit organization based in Europe, announced its plan to push for a “Great Reset” of global capitalism...The stated purpose of the “Great Reset” is to use the coronavirus pandemic as a justification to completely overhaul the entire global economy, including the U.S. economy, to make a more “equitable” world and to fight climate change...

On NBC’s Today show, Gore evoked the “Great Reset” directly and called for radical economic changes to the world economy to fight climate change. “So, I think this is a time for a ‘Great Reset,’” Gore said. “We’ve got to fix a lot of these problems that have been allowed to fester for way too long. And the climate crisis is an opportunity to create tens of millions of new jobs, clean up the air, and reduce the death rate from pandemics, by the way, because the air pollution from burning fossil fuels heightens the death rates from coronavirus."

"So, this is a time for a reset to fix a bunch of challenges, first among them the climate crisis,” Gore added.

Update: Greenpeace Co-Founder Dr. Patrick Moore responds to study: "How does this garbage get published? I have never seen the forests and wild lands so lush with growth. The CO2 fertilization effect is real, 35% increase in growth, caused by affluence. Can’t we teach them just one thing, that the CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere came from there in the first place? That fossil fuels were made from plants?"

Eric Worrall at WattsUpWithThat: "Central planning, rationing, price controls, punitive wealth taxes and wealth redistribution. The glorious future climate concerned scientists are planning for us."

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New study in the journal Nature Communications - June 2020: "The affluent citizens of the world are responsible for most environmental impacts." Propose "far-reaching lifestyle changes."

"We provide evidence from the literature that consumption of affluent households worldwide is by far the strongest determinant and the strongest accelerator of increases of global environmental and social impacts." - "These solution approaches range from reformist to radical ideas, including degrowth, eco-socialism and eco-anarchism."

Study laments that "low-income groups are rapidly occupying middle- and high-income brackets around the world. This can potentially further exacerbate the impacts of mobility-related consumption, which has been shown to disproportionately increase with income." - "Affluence needs to be addressed by reducing consumption."

'A shift beyond capitalism': "It is clear that prevailing capitalist, growth-driven economic systems have not only increased affluence since World War II, but have led to enormous increases in inequality, financial instability, resource consumption and environmental pressures on vital earth support systems"

New goal: "Avoid or to reduce consumption until the remaining consumption level falls within planetary boundaries, while fulfilling human needs." ...Avoiding consumption means not consuming certain goods and services, from living space (overly large homes, secondary residences of the wealthy) to oversized vehicles, environmentally damaging and wasteful food, leisure patterns and work patterns involving driving and flying."

Propose ‘sustainable consumption corridors’, i.e. minimum and maximum consumption standards.'

"Eco-feminist approaches highlight the role of patriarchal social relations and the parallels between the oppression of women and exploitation of nature."  ... "Strengthen equality and redistribution through suitable taxation policies, basic income and job guarantees and by setting maximum income levels, expanding public services and rolling back neoliberal reforms (e.g. as part of a Green New Deal)."

'Setting maximum income levels': "The transformation of economic systems can be supported with innovative business models that encourage sharing and giving economies, based on cooperation, communities and localised economies instead of competition"

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Note: The journal Nature likes touting 'degrowth.' See: STUDY in Nature in 2018: Global wealth redistribution, economic ‘degrowth’ needed to fight ‘global warming’

Andreas Malm is in the human ecology division at Lund University: "The whole strategic direction of Lenin after 1914 was to turn World War I into a fatal blow against capitalism. This is precisely the same strategic orientation we must embrace today — and this is what I mean by ecological Leninism. We must find a way of turning the environmental crisis into a crisis for fossil capital itself." ...

"There was a moment in March 2020 when many of us in the climate justice movement felt a degree of surprise to find that governments in Europe and elsewhere were prepared to basically shut down their entire economies in an effort to contain the pandemic. This is striking, given that the same states had never contemplated undertaking any kind of intervention in the economy for the sake of the climate crisis."

COVID 'is an opportunity": "This is an opportunity in the sense that it has brought about a temporary cessation of many of the most environmentally damaging activities, mass aviation has been suspended, carbon emissions have declined, fossil fuels are remaining in the ground, and so on. This is a moment where we can say to governments: “If you were able to intervene to protect us from the virus, you can intervene to protect us from the climate crisis as well, the implications of which are much worse.” The current juncture therefore provides us with an opportunity to oppose the return to business as usual, to push for the transformation of the global economy and the launch of something like a Green New Deal."...

"State power should definitely be used to prevent luxury emissions perpetrated by the rich — private jets should be banned outright, as should SUVs and other vehicles that consume completely indefensible amounts of fuel. This is low-hanging fruit for the climate justice movement, as these sources of emissions are among the least socially necessary." ...

"Some forms of consumption will indeed have to be limited or abolished outright — this cannot be done through markets or appeals to ethical consumption, but only through state regulation." ...

"While it may seem utopian at this stage, it is important to make the proposition of closing down institutions designed to survey and control populations and repurpose them to attack capital, closing down the sources of global warming and zoonotic transmission. In the book, for example, I propose that we abolish border agencies and turn them into institutions for cracking down on the wildlife trade."

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Book reveals UN’s goal of ‘2 degree’ limit of ‘global warming’ has no scientific basis – ‘Pulled out of thin air’ - Book Excerpt: In 2007, Jones emailed, “The 2 deg C limit is talked about by a lot within Europe. It is never defined though what it means. Is it 2 deg C for globe or for Europe? Also when is/was the base against which 2 deg C is calculated from? I know you don’t know the answer, but I don’t either! I think it is plucked out of thin air.”

“The only way that a 2015 agreement can achieve a 2-degree goal is to shut down the whole global economy," Yvo de Boer, former UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) executive secretary said in 2013. 

Yvo de Boer's words sound prophetic when compared to the comments of climate campaigners in 2020 excited about the impact of the COVID lockdowns.

Climate activist Eric Holthaus said on April 22, 2020, about the impact of lockdowns on global CO2 emissions: “This is roughly the same pace that the IPCC says we need to sustain every year until 2030 to be on pace to limit global warming to 1.5C and hit the Paris climate goals. This is what ‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’ looks like.”