Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Guardian Columnist George Monbiot, if we treat future generations not yet born as having equal rights to the living, property rights will have to be radically adjusted; we’re all effectively tenants, holding land in trust which will be passed to future generations who enjoy the same rights as us, even before they are born.
Capitalism is destroying the Earth. We need a new human right for future generations
George MonbiotThe children on climate strike are right: their lives should not be sacrificed to satisfy our greed
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At the heart of capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to as great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy.
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So what should take its place? It seems to me that the founding principle of any just system is that those who are not yet alive will, when they are born, have the same rights as those who are alive today. … “Every generation shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.”
This principle is hard to dispute, but it seems to change everything. Immediately, it tells us that no renewable resource should be used beyond its rate of replenishment. No non-renewable resource should be used that cannot be fully recycled and reused. This leads inexorably to towards two major shifts: a circular economy from which materials are never lost; and the end of fossil fuel combustion.
But what of the Earth itself? In this densely populated world, all land ownership necessarily precludes ownership by others. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration is self-contradictory. It says, “Everyone has the right to own property.” But because it places no limit on the amount one person can possess, it ensures that everyone does not have this right. I would change it to this: “Everyone has the right to use property without infringing the rights of others to use property.” The implication is that everyone born today would acquire an equal right of use, or would need to be compensated for their exclusion. One way of implementing this is through major land taxes, paid into a sovereign wealth fund. It would alter and restrict the concept of ownership, and ensure that economies tended towards distribution, rather than concentration.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/capitalism-destroying-earth-human-right-climate-strike-children
Are the climate change strikers in tune with Monbiot’s thinking? I suspect so. Their manifesto seems to boil down to a demand that their parents provide them with free stuff. Like Monbiot they don’t appear to recognise that the effort others have put into improvement provide those others with any entitlements, or that they have any personal responsibility for their own upkeep or wellbeing.
As for Monbiot’s idea that we should accommodate the rights of future generations, frankly we have no idea what future generations will need.
The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 is a classic example of panicking over future problems which never manifested. Cities were covered in vast piles of stinking horse manure, and the rotting corpses of dead horses. Projecting known population growth, city planners were aghast at the looming crisis – in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted… “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”
The solution of course was Henry Ford, and the foundation of Ford Motor Company in 1903; a technology shift which wasn’t obvious in 1894, at least not to the Times.
In just a few short years nobody wanted horses anymore. Clouds of smoke from primitive engines and exhausts were far preferable to vast stinking piles of renewable horse manure.
“…. “Everyone has the right to use property without infringing the rights of others to use property.” Now there’s a societal recipe for absolute pandemonium caused by people offering nothing to prosperity and their greed running rampant. It would be a quick trip to oblivion.
I shall think about a 2 week stay in George Monbiot’s home. Another dozen or so may want to come along. I don’t like being alone.
George and his two friends can be there at the same time, because I don’t want to infringe on the rights of others.
If we “treat future generations not yet born as having equal rights to the living” then we treat imaginary people as equal to real people.
Hard to see how society could function in such a situation.
So the “spirit” of your grandchildren should perhaps be consulted before you make a decision.
I can see a “new” industry opening up here!
Using sacrificed roosters and goats perhaps.
“Using sacrificed roosters and goats perhaps?”……Or maybe sacrificed unicorns? Then read the swirls in the horn instead of depending on something so munificent as a hockey Schiff graph?
Monbiot is mental midget. Thankfully he writes a lot less than he used to.
The current manifestation of capitalism run by and for banksters is one of continual and sustained GROWTH of credit ( ie debt ). To feed this they need never ending increase in consummation of goods, thus we get institutionalised built-in obsolescence. That wastes ever more resources and an ever greater part of our lives working to buy, over and over, the same object ( vehicle, washing machine …. ) .
The current enviro movement is not helping this , they are simply exacerbating the problem by introducing a new form of obsolescence : the need to throw away good working machines and replace them with new “greener” versions. When most of the time this is pure waste in itself.
This new idea of “guardianship” instead of ownership is going to appeal to those who own nothing and resent that others do. Anyone who has worked 20-30 years of their life to buy a
property, with the hope of passing it on to their off-spring, will be less impressed by someone coming along and explaining they are only “looking after it”
+++ gazillions;-)
Yep.
“The current manifestation of capitalism” is better described as Fascism: under capitalism rotten corporations go broke.
2008 the bankrupt banks told our spineless politicians they were “Too big to fail”, so we now have Banksters telling politicians how much money=credit=debt they will create out of thin air, & dictating their policies via the fear factory fake news MSM: the non-existent warming/climate crisis; the ridiculously over-hyped nuclear “disasters”of Chernobyl, Fukushima & Three Mile Island, etc etc.
Corporations controlling govts is Fascism.
JD.
It never ceases to amaze me how little the critics of capitalism actually know about capitalism.
There is no such thing as built in obsolescence. That’s another phrase invented by critics of capitalism. To the very limited extent that it exists, it exists because products get better over time. Would you really prefer a world in which nothing ever improved?
Plus, products, like people, do get old, do have a useful life before they wear out or break down. It can also be considered an “entropy” of sorts.
This notion of “obsolescence” was put into the intellectual and cultural bloodstream by Vance Packard in several books on the subject of industrial capitalism. What he failed to understand, though, is
that the knowledge of materials, their type and their chemistry and physics, had improved so much since the days of Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, and other manufacturers compared to even Packard’s day.
Now, with the kinds of innovation, scientific discovery, and improved manufacturing techniques (compelled in part by competition and the insistence in markets and governments on product safety and quality), products are even more durable and safer in general.
Does that mean they don’t wear out with use? No. Or that people don’t want, like, or expect something new? Of course not. Especially in this day and age of rapidly evolving technology.
I consider the concept of”obsolescence” to be a quaint, rather obsolete, idea in connection with any economic discussion. That Monbiot uses the concept shows how little he understands about our changing world.
The moron Moonbat needs to stop pontificating from his decrepit pulpit & educate himself.
Two books I recommend:
The Ultimate Resource 2, by Julian L. Simon, top economist, who examined our major contemporary problems: population; food; energy, including nuclear; resources; pollution & environment etc & found that every trend in human progress shows improvement, which can continue, indefinitely. A joy to read.
Simon took money off dumb arch doomsters Ehrlich & Holdren in a bet, because they are as unfounded in reality as the moron Moonbat.
Human Caused Global Warming, The Biggest Deception In History, by Climatologist Dr. Tim Ball.
All the science, politics, scandals & agendas, in only 121 pages. A must read. He names names: the Bankster Rockefellers & their multi-billionaire cronies like Soros & Ted Turner, Gore & much more, & the feudal vastly depopulated future of Lords & serfs they plot for this planet.
http://www.drtimball.ca
JD.
There’s an inverse relationship between complexity and operative lifespan. The more stuff you put in, the more stuff that will eventually break down. The customer wants lots of features these days, so producers oblige, then get blamed for alleged “built-in obsolescence”. 😐
And that’s before you factor in any lack of owner maintenance or any owner abuse of the product.
But why take any personal responsibility for your property when you can complain about the rich suit who gave you what you wanted, for giving you what you wanted?
John Doran: Did you know that the moonbat was named after Gospodin Monbiot?
The ‘static’ mind of Monbiot completely ignores human imagination and innovation.
if we treat future generations not yet born as having equal rights to the living… then it’s hard to justify killing those in the womb.
