Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Steve Keen, a Fellow at University College London, believes fellow economists are biased towards believing “capitalism can handle anything”, and that a “war footing” is required to correct the “total misrepresentations” of economists.
‘War’ footing needed to correct economists’ miscalculations on climate change, says professor
PUBLISHED SUN, MAY 23 20219:55 PM EDT
Karen Gilchrist…
Mainstream economists “deliberately and completely” ignored scientific data and instead “made up their own numbers” to suit their market models, Steve Keen, a fellow at University College London’s Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security, told CNBC on Friday.
Now, a “war-level footing” is required to have any hope of repairing the damage, he said.
“Fundamentally, the economists have totally misrepresented the science and ignored it where it contradicts their bias that climate change is not a big deal because, in their opinion, capitalism can handle anything,” Keen told “Street Signs Asia.”
Keen said the repercussions of climate change were foretold in the 1972 publication “The Limits to Growth” — a divisive report on the destructive consequences of global expansion — but economists then and since failed to heed its warnings, preferring instead to rely on market mechanisms.
“If their warnings had been taken seriously and we’d done as they’d suggested, changing our trajectory from 1975 on, we could have done it gradually using things like carbon tax and so on,” he said. “Because economists have delayed it by another half century, we are, as a species, putting three to four times the pressure on the biosphere.”
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Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/war-footing-needed-to-correct-economists-climate-change-failings.html
Part of the problem of course is academics like Steve Keen are way too timid when describing their position. “The Limits to Growth” strongly suggested population growth and economic growth are linked. I’m sure we would all have loved to hear more about Professor Steve Keen’s plans for limiting global population. Sadly Steve doesn’t appear to have explained any of this to CNBC, or perhaps CNBC decided not to publish that part of the interview.
Of course, “The Limits to Growth” is not without critics. Peter Passell, Marc Roberts and Leonard Ross’ 1972 response probably single handedly popularised the phrase “Garbage In, Garbage Out“.
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The book is “The Limits to Growth,” and its message is simple: Either civilization or growth must end, and soon. Continued population and industrial growth will exhaust the world’s minerals and bathe the biosphere in fatal levels of pollution. As the authors summarize, “if the present growth trends.. continue unchanged, the limits of growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next hundred years.”
“The Limits to Growth” is a product of an interdisciplinary M.I.T. team led by Dennis Meadows. It is financed and publicized as part of the “Project on the Predicament of Mankind,” an activity of the Club of Rome. The Club of Rome is a four‐year‐old international organization of 75 technocrats and businessmen selfdescribed as an “invisible college” dedicated to probing “the complex of problems troubling men of all nations,” including poverty, degradation of the environment, alienation of youth, rejection of traditional values, and monetary disruptions. These “seemingly divergent” problems are, says the Club, in reality part of a single “world problematique,” which can now be analyzed with the help of computers. Using techniques developed by M.I.T. systems‐engineer Jay Forrester, the Meadows team claims to have limned the underlying fallacy of industrial expansion.
“The Limits to Growth,” in our view, is an empty and misleading work. Its imposing apparatus of computer technology and systems jargon conceals a kind of intellectual Rube Goldberg device—one which takes arbitrary assumptions, shakes them up and comes out with arbitrary conclusions that have the ring of science. “Limits” pretends to a degree of certainty so exaggerated as to obscure the few modest (and unoriginal) insights that it genuinely contains. Less than pseudoscience and little more than polemical fiction, “The Limits to Growth” is best summarized not as a rediscovery of the laws of nature but as a rediscovery of the oldest maxim of computer science: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/02/archives/the-limits-to-growth-a-report-for-the-club-of-romes-project-on-the.html
“The Limits to Growth” advocate Steve Keen seems like a fascinating character. According to Wikipedia he applied for voluntary redundancy in 2013, after The University of West Sydney shut down their economics programme. Since then he appears to have found his spiritual home with far left post Keynesians in London, where he is now Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University. No doubt Steve wields significant influence over the course material studied by students entrusted to his care.
Steve Keen appears to have quite a following on Patreon, a platform for giving money to people. He wrote a very long essay about how wonderful it is people give him money, thanking people who support his efforts to overturn blind faith in Capitalism.
