We may need to add a new category: Totalitarian Delusions of Grandeur
You vil live in your pod, eat slurry, and like it! Nothing like modeling “six dimensions of human need satisfaction”.
This paper says all the quiet parts out loud.
Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use: An international analysis of social provisioning
Author links open overlay panel JefimVogela Julia K.Steinbergerba Daniel W.O’Neilla William F.Lambca JayaKrishnakumarda Sustainability Research Institute, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, UKb Institute of Geography and Sustainability, Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, University of Lausanne, Switzerlandc Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, Berlin, Germanyd Institute of Economics and Econometrics, Geneva School of Economics and Management, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Received 26 July 2020, Revised 27 April 2021, Accepted 7 May 2021, Available online 29 June 2021.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102287
Under a Creative Commons license open access
Highlights
- No country sufficiently meets human needs within sustainable levels of energy use.
- Need satisfaction and associated energy requirements depend on socio-economic setups.
- Public services are linked to higher need satisfaction and lower energy requirements.
- Economic growth is linked to lower need satisfaction and higher energy requirements.
- Countries with good socio-economic setups could likely meet needs at low energy use.
Abstract
Meeting human needs at sustainable levels of energy use is fundamental for avoiding catastrophic climate change and securing the well-being of all people. In the current political-economic regime, no country does so. Here, we assess which socio-economic conditions might enable societies to satisfy human needs at low energy use, to reconcile human well-being with climate mitigation.
Using a novel analytical framework alongside a novel multivariate regression-based moderation approach and data for 106 countries, we analyse how the relationship between energy use and six dimensions of human need satisfaction varies with a wide range of socio-economic factors relevant to the provisioning of goods and services (‘provisioning factors’). We find that factors such as public service quality, income equality, democracy, and electricity access are associated with higher need satisfaction and lower energy requirements (‘beneficial provisioning factors’). Conversely, extractivism and economic growth beyond moderate levels of affluence are associated with lower need satisfaction and greater energy requirements (‘detrimental provisioning factors’). Our results suggest that improving beneficial provisioning factors and abandoning detrimental ones could enable countries to provide sufficient need satisfaction at much lower, ecologically sustainable levels of energy use.
However, as key pillars of the required changes in provisioning run contrary to the dominant political-economic regime, a broader transformation of the economic system may be required to prioritise, and organise provisioning for, the satisfaction of human needs at low energy use.
Graphical abstract
Keywords
Sustainability Well-being Human needs Energy use Social provisioning Human development
1. Introduction
Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C without relying on negative emissions technologies requires not only rapid decarbonisation of global energy systems but also deep reductions in global energy use (Grubler et al., 2018, IPCC, 2018). At the same time, billions of people around the globe are still deprived of basic needs, and current routes to sufficient need satisfaction all seem to involve highly unsustainable levels of resource use (O’Neill et al., 2018). The way societies design their economies thus seems misaligned with the twin goals of meeting everyone’s needs and remaining within planetary boundaries (O’Neill et al., 2018, Raworth, 2017). This study addresses this issue by empirically assessing how the relationship between energy use and need satisfaction varies with the configurations of key socio-economic factors, and what configurations of these factors might enable societies to meet human needs within sustainable levels of energy use.
While these questions are poorly understood and empirically understudied (Brand Correa and Steinberger, 2017, Lamb and Steinberger, 2017, O’Neill et al., 2018, Roberts et al., 2020), the corner pieces of the research puzzle are largely in place. We roughly know the maximum level of final energy use (~27 GJ/cap) that can be globally rendered ecologically ‘sustainable’ (compatible with avoiding 1.5 °C of global warming without relying on negative emissions technologies) with deep transformations of energy systems (Grubler et al., 2018, IPCC, 2018). We understand what defines and characterises human needs, and what levels of which goods, services and conditions generally satisfy these needs (Doyal and Gough, 1991, Max-Neef, 1991, Millward-Hopkins et al., 2020, Rao and Min, 2018a).
We also know the basic characteristics of the cross-country relationship between energy use and a wide range of needs satisfaction indicators, including life expectancy, mortality, nourishment, education, and access to sanitation and drinking water (Burke, 2020, Lambert et al., 2014, Mazur and Rosa, 1974, Rao et al., 2014, Steinberger and Roberts, 2010). While at low levels of energy use, these need satisfaction indicators strongly improve with increasing energy use, they generally saturate at internationally moderate levels of energy use (ibid.). Beyond that saturation level, need satisfaction improvements with additional energy use quickly diminish, reflecting the satiability of needs (Doyal and Gough, 1991).
How much energy use is required to provide sufficient need satisfaction is only scarcely researched, and the few existing estimates are broadly scattered (Rao et al., 2019). Empirical cross-national estimates include 25–40 GJ/cap primary energy use for life expectancy and literacy (Steinberger and Roberts, 2010), or 22–58 GJ/cap final energy use for life expectancy and composite basic needs access (Lamb and Rao, 2015). Empirically-driven bottom-up model studies estimate the final energy footprints of sufficient need satisfaction in India, South Africa and Brazil to range between 12 and 25 GJ/cap (Rao et al., 2019), based on Rao and Min’s (2018a) definition of ‘Decent Living Standards’ that meet human needs. Global bottom-up modelling studies involving stronger assumptions of technological efficiency and equity, respectively, suggest that by 2050, Decent Living Standards could be internationally provided with 27 GJ/cap (Grubler et al., 2018) or even just 13–18 GJ/cap final energy use (Millward-Hopkins et al., 2020). Together, these studies demonstrate that meeting everyone’s needs at sustainable levels of energy use is theoretically feasible with known technology.