Ouch. Capital punishment is evil, but killing unborn children is a honorable. These same people want to be in charge of your health care. What could possibly go wrong?
Shhhh!
“Liberal Think” doesn’t allow logical conclusions to it’s axioms.
They offend them.
Amen
This! Obvious yet ignored by the moonbats.
Spirit of your grandchildren , or great grandchildren, or grear great great etc up until they become a new species
As a corollary perhaps we could sue our great great great grandparents for not suppling us with the right DNA to be an NBL basketballer or an Olympic sprinter[ if we failed in those ambitions].
They are murdering these descendants if they manage to survive the attempted abortion. So what future generations is this Moron referring to??
JFH—
The Hotel Moonbat has no vacancies. You have been compensated for your exclusion by the edification you receive reading his communistic rants.
Actually it’s completely vacant. Or vacuous.
John, I think I will join you we can stop off for an extended visit at one of Al Bore’s mansions. He has so many I am sure we can find one along the way.
Or, indeed, communism, perfectly described.
How do they miss the fact that the wealth our current generation creates and amasses goes to the next generation. The things we build and develop in increasingly better forms goes to the next generations. Everything goes to the next generation.
So, what Monobot is saying is that we should have a status quo in which the world we leave the next generation is not better than it was for us. No progress, stagnation. Wow, that’s the essence of pessimism.
“So, what Monobot is saying is that we should have a status quo in which the world we leave the next generation is not better than it was for us. No progress, stagnation.”
Mobiot wants us to keep fossil fuels in the ground for the next generation but he also wants the next generation to keep fossil fuels in the ground for the next generation, so it looks like under Monbiot’s plan humans will never again use fossil fuels.
These Central Planners have all the answers, don’t they.
Free Enterprise and freedom of action is what will take care of future generations.
Capitalism is a perjorative meant to put free markets in the same category as socialism and communism. Free markets and freedom of action for free people is what conservatives and capitalists are promoting, not an “ism”.
One word he fails to mention is “Socialism”, which will be quickly followed by Communism, famine, executions and forced labour. It never fails to devolve into that.
How about it Moonbat..? Why don’t you tell the children that what they’re brainwashed into unknowingly advocating is never owning anything, and everyone in the country spying on everyone else so they’re favoured if not rewarded by the Socialist/Communist State for “reporting” on your best friends that might be a teeny bit disgruntled?
Have your precious underage zombies been educated on Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot – not forgetting everything North Korea? Will your children know what happens when they report their best friends to the State and will never be seen again? Communist Russia “disappeared” many millions through mass killings against civilians by governments, including executions, destruction of population through man-made hunger and deaths during forced deportations, imprisonment and through forced labour – the Gulag.
Let’s not forget about the many more millions that starved to death.
Yeah Moonbat.. ♫ ♪ Save the children.. ♫ ..You hypocrite with murderous intent.
You have to let them rattle on. How else will you know what they are dredging up out of their cranial tissues?
The more we know about them, the better. That should be obvious to anyone who wants to see this bunch of cracked eggs collected into their collective.
I keep hoping a planet will turn up, not too far away, where they can go and set up some sort of housekeeping thingy, and leave the rest of us alone. What?? I can dream, can’t I?
There is a nice example of that planet. We call it Cuba. The only difference is that they are still close enough to productive free markets to beg for the scraps from the banquet table of productive FREE people.
We’ll put them on the first ark…. but keep the telephone sanitizers here on Earth 😁
Just like the communes of the 60s…
LISTER: The whacked-out, crazy, hippy drummer’s called Dobbin. He joined
the police force in the end. Became a grand wizard in the Freemasons.
The bass is called Gazza. He was a neo-marxist, nihilistic, anarchist.
Eventually joined a large insurance company and got his own parking
space.
With apologies to Churchill, “Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.”
You will not be allowed into the homes of the politbureau elites. They are doing important work for the people, and cannot be disturbed. If you invade their townhomes, they will be flown and chauffeured to their homes in Jackson Hole, WY … where Federal Agents patrol the perimeter of their acreage.
They need to be flown to places like
Administrative United States Penitentiary, Thomson Illinois
United States Penitentiary, Allenwood Pennsylvania
United States Penitentiary, Atlanta Georgia
United States Penitentiary, Atwater California
United States Penitentiary, Big Sandy Kentucky
United States Penitentiary, Beaumont Texas
United States Penitentiary, Canaan Pennsylvania
United States Penitentiary, Coleman† Florida
United States Penitentiary, Florence ADX Colorado
United States Penitentiary, Florence High Colorado
United States Penitentiary, Hazelton† West Virginia
United States Penitentiary, Lee Virginia
United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth Kansas
United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg Pennsylvania
United States Penitentiary, Lompoc California
United States Penitentiary, Marion Illinois
United States Penitentiary, McCreary Kentucky
United States Penitentiary, Pollock Louisiana
United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute Indiana
United States Penitentiary, Tucson Arizona
United States Penitentiary, Victorville California
Where federal agents patrol the perimeter of their cages
And exercise yards
In Soviet Russia they had Zil Lanes.
Of course, different rules for the rule makers. We all know that those who run Socialist regimes abide by a different set of rules, that they whipped together as they go, and rewards for all their hard work at taking and redistributing.
Your comment reminds me of what Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin found in the Shire when they returned home in triumph after defeating Sauron. They made quick work of the problem and then went about setting things right. Let’s not allow the dark lord to get that far.
Its just Judeo-Marxism or Judeo-NeoMarxism meant to radically change the Western World?
Mods?
Looks like “Santa” is another Labour MP or Democratic Socialist Representative posting about the Joooooooooooooooooooz again.
Great.
Thanx for validating my post,
Ok explain how the prefix “Judeo-“ does not mean Jew.
You’re either an antisemite or more likely a troll pretending to be an antisemite in order to discredit people who oppose socialism.
The real title should be «Neomarxism Policy based climate science is trying to destroy The Western Civilization.»
I see no evidence of planet Earth being destroyed.
What I see is the continuum of governments governing badly.
And idea that such evil and corrupt bodies could do anything about “climate change” is utter
nonsense.
I shall endorse that statement to my grave, sir.
And idea that such evil and corrupt bodies could do anything about “climate change” is utter nonsense
No, but they can make a gigantic stinking mess of it all by the time they’re removed from office feet-first. I call that … The People’s “Insurance Policy”, Mr Strzok
Another “I am Spartacus!” moment for the green blob. Yes, we really are brain-dead socialist watermelons, and proud of it.
According to Guardian Columnist George Monbiot, if we treat future generations not yet born as having equal rights to the living.”
Rights of Future Generations not yet born, huh? Hey Monbiot, how about if we talk about that word you dare not mention, “a-b-o-r-t-i-o-n”???? I mean if generations not yet born have rights, then wouldn’t you think that at least they have the right to BE born in the first place?
Oh I know, this is just intended to point out the total cognitive dissidence of the Left. The shriek about ‘Rights of the Unborn” when they think it supports their present goals, and in the same breath say those very same Unborn have absolutely no rights whatsoever.
Isn’t it difficult to forecast, especially the future?
“cognitive dissidence”
Not sure if you meant to write that, instead of dissonance. But it would kinda work, if they were cognitive in the first place.
lol, I could blame it on spellcheck, but it came out oddly appropriate, as you point out.
Ouch. That’s going to leave a mark.
good point, but it is a hobby horse.
how about some logical dissection instead?