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What will exhaust the World’s minerals and bathe the biosphere in fatal levels of pollution is not excessive population growth but the insane drive by Climate Alarmists to cover the Earth in Wind-Turbines and Solar Panels and fill the roads with electric vehicles. The demand for rare minerals and metals to supply the Alarmists’ dream is already having severe evident consequences for people..
A miner’s dream. They will rule the world as they dig up the Earth.
3 tonne of copper for every wind turbine. That’s a lot of copper. Then at least tripling of the the transmission infrastructure because they operate at 30% of rated capacity. Then a lot more to cover for low wind plus humungous batteries that don’t come cheap. Then a tripling of the tripling to cover fossil fuel elimination in transport and industry.
Money. money, money – good time to be a miner! The prospects makes the dizzy days before the GFC look ordinary. The new surge will go to the moon:
https://www.macrotrends.net/1476/copper-prices-historical-chart-data
“3 tonne of copper for every turbine.” That might explain the price of copper doubling in the last 12 months. As a mining exploration geologist I now find myself conflicted by all this nonsense versus opportunity.
Wouldn’t it be insane if the “need” for renewable energy forced us into meterorite mining to meet the demand for metals?
I haven’t heard of any asteroids rich in copper, let alone meteorites landing on Earth.
And don’t forget the EVs. A typical EV requires 6 times the mineral inputs of a conventional car according to the IEA and with a projected 2 billion cars worldwide by 2050 that’s an awful lot of minerals required to meet net zero.
But wait there’s more! The planting of vast areas of uncared-for forests on what was productive agricultural land is having a serious effect on food prices. And the forests will be a magnet for destructive diseases and pests. All in an effort to offset harmless CO2 emissions. And we have to pay for this nonsense. It’s a drag on productivity.
Oh no worries – they’ll cut them all down to put up wind turbines and solar panels, which will kill off lots of birds, bats and will increase the “pests” even further. Of course these “energy” installations will get a pass on that whole “deforestation” thing. Along with the whole “killing lots of birds that constitute endangered species” thing.
“War level footing” sounds a lot like suspension of freedoms, aka ‘martial law’. I can see how attractive that would be to those who favour a controlled economy, a curtailment of free speech, the right of unlimited search and seizure, the state control over every aspect of life.
It will no doubt be a Worker’s Paradise.
Of course in a Worker’s Paradise YOU will still be just a Worker.
THEY will be in administration type positions (cause only they know what is best and how to implement it) but someone (ie YOU) will still need to do the work.
The correct postulation is “lived experience.”
“War level footing” is a rather pathetic and short sighted appeal to emotion – akin to a temper tantrum or cries for attention from a toddler.
If this person was seriously considering putting countries on such a footing then his job and that of every student and academic over 16 would be ended. They, along with most of the working population, would be toiling in manual jobs either in food, energy or mechanical production for little more than minimum wage.
He’s an idiot and has no clear idea what he is talking about or he would have shut up a long time ago. I can only assume that his belief is that this “War level footing” would be happening to other people, not him.
Like most socialists, he’s convinced that he will be one of those who manage socialism. The rest of you are the ones who will have to give up everything you have in order to become the worker drones you were meant to be.
I don’t even think that they’re hiding it anymore. Of course you have to restrict freedom if humanity is threatened!
Maybe this could be one of those non-euphemistic “war level footings” where the other side starts sending things back the other way.
Wasn’t it just yesterday when one of the usual suspects castigated all of us for tying climate alarmism with a desire for more socialism/communism.
They’ve already said as much: “covid-style lockdowns” to “save the environment”
Keen said the repercussions of climate change were foretold in the 1972 publication “The Limits to Growth”
Well I never did read that publication but I sure heard enough about it. Strangely I can’t recall ever hearing any mention of “climate change”.
Besides, they called it global cooling back then.
Re Keen’s reference to the long-debunked 1972 publication “The Limits to Growth” : Just because his milieu is in love with deceit or is extremely stupid, does not mean that the ‘real world’ will permit his ‘errors’ any credence.
History has refuted just about every claim made in “The Limits to Growth”. Much like Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb”.
