Links tagged “governance”
- The Socialists’ Plan for ‘Ecological Leninism’
The world is heating up and we face a global pandemic. Neither of these assertions is to be questioned, says Malm. “Science” tells us that they are true, and that is that. What causes these problems? The answer, you will not be surprised to learn, is capitalism. Marx long ago predicted that capitalism would collapse because capitalists, greedy for profit, would expand production to a greater extent than the market could absorb. The revisionist Marxist Eduard Bernstein objected that capitalism had so far surmounted its crises and hadn’t collapsed, but Rosa Luxemburg, another heroic figure for Malm, had high hopes for future disaster.
- Economist Dr. Walter Williams RIP: Freedom’s greatest defender – ‘Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man’
Walter Williams RIP
Marc Morano's comment: "The world has lost one of its greatest thinkers and the greatest defender of freedom. As a former student of Dr. Willaims at George Mason University in the 1980s, his loss cuts deep. I interviewed Dr. Williams for GMU TV, I got a 'C' in his economics class and I later featured him in my Amazon Rainforest Documentary in 2000. See: Rainforest Factsheet: Clear-Cutting the Myths About the Amazon and Tropical Rainforests
Williams was a ferocious debater who regularly popped the Left and media misperceptions on race, economics, culture and freedom. He also a regular guest host of Rush Limbaugh's nationally syndicated radio show. His death will leave a gaping hole in intellectual thought."
Williams recent quotes:
"Leftists constantly preach such nonsense as 'The world that we live in is beautiful but fragile.' ... 'Remember that Earth needs to be saved every single day.' These and many other statements, along with apocalyptic predictions, are stock in trade for environmentalists. Worse yet, this fragile-earth indoctrination is fed to the nation's youth from kindergarten through college. That's why many millennials support Rep. Ocasio-Cortez." -- Walter Williams in 2019
“Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.” -- Walter E. Williams
"Despite the miracles of capitalism, it doesn't do well in popularity polls. One of the reasons is that capitalism is always evaluated against the non-existent utopias of socialism or communism. Any earthly system pales in comparison to utopias. But for the ordinary person, capitalism, with all of its warts, is superior to any system yet devised to deal with our everyday needs and desires." - Walter Williams
- JunkScience.com’s collection of climate activists admitting climate is not about — the climate
- It’s not about the climate: President of Ireland: Response to climate change should focus on principles of ‘redistribution, social consumption & social investment’
Michael D Higgins will today call for a new approach to economics that incorporates the “radicalism” of climate activism. Part of the worldwide response to climate change should be framed around the principles of “redistribution, social consumption and social investment”, the president will say. Mr Higgins will call for a new approach to economics, one that “combines the radicalism that is in the consciousness of climate activism” with the “consciousness of egalitarianism.
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One that “combines the radicalism that is in the consciousness of climate activism, with the consciousness of egalitarianism and the programmes of inclusion activists”. It should be “framed around the three implicit goals of welfare states: redistribution, social consumption and social investment and characterised by gender equality, income redistribution, a reconfigured social consumption,” he will say.
- Salon Mag: ‘From pandemics to climate change, the real problem is capitalism itself’ – ‘A system that has devastated our planet’
Salon Staff Writer Matthew Rozsa: "The truth is that the ailment afflicting America is capitalism, and the difference between the two parties is that the Democrats will only describe some of the symptoms but refuse to provide an honest diagnosis, while the Republicans outright defend the disease. Most of the major problems with America, and the world, can be traced back to the singular cause of capitalism, an economic system in which a society's means of production are primarily controlled by private individuals hoping to make a profit. It is a system that has devastated our planet to the point where it may soon be largely uninhabitable, created massive income inequality and left us woefully unprepared for crises like the novel coronavirus pandemic." ...
"The state of facts and evidence proves that capitalism is condemning millions upon millions to hopeless poverty, rendering us incapable of effectively coping with manageable problems like a pandemic and literally destroying the planet. Unless that reality becomes part of our mainstream political discourse, humanity is doomed."
- Warmist David Attenborough: ‘Curb excess capitalism’ to save nature – Demands standard of living in wealthy nations is going to have to take a pause
- An ‘Ecotopian’ Future: Can California’s Green Extremism Go National? Seek ‘handing over power to credentialed environmental ‘experts’
Joel Kotkin: This is a state that issues mandates for electrification of everything while reducing its generating capacity. It blames devastating fires on climate change, without taking the blame for forestry practices that helped make the seasonal fires much worse. In California, pot is legal, but owning a car with a gas engine, however clean, may soon not be, and climate skeptics of any stripe face opprobrium, consignment to obscurity, and—if they have assets—court dates. ...
In both Germany and California, green policies have hurt the working class far more than the affluent, who, argues British socialist James Heartfield, actually benefit from scarcity. Family-oriented people may also object to Ecotopia-like calls for restrictions on having children due to their “carbon legacy,” a proposal already endorsed by climate researchers at Sweden’s Lund University and Oregon State University. Some scientists suggest that we will have to shift from hamburgers to such delightful concoctions as “maggot sausages.” One scientist even suggested that we recycle ourselves and rediscover the finer points of cannibalism.
The Coming Autocracy
It’s unlikely that voters will long embrace such ideas. But many greens, concerned that the masses may not follow orders, prefer the post-democratic method of handing over power to credentialed environmental “experts” operating in Washington, Brussels, or the United Nations, a notion already advanced by former Obama budget advisor Peter Orszag and journalist Thomas Friedman.