“Every generation shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.”
generations don’t possess rights; individuals do.
you must exist to be able to claim rights. people who don’t exist have none.
You have a right to life – at your own expense.
you have the right to own what you produce or trade for or a given by the owner.
you have no right to any other thing.
you are not entitled to the possessions of others.
the fact that the air is yours for the price of inhaling it does not mean you may take it from somebody else or that anybody else must consider your ‘need’.
need is not a blank check on anybody’s life or property.
________________________________________________________________________
“But what of the Earth itself? In this densely populated world, all land ownership necessarily precludes ownership by others. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration is self-contradictory. It says, “Everyone has the right to own property.” But because it places no limit on the amount one person can possess, it ensures that everyone does not have this right.”
Well, duh. Exclusivity is the nature of ownership.
The earth is not densely populated. (Maybe some cities are.)
There is no shortage of land.
Nobody owns everything.
Pile a ridiculous notion on top of a false premise and you have a proposition that is not susceptible to reason.
The word for that is STUPID.
You nailed it. Wish I could upvote you.
He looks pretty well off to me.
His loony suggestion is merely rabid comunism, ie testriction of freedom, naive governmental control, and huge taxes, packaged as ‘freedom for all’. “Slavery is Freedom” I think is the appropriate term.
The sad thing is that every single one of these ‘save the world for our children’s sake’ proposals would have exactly the same result. It’s not even slightly hidden. Do people no longer understand the utter failures of comunism? Do they just not read history? Did the world begin when the world wide web was invented, or something?
Go read some history!
Now where have I heard that before..? Arbeit macht frei was it..? Same schit, different bucket.
I think history has gone the way of dodos in the school systems. Hurry before it’s pulled from the shelves and burned. Oh, wait, no bother. The new crop of AOC’s won’t be able to read anyway.
Capitalist societies have done more to help and save the enviroment than any socialist society ever has or will ever do.
You don’t understand. This time it’s going to be perfect, because people like Monbiot will be in charge.
Oh, yeah! I can see the Monbiot turning the world into the Moonbit (in honor of the architect, of course!)
“No non-renewable resource should be used that cannot be fully recycled and reused.” I love this one. Since nothing can be fully recycled and reused (there will always be losses) then nobody can use any resources for anything ever. There is also no guarantee that something will be recycled.
Under Socialism/Communism there won’t be any money to recycle anything. The USSA will be broke.
On the day of Anti-Capitalist Action in New Zealand – an Anti-Capitalist opens fire and kills 49.
Of course, the Media tells us all he was a ‘right winger’, based solely on his ‘nationalism’ – despite his stated preference for the communist Chinese political model and his opposition to free/fair trade.
Question everything, believe nothing!
The leftists have defined themselves as good, so everything bad is by definition right wing.
Liberal concern for unborn children.
Property rights? Why yes of course.
Right to life? No.
Yes indeed…. But Monbiot doesn’t want to talk about those rights. Doesn’t fit with the Socialist agenda.
Somehow I doubt the US Democrats are able to honestly embrace the concept of “generations not yet born” since they are okay with embracing legal infanticide of a full-term (38-week) viable baby still in the womb.
Even after the baby has been born – just ask the Gov of Virginia…?
And if the “viable” baby is causing complications and slowly killing its mother..? It’s surely a moral issue but what would you decide as a doctor..? Always two sides of the coin my good man.
MODS: Why are every one of my comments awaiting moderation..? Or is it the same for everyone..?
What percentage of pregnancies result in a risk to the life of the mother?
That’s not the other side of the coin, that’s a distraction.
And of course, and all powerful government, run by men such as Monbiot are the only ones who are capable of speaking for those not yet born.
MarkW
I like George. A Zoologist by profession, although my 24 year old daughter well out-guns him in qualifications. He should be reading her stuff to learn something, but he wouldn’t
But I do get a laugh at his infantile politics. I was discussing the nonsense he spouts when I was 15, and had rejected it as sh*t by the time I was 16.
As you say, ‘we need a better world, as long as I’m running it’.
It’s a form of child abuse to goad students into striking for the world of the future. Kids learn little enough as is; now they’re jumping to conclusions based on doomsday scenarios peddled by second rate ideologues? As a career farmer, you have no idea how often I’ve been berated by people who haven’t the foggiest idea what they’re talking about, but their ignorant certainty is impenetrable.
Primitive cultures tried to appease their gods by disemboweling hapless victims, tossing virgins onto bonfires, and other forms of human sacrifice. That the suspected apocalypse did not arrive, did NOT prove that the sacrifices were effective. But the coincidences were enough to rationalize the continuance of barbaric rituals.
Naomi Klein, Albert Gore, Bill McKibben, Ed Markey, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez et alia are Pied Pipers leading kids to despair and destruction on scant evidence. All but Cortez are old enough to know better, yet unlikely to live long enough to suffer the consequences of their wrongheadedness. Those damn fool dinosaurs will be lying in their graves by the time millennials realize they’ve been had.
None of their doomsday prophesies have come true. None of their draconian proposals predict the benefits of dismantling industrial society. Hurricanes and tornadoes will subside to how many per year, compared to now? Crop yields will do what exactly? How will people heat their homes, cook food, commute to work, and transport goods without steel, motor vehicles, and fossil fuels? What are those tens of millions of jobs supposed to consist of? Subsistence farming with hand tools? Learning to drive mules? Pitching hay with wooden forks? That didn’t work 300 years ago with global population one tenth of today’s.
What happens to AOC when she quickly eats a large serving of home-made ice cream? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Can’t freeze a vacuum I guess 🙂
Don’t be blaming “the kids” or ”the teenagers”, …… blame their environment.
Because, …….. “You are what your environment nurtures you to be”.
“That the suspected apocalypse did not arrive, did NOT prove that the sacrifices were effective.”
I think you meant to write “ineffective”.
If we never exploited any resources, we would still be living in caves.
Then again, most environmentalists want humans to return to living in caves.
Isn’t the cave a resource? Where are the bats going to live now?
Or the stone flint, you can’t do that.
You’re making a net out of reeds to catch fish? Use your hands, or your teeth.
They truly can’t think beyond the sound of the words they use. They profess themselves wise.
Actually, capitalism will do the exact opposite of what the Moonbot yammers about. Because capitalism knows there are finite resources and tries to make the most efficient use of them. It is the Marxists that don’t. That is why Russian pipelines didn’t have metering on them because they saw no reason to keep track. And so when there were enormous pipeline leaks, they simply increased the volume going into the pipes to keep the flow going. Monbiot is a clown.
The USSR found that a third of their annual gold production cost more per ounce than the spot price of the metal–once their vaunted system of communism collapsed and they finally put a sharp pencil to their gold mining! Talk about robbing Petra to pay Paulus!
“Not yet born having equal rights.” That’s new.
…except those babies don’t have the right to life; they are granted no protection whatsoever! So does Moonbat get to claim the inheritance of terminated babies just because he considers himself to be so noble?
I smell a stinking, hypocritical rat!
‘Future generations’ are hypothetical, and thus do not exist, therefore have no ‘rights,’ as we define them. We here in the USA, who do exist, have rights as defined in our Constitution, including the ‘Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.’
More blatantly unconstitutional opinionated drivel from the Moonbat Gruniad. Anyone who writes or publishes this sort of excrement deserves our derision and scorn.
