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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Frank Herbert made the defining statement on agendas like this:
“Every revolutionary is a closet aristocrat”
Whatever ‘noble’ or ‘necessary’ change revolutionaries are trying to convince you (and themselves) needs to be enacted it’s fundamentally always about forming a new power structure with them at the top. The impulse is as old as the human species, and always has it’s greatest number of adherents amongst the young who have most to gain from reshuffling power structures – ie taking power from more powerful/older members of society.
It reminds me of the old sci-fi movie ‘Zardos’. They get tired of their easy lives and engineer a complex series of events to eventually bring about their own destruction.
Our road to hell is paved with his good intentions.
The first refuge of any revolutionary is a closet.
============
There is no doubt that if you borrow more money than you can ever pay back then you are in trouble, just like many of us now.
But that has nothing to do with weather, normal or abnormal climate change or any other kind of science.
(Love the term “envirofascist”, GregO.)
@pablo
I can’t believe you said that.
There has always been the political element to the warmists as it clear that some saw the AGW scare a horse they could ride to achieve their political goals which otherwise would never been accepted by the people . Add to that you have unhealthy mixture of the hard left that after the fall of Russia where looking for new hope to further their ‘socialists paradise ‘ , the eco-nutters that don’t actual like humans very much and those that want to take everyone back to some mythic pastoral existence . With all of those hopping to hitch their own desires onto AGW , and you can see why AGW as become such waste ground for the mad and the bad .
Which makes it even more of a petty that those that should have acted as gate keepers to stop climate science turning into a political football or a joke, and so ensured scientific validity was maintained, either deserted their post or join in the attack .
“The Green Guard are getting us ready for their ‘Great Leap Backwards’.”
Finite planet, finite amounts of oil and coal, finite CO2-emissions.
I guess Limits to Growth are finally catching up on our globalized economy.
And please don’t say: “we didn’t know”.
Economic mayhem will cut CO2-emissions faster than the Warmists dare to dream.
With 15T USD in debt and counting, I think the decline will be anything but graceful. The post-Soviet model comes to mind. These people are still living geo-politically in the 1950’s. A lack of or distorted peception of reality, not unlike the empirical take on lack of data for CO2-princip. component-based GW, is evident here. Small minds.
He’s just another do as I say not do as I do merchant, and should be treated with the contempt he deserves.
Jessie says:
August 20, 2011 at 9:55 pm
Bob Weidemer’s After Shock Survival video may be of interest in this news report ‘Aftershock’ Book Predicts Economic Disaster Amid Controversy
25 July 2011 (second to last link in report works) – 30 minutes
==================================================
There’s 30 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. But don’t count out America. The whole world depends upon her getting stronger.
Hans Verbeek says:
August 21, 2011 at 3:42 am
Pessimism is a nasty disease. There is no cure.
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Oscar Wilde
Fannie Mae owns patent on residential ‘cap and trade’ exchange
By: Barbara Hollingsworth | Local Opinion Editor | 04/20/10 3:00 AM
When he wasn’t busy helping create a $127 billion mess for taxpayers to
clean up, former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines, two of
his top underlings and select individuals in the “green” movement were
inventing a patented system to trade residential carbon credits.
Patent No. 6904336 was approved by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office on Nov.
7, 2006 — the day after Democrats took control of Congress. Former Sen.
John Sununu, R-N.H., criticized the award at the time, pointing out that it
had “nothing to do with Fannie Mae’s charter, nothing to do with making
mortgages more affordable.”
It wasn’t about mortgages. It was about greenbacks. The patent, which Fannie
Mae confirmed it still owns with Cantor Fitzgerald subsidiary CO2e.com,
gives the mortgage giant a lock on the fledgling carbon trading market, thus
also giving it a major financial stake in the success of cap-and-trade
legislation.
Besides Raines, the other “inventors” are:
…
Read more at the Washington Examiner:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/node/96936#ixzz1VfZcJye8
====== Related:
ICE to shutter Chicago Climate Exchange
Chicago Tribune – Aug 8, 2011
Intercontinental Exchange Inc. will close its US emissions derivatives
platform, the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange, after the first quarter, the
Wall Street Journal reported. …
…
The company is shutting the exchange down as it is losing money and the
chances of a federal carbon-reduction plan being put into place look slim,
the Journal said.
ICE bought the platform’s parent company Climate Exchange PLC in 2010 for
about $600 million last year.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-ice-to-shutter-chicago-climate-exchange-20110808,0,7784695.story
oldseadog says:
August 21, 2011 at 1:36 am
There is no doubt that if you borrow more money than you can ever pay back then you are in trouble, just like many of us now.
But that has nothing to do with weather, normal or abnormal climate change or any other kind of science.
(Love the term “envirofascist”, GregO.)
=================================================
lol, Well, it normally wouldn’t. But today, we see the “envirofascists” have tied CO2 emissions to our weather and climate. CO2 emissions can be seen as economic growth. That is to say, the more one nation emits, the more their economy grows. They can be no clearer example than to look at China and the U.S.