But then, being proven wrong by history never bothered socialists. If it did, they wouldn’t be socialists in the first place.
Speaking of credence, why should anyone believe an economist (One who practices the “dismal science.”) who claims to understand what are essentially issues of physical science? He is out of his element and doesn’t realize it.
I did examine the 1972 publication, and the Club of Rome output before that. It took no genius to identify the basic error involved: “If current trends continue unabated…” But, of course, they never do!
Exactly! The Club of Rome “experts” identified early-on exponentially-increasing trends in various developing fields (e.g., oil consumption vs production) and just extrapolated this out hundreds of years into the future. Like naive students, they never stopped to consider that an S-curve, commonly found in nature and that first appears as an exponential increase, is much more likely to reflect reality. Nor did they consider how new scientific discoveries, inventions and technology can be overwhelmingly disruptive to established trends in any field (e.g., agriculture, medicine, fossil fuel extraction, fossil fuel use, etc., etc).
For one, they probably assumed every car put on the road in the future would get the gas mileage of 1972 vehicles!
An economist can’t even predict the economy 3 years ahead….why on Earth would they believe a climatist can predict the climate in 2100 ? Much less advocate going on a war footing ?
“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Charles Dodgson already thought about that ….
From his perspective, “war” is his preferred ‘modus operandi’, because [1] he has no problem with error, deception and lies, and [2] “The first casualty when war comes is truth“ is his rationale and ally. However, mankind will never solve our problems – and will not stop inventing bogus problems – unless very many people of ‘good will’ * soberly, conscientiously and prudently collect, analyse, test, confer, discuss, formulate, experiment etc in a shared mission to protect, nurture and improve our common estate. PS. re: * all people of ‘good will’: not so long ago, I could have said ‘Civil Society’ rather than “all people of ‘good will’ “, but with the wholesale corrupting of the proper objectives and purposes of so many vital institutions – including the Judicial Branch of Government – the reform of Civil Society becomes everyone’s responsibility.
Meanwhile their war on coal is hotting up with State mandated dumping by wind and solar leaving coal fired power stations running on sticky tape and string to eke the last revenue out of them-
Queensland hit by widespread power outage after fire and explosion at Callide power station (msn.com)
Callide Power Station – CS Energy
Lest we forget-
Workers offered counselling after Liddell power station explosion – ABC News
No coal means no metallurgical-grade silicon—which means no integrated circuits, no photovoltaics, no Green
NewRaw Deal.“Keen said the repercussions of climate change were foretold in the 1972 publication “The Limits to Growth””
Which has been proved to be a work of pure fantasy over time, along with The Population Bomb etc.
I’m surprised to hear Steve Keen spout such nonsense. In interviews he’s done with Max Kaiser he seemed to be somebody with some original thoughts. He has been very critical of QE for example. I will scratch him off my list of people worth listening to.
The phrase “war footing” means suspension of liberty and democratic principles. Typically these mandates are invoked when activists run out of rational arguments. Conversely the use of these phrases is the evidence that they have run out of rational arguments.
Climate Scientists probably need to be careful with war footings it a bit like going past grassy knolls you need to make sure your opponent is going to play by the rules.
The brown shirts are waiting to make a move.
So very well said!
So they were completely correct? The Limits to Growth was wrong in almost every possible way, so ignoring it was sensible.
Don’t forget the famous Paul Ehrlich/Julian Simon wager. Ehrlich lost utterly.
But, as a leftist, he claims he was even more right than he thought when he wrote his Population Bomb book in the 60s.
Leftists cannot allow history t interfere with their goals. And the MSM never holds @sshats like him accountable for their foolishness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
The guy cannot see past his nose. He derided classics economists as Ptolemists, stuck with their beliefs and halve truths on economics in the face of actual evidence that showed their beliefs wrong. Now he suddenly thinks climate scientists have is spot on and has joined their church and belief system despite all the evidence that shows they and their models are worse than useless.
Oh my, The Limits of Growth. What a Blast From The Past.