“The children on climate strike are right: their lives should not be sacrificed to satisfy our greed … everything we take for ourselves we take from someone else …”.
=============================================
As usual in these sermons lots of “we” and “our” rather than ‘I’ and ‘my’, what he actually means is ‘you’ and ‘your’; the someone else that I allegedly take everything from must have taken it from someone else in turn maybe me, so I’m just taking it back.
Africans and Indians for instance have a right to develop their economies to at least that of the current richest countries and they can’t do that without fossil fuels and/or nuclear.
The Earth is not being destroyed nor densely populated:
“The Earth is not being destroyed nor densely populated”
I heard a story yesterday about how hackers had made public a Chinese database that kept track of fertile Chinese women. It seems China’s population growth has taken a drastic cut in recent years, enough to seriously concern Chinese leadership, to the point, in one pundit’s opinion, that the Chinese may start requiring couples to have children. He said China might adopt a Two-Child policy!
Apparently China is about to lose its longstanding record as being the most populous nation on Earth and India will replace it as most populous.
So, China over the last few decades, has raised its populations affluence and now the population is leveling off. This seems to happen to every nation that reaches a certain level of affluence. I saw a story the other day about the demographics of every nation in the EU being down.
Making people rich and affluent is good for the whole world. We can’t make more people rich without using fossil fuels and/or nuclear power generation.
“Good Point! I agree!” – Nikita Khrushchev
I am sure his real name is Moonbat.
Link says “commentisfree”….
I can’t see where the comment thread to the piece is?.
Comment macht frei!
iirc George doesn’t care for any comments that challenge his wisdom.
His intolerance for discussion / criticism is epic – I’d wager he’s blocked more people than he has followers on Twitter.
Monbiot is so stupid: money is a resource, too, just like everything else that’s considered valuable!! If we didn’t have money, how would society function? It wouldn’t! (…Take a cow down to the airport to buy a round-trip ticket to Europe?? Right! LOL!!) And if money wasn’t worth anything, they’d have to invent something that had value! And you know what they’d probably call it? MONEY!!
But why allocate a valuable resource to people who are yet unborn? That’s like planning a Green New Deal based on technology that isn’t even invented yet!! But that’s a red herring; the point is to pass policies so government can replace every building in the country! Then who do you think owns those buildings? YOU?? Are you as stupid as Monbiot? The GOVERNMENT now owns the buildings; they paid for replacing them, remember? It amounts to the largest transfer of wealth away from private ownership toward a government collective in the history of the world! And since the government owns (and controls) everything else, you can kiss your individual freedoms goodbye and become part of the socialist Borg, if you somehow manage to stay alive! Monbiot is just another shill advocating for Globalist dominance, and considering how much of the world is now turning nationalistic, the Globalists are freaking out!! They see the demise of their deception and have gone shat bit crazy!
They were already shat bit crazy. They just did a better job of hiding it from the commoners.
“everything we take for ourselves we take from someone else …”.
So Moonbot is against deficit spending, including for his “green” projects? After all, all those National Debts are “for the children”.
classic zero sum Communism.
No concept of value add, no idea about wealth creation only wealth distribution.
The socialists don’t seem to realize that progress keeps making the pie bigger, and people getting rich does not preclude poorer people from getting rich, too. There is room for everyone. The socialists want you to believe that a rich person is taking something away from you. They are not. If you want something, then go get it. A rich person will not prevent you from following your dream.
Leo wrote: “no idea about wealth creation only wealth distribution.”
The socialists/authoritarians are only interested in wealth distribution. They are eager to distribute other people’s weatth to further their favorite political ideology.
A good example is AOC. She has these grandiose ideas about fighting climate change which would cost an estimated $93 TRILLION, and when asked about the enormous costs, she just dismisses the cost as being absolutely necessary and we will get the money from somewhere. Her whole focus is on the fix, not the cost of the fix, because to her, there is an endless supply of money out in the world just waiting for people like her to tap in order to do what they consider good for the world.
Costs really don’t enter these people’s minds. Their only focus is on how to get hold of other people’s money to spend. That will take care of the costs, they say.
Mr. Abbott, I raise a pint to salute you, sir. I have made virtually the same statements as you did in your first paragraph. Some are quick to demonize the Bill Gates of the world, but never question what the impact would be had they done nothing. The world would be substantially poorer, including the person making the complaint.
When someone complains that the rich have stolen from the people, my standard reply is, “Really? Who stole from you, how, and how much?” Never get a response.
Then there are the complaints of ‘slave labor’. Don’t like the wages? Quit and get a different job. Better yet, start your own company. Millions do that every year a free-market, capitalistic countries.
Equality, in the form of abject poverty and despair, is spreading in Venezuela and yet the billionaires are still in control.
In the U.S., the second Amendment would have come into play by now.
P.S. Monbiot equates two terms thatt are not tkphe same: property rights and legal possession!
If some law gets passed that says the unborn have an equal right of possession, how easy would it be to extend the same law to those who are alive but who currently have no property? Suddenly you get government notification that there are shareholders in your house conveyed simply on the idea that the have-nots should become the haves! Talk about an amazing distribution of wealth, although a larger theft has never before been perpetrated on humanity!
Beyond that it can’t and doesn’t work because we are a world of countries with different rights and laws. This type of stupidity is from the green eco lunatic fringe who suddenly think everyone is going to become one world under UN type setup.
That’s what all these “agreements” and “treaties” are for, such as Paris. The more countries sign up and “consent” to UN terms, the more they’re under the NWO thumb. Thankfully, many have seen through this and issued the middle finger.
Great, the share holders can donate part of the cost of a new roof.
Will the bank loan me money on the basis of future earnings of my great grandchildren? It works for the national debt.
Monsieur Moanyboat mistakenly links capitalism with weather changes during his brief stay here on this planet. I challenge him to assert a scenario where socialism will keep weather (and in the centennial term, climate) in check.
Lets be realistic the climate is the least of your problems under socialism just getting food and shelter tends to be hard enough.
A high priest of UK eco-loonery regularly platformed by the state broadcaster and touted as a sage – and a long term evader of actual debate about the procession of mostly garbage he spouts because debate is pointless since he’s always right.
The school strike twottery has been orchestrated by adults like George – the idea that it’s a spontaneous demo by children is a deceit on a grand scale – and that’s right up George’s street.
Perhaps Monbiot should be concentrating on the concept that negativity is destroying the human paradigm and the planet really doesn’t feel any pain…
At least Monbiot practices what he preaches, by recycling his articles.
Maybe he should lead by example and recycle himself back into fertiliser. After all, it’s the only thing that comes out of his mouth.
Yes George. Now take your meds and don’t forget them again
After all these years, he still hasn’t grown up and learned what is really going on. He is stuck in the stone age of foggy thinking.
He is Monbiot, the science child who never grew up.
George Monbiot looks a bit like Ned Isakoff, aka The Communist … onetime boyfriend of Elaine Benes. Do Commies all look alike? It’s not enough that they all think alike?
http://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/ned-isakoff.jpg?w=650
Until he was blacklisted 😏
Monbiot still owes me a crispy£tenner. see The Great Climate and Global Warming Fraud invented by the Club of Rome see http://www.theeuroprobe.org/210/
This issue is one of my pet peeves.
Please don’t fall for the idea that Capitalism is the opposite of Communism, it is a Straw Man comparison.
The Opposite of Communism is not Capitalism.