But, what does this have to do with borrowing? The amount borrowed is tied to GDP. When GDP is up, so is the governments’ revenue. Conversely, when GDP is down the revenues are down. This is, of course, only one side of reason for borrowing.
The other being an abject rejection of individualism, responsibility and pride. The sense of entitlement is rampant. We’ve even recently seen an example of a well paid government worker receive graft for his advocacy, and then invested the graft to receive financial aid from both the state (Pennsylvania, a direct payment) and the federal government,a $21,000 tax credit. And no one bats an eye. We are subsidizing his electric bill. Oddly, after he did all of this, he concluded the investment isn’t the way forward for America. Just him, I guess.
I just can’t figure out how come we have a borrowing problem………
Damn….. “They can be….” should read “There can be…..”
@Hans Verbeek
What a two-dimensional thinker you are.
“Something in me snapped”
Yup.
“Something in me snapped.” Probably went off his meds, or needed a different prescription. It appears he has invented a new planet he calls “Eaarth”. He and his fellow eco-loons should go live there. The world would be a better place.
This is cabin fever. Now is the first time in humanity’s history that we are stuck where we are (except maybe during the last ice-age when we were constrained to live in deep caves). Until now we have always had somewhere else to explore, go, create new societies. Our explorers have become ridiculous whisky-fuelled rowers to a faux pole. The urge to explore is a deep seated part of our psyche, it’s one of the traits that has made us so successful. The end of manned space exploration is a human tragedy. The kind of nervous breakdown which has and is afflicting the US and the West over this is a direct result (I notice that China which doesn’t have these problems is still going for it).
The mass of the universe is about 10 to the 55th kilos. The idea that we are going to sit at home and die of heatstroke or cold because we have run out of raw materials is preposterous.
I don’t find the whisky rowing funny, I find it pathetic. The desire to explore the unknown at considerable personal risk is one of the noblest things a human can do. That this desire has become so perverted by the voluntary circumscription of our horizons is one of the most depressing artefacts of our age. Marco Polo, Tensing, Shackleton, Bougainville, Neil Armstrong et al are become pale shadows, more open to ridicule than to admiration.
And don’t get me started on the fact that our youth is so de-moralised that it thinks that Armstrong is a liar. It pierces my heart.
Ah, another example of the “intelligentsia” at work. We need to scrub our colleges and universities of these idiots out to save the world. Hire more engineering/science professors to take their place.
I plucked this from Hans Verbeek’s blog; a video that parades all the catastrophists; McKibben, Ehrlich and all the other enviro-apocalytpic prophets. All these people make their living exclusively by preaching “The End Is Nigh”; a rather nice way of avoiding the drudgery of labor.
When you watch it, google in the meantime for all the congresses these people are invited to and compute in your head how much kerosene it costs to shove their bodies around the poor dying planet – increases the entertainment value tremendously.
Maybe Hans’ goal is to rise up into the top league of full time catastrophists; and make as much air miles as Ehrlich. If Hans is already an established catastrophist prophet, i apologize; there are so many of them that one easily loses track.
I just read a page that is favorable towards McKibben:
http://americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/bill_mckibben.php
I was struck by how he rails against those he calls elitists and calls their lifestyle unsustainable. Yet he apparently has more than one home, has the option of choosing not to install a hot tub, etc., yet says the Bangladeshis’ low level of carbon production is a virtue – in the same sentence where he decries their deaths from dengue fever. I wish he would wake up and see that there might be a connection between their low level of carbon production and their susceptibility to dengue fever. Yet he would have citizens of developed countries take their lifestyle down “to ground” to help the Bangladeshis!?! How does that help?
In his early 50s, it seems to me that the man is experiencing a midlife crisis. I think he needs a good, non-destructive hobby – and some counseling to help him deal with his craving to be The One that everyone listens to and follows.
One more thing – I wonder how much satisfaction a construction worker on, say, the Golden Gate Bridge felt with what he accomplished in his life, compared to what McKibben has?
When a company stops growing, the company has in fact started to die. The same is true of countries.
The reason is very simple. Compound interest and debt. Debt plus interest must be repaid. To pay the interest, you must grow the company or the country, or the debt will compound and force you into bankruptcy.
There is no way that you can gracefully wind down the economy, any more than a person with a mortgage can hope to gracefully stop working and continue to own a house.
Either the US economy must continue to grow, or compound interest on the debt will crush the USA much more effectively than bin Laden and al Qaeda could ever have hoped for.
These people are happy when you’re unemployed.
“Great News! Economic Recovery Stalls
Economic news last Friday was quite positive. Annualized U.S. GDP growth was less than one percent in the first half of 2011. However, I would hazard a guess that, oh, some 99.9 percent of the world considered this bad news.”
http://www.growthbusters.com
(Found via the video that Hans Verbeek links to on his blog)
When nothing concrete comes from your work, your are engaged in a useless enterprise. You might have achieved something if you had ponied up some cash or raised a lot instead of watching people die! What you watched is essentially what your prescription for the planet is – let us hope nothing continues to come from your useless work.