Guest commentary by Indur Goklany
Sometimes the true agenda is laid bare.
From http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2011/08/19/1, a piece on Bill McKibben, in which E&E News’ Paul Fialka discusses his agenda, are these passages.
[My comments are in brackets. I have highlighted some passages.]
Many of the climate theories in [McKibben’s] book [“The End of Nature.”]– and the future career path of McKibben — were shaped by James Hansen, who was then and is now the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Starting in 1988, Hansen had begun to testify before Congress that greenhouse gas emissions had begun to change familiar weather patterns on the planet and, without action to limit them, the changes would become more obvious and dangerous in the 21st century.
As Hansen explained and as McKibben later found out, the people who were most vulnerable to the flooding, famine and drought and the spread of tropical diseases lived in developing countries. McKibben was interviewing people in the slums of Bangladesh in 2006 when he was hospitalized with dengue fever, which is still untreatable. As he watched others dying, he recalled in a later book: “Something in me snapped. Nothing concrete had come from my work, or anyone else’s.”…
Putting the U.S. economy into ‘graceful decline’
While some companies have been critical of the chamber’s lobbying, McKibben will have great difficulty convincing them about another premise of his, which is that to cope with the more expensive food, weather, health and energy challenges of a climate-changed world, the growth of America’s economy can’t continue.
350.org supporters line up in Baku, Azerbaijan. They were among those in 188 countries who demonstrated for climate change solutions on Oct. 10, 2010. Photo courtesy of Flickr. He talks about federal policies that put the economy in a “graceful decline,” one that stimulates small-scale, organic farming and has more of a focus on activities in neighborhoods, towns and states than on national and international affairs. “We need to scale back, to go to ground,” he says in “Eaarth.”
[COMMENT: (1) Apparently, it has never occurred to McKibben that the perhaps the major reason why people in developing countries were most vulnerable to flooding, famine and drought and the spread of tropical diseases and why Bangladeshis died from dengue is that they lacked economic development and had stuck to “organic farming” for much longer than farmers in the developed countries. (2) There is nothing “graceful” about lower economic development. Ask not only people in developing countries but also those trapped without jobs in developed countries.]
What McKibben says he wants from Washington ispoverty a “stiff price on carbon” emissions. He calls cap and trade, the Democrats’ most recent legislative attempt to impose a price on carbon emissions through an economywide emissions trading scheme, “an incredibly complicated legislative scheme that gives door prizes to every interested industry and turns the whole operation over to Goldman Sachs to run.”
…Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund…one of the leaders of a coalition of major environmental groups and corporations that pushed cap and trade through the House [when asked] about McKibben’s advocacy of civil disobedience, … said “that’s a matter of personal conscience and personal choice. It’s not among the tactics that EDF uses.”
Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a small, Washington-based environmental group, is among those lining up alongside McKibben…
Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton administration White House aide, has known McKibben for 15 years [and] now works with Washington’s Bipartisan Policy Center, said he isn’t surprised by McKibben’s move toward civil disobedience. “Because climate impacts will hurt and potentially devastate the poor disproportionately, the moral and social justice elements of climate are much greater than many other environmental problems,” Bledsoe said.
[COMMENT: So how would a decline in economic development – “graceful” or otherwise – reduce climate impacts?]
In the interview here, McKibben explained that his group, 350.org, gets about $1 million a year in donations, most of it coming from foundations. Most of its activists are volunteers, led by 20 to 30 staffers “who are paid very little.” Financially, it is outgunned by the U.S. Chamber and fossil fuel companies, which is why he has organized it as a “movement” to raise public awareness. “Our currency is bodies and spirit,” he said. “This [climate change] is the biggest thing that’s ever happened.”
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Two words: White guilt.
It seems that they are succeeding very well, with some help from wall street and the bailout freaks… And it’s far from a graceful decline.
Graceful decline? Ask people who have lost homes and jobs how “graceful” that feels. “Decline”? That sounds like George Soros’ “managed decline” mantra. Wonder how much Soros gives to 350
“Financially, it is outgunned by the U.S. Chamber and fossil fuel companies, which is why he has organized it as a “movement” to raise public awareness.”