The Opposite of Communism is Freedom.
The United States was founded on the Ideals of Liberty, not Capitalism. Capitalism was not the objective – no one ever said, “Give us Capitalism or give us death.” They said, “Give us Liberty or give us death.” Nowhere is the word “capitalism” to be found in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.
We established a Government designed to Secure the Unalienable Rights of Mankind (Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness), first, then an economic system of Capitalism automatically followed because Capitalism is the only Economic System that fits with Freedom.
First comes Freedom then comes Capitalism.
When people criticize Capitalism they’re really criticizing Freedom.
Communists don’t want to argue against Freedom so they replace that term with the word Capitalism in order to redirect and muddle the issue.
We don’t need to defend Capitalism, we need to defend Freedom.
For instance, if a Communist says something derogatory about Capitalism don’t waste your time trying to prove Capitalism is better than Communism, simply prove that Freedom is better than Totalitarianism – it’s that simple.
In the end, Communism is nothing more than a Euphemism/Facade for Totalitarianism, and Capitalism is a Communist Epithet/Pejorative for Freedom.
The Debate isn’t between Capitalism and Communism, the Debate is between Freedom and Totalitarianism.
In a Totalitarian Society:
• All Capital and Property is controlled or owned by the State.
• All Economic Commerce and Consumption is planned and controlled by the State.
• All Human Sustenance, such as Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Healthcare is provided by the State.
• The Goal of Education is to Promulgate a Culture of Dependency.
• All Communication Media are produced or controlled by the State and limited by Political Correctness.
• Society is organized like an Insect Colony being divided into First and Second-Class Citizens (Leaders and Workers (i.e. Rulers and Peasants)).
In a Free Society:
• All Citizens have the Right to Own, Buy, Sell, and Leverage personal Property and Capital.
• All Economic Commerce and Consumption is determined by Supply and Demand.
• The acquisition of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Healthcare is a direct function of the intensity of an Individual’s ingenuity, determination, and perseverance.
• The Goal of Education is to Promulgate a Culture of Self-Reliance.
• All Communication Media are Privately owned Enterprises and Endeavors exercising the Freedom of Speech.
• Everyone is Free to Pursue an increase of their Wealth and Status in the Community
It’s as simple as that.
Agreed +100.
Now if only we can get out of the strawman/birth (berth) certificate/Statute/law of the sea deception. That’ll return us all our natural rights and freedoms.
A most illuminating analysis. Thank you.
“Communists don’t want to argue against Freedom so they replace that term with the word Capitalism in order to redirect and muddle the issue.
We don’t need to defend Capitalism, we need to defend Freedom.”
Excellent comments, FM!
We are defending Freedom not some “ism”. Freedom of speech and action is what we need. That’s what makes the world work properly.
I sort of agree but you can easily argue it under Capitalism and how the two are connected
In Capitialism all transactions between two parties must benefit both parties or it would not happen … you have the freedom to not to do a transaction if it doesn’t benefit you.
In Socialism few transactions between two parties benefits both parties, one party is often giving something up either voluntarily or usually by force. This benevolence is supposedly for the greater good of others in the state.
The weakness of Capitialism is simply that those that don’t have skills or products to sell are disadvantaged … so that usually translates to the poor and disabled. Usually Capitialism requires you put a small socialist structure in place to support those people usually called social security.
The weakness of Socialism is there is no incentive for people to excel because you get no advantage you either donate or the state steals all excess you produce. Why even bother going to work you can stay home and play computer games all day and still get your share of the resources. You also struggle to find people for the horrible jobs like cleaning because a person doing those horrible jobs receives no extra support.
That is why Socialism has and always will fail because it is an immoral and corrupt system.
LdB said:
“Usually Capitialism requires you put a small socialist structure in place to support those people usually called social security.”
“That is why Socialism has and always will fail because it is an immoral and corrupt system.”
So socialism is doomed to failure because it has no capitalist element, but capitalism isn’t doomed to failure because it has no socialist element, even though you say it requires one?
Freedom Monger said:
“The acquisition of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Healthcare is a direct function of the intensity of an Individual’s ingenuity, determination, and perseverance.”
So where does that leave an orphaned baby? Should the state stay out of it and let their fate be determined by whether or not individuals decide to provide charity?
What about someone who is rendered unable to work after being beaten up by unknown assailants? No health care for them, and no education for their kids?
Re: Phillip Schafer
Are you actually saying that Free People can’t voluntarily come to the aid of orphans and victims unless the Government forces them? Is that what you really believe?
You’re not the kind of person who wouldn’t help someone in need unless the Government made you, right? Why do think nobody else will?
Voluntary Charity is the essence of Love Thy Neighbor. (I know, Voluntary Charity is an oxymoron)
Of course, when I say that the acquisition of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Healthcare is a direct function of the Individual’s ingenuity, determination, and perseverance, I’m talking about adults, not children. I’m saying that it is not the Government’s (or anyone else’s) responsibility to provide people with these things.
if we treat future generations not yet born as having equal rights to the living, property rights will have to be radically adjusted.
According to the Pro Choice folks (mostly progressives) the not yet born have no rights.
Future adjustments, yes. Selective-child in progress. Wicked.
Free markets, retained earnings, and the prophecy of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming are destroying the Earth. Throw another baby on the barbie, he’s done.
The guy who wrote this blog post says he invented the Great Horse Manure Crisis. It is interesting that at the top of the blog is his apparent motto: “Always plan for the Worst Case Hypothesis”.
That is a really good way to make sure nothing ever happens because we won’t be able to do anything for fear that some worst case hypothesis will come true. That is a ticket to doom. It is the opposite of wisdom.
Wisdom is picking up your load and bearing it into an uncertain future with the knowledge that there will be suffering and eventually you will die. While you’re here, at least you can try to do something meaningful to make your miserable existence worthwhile … or something like that.
In the mean time we should be cognizant of the fact that capitalism has brought us as close to an earthly paradise as we have ever been. With every passing year, fewer people in the world suffer extreme poverty. Why? Mostly because of the wealth enabled by fossil fuels.
I don’t know about you, but when I look out my front window I see a clean suburban environment which supports a vast array of plants, birds, and mammals, not the least of which is a skunk whom I haven’t seen yet. 🙂
Close your eyes and envision Monbiot: that’s your skunk!
That crisis is actually identical to the whole CO2 debate. If we really needed to scrub CO2 out of Earths atmosphere the hard sciences could make it happen and for less than the whole emissions control path. Make no mistake the whole CO2 crisis is simply an excuse to push a left agenda it really has nothing to do with removing CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Sounds like pumped-up Pompeo in Houston this week.
China has reduced poverty by 800 million in 10 years, with less poor than the good ol’ USA today with 4 times the population, an unparalleled record.
How is that possible? Simple – they applied FDR’s New Deal, China style (Confucius) on a massive scale. Two China premiers have said this – which is why Trump can do a deal, if the pompous warriors get out of the way.
It is time for the USA to get onboard this new paradigm – the worn-out old tattered memes are yawn inspiring.
One system rewards you for your economic activity. The other system rewards you for your political beliefs.
The first system says you can have all the food you are willing to work for.
The second system says you can’t have food because that means someone else will have to go without.
Old Chinese proverb. Food on table, many problems. No food on table, only 1 problem.
One really irritating thing is that the the slack-jawed lefties who read the Grauniad literally worship the ground from which this idiot Moonbat spouts his preposterous ramblings. They have ABSOLUTE belief.