What remains poorly understood, however, is how the relationship between human need satisfaction and energy use (or biophysical resource use) varies with different socio-economic factors (Lamb and Steinberger, 2017, O’Neill et al., 2018, Steinberger et al., 2020). A small number of studies offer initial insights. The environmental efficiency of life satisfaction, presented as a measure of sustainability, follows an inverted-U-shape with Gross Domestic Product (GDP), increases with trust, and decreases with income inequality (Knight and Rosa, 2011). The carbon or environmental intensities of life expectancy, understood as measures of unsustainability, increase with income inequality (Jorgenson, 2015), urbanisation (McGee et al., 2017) and world society integration (Givens, 2017). They furthermore follow a U-shape with GDP internationally (Dietz et al., 2012), though increasing with GDP in all regions but Africa (Jorgenson, 2014, Jorgenson and Givens, 2015), and show asymmetric relationships with economic growth and recession in ‘developed’ vs. ‘less developed’ countries (Greiner and McGee, 2020). Their associations with uneven trade integration and exchange vary with levels of development (Givens, 2018). Democracy is not significantly correlated with the environmental efficiency of life satisfaction (Knight and Rosa, 2011) nor with the energy intensity of life expectancy (Mayer, 2017). All of these studies either combine need satisfaction outcomes from societal activity and biophysical means to societal activity into a ratio metric, or analyse residuals from their regression. Hence, they do not specify how these socio-economic factors interact with the highly non-linear relationship between need satisfaction and biophysical resource use, or with the ability of countries to reach targets simultaneously for need satisfaction and energy (or resource) use.
The socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use have been highlighted as crucial areas of research (Brand Correa and Steinberger, 2017, Lamb and Steinberger, 2017, O’Neill et al., 2018, Roberts et al., 2020), but remain virtually unstudied. While the theoretical understanding of this issue has seen important advances (Bohnenberger, 2020, Hickel, 2020, Stratford, 2020, Stratford and O’Neill, 2020, Gough, 2017, Kallis et al., 2020, Parrique, 2019), empirical studies are almost entirely absent. Lamb, 2016a, Lamb, 2016b qualitatively discusses socio-economic factors in enabling low-energy (or low-carbon) development, but only for a small number of countries. Furthermore, Lamb et al. (2014) explore the cross-country relationship between life expectancy and carbon emissions in light of socio-economic drivers of emissions, but do not quantitatively assess how life expectancy is related to carbon emissions nor to socio-economic emissions drivers. Quantitative empirical cross-country analyses of the issue thus remain entirely absent.
We address these research gaps by making three contributions. First, we develop a novel analytical approach for empirically assessing the role of socio-economic factors as intermediaries moderating the relationship between energy use (as a means) and need satisfaction (as an end), thus analytically separating means, ends and intermediaries (Fig. 1). For this purpose, we adapt and operationalise a novel analytical framework proposed by O’Neill et al. (2018) which centres on provisioning systems as intermediaries between biophysical resource use and human well-being (Fig. 1A). Second, we apply this approach and framework for the first time, using data for 19 indicators and 106 countries to empirically analyse how the relationships between energy use and six dimensions of human need satisfaction vary with a range of political, economic, geographic and infrastructural ‘provisioning factors’ (Fig. 1B). Third, we assess which socio-economic conditions (i.e. which configurations of provisioning factors) might enable countries to provide sufficient need satisfaction within sustainable levels of energy use. Specifically, we address the following research questions:1)
What levels of energy use are associated with sufficient need satisfaction in the current international provisioning regime?2)
How does the relationship between energy use and human need satisfaction vary with the configurations of different provisioning factors?3)
Which configurations of provisioning factors are associated with socio-ecologically beneficial performance (higher achievements in, and lower energy requirements of, human need satisfaction), and which ones are associated with socio-ecologically detrimental performance (lower achievements in, and greater energy requirements of, need satisfaction)?4)
To what extent could countries with beneficial configurations of key provisioning factors achieve sufficient need satisfaction within sustainable levels of energy use?
The remainder of this article is structured as follows. We introduce our analytical framework and outline our analytical approach in Section 2. We describe our variables and data in Section 3, and detail our methods in Section 4. We present the results of our analysis in Section 5, and discuss them in Section 6. We summarise and conclude our analysis in Section 7.
2. Analytical framework and approach
Building on the work of O’Neill et al. (2018), our analytical framework (Fig. 1A) conceptualises the provisioning of human needs satisfaction in an Ends–Means spectrum (Daly, 1973). Our framework considers energy use as a means, and need satisfaction as an end, with provisioning factors as intermediaries that moderate the relationship between means and ends. We thus operationalise O’Neill et al.’s (2018) framework by reducing the sphere of biophysical resource use to energy use (for analytical focus), and reducing the sphere of human well-being to human need satisfaction (for analytical coherence). Our operationalisation of human need satisfaction follows Doyal and Gough’s (1991) Theory of Human Need, reflecting a eudaimonic understanding of well-being as enabled by the satisfaction of human needs, which can be evaluated based on objective measures (Brand Correa and Steinberger, 2017, Lamb and Steinberger, 2017).
The main advancement of our framework consists in operationalising the concept of provisioning systems (Brand Correa and Steinberger, 2017, Fanning et al., 2020, Lamb and Steinberger, 2017, O’Neill et al., 2018) by introducing the concept of ‘provisioning factors’.