Rockefeller Family FOundation >> Suatainable Markets Foundation >> 350.org
>> “It’s hot in here” (Youth lunatics)
http://compleatpatriot.blogspot.com/2009/10/peer-reviewed-earth-sciences-literature.html
I thought thier ultimate mission was to remove all CO2 from the atmosphere, as well as all traces of Carbon from the surface, and bury it. In other words, to sterilize the Earth of all life. Eventually, Earth would resemble a much bigger Mars
Sorry, the info wasn’t complete.
You go to the Rockefeller Family Foundation and enter “Sustainable Markets Foundation” in their search box.
You get 126 nondescript hits; some of them just showing a postal address; others showing individual grants granted
to the Sustainable Markets Foundation with designation of a purpose, like this one:
http://www.rbf.org/grant/11449/sustainable-markets-foundation-1
“GRANT DETAIL
New York, NY
United States
$100,000 for 1 year
For its Project 350.”
Good. From here we can stop using the rather slow search and directly change the URL, changing the number at the end,
for instance to
http://www.rbf.org/grant/11449/sustainable-markets-foundation-2
and so on and so on…
Here, chew on this from 2008.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/01/bill-we-just-ha.html
Their agenda will come crashing down on them, along with a lot of pissed off people!
BTW, it’s not about the climate.
You have to wonder how many “warmists” simply have the goal of the destruction of modern economics as their main objective?
It makes you wonder what kind of “self-loathing” is at the root of this desire?
Well it feels like we’ve already shot past graceful decline economically; I’m not sure how we can be expected to help the less fortunate in the world when we can barely take care of ourselves. What it really boils down to is that there are two kinds of people in the world, people who only want a piece of the pie and people who bake more pies.
He talks about federal policies that put the economy in a “graceful decline,” one that stimulates small-scale, organic farming and has more of a focus on activities in neighborhoods, towns and states than on national and international affairs. “We need to scale back, to go to ground,” he says in “Eaarth.”
=============
After wasting 20 minutes of my life trying to think of a reply, I decided the man’s thoughts are not worth the effort.
Are there any warmists at all who don’t have economic decline on their agenda?
Warmism is one of a whole series of cover ideologies for the UN’s “Agenda 21”, sometimes known as “Smart Growth”. If you read the actual Agenda 21 resolution (www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/ ), it makes clear that the authors are out to make the rich countries poor and keep the poor ones poor too, because in their view, comfortable human life simply isn’t “sustainable” by or on Earth.
To which I say, what the bleep else is the Earth for?
The Green Guard are getting us ready for their ‘Great Leap Backwards’.
These folks look like the ones that should be gracefully declined into homelessness and poverty first, to test the waters.
This right here…this is utter madness. Our economy is what made it possible for us to have the kind of money needed to fund this clown’s research in the first place.
I’m a little tired of the strain of thought in successful economies that wealth is limited and that if you are wealthy, you must have taken that good fortune from someone else who needed it. That’s not how it works. The economy is not capped…it grows when industry leaders create new wealth with a new and better idea…something that improves our lives or creates productivity. Something that expands the agenda of the human race. People like McKibben think that American opulence comes at the cost of Bangladeshi deaths and misery. That’s not how it is. Bangladeshis suffer because they have failed to understand the basic things that make an economy work to better their lives.
This “discovery” is about like “discovering” that many Christians believe in salvation through faith. It’s right there in the words of the founder, if you care to read them.
Same here, except the founder is Margaret Mead. Nuff said.
The purpose of illusion is to show us where reality isn’t. That vision reveals where the faults lie and they always lie within. To attempt the restriction of human advancement and evolution is to throw oneself (and anyone else crazy enough to follow) beneath the wheels of progress in a vain attempt to slow that juggernaut. Far better to determine the effort required to steer that wagon to its eventual destination in the most efficient and effective manner rather than trying to derail the process.
Small scale farming rapidly devolves into subsistence farming which translates into working full time just to feed yourself and your family and praying to God your cow doesn’t die.
Folks like mckibben are reason to believe that Satan is alive and well.
As he watched others dying, he recalled in a later book: “Something in me snapped. Nothing concrete had come from my work,”
If this is true why did Hansen waste his life in climate science? Sadly, a lot of people die on this planet and it has nothing to do with temperature, climate science etc. These people are very poor – no food, no water, no security. Oh and nothing concrete HAS come from his work.