They have the same sort of glassy-eyed stare and rictus grin as you see on those JW’s who come knocking. 100% impenetrable belief. I suppose one might as well just ignore them, as best as one can.
George has confused work and inheritance.
The right to property was not a right of inheritance. You are not born with a piece of land for your use.
What the right to property means is that you are allowed to own land.
This is a big deal. Not so long ago the average peasant was not allowed to own land. They were serfs. The noble was the land owner. Chances are good your ancestors didn’t own the land they farmed.
Even today in countries like China you are not allowed to own land. All land must be leased from the government.
And those that talk about slavery and white privilege are displaying an ignorance of history.
The landless serfs of feudal times were no different than slaves to their feudal lord. The idea that a serf would get a vote to choose their lord would have been no different than a pig voting to choose their farmer.
Yet this system governed Europe for hundreds of years until the serfs eventually won their freedom. And it was these events that in large part eventually led to a general outlawing of slavery worldwide.
The system that George envisions seems very much like a return to feudalism, with the loss of hard fought freedoms.
“Every generation shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.”
and
“no renewable resource should be used beyond its rate of replenishment.”
So at one generation, of say 10 billion people, each person has a right to 1 ten-billionth of the renewable amount of resources. A somewhat later generation, of say 20 billion people, will then have a right to half that amount per person. And since they claim there are limits to growth, that pie is not going to get bigger. The individual share is going to go down, since population is still going up.
The individual share is going to go down, since population is still going up.
≠=====((
Interesting observation. By reducing the individual share this means each new person born is infringing on the rights of the existing people.
So under George’s rules, we can’t allow anyone to be born unless someone first dies.
So in the end, it comes down to population control. And the temptation for people to increase their share by making sure that population decreases.
I know several countries that have nukes that dispute the claim that you have any right to our countries resources. You are welcome to come and try and take them.
The Climate Finance Partnership was created in 2018 in order to propel forward the New Climate Economy. Both being key vehicles to unlock 100 trillion dollars from pension funds to invest in (privatize) the Global South while simultaneously implementing the economic valuation and payment for environmental services hidden within the Sustainable Development Goals.
The privatization of nature will transform global finance. Those most responsible for the destruction will be assigned as the new “stewards of global natural capital.”
Social capital will also be valued and monatized to offset companies negative natural capital through resource consumption. Only those ( corporate and individual) with access to social credit will be able to consume resources without paying a heavy tax.
The youth are being duped to get the oligarchs who operate via large foundations what they want. From artist Hiroyuki Hamada:
“What’s infuriating about manipulations by Non Profit Industrial Complex is that they harvest good will of the people, especially young people. They target those who were not given skills and knowledge to truly think for themselves by institutions which are designed to serve the ruling class. Capitalism operates systematically and structurally like a cage to raise domesticated animals. Those organizations and their projects which operate under false slogans of humanity in order to prop up the hierarchy of money and violence are fast becoming some of the most crucial elements of the invisible cage of corporatism, colonialism and militarism.”
Oligarchs are salivating over the global waves of youth mobilization demanding action on climate change.
The link between most, if not all of the NGOs, institutions, and high-level individuals behind the Climate Change Movement is the shared desire for carbon markets and/or the implementation of payments for ecosystem services (PES). The money for multi-billion-dollar corporations – to create privatized services and industries, under the guise of environmental protection, is going to be PAID FOR BY THE PUBLIC – BUT THE PUBLIC WILL NOT OWN THEM .
Once you remove the incentive for people to work harder for greater reward, you remove the incentive to work and the result is poverty.
Hmm… How about “No. Non-existent hypothetical people don’t have the same rights as the living.”?
I think I’ll go with my version.
Marxism and Malthusianism are deadly wrong because both of them blatantly ignore human ingenuity.
Despite its flaws, capitalism collapses only in the Chicken Little minds of Marxists. Conversely, Marxism has proved to collapse everywhere it has been applied.
In the same vein, the resources of the Earth are lacking only in the blindly retrograde minds of the Malthusians.
Marxism and Malthusianism are religiously embraced by people who can’t neither grasp reality nor project themselves into the future and who fall into dystopia which they want to impose to other.
“The children on climate strike are right: their lives should not be sacrificed to satisfy our greed”
No, our lives should not be sacrificed to satisfy their greed. See, two can play that game.
Moonbat is an idiot. Enough said.
NO that isn’t enough said. The Guardian is a worthless rag not even suited for lining parakeet cages. Now between us we have said enough.
Well, if future generations not yet born have the same rights as those living now, then . . .
. . . we should never do deficit spending, and
. . . abortion should be outlawed.
Outlaw any form of birth control also, including sterilization procedures like vasectomies and tube-tying.
Because denying future generations their opportunity to be born would be just as bad, if not worse, as killing them.
Monbiot has devolved into a profoundly shallow reactionary hysterical parody of a thoughtful person.
The utter lack of climate crisis has driven him delusional.
His rejection of the facts of the success of our current economic system has led him to embrace death and destruction. His ideas, if implemented as he wishes them, would kill billions of people.
Those born in the future would live brutish short desperate lives.
It is long past pushback and exposure of this deceitful misanthropic blowhard. The ideas he champions ate more than merely wrong.
What is infuriating about Monbiot is not his idealism and passion for a particular brand of politics and society.
He shares that characteristic with most of us , albeit with a different outlook.
No what is almost inadmissible is his ignorance. Despite a good education and access to all the archive material of a major news company he does not seem to be aware that what he proposes has been in operation , in the most “capitalist” of countries , for generations .
It was the US , in its most capitalist and expansionist phase that first started the idea of National Parks , free of development for present and future generations to enjoy. An example that spread throughout the western world and regions formerly part of European empires.
Most countries have game and wild life protection policies that constrain development- except of course when the “planet saving” renewable technologies are concerned .
The children of the future will never see a live bald eagle in the wild in the US or a hen harrier in Norfolk marshes thanks to the policies supported by Monbiot .
It is in the wonderfully socialist Norway that there is a determination to rid the seas of the remaining sea mammals. If you are ever in China at a major tourist centre like the Terracotta Army , there is a large market outside and hunters displaying the carcasses of the mammals shot . I am sure that I saw the fur of snow leopards displayed there. This is communist China , where future generations will never see a snow leopard again (not that they are easy to see now admittedly).
It is not the “capitalist ” countries where heritage is lost to future generations , but the socialist or communist societies , where development takes priority .
Despite a good education
George has a religious belief
They say Charles (the Halfwit) had the best education money can buy.
He believes in all kinds of loony things. Access to a good education is no guarantee of outcome.
One. Could wish that the delusional Monbiot was part of the great unborn.
“… We need a new human right for future generations…” Except we reserve the right to abort them. It is so progressive of the Guardian to lay full righteous claim to speak for the unborn today, yet last yesterday and tomorrow they will return to defending a “woman’s right to control her body” and have taxpayer funded abortion upon demand. How progressive.
Mombiot is obviously barmy. The fact he is a Guardian journalist with ideas so flawed he could only present then via the Guardian should surprise no one.
I wake up every day confident the Wirld is a better place for humanity thanks to fossil fuels that it was before real cheap energy was available.
I also rest easy not having any worries about climate change, or any worries about bogus CO2 worried.