Provisioning factors comprise all factors that characterise any element realising, or any aspect influencing, the provisioning of goods and services. This includes economic, political, institutional, infrastructural, geographic, technical, cultural and historical characteristics of provisioning systems (or the provisioning process), spanning the spheres of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. In other words, provisioning factors encompass all factors that affect how energy and resources are used to meet human needs (and other ends). For example, it matters whether provisioning caters to consumers with equal or unequal purchasing power, whether it occurs in an urban or rural context, in a growing or shrinking economy, whether electricity is available, and what transport infrastructure is in place. Provisioning factors are intermediaries that moderate the relationship between energy use and need satisfaction. Whereas provisioning systems are broad conceptual constructs that are difficult to measure, provisioning factors are tangible and measureable, and as such operational: provisioning factors characterise provisioning systems (or the provisioning process).
While interactions between energy use, provisioning factors and social outcomes may in principle go in all directions (Fanning et al., 2020, O’Neill et al., 2018), our focus here is on the role of provisioning factors for countries’ socio-ecological performance, i.e. their achievements in, and energy requirements of, human need satisfaction (Fig. 1A). We use regression-based moderation analysis (Section 4.2) to assess how the relationship between energy use and need satisfaction varies with different provisioning factors, and subsequently model that relationship for different configurations of each provisioning factor (Fig. 1B). We further estimate how multiple provisioning factors jointly interact with the relationship between need satisfaction and energy use, using multivariate regression analysis (Section 4.3). While these are established statistical techniques, the way we apply them to our analytical framework and research questions is novel. Our approach allows us to coherently assess and compare the interactions of a broad range of provisioning factors, not just with need satisfaction or its ratio with energy use, but with the relationship between need satisfaction and energy use, across the international spectrum.
The variables assessed in our analytic framework (listed in Fig. 1A and detailed in Table 1, Table 2) capture key dimensions of human need, key categories of provisioning (state provision, political economy, physical infrastructure and geography) as well as total final energy use. Based on our understanding of human need theory (Doyal and Gough, 1991, Max-Neef, 1991) and provisioning systems (Brand Correa and Steinberger, 2017, Gough, 2019, O’Neill et al., 2018, Fanning et al., 2020), we analyse electricity access, democratic quality and income equality as provisioning factors (intermediaries) rather than as indicators of human need satisfaction (outcomes).
Table 1. Human need satisfaction variables used in the analysis.
| Variable name | Description and [units] | Sufficiency threshold | Indicator source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Healthy life expectancy | Average healthy life expectancy at birth [years] | 65 years | IHME GBD |
| Sufficient nourishment | Percentage of population meeting dietary energy requirements [%], calculated as the reverse of Prevalence of undernoursihment, rescaled onto a scale from 0 to 100% | 95% | WB WDI 2020 |
| Drinking water access | Percentage of population with access to improved water source [%] | 95% | WB WDI 2017 |
| Safe sanitation access | Percentage of population with access to improved sanitation facilities [%] | 95% | WB WDI 2017 |
| Basic education | Education index [score] | score of 75 | UNDP HDR |
| Minimum income | Absence of income shortfall below $3.20/day [%], calculated as the reverse of the Poverty gap at $3.20 a day (2011 PPP) | 95% | WB WDI 2020 |
Saturation transformations are applied to all need satisfaction variables (see Supplementary Materials Section C.4.2). Indicator sources are: the Global Burden of Disease Study (IHME GBD; Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, 2017), the World Development Indicators (WB WDI; World Bank, 2017, World Bank, 2020), and the Human Development Report 2013 (UNDP HDR; UNDP, 2013).
Table 2. Provisioning factor variables used in the analysis.
| Variable name | Description and [units] | Trans-formation applied | Indicator source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity access | Percentage of population with access to electricity [%] | Saturation | WB WDI 2017 |
| Access to clean fuels | Percentage of population with access to non-solid fuels [%] | Saturation | WB WDI 2017 |
| Trade & transport infrastructure | Quality of trade and transport-related infrastructure [score], component of the Logistics performance index | Identity | WB WDI 2017 |
| Urban population | Percentage of population living in urban areas [%] | Identity | WB WDI 2017 |
| Public service quality | Quality of public services, civil service, and policy implementation [score], calculated as Government effectiveness, rescaled onto a scale from 1 to 6 | Identity | WB WGI |
| Public health coverage | Percentage of total health expenditure covered by government, non-governmental organisations, and social health insurance funds [%] | Identity | WB WDI 2017 |
| Democratic quality | Ability to participate in selecting government, freedom of expression and association, free media [score], calculated as Voice and accountability, rescaled onto a scale from 1 to 6 | Saturation | WB WGI |
| Income equality | Equality in household disposable income [score], calculated as the reverse of the Gini index | Saturation | SWIID |
| Economic growth | 3-year (2010–2012) average percentage annual growth rate of GDP per capita in constant 2011 $ PPP [%], calculated based on Gujarati, 1995, pp. 169–171 | Identity | WB WDI 2017 |
| Extractivism | Share of total value generation obtained from total natural resource rents [% of GDP] | Logarithmic | WB WDI 2017 |
| Foreign direct investments | Share of foreign direct investments (net inflow) in total value generation [% of GDP] | Logarithmic | WB WDI 2017 |
| Trade penetration | Share of total value generation that is traded [% of GDP], calculated as Importvalue+Exportvalue | Identity | WB WDI 2020 |
Indicator sources are: the World Development Indicators (WB WDI; World Bank, 2017, World Bank, 2020), the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WB WGI; World Bank, 2018, Kaufmann et al., 2011), and the Standardized World Income Inequality Database v6.2 (SWIID; Solt, 2020).