These people all view global productivity as a pie. If one nation gets a bigger slice it comes at the expense of a smaller slice for another nation. This view isn’t limited to nations. They apply it to individuals as well such that the wealthier person gets his wealth at the expense of someone else. This translates into a political class that preys on people of good will and good fortune with what’s called “the politics of guilt”. In other words, the Democratic party.
This view is nonsense of course. If it was true the human population would still be a few million people living in caves with expected lifespans of 35 years. Global productivity has been growing for thousands of years and hasn’t stopped. The pie keeps getting bigger.
People like McKibben are pathetic. They think of themselves as martyrs to some glorious cause, yet are far too vain and cowardly to strap on a vest full of C4. Or to even to publicly set themselves on fire, as some did during the Vietnam era, to make their point. They are beneath contempt.
Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” and the subsequent blanket ban on DDT has so far resulted in the death of > 30 Million. I believe that Hitler and Stalin killed less people, on an individual basis at least. It would appear that the Uber Greenies either never learn or simply don’t care about the effect the policies they promote have on real people. Or doesn’t it matter if they die one at a time instead of being mown down in droves ?
I well remember a documentary I saw a few years back about the loss of ice cover on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The lead up in the movie, prior to the walk to the summit, showed the climbers at a village on the lower slopes where they filmed, without any commentary, dozens of happy leaping dancing children. They were clearly being children and acting out for the camera but I couldn’t help but think that with their lack of commentary the film makers were saying “and here’s the source of the problem.” Chilling.
White Guilt? Maybe a smidgeon.
More like Darwin Award for everyone on the Earth!
This is a bona fide mental illness.
Climate changes. That much we can be certain of. It has changed without us and it will continue to change with us. Do we impact it? Of course we do! As part of the ecosystem, our activities have an impact. This has been true in the neolithic when people colonized new continents and wiped out species, in the middle age when the forests of Europe were clear-cutted and of course more recently with the industrial revolution… and people have adapted. Sometimes the changes were overwhelming and civilizations crashed; the Aztecs, Easter Island, but mostly they survived, succumbing later to the onslaught of other civilizations.
And this I think is the major problem that we do not acknowledge and which makes the point of Bill McKibben irrelevant. The equilibrium that we need to main[tain] is not just ecological but it is also social for if the consequences of maintaining the ecological balance is to weaken society, then the civilization is doomed and soon enough will be replaced by another one. Then what is the point of saving a civilization from ecological disaster if soon after it is wiped out culturally?
Cultures have always been dominated by “myths”. This was true in the past and we recognize it but it seems to be far more difficult to understand the myth with which we live now.
1 – The first myth is most certainly the carbon treat. That we are producing too much carbon by burning fossil fuels is certain. That we should “think” about it among many other problems is no less certain. That carbon is the main cause of the climate disturbances that are taking place and that we should therefore forget everything else to tackle this issue is most certainly the wrong priority.
It reminds me of the war against communism in the 1950s or the war against terrorism now. You can never do enough to remove the treat but once you stop the “wars” somehow the problem disappear as if it wasn’t really there in the first place. There are still communists, there are still terrorists, and there will still be some climate changes. It’s just that neither the scale nor the scope of the problem was what it was said to be.
2 – The second myth is the “global” civilization in which we are supposed to live. This one is plain wrong. There may be a community of people but there are arranged in discrete (as opposed to continue) societies which are still very much in competition with each other. A Chinese, an Indian, a Latin European and an American do not share the same basic values and the world would be a very different place if dominated by the Indians or Chinese indeed. I am not saying worse or better, but just different enough so that we could call it a different “civilization”.
And this is why decline cannot be “managed” or even as a society envisioned for it represents the destruction of a value system and a society, even a schizophrenic one cannot contemplate such an outcome as a functioning entity. (It would only accelerate decline.)
So what is the future for the ideas of Mr McKibben? Well, they will most probably fade sooner than later under the onslaught of economic reality. The coming economic recession will very quickly crowd out any remaining concerns about carbon. (Wrongly in my opinion since we need to think about it in the long term. Just not as urgently as some people think.) As for decline, it may come but if it does, I am not so sure that even the people promoting the idea will welcome the consequences. I can read Chinese. Can they? Well hurry up! If English becomes the Latin of the 21C and these people need to survive in a “Chinese” world, Carbon will quickly become a secondary concern, if at all!
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.” Robert Heinlein
Two words: Jesus complex.