I actually feel sorry for the ignorant greens who suffer dread about everything and never have chance to relax and enjoy living.
funny..Ive never thought we were born with any “rights”
we land/get used to who/ where/ and the circumstances we find ourselves in and adapt or fail, rights have little to do with it. you dont have the right to decent parents a house or land or anything else some get it some get it all and the majority get very little , and learn to make do.
is banning any advice on NOT having kids you dont want/cant feed or house well/ really wise
ie usa policy on any OS aid being provided ONLY on the grounds of no birth control help or meds given?
entire slums in usa and elsewhere populated by people who would have better off NOTbeing and if decent affordable options were available wouldnt have been.
its cute how blokes get so antsy about a womens right to decide if she wants the burden of pregnancy birth and reponsibilty for 18+yrs cos being honest she is the mug who most often bears that cost.
if not her alone then her and the entire society that ends up paying forsupporting the kids.
chicago and harlem in usa spring to mind useless breathers who cant even speak the language of the land,
every nations got similar places some worse some marginally better, but all are a drain on the society
This “overcrowded planet” bit is getting a bit tedious.
At the current level of population, every person alive could be allocated about one-quarter acre of land in Australia which leaves the whole of the rest of the planet for whatever else you need it for.
Just because the Brits can’t bear not to be in commuting distance of London and the Americans prefer the east and west coasts to the bits in between, this does not mean the planet is overcrowded!
‘No non-renewable resource should be used that cannot be fully recycled and reused.’
OK, take that back to Adam and Eve and where do we end up now?
NO Guardian newspaper.
Perhaps not all bad then.
“… a circular economy from which materials are never lost, …”
In other words the future he envisages is simply treading water, there will be no progress. At least he is being honest, if only inadvertently, with renewable energy such as wind and solar that is the best prospect available.
There are no property rights in a mere expectation, established common law principle. Monbiot’s thesis falls on this point alone!
The mass killings in New Zealand actually brought some perspective to the children’s climate march. Ironically the children’s march because of the timing barely rated in the news. Even the media which has been complicit in the global warming scam realised that such an atrocity as occurred in NZ has priority. Whilst problems ( especially imagined ones) of the future are important in planning our future behaviours what matters to most people including most kids is the here and now. It’s much , much so much more important that one can go to a place of worship without fear of being killed rather than wondering whether an unproven theory about future global temperatures is true and weather if it is true we can actually do something about it.
When ClimateGate erupted, Monbiot covered his ass, by throwing Phil Jones under the bus and switching his focus temporarily to the CAGW evil twin, the BioDiversity agenda.
Is it realistic that Monbiot didn’t know the shenanigans practiced by UEA and other climate charlatans, given Monbiot’s close association to Crispin Tickell, CAGW Godfather Himself??
Climategate: George Monbiot’s Lament
One of Europe’s most ardent and best-known global warming alarmists, George Monbiot, is in anguish over the unfolding climategate e-mail scandal and is calling on Phil Jones, one of the climate scientists at the heart of the fiasco, to resign
https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/6757-climategate-george-monbiots-lament
Sir Crispin was President of the Royal Geographical Society from 1990 to 1993 and Warden of Green College, Oxford, between 1990 and 1997, where he appointed George Monbiot and Norman Myers as Visiting Fellows. Green College merged with Templeton College in 2008 to become Green Templeton College, located at what was previously Green College
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispin_Tickell
Crispin Tickell: CAGW Godfather
Nigel Lawson: Global warming has turned into religion
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/11/was-climate-change-alarmism-always-about-fears-of-overpopulation/#comment-2623744
Examples would necessarily be anything made of materials mined or derived from fossil fuels; clothing, electronic devices, automobiles etc.
The concepts of cost and value are lost on idealists like AOC or Monbiot.
Recycling takes additional labor and energy. If the value of the resulting material is less than the cost of those resources, then under their scheme the difference would have to be made up in the price of the original item.
Since most of our clothing, electronics etc are not easily recycled (because of mixed materials for example) the price of those everyday items would skyrocket; with many becoming unaffordable.
(I know, that’s their “anti-consumerism” objective, even if they haven’t explicitly thought it out. I bet AOC still expects her next laptop, new suit, or TV to be available at today’s prices.)
CAGW-Climate Change-Climate Disruption- Extreme Weather- Capitalism? Whatever will they think of next or was that what they were thinking all along. Duh!
I had the misfortune to see Monbiot live on BBC Politics Live programme yesterday. I truly believe the man is insane and switched off after a couple of minutes.
This is a man whose philosophy would mean that there is no future. There would be no innovation and human existence would be dragged down to the level of mere animals (and not the comparatively comfortable existence of farm animals).
People like Monbiot are a much bigger risk to the future of the planet than any of the manufactured risks that he and his ilk scare impressionable people with.
In an engineering economics course I asked students what they could offer as a one sentence definition of ethics. One was so amazing it is now permanently etched in my memory. “Caring more for the needs of others than you do for yourself.” I simply replied that it could not be used to organize a stable or just society. Monbiot’s statement is similarly vacuous.
Monbiot, the little tool of Sir Crispin Tickell, the former chairman of… the Thomson Reuters Foundation…
Hypocrite.
Man-Bot is right – but only from his perspective. The “Elite” must control the unwashed, crushing them when necessary, in order to ensure their and their children’s (the Elite’s) thriving survival.
Oddly Moonbat can never offer an ‘socialists’ state or any type of state other than capitalists,who have a better record on the environment than several capitalists states such as Sweden who are regarded as having very good environmental records and have for a long time.
Indeed states such has the USSR , Venezuela , China have bloody awful records on the environment no matter how much of their ideology Moonbat admires.
What does that even mean, “lost”? In the universe where I have spent most of my time, we have a law called conservation of mass.
Why was it not a problem when CO2 was “lost” over the eons of fossil fuel and carbonate rock formation?
Matter is neither created nor destroyed. If burning fossil fuels caused us to lose some of the hydrogen, carbon, or oxygen atoms to space, then we would have a real problem.
Apparently in Moonbat’s world, it’s unacceptable to have change of any sort? Or is it that coal, oil, and natural gas has some sort of metaphysical value when it is in the ground where nobody can see it and it serves no practical purpose? If we turn all the fossil fuels back to carbon dioxide and water, how is that a problem compared to the supposed requirement to leave them in the ground? Either way, future generations won’t be benefitting from them. It’s like refusing a gift of a billion dollars because if you get used to spending a million dollars a week, in a couple of decades you’ll be broke.
How can we rely on solar power when the sun only has a couple of billion years left? It’s not sustainable.
Has anyone else noticed that there are never trolls when the discussion is about the real reason for AGW (ie communism/world control)?
Monbiot would impress me more if he could get the Gruaniad to run at a profit. Until such times he should go away and hide under a rock and let the rest of us get on with our lives and not try force us to live on planet Guardian. No doubt he believes that Centrifugal Force exists, that the dominant terrestrial green house gas is Carbon Dioxide and the Earth is flat.
The Guardian is supposed to have gone back to its roots to save money, to Manchester. For our American cousins it used to be called the Manchester Guardian.
Some of us in this country used to refer to The Guardian as the “Maoist Guardian.” Except now, with the likes of Monbiot, it should probably be referred to as the “post-modernist-Maoist Guardian.”
“…the founding principle of any just system is that those who are not yet alive will, when they are born, have the same rights as those who are alive today.”
Not taking sides here but does their position make them pro or anti abortion?