- Gleeful Climate Prof. John Schellnhuber: Children will ‘fight for a new society that is sustainable’
- Europe’s Green New Deal climate goal: Revolution: To eliminate emissions by 2050, the EU will have to ‘remake civilization’
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen likes to compare her Green Deal to “Europe’s man on the moon moment.” That’s almost certainly a galactic understatement. Cutting the Continent’s emissions to “net zero” — meaning Europe would sequester at least as much greenhouse gases as it produces — by 2050 will require a radical overhaul of nearly every aspect of the modern economy. Dramatic cuts in carbon will wipe out entire industries, transform others and force people to change the way they eat, work, live and travel. “Man on the moon was a hobby,” said Vincenzo Balzani, an Italian chemist, emeritus professor at the University of Bologna and author of several books on the transition to a cleaner world. The EU’s ambition to decarbonize Europe, he said, is nothing less than “a proposal to remake civilization.” This is not policymaking on a normal scale. French President Emmanuel Macron calls what follows “the next world.” Polish Climate Minister Michał Kurtyka, president of the 2018 U.N. climate conference, calls it a “civilizational challenge” that will require a “Copernican revolution” to succeed.
- ALERT: Warmist Eric Holthaus admits it: ‘The climate emergency isn’t about science, it’s about justice’
Holthaus has joined other prominent climate campaigners in admitting that climate change activism is not about climate science.
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Bill Gates & UN Launch New Climate Agenda – Seeks ‘to kick start a transformational decade’ of climate ‘action’
Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, and Narendra Modi will apparently gather in the Netherlands. There, along with Bill Gates, UN head Antonio Guterres, and personnel associated with the European Union, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, they’ll attend a climate summit hosted by the Global Center on Adaptation. ...
We’re told this summit "will launch a comprehensive Adaptation Action Agenda to kick start a transformational decade."
Donna Laframboise: "The chutzpah is astonishing. The global economy is in tatters. Billions face an uncertain future. Health care workers are exhausted. Yet this Clique of Self-Important People™ is full speed ahead, determined to impose its climate vision on the rest of us."
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The Return of the Dead: Countering Species Extinction Claims – The most aggressive claims rest on shaky foundations’
In the last 500 years only some 80 mammals are recorded as having gone extinct. In his book, More From Less, Andrew McAfee, a board member of HumanProgress.org, discusses how relatively rare recorded extinctions are – with some 530 across all species in the last five centuries. More importantly, he notes, the rate of extinction “appear[s] to have slowed down in recent decades; for example, no marine creatures have been recorded as extinct in the last fifty years.”
Matt Ridley, another board member and frequent contributor to this site, argues that despite the human population doubling in the last half-century, “the extinction rate of wild species, especially in the most industrialized countries,” seems to have fallen rather than increased. While absence of evidence isn’t the same as evidence of absence, and there might be millions of unrecorded species in the world’s oceans and tropical forests, the most aggressive claims rest on shaky foundations.
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CNN report buries this good news in paragraph 12 on polar bears: ‘They are doing quite well…Svalbard’s polar bear numbers do not appear to have decreased in the last 20 years’
CNN: Jon Aars, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Polar Institute: "Polar bears are optimistic animals," Aars says. "It seems that they are quite resistant, and they are doing quite well despite the fact that they've lost a lot of their habitat." Despite the odds, Svalbard's polar bear numbers do not appear to have decreased in the last 20 years, he says.
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Statistical politics: Prof. Mike Hulme on ‘politically charged’ climate baseline changes from 1961-1990 to 1991-2020: ‘In an instant; today, the world’s climate has ‘suddenly’ become nearly 0.5°C warmer’
Hulme: "January 12021, a new World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) climatological standard normal came into effect. The ‘present-day’ climate will now formally be
represented by the meteorological statistics of the period 1991-2020, replacing those from 1961-1990. National Meteorological Agencies in member states are instructed to issue new standard normals for observing stations and for associated climatological products. Climate will ‘change’, one might say, in an instant; today, the world’s climate has ‘suddenly’ become nearly 0.5°C warmer. It is somewhat equivalent to re-setting Universal Time or adjusting the exact definition of a metre." ..."So, what is the significance of the move to a new 1991-2020 WMO normal in January 2021? On the one hand, it is a pragmatic move to redefine ‘present-day’ climate for operational applications to that of the most recent 30-year period. On the other hand, it puts into play a third climatic baseline. Already existing is the ‘pre-industrial’ climate of the late nineteenth century and the ‘historic’ climate’ of 1961-1990, the latter about 0.3°C warmer than the former. And now there is the new ‘present-day’ climate of 1991-2020, in turn about 0.5°C warmer than the ‘historic climate’ of 1961-1990." ...
"Combining a climatic tolerance of 2°C—or indeed 1.5°C—with a pre-industrial baseline yields a very different climate target than, say, using a 1986-2005 baseline, the period widely adopted by IPCC AR5 Working Group I as their analytical baseline. The choices of both baseline and tolerance are politically charged. They carry significant implications for historic liability for emissions (La Rovere et al., 2002), for policy design (Millar et al., 2017) and for possible reparations (Roberts & Huq, 2015)."