Limits of Growth(1972) was the big follow-on to The Population Bomb(1968) by Paul Ehrlich. Together they predicted the total collapse of Western Civilization and the End Of The World by the year 2000. This whole technology-driven End-Of-The-World idea was very popular among the intelligentsia of the day. This was an oddball collection of Marxists, Neo-Marxists, Ivory Tower academics, environmentalists, and their foot soldiers, the drugged out hippie-freak contingent on campus.
Obviously, twenty years after the Collapse of Western Civilization, we can look back and check the veracity of those predictions.
Now here it is, the year 2021, and we have an old Neo-Marxist still banging that drum. It must be sad, in all these years he never came up with anything else, so he just keeps banging on with what he knows. Anyway, it is a good look at the roots of the AGW scare / ideology.
Population Bomb was all about overpopulation + pollution.
Limits To Growth was all about resource depletion.
Global Cooling was there lurking in the background.
CAGW is all about resource usage.
And all of these have one thing in common. The use of science and technology to better the Human Condition across the planet. And they hated it. But one thing they did get right, which was recycling. Look carefully at the CAGW scare / ideology, with the “science” removed. You have the Marxism and Neo-Marxism. You have the anti-science and anti-technology all the while claiming to “Believe in the Science”. And you have the anti-growth and anti-progress positions. All of this recycled from 1968-1972. And this guy shifted smoothly from Limits to Growth to CAGW because at base, it was all the same territory.
Of course, many others have noted the recycling of the ideologies of that era into the CAGW scare. Still it is fun to take a walk down Memory Lane.
That’s racist.
This is the same guy who lost a bet 11 years ago because he predicted house prices in Australia was going to drop 40%. https://www.smh.com.au/business/keen-to-climb-kosciuszko-after-losing-bet-20100217-o978.html
Perhaps he should’ve bet his house on it as well, if he was so convinced?
To the Left “war level footing” really means total censorship (sayonara WUWT, they don’t like us) and locking up the people they really don’t like in internment camps. It means rationing and ration cards for the masses. But if you’re superwealthy you’ll be able to buy all the “extra ration credits” from the government you need to maintain your lifestyle … if you are properly connected, just like carbon credits for the wealthy and their private jets.
Witness all the crazy shills that are sent here on a regular basis with standard party talking points. I won’t post a list.
Yes, the “crazy shills” don’t seem to have much staying power. Perhaps their employers are displeased with their lack of effectiveness. I have to hand it to Stokes, however, as he hangs in there, despite sometimes racking up ‘unprecedented’ negative votes. Perhaps his patron is more forgiving.
He’s still behind griff’s record haul, IIRC.
He’s a martyr for the cause; or so he probably thinks
Hmmm… UAH6.0 is at -0.05C and global temps will soon fall for 30+ years when the PDO and AMO reenter their respective 30-year cool cycles, which will cause global temp trends to fall to just 0.07C/decade from 1979…
Oh, the humanity…
We actually need a “war-like footing” against the Fascist CAGW advocates who are out to totally destroy Western Civilization, free-enterprise economics, individual life/liberty/property rights, free speech, and implement global totalitarian regimes to control/tax every aspect of our lives.
Objective evidence stopped being needed or even wanted in the Climate Scam by the scammers over 20 years ago.
Agreed, Joel-san!
CAGW should never had been taken seriously….
You need to lift your sights a little, and aim at the elitism based in Fabian Socialism. The alarmist cant for the last 60 has ever and always been whatever is required to move their agenda forward – and, unfortunately, with increasing success.
Reading through this carefully, I see this as an effort to show Ralph Nordhaus he was wrong about the Climate Scammers lack of commitment.
Nordhaus called them all (aka, the Green New Dealers) out in this essay:
https://issues.org/empty-radicalism-of-the-climate-apocalypse/
where he wrote,
…
It seems to me Keen is simply trying to prove fellow economist Nordhaus is wrong about being a neoLiberal and the hard Left’s commitment to its own insanity.
The far left mostly seems to be about finding a reason why it is someone elses job. Think Kamala Harris visiting the border.
Where the left totally dominates, like Venezuela, its very obvious the reason nothing gets done is they are all sitting back waiting for someone else to do the work.
The last thing people like that would want is to put their fellow travellers in charge of completing a task they actually want performed.
Cackling Kamala is another empty suit propped up by the Marxstream Media, who couldn’t even get above 2% support in her own state.
But she does have a list of preferred pronouns.
The only border Kamala has managed to visit is the Canadian one.
“If their warnings had been taken seriously and we’d done as they’d suggested, changing our trajectory from 1975 on, we could have done it gradually using things like carbon tax and so on,”
Interestingly, just 5 years later there was a clear change in trajectory, because since 1980 the collective emissions from the developed world stopped rising and are still the same today despite immigration from the developing world pushing up population in the developed world.
The very rapid rise in emissions since 1990 has been driven by China, who now emits more CO2 than the entire developed world combined and the developing world now emits 2/3 of all emissions and still rising rapidly.
Steve Keen spent a lot of time predicting the crash of housing in Australia in those years before 2013. Prediction after prediction, and he had me sucked in. Never happened and he disappeared quietly.
Mind you all booms will crash eventually, but his absolute certainty was remarkable.
Aren’t “academics” like Steve Keen ever conscious of the need to check before they open their mouths and confirm their idiocy? And is there no procedure for removing them from their comfortable sinecures? There sure should be!
my favourite is:-
Don’t open your mouth before putting your brain into gear”
War always favors Capitalism, good profits to be made for the few !
The cannon fodder is just collateral damage.
Read history, start with the Babylonians & end in 2021, same pattern for 8,000yrs.
I was thinking the same when I saw the title.
You are wrong.
Don’t confuse Capitalism and capitalists. Capitalists ( especially Big Capitalists) hate capitalism and support socialist parties, socialist media, socialist think-tanks. Because they know quite well that it’s much easier to profit from government’s contracts, subsidies, and bailouts than operating on free markets.
Actually, every capitalist who gets government’s contract stops being a capitalist and turns de facto into a “red manager”, who receives money not from willing customers but from helpless taxpayers.
So War and Capitalism are antithetical.
Yes, we need a war level footing to eradicate these leftist enemies of the human race.
I thought the warmists were already on a war footing….the propaganda is on full speed and Princess Charles has called or the military to get involved.
Is he going to force China and India onto this ‘footing’?
I’d like to see him – and the rest of them – try!
Send them all to China to protest about China’s “emissions,” and see how long they last!
Wikipedia:
Poor Keen. Still angry that Friedman got the Nobel, are we?
I am seeing the word “war” used more and more in discussions of climate policy. This should concern anyone involved – synonyms for war include but are not limited to: bloodshed, attack, crusade, siege, vendetta, hostility, antagonism, disunity, and ill-will. Opposites to war include: harmony and peace. It is a striking reversal of the idealism of the flower children from the 1960s. In Canada we are 708 days into the climate emergency decree where the era of perpetual govern-by-emergency is in full swing. In this unlawful new system the government is empowered to put through policies that it would normally not be permitted to do. The checks and balances enshrined in the parliamentary system of the Constitution Act have all but been dismantled. We should all deem war to be abhorrent but instead many appear to embrace it wholeheartedly, with excitement and enthusiasm. In a state-of-emergency war-stance the instruments of coercion (i.e. threats, propaganda, intimidation, force) are fair game.
Usually before war starts, the people who start it, begin by occupying government buildings and waving flags.
After the “legitimate” government takes down the posturing, people get a chance to make a totally fake vote, and the radicals/other opportunists get let in by the front door.
The “new rebel” government which kicked out the old guard, then secures its hold on power by cancelling all future elections, voting in repressive laws, and locking all dissidents in prisons as well as use of well known methods of torture.
This is how it was in Russia in 1917-23, (and is currently in the “stalin burp” phase), Germany in 1933, Crimea since 2014, and how it’s currently playing out in Belarus over the last 27 years (with local variations), with stuff like Srebrenica thrown in next door.
Orwell stated in hommage to Catalonia (where he survived being shot), the worst kind of war known to man is civil war.
Apparently people like Keen would rather like local replays of this old movie scene.
In most civil wars he forgets, it’s ordinary people that suffer while the true monsters like Honecker or Milosevic never have to pay for it.
What beachfront property is he aiming for?