Pro abortion so as to minimize the population of future rights holders or Anti abortion because those unborn are entitled to the same rights as those born?
Seems to mean this line of reasoning is inane.
The Monbiot Mental Midget appears to be offering just another, but stranger, alternative rationale for the imposition of a brand of Marxist socialism/communism. He thinks he is doing better, but he is not. Monbiot makes Stalin and Mao look like pikers, and I suggest Monbiot would be willing to kill millions of currently born in order to advance his ridiculous theory.
Funny thing, too: Monbiot favors some kind of imaginary “right to own property” vested in the unborn. Except that he probably supports or sympathizes with the unlimited right of abortion now practiced and advocated in the United States, along with the less-extensive but nevertheless pernicious abortion laws that exist in Europe. Couple that with the declining birth rates in Europe and the U.S. (because people like AOC suggest, like many other millennials, that maybe it’s not right to bring children into the world now), it makes a right of the “unborn” such as Monbiot suggests a complete contradiction to the rest of his (perverse) world view. Such is the function of post-modernist ideology and its reigning ideologues.
Not to mention that Monbiot completely forgets about the “tragedy of the commons.” If everybody (including future generations) owns everything, it means nobody owns anything. No one has any incentive to create, innovate, or do anything else to develop, use, and husband the world’s resources. Government does everything at that point? Ha! Government will have nothing to tax, or do, before long, because in the course of redistribution of existing wealth (for the future “benefit” of a mythical “unborn”), no new wealth can be created, sustained, or husbanded.
It is a prescription for a totalitarian leviathan of the sort that Hobbes, Marx, Lenin, and Mao could only have dreamed of.
Concerned about future generations?
Considering the current state of abortions, future generations have bigger problems to worry about than the use of fossil fuels.
Just wait until they decide to do something about those “useless eaters” at the other end of life.
No I think it is more like ppl in the Western world have no interest in having children at all. Abortion is a small piece compared to the ’35, not married, no spouse in sight, could I possibly manage to make one’ lot.
For men the challenge is to be well-doing enough that women take an interest. It’s a law of pairing that a man may marry an uneducated woman, but the contrary is rare. So the more educated women are compared to men, the less options ppl have. And among men, there are more who have reading difficulties and college drop-outing. Some men excel, but women generally trump men in education.
‘Sorry Grok, stone is not renewable, so you are not allowed to use it for your stone axes. According to the Stone Axe and Other Dangerous Assault Weapon Prohibition Act, you are fined for 50 squirrels and punished with two weeks in detention cave.’
I wonder are socialists are a side product of the modern world, or had cave people and Qin dynasty their own?
With all do respect to Monbiot, especially in consideration of past experience of mine with Monbiot at Guardian, I got to say, and hopefully I am wrong with this,
but Monbiot seems to have reduced himself to a junky drug addict, as almost all of MSM stars have, due to the course of reality…and heavy strains there.
Hopefully me being wrong, but in case of the smallest chance there, got to say, that no much value on taking the leading, education, schooling or following from junky drug addicts of MSM…
Maybe too harsh, and maybe too unacceptable, but hey Americans when you look at Young Turks MSM panel, you looking at a very much junky and drug addict panel…completely under drug dependency, which makes a guy like me question the Monbiot position in regard of drugs… when considering the far gone beyond any safety of the young junk Turks at large…
Hopefully wrong, but all MSM stars all over there could no do what they doing unless under influence and support of drugs, in heavy dependency as from such as, as far as I can tell.
Again hopefully I am wrong with all this…but hey, free expression of the mind in my part, let the dogs lie, where they may be.
Time only will tell, at this point in time, as far as I can tell, in consideration of the whole plethora of MSM and it’s open engagement and dependency in drug taking…almost in all given environment , more than ever before,
somewhere more and somewhere less, but still the same in basics.
Junky, drug addiction at best of it…in the best attempt to resist against the odds, as per means of psychopathy clause…the only and the main means to suppress the feelings, at the most possible.
Sorry again, if too harsh,,, especially apologies to Anthony, in this one point here.
Really, really, really sorry, if too inconvenient with this..but got to say it.
cheers
What are we really passing on to future generations? Some decaying infrastructure which is too little for even current needs. Some decaying ideals about democracy, freedom, and all that. A whole lot of international disputes and the weapons to fight them. Other than that, what?
A whole lot of debt which can never be repaid, and more coming…
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/behind-the-budget-gimmick-that-could-help-secure-trumps-border-wall.amp
Save the earth too? Good luck with that.
It’s probably been said before, but Monbiot, like Figueras (sp?) know that their particular type of socialism is doomed, especially after Venezuela, so they need to take advantage of ‘climate change’ as a means to an end. Let’s face, if idiots like AOC can get elected, apart from the loss of superiority people like Monbiot must suffer as a result, he must think his argument stands a chance.
But that’s the problem, if you treat the populace as idiots too, they will fight back at the insult. Although, now they are recruiting school-children to their cause – having managed to get their socialist teachers to fail to teach them anything about …. anything,
…furthermore (I repeat myself): If Monbiot thinks we should all be equal (ie: socialists) he has not understood Solzhenitsyn’s apercu that: we are all born with different abilities; those who are free are not equal; those who are equal are not free.
The logical fallacy of George’s “unborn future generations have the same rights as the living” is that under this assertion, the dead of previous generations have the same rights as the living. What he is asserting is that time no longer exists for the purpose of defining rights. Next year, this year, last year are not different.
Hey George, you are living on the land, and infringing the rights, of dead people. Get outta there! Give it back!
If THIS generation must be denied resources because of the “future”, exactly which future generation WILL be allowed to use them? Because EVERY generation looks to the future. It’s just an argument against resource use altogether.
It’s also a demand that future generations be born into poverty. Do you think they will thank us for that?
Typical of the anti-capitalists, Monbiot has no idea how wealth is created, assuming – despite all historical eveidence to the contrary – that capitalism is only about concentrating and destroying wealth, not building it.
Hold on a second … George said “Every generation shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.” He should have stopped there. Rights? We’re talking about rights as if they grow on trees. Everybody’s rights to this are equal — they are all zero. There is no such right. George is making it all up.
Monbiot, the man with a permanent eco-climate psychosis…
“I’ve converted to veganism to reduce my impact on the living world
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/09/vegan-corrupt-food-system-meat-dairy
And the most bizar twist of his anxiety disorder:
“I still eat roadkill when I can find it, and animals killed as agricultural pests whose bodies might otherwise be dumped.”
OMG
Monbiot is a climate flagellant and a “peer review” fanatic. Fitting indeed.
The worse part of this drivel is being taught in public schools to children like and the Morlocks in the movie The Time Machine feeding off the innocence of children to promote their global warming agenda.
Unable to sell their green ideas to the adult public they, like the Morlocks, have sunk to the lowest level of human activity by corrupting the minds of children.
Seems to me capitalism is a benefit wherever it’s practiced – even for the parasite socialists who bleed it dry.
Cities were covered in vast piles of stinking horse manure
Well, many of todays lefty run cities do have a manure (and needle) problem. Only it’s not coming from the horses any more.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/12001/san-francisco-requires-poop-maps-help-pedestrians-hank-berrien
And the BBC chimes in:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190318-can-we-reinvent-democracy-for-the-long-term
Indeed. What we need is population control.
What are we really passing on to future generations?
Douglas Murray, the author of the book “The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam” asks
What are we NOT passing on to future generations?