And don’t miss the following section, emphasis mine:
6.4. Paradigmatic provisioning factors: Economic growth and (in)equality
Our findings challenge the influential claim that economic growth is beneficial to human well-being. In fact, our results suggest that at moderate or high levels of energy use, economic growth is associated with socio-ecologically detrimental performance (lower achievements in, and greater energy requirements of, need satisfaction). Given the close coupling between economic activity and energy use (Steinberger et al., 2020), these findings imply that economic growth beyond moderate levels of affluence is socio-ecologically detrimental. At low levels of energy use (currently corresponding to low levels of affluence), economic growth exhibits no significant association with need satisfaction. Joint analysis with other provisioning factors corroborates the adverse outcomes associated with economic growth (Supplementary materials Table B.2). These findings run contrary to the near-universal policy goal of fostering economic growth. Due to our novel approach of analysing economic growth as a provisioning factor, our results analytically integrate multiple critiques of growth: the social limits and detriments of growth (Hirsch, 1976, Kallis, 2019, Mishan and Mishan, 1967, O’Neill, 2015); the ecological unsustainability of growth (Dietz and O’Neill, 2013, Jackson, 2017, Kallis, 2018, Kallis, 2019); and the incompatibility of growth with limiting global warming to 1.5 °C (Antonakakis et al., 2017, D’Alessandro et al., 2020, Haberl et al., 2020, Hickel and Kallis, 2020). Abandoning the pursuit of economic growth beyond moderate levels of affluence thus appears ecologically necessary and socially desirable. Rendering a non-growing economy socially sustainable will require a fundamental political-economic transformation to remove structural and institutional growth dependencies (Hickel, 2020, Hinton, 2020, Kallis et al., 2020, Parrique, 2019, Stratford, 2020, Stratford and O’Neill, 2020).
Our findings also add new perspectives to the controversial debate on how income (in)equality relates to energy use and carbon emissions (Grunewald et al., 2017, Jorgenson et al., 2016, Oswald et al., 2021, Rao and Min, 2018b). By assessing income equality as a provisioning factor, our analysis integrates previous findings related to both biophysical resource use and social outcomes. The positive association we find between income equality and socio-ecological performance supports claims that improving income equality is compatible with rapid climate mitigation (D’Alessandro et al., 2020, Oswald et al., 2021, Rao and Min, 2018b), beneficial for social outcomes (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010) and favourable (Jorgenson, 2015, Knight and Rosa, 2011, Oswald et al., 2021) or even required (Gough, 2017) for reconciling human well-being with ecological sustainability. These findings are particularly important as inequality is on the rise in many countries (Piketty and Saez, 2014), and as efforts to limit resource use could lead to escalating inequality through intensified economic rent extraction (Stratford, 2020). Taken together, these analyses provide a strong case for redistributive policies that establish both minimum and maximum income and/or consumption levels (Alexander, 2014, Fuchs and Di Giulio, 2016, Gough, 2020).
More castles in the sky.
As Michael Kelly slyly commented that a “herd of unicorns” would be needed to achieve the utopia these people envisage.
Imagine what you could do if you could treat people like they were potatoes? It is astonishing that this is actually and academic discipline and that people are actually making a living doing this kind of work. Think about the effort that went into this paper. (facepalm)
Here is an idea that could be implemented immediately and produce beneficial results:
Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs by eliminating useless academic disciplines: An international analysis of educational provisioning.
Before I open my mouth and start expounding on some solution to the world’s problems, based on my limited understanding, I always remind myself how better off the world would have been had Karl Marx opted for a factory position instead of becoming an author.
Like most Marxists, Karl Marx viewed himself as being one of the elite who would lead the world into this glorious future.
The idea of actually working for a living no doubt would have offended him.
He tried working in one of his friend, Engels, factories and failed.
Lifelong sponger, failed to provide for his children, or wash. Typical leftard.
“herd of unicorns” would be needed to achieve the utopia these people envisage”
Thats the core idea of making something have a wide appeal. The whole climate thing is built around something that is very appealing to the mind. Even if its complete nonsense built on on half truths and outright lies it still has a viscereal appeal for many. Marxism had a similiar appeal at the time 100 years, it was ‘science’ as well, and offered a utopia that was appealing to a core of influencers
At the moment, it is a “Castle in the Sky”, but they have already managed to corral and tame a herd of unicorns to do their bidding. Pretty soon the “Castle…” will become more and more real as increasing numbers will not be aware of alternative viewpoints.
They will continue to be unaware of their increasing loss of control over their lives.
Really says something about our perception of Reality.
Lemmings to their slaughter
The foolish will destroy everything
Like a lobster in a pot of cold water ever getting hotter
Oh no its to hot its to late we die
No, commieBob. Consider the very last line in the essay:
“Taken together, these analyses provide a strong case for redistributive policies that establish both minimum and maximum income and/or consumption levels”
This is no castle in the sky. This is a Gulag in the sky. And these people want it.
Scary.
They want it for everybody else.
Just once I’d love to actually see at least some of these clowns actually practice what they preach! If you don’t think people should have this, this and that – then you go without first!
I believe an earlier philosopher put it this way: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
With the government deciding what you need and what your abilities are.
It was once popular to say that capitalism means “From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed”
Which may have been partially true in 1850.
As Gordon Gecko put it, “Greed is good”.
Greed is why people work harder in order to have more money.
In socialist societies no matter how hard you work, you still get the same stuff. As a result, nobody does anymore than they are forced to.
” We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
This is a fabulous way to organise your family, and a hideous way to organise society.
Boxer « I will work harder ». Ended up as glue…..
Stalin changed the Soviet constitution to read: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his WORK. Doesn’t sound quite so utopian, does it?
What is really scary is that so many people are involved in this work judging from the number of references quoted.
So did the Seven dwarfs, but there is always a ringleader
Lofty talk about ‘social justice’ or ‘fairness’ boils down to greatly expanded powers for politicians, since those pretty words have no concrete definition. They are a blank check for creating disparities in power that dwarf disparities in income – and are far more dangerous.
Thomas Sowell
“So many idealistic political movements for a better world have ended in mass-murdering dictatorships. Giving leaders enough power to create ‘social justice’ is giving them enough power to destroy all justice, all freedom, and all human dignity.”
Thomas Sowell
If you want to see real disparities in wealth, look at socialist and communist countries. The greater the power of government, the more wealthy those who run government become.
They are quite possibly all ignorant children; they have not even heard of a Gulag, and do not have any conception that they are innocently writing mass murder, with all their long clever words.
Does Chomsky still deny that the Killing Fields existed?
A pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow of inclusive exclusion.
Castles? I think they want FEMA trailers for the masses.
Oh, nothing so luxurious as that, Walter. Unsustainable.
.
.
Wait… unless they plan on four families to a trailer, then yeah.
And to think, our trolls continue to insist that there is no connection between socialism/communism and the global warming cabal.
It is all about believing in Gover…ahh Science, Comrade.
I’m waiting for griff and loydo to announce here today on WUWT that they will forfeit any wealth, income, assets they may own ,for the good of human kind in exchange for a stone built 6x6ft hovel, a sheep skin to wear and a monthly supply of organic turnips, no wood fires, only stream water and a communal light bulb that goes on for a hour around dusk, so they can read from the ipcc holy book of co2 and offer prayers that they have been saved from themselves.
have we actually established griff/loydo are not the same person with different avatars. They certainly post like one mind or better put, mindless Soros paid mouthpiece for nonsensical political science..
The brainwashed are many, they speak from the same bible.
More like ‘same Necronomicon.’ (Which was completely made up, iirc.)
They both seem to be rather unaware of their own previous postings, suggesting that they may each even be multiple people.
I have noticed that griff has several different writing styles. He either has multiple personalities, or there are multiple people writing under that name. I will sometimes refer to them as the griff collective. (Collective being appropriate for more than one reason.)
Have we asked griff’s pronouns? I suspect the correct one is “they”
No no, inorganic turnips for the saviors of humanity… er … hu-person-ity? Let them eat rocks.
socialism/communism, fascism, too. a a democratic/dictatorial duality. a wicked solution to a purportedly hard problem. deja vu
Looks like more Agenda 21 stuff — all based on the fraudulent “consensus” propaganda against CO2. More CO2 would be good for the earth, a warm earth is better than a cold one, and our climate is doing just fine … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNeujL1IoCA
More CO2 is good for a greener Earth. Emit responsibly.
V8 Jeep. V6 Alfa. Two wood burners, I’m doing my best!
John,
Your work just keeps getting better! Well done, man!
I particularly like Modern Climate Optimum; do you mind if I start using it? It seems to be about the equivalent of a 2X4 for hitting the alarmists in the head to get their attention!
Yes, of course you can use the phrase. And if it gets warm enough, we’ll return to the climate of the Garden of Eden.
My understanding is that there is not enough ‘carbon’ in fossil fuels available to achieve that. Therefor we must reduce population, starting with the authors of this paper and their supporters.
Right. That’s funny … folks have been saying similar stuff for years — just like the sky is falling. But guess what — they keep finding more and more energy reserves. Man has only begun to explore and find the tremendous resources available of earth. Mother Nature has given us vast amounts of stored solar energy – in the form of fossil fuels – for humans to use — which in turn gets recycled back into the earth again. We are in a CO2 famine, and if you really want to know why the Left demonizes CO2 … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOpOnaRMGCY
I think you may have missed the sarcasm
Excellent observation.
So just hand everybody money and all will be well. Really???
Well you’re handing it to some but taking it away from others.
Well no. Unless you’re making less than $1,168 per year, it seems that you’ll need to be handing over the money, not getting any.
They say $3.20/day is the minimum income and they say we need income equality. So logically we all need to drop down to an equal level of misery. And let’s face it, unless you’re way above that level today, you’re not reading this.
If $3.20/day is the minimum income, we should push that as the US minimum wage instead of $15/hr, in order to achieve equity with the rest of the world.
The true minimum wage will always be $0.00. That’s what you get when the government minimum wage means that employers can no longer afford to hire you.
A longer fancier way of saying what Christiana Figueres said years ago.
NO redistributive policies for my stuff, you socialist nutters.
There are diverse historical and global precedents for redistributive change per chance retributive change. Assuming progressive costs and availability, the former would make sense, and the latter to force deniers to take a knee. However, given the evidence submitted, observable, past and present, probable not plausible states and paths, it is a wicked solution to a purportedly hard problem.
English, please.
I’m pretty sure he essentially said the “socialist elites'” case for redistributive justice, let alone retribution, has not been made to his satisfaction . . Or; “Nuts” as the Germans who demanded those defending Bastogne surrender or else, once upon a time, were told.
Actually I think he said redistribution as a response to chance events (disasters?) makes sense but as a general policy probably won’t work based on past results.
WTF you say???
“A longer fancier way of saying what Christiana Figueres said years ago.”
Along the lines of what I was thinking Rud. Just another attempt to attach Marxist-socialism to the climate alarmist narrative to make the former easier to sell to the uninformed masses.
It’s so fortunate for the Marxists that the great masses are not scientifically literate enough to understand the issues with the CAGW narrative.
Time has come today.
And he was that before he succumbed to Dementia.
“Let’s hear it for Chuck. Stand up Chuck!”
Makes you want to upchuck don’t it?
Joey doesn’t want to get in trouble….the people behind him tell what to say…what to sign…Joey is letting in all these Guatemalans…Joey should be deported to Guatemala in return.
No, the people behind joey should be deported, and preferably to someplace like Syria or North Korea rather than Guatemala. Joey should just be sent to a nice retirement home in NY state.
How long before they identify that with a lot less people (like less than a million total), a lot of impossible things can be done? I know some have already gone there, but it seems like the whole Climate Change scare has been targetted to reduce people’s desire to reproduce. I just wonder when that comes to the forefront as the main outcome.
Already there. World wide engineered pandemic is just a start. . Listen to Gates, Fauci, and their ilk.
Probably more than a million, 500 million to 1 billion is what I’ve seen. Yes, they are serious and they plan to exterminate 5-6 billion people. Many people baulk at the sheer evil of this. How could it possibly be? Look around, it’s happening NOW. People are so brainwashed that they are welcoming it, it’s sickening.
If we survive this with any sort of intact human society, I wonder what lies the history books will contain.
MarkH: “If we survive this with any sort of intact human society, […]”
.
.
I have faith in the Socialist/Marxist/Commies. They have never succeeded in creating a utopia, only an ash heap of misery.
So I have all faith that they will get rid of the wrong (necessary, critical) people when they cull the herd and keep those who are of little or no use.
A word to the wise… start learning flint knapping.
H.R.,
Why learn flint knapping? It’s a lot of hard work and a few high quality stainless knives will last for generations!
I would suggest a good quality bow or crossbow, which also can last for many years; but I don’t expect to have to use them until the ammo supply starts to get low!
The Socialist/Marxist/Commies appear to be trying out their end game. They may have thought the ChiCom virus and the cytotoxic “vaccines” were enough to win the day; I’m not sure if they have overplayed their hand or not, but if the truth about the election and the mRNA side effects keep leaking out there will be a reckoning!
From what I have read, the ammo supply is already starting to get low.
My (limited) experience with stainless has been that it will keep 90% of an edge forever, but it will lose the last 10% as soon as you put the whetstone down … 🙁
Depends on the grade of stainless and what you’re cutting, and there is something rather meditative about sitting quietly, honing your knives to a nice razor edge!
I just wish I’d discovered the zen of kendo when I was young and could really benefit from it. There’s something to be said for a good claymore, but I’d really like to study the two-sword technique developed by Musashi! Maybe next time!
Took me a moment to realize you meant “claymore” as in “a type of sword”… these days “claymore” is something that goes “boom!” and sends thousands of ball bearings in the general direction of your enemy.
That’s good, too.
Bows and crossbows = reserves of string wax and strings, plenty of arrows.
I’m a computer programmer by trade. It’s no mistake that my hobbies include carpentry (with hand tools), blacksmithing and the growing and preserving of food.
I should probably add primitive pottery and basketry at some point.
👍👍 MarkH
Same here, except I’m a retired engineer with a fairly complete set of necessary woodworking tools dating from the 1830s to about 1910, most from the 1880s. And I use them.
Working with hand tools is quite relaxing and rewarding. I actually had cause to use my #113 compass plane last week. Not a tool I pull out regularly though.
Wouldn’t say I have a complete set, but you don’t need everything to get started. I built my work bench (based on Paul Sellers tutorial) with a #4, one chisel and a hand saw.
Very early tools are harder to come by here in Aus, but I have enough to get by.
Why would a carpenter run a bead on rebated back boards, muntins and rails that hold a door?
I say let’s begin an all out redistribution and energy conservation program by demanding that all liberals, commies, warmists, and other lmindless morons (but hey, I repeat myself!) do their part by committing suicide .. then we’ll distribute their stuff to the rest of us.
Imagine all the hot air that would be avoided with just that action alone!
I’ve always wondered why those leftists who are quite open in their hatred towards the US, are still here. If Europe is so superior, I’m willing to chip in for a plane ticket for anyone who promises to never return.
MarkW the problem is that they can’t stand the idea of anyone living in a manner they don’t approve of. That’s why I say that even a split of the US won’t work – it’s not sufficient that they live the way they want to, EVERYONE must be forced to live the same way.
Wow, am I the only one, or is there a distinct lack of the intangible is the criteria here? To wit, humanity, creativity, hope, personal acheivement.
And what is wrong with fully satisfying the energy needs of everyone? Today that is called nuclear. Tomorrow, who knows what new technology will be invented by those free to invent because they will have critical incentives like income inequality.
That is correct, Nuclear Energy can Sustainably produce …
-Cheap
-Abundant
-Reliable
-(#And clean (Nu-Clear))
Energy for Centuries to come.
The energy needed to …
-Drive modern society
-Lift from poverty
-Provide clean water
-Educate strong minds
-Elevate the masses
There should no need to “Reduce Energy Needs” to meet the capability of Unreliable Sources when the alternative exists.
(And, lest we forget, the promise of Fusion power is only 10 years away) 😉
Nuclear energy absolutely once it’s needed (fossil fuels more expensive to extract), but cost-effective fusion power? That’s never gonna happen.
Of course nuclear is based on “extractivism” which is against their religion. And also we don’t need an international high priesthood to dole out the pittances if we had cheap, abundant nuclear power. Why that would be like giving a machine gun to an idiot child, dontchaknow.
But the ability to create Solar Panels, Wind Turbines and the required Battery Backups necessary to Transform Societal Energy Requirements is also predicated on Extractivism…but on a much more massive scale than currently in practice. To transform the energy sector in the next 14 years (2035) will require tens of millions of Wind Turbines and Billions of Solar Panels to be manufactured in a short time span also Hundreds of Billions to Trillions of Batteries for Back-up and Transportation
Coal will still need to be mined for both coking Steel and purifying silica for silicon as will Oil and Gas for Petrochemicals needed to produce light weight materials needed for both Solar and Wind (and Automotive)
Sure if you want to buy in to greentard theology and dismantle society.
I say “Drill baby, drill!”
And “Frack on!”
Get the nukes started and perfected by all means. In a few hundred years our great-grandchildren will be depending on them. Especially if they are facing a new LIA or worse.
Meanwhile don’t lose track of reality.
Plus a few billion
I don’t think you are getting the point. The plan is two-fold: One, reduce the population drastically; two, reduce the living standards of those who are left just as drastically.
Then you don’t need all of that “extractivism.” Only that required to supply the great needs of those who determine the daily bread and gruel ration, and those who produce the indoctrination radio broadcasts and identify the targets for the three minute hates.
That small number of people (in which group these academics are quite confident they will be members) can easily be supplied by the labor of those that some of the commenters here so quaintly call “artisanal mining.” (Who shall remain nameless, lest I set off more tantrums.)
I hear ya about “the point”, and suggest everyone stop believing people they believe are liars ; )
I do get it WO
And I would Plus your comment a few billion too
When looking at the history of socialist dictatorships that the globalist capitalists have put in place and supported over the last 100 + years, i suspect that the smug self righteous socialist academics that are currently the willing propagandists for a world government will find themselves amongst the second group into the camps.
That is after all their observed modus operandi.
I saw something the other day (sorry, I forgot the source) that there is a technology that will let us extract uranium from sea water and we wouldn’t need mining. I have zero idea if that is true, or not.
There are at least two or three such technologies – both mechanical and biological. From what I have read, they do work. At an efficiency that is absolutely cost and environmentally ruinous. (Far more so than even the Green Scam technologies.)
Thanks, Observer. I wondered about that. Environmentally ruinous, too? Then why would anyone do it? Never mind. Since they do windmills and solar panels and kill gas pipelines, why not?
That is also true of Gold, however the energy cost of extraction VASTLY outweighs any profit.
They were looking at extracting gold from seawater in the 1960’s.
Mind you when you look at the economic bollocks being thrown around to justify replacing baseload power with wind and solar, then anything is possible.
Lol! It’s been “only 10 years away” since I started paying attention, over 40 years ago. I want my GM, compact fusion powered Battle Robot already!
You are not the only one. The socialist/communist theory rejects human nature as a consideration. Marx seemed to believe everyone would be happy and satisfied if they simply had a job, a home to live in, and adequate food. The article above doesn’t seem to want to go even that far. Only 95% percent of the world population will have adequate food, shelter, and energy. The other 300 million would be left out. Oh well, as long as the authors have their tenure, that is all that they need.
If the authors and those behind this study are serious, they are insane or socialist ideologues (same thing). They would be among the first put up against the wall; the thugs required to force people to bend to the collective won’t bridge opposition.
I work for my and my family’s betterment. I don’t work to make some commissar happy. I support equality, not equity.
Yes, all they care about is “sufficient”. The proles don’t need anything more.
We gonna soak da rich! We elitists will be in charge of wealth redistribution, and ridding the world of non-essentials. I suppose people who write such things feel useless in a way as they produce nothing, and are merely parasites on society.
highly doubt this will apply to the rich elites.
Just ask all the rich elites of late 18th century France.
Oh brother. Does anyone take this stuff seriously?
We do need to “take seriously” HOW these people came to be and how they’re reshaping the social structure of our society.
Quite clearly, people do take it seriously, and you should be worried.
Pretty much everything the left is doing to us now, was once considered to be in that same category.
Most people laughed it off, thinking nobody would be stupid enough to buy into that nonsense.
Yes.
Central planning never was a good idea 😀
To the drones who wrote that unmitigated nonsense, “central planning” is the only way and is a very good idea as long as they get to be at the center … restricting us for our own good.
I remember only the 5 year plannings in old GDR or Russia.Often planned the wrong goods.
I was in Russia during the ’70s and it was a “thing” among most people to buy the discounted consumer goods (luxuries) from “central planning” overages. People never bought these goods when first made available. The rich just went to the Beriozka stores to buy luxury goods with their stash of foreign currency.
Many of those five year plans were written for them by U.S companies.
The Great Reset is here. We have determined your maximum and minimum amount of income/consumption levels and you will be forced to remain within those parameters. You will own nothing and be happy.
Al Gore , Bill Gates, Di Caprio, Obama, Biden family, Clinton family, Soros, and all the other ultra-left billionaires…
They have plenty to share around
And you can bet the writers of this piece of trash-talk would also be pretty well off !
But it doesn’t apply to them, does it.. just to everyone else.
Progressive economists generally suffer a bad case of math envy viz. the hard sciences, so typically over compensate by attempting to reduce all of humanity to a set of tractable equations that can be “solved” for, say, maximum “utility”. Unfortunately for us, the trivial solution to the “problem” is just to kill everybody.
This is one of the big dangers of AI too. If you ever put it in charge it would very quickly decide that exterminating every one is the optimal solution. The answer isn’t “wrong”, but the formulation of the question is. To reduce people to mere meat units in some engine is as inhumane as you could possibly imagine.
(Recalling “Brave New World” by A. Huxley)
In this peer-reviewed article the Betas (the workers employed due to their high skills to make models for everything plus the kitchen sink) explain to the Alphas (the owners of all this, who employ the Betas and the Gammas) how to optimize the means to transform each and everyone in Gammas (except the Alphas and Betas).
Putting a Minimum Sustainable Income Level and a Maximum Cap on Earnings potential is Ludacris.
You may as well close down Colleges and Universities and eliminate the Degree Process entirely as there will be no incentive to further your education beyond Grade School. Most all jobs will pay the same or similar enough. It will be nearly impossible to hire more than grunts as the education level will only produce grunts. It’s the beginning of the Idiocracy
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk
Many job types will vanish as no one will know how to perform them with precision like:
Mechanical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Architectural Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Finance
Science
Upper Math like:
-Trigonometry
-Calculus
These and others will be lost as there will be no incentive to do the needed work to learn them.
Why spend 4 years in a University if you have the same earning potential as a sixth grader regardless?
Why spend an additional 4 years in Med School or Law School if you get no additional financial benefit for your efforts?
In the future, if we need the services of such people, then China, India, and Korea will be more than happy to supply them as consultants, charging us an appropriately lucrative fee for their work.
“You may as well close down Colleges and Universities and eliminate the Degree Process entirely as there will be no incentive to further your education beyond Grade School.”
For most, the universities already do not further education beyond grade school now. They threw open their doors to welcome the other half of the bell curve and then had to create faculties for the illiterate and innumerate (usually recognized by the meaningless “Studies” in its name). The schools and universities have become dressed up re-education camps à la Mao.
This one of the huge messes that will have to be cleaned up when this global putsch dies out. What to do with the Harvards, Cambridges, Oxfords… The only practical solution is to create new centers of excellence with high standards that will syphon off the 5% of real scholar material in the population.
How about ivy walled homeless shelters?
“What to do with the Harvards, Cambridges, Oxfords…”
Turn them into indoctrination centers? Oh, wait…
Reeducation Camps
Walk in with a fully functioning brain, walk out with a fully functioning Neuron and a Degree in Idiotology
“Economic growth is linked to lower need satisfaction …”
Only a first-world academic who already has high “need satisfaction” and fails to understand technology would make such an absurd claim. Ask anyone in the developing world if economic growth would improve their lives and their unequivocal response would be “Of course, why do you ask such stupid question?”
Anyone who thinks that “economic progress” simply means ‘more, better, cheaper’ clearly knows more economics than our first-world academics.
This caught my eye. Way up at the top, in the middle of the HIGHLIGHTS section, we find this gem.
“Public services are linked to higher need satisfaction and lower energy requirements.”
Let’s unpack this, for a bit.
First, Public services, is a nice name for a nameless, faceless bureaucrat, unelected, and unaccountable to anybody. Routinely they are paid way over their worth, and far higher than their individual talent sets could garner in the dreaded private sector. Then add in platinum plated benefits packages and they are way ahead. Top it off with guaranteed Pensions. There is no such thing as a pension in the private sector and has not been for decades. Yet pensions are alive and well, and universal in the public sector. Put it all together, salary, benefits, and pension, and we come up with the rest:
“are linked to higher need satisfaction”
Well, how about that! I never would have guessed.
And for the last part, we have this:
“and lower energy requirements.”
Well, of course. Once the nameless, faceless bureaucrat has properly ensconced itself into it’s position, it does not have to do anything. As you know, doing nothing is is fully consistent with lower energy requirements.
So there we have it. And we also see how the authors of this scheme get the buy-in from government. A tacit agreement that the bureaucracy will be in on the take.
The publication mill is linked to money and the prospect of more money and a disconnect with accountability and science.
The coffee shops of Vienna never stopped breeding bad ideas.
People poo-poo Agenda 21 but this type of thinking is a direct result of what they are trying to achieve with it. If you haven’t yet, read it, and get to know the enemy.
Yes, whatever happened to Rosa Korie? and her intuition about UN agenda 21 ??
Sadly Rosa died in May this yr from lung cancer.
Having missed their deadline for Agenda 21 it’s now been renamed Agenda 2030. Most people won’t recognise the immediate effect of this totalitarian technocracy until around 2025 when the worlds central bankers roll out digital currencies, which will morph (Via Universal Basic Income) into a social credit system, when you will “own nothing and be happy” or be censored and sanctioned until you comply or die.
Making the rich poor does not make the poor rich .
This lowest common denominator theory will only make the world poorer .
Educating the underdeveloped world and helping them fend for themselves would make more sense .
I’m trying to remember which of the early civil rights leaders said “You can’t pull yourself up, by pulling others down.”
“Equity” means equality of outcome. The only way to achieve that is by preventing excellence, since people’s capabilities are inherently unequal, is to hold back those with greater capabilities.
“And the Trees were all made equal by hatchet, axe, and saw”
It would but, the globalists always were Malthusian, and committed to Eugenics, i have always viewed the Agenda 21 wealth distribution plan to be a mechanism for pouring vast wealth into the U.N, i suspect very little wealth is likely to be redistributed, except possibly as bribes to the leaders of developing countries, to go along with the intended plan of keeping their populations poor.
I feel vaccines with a hidden contraceptive effect coming on.
Some of the most bizarre gobligook I have ever read. It’s someone’s nightmare!
I really don’t like to be pedantic, but it’s gobbledygook.
One definition is “language that is meaningless.” One synonym: “argle-bargle.” Does meaningless language truly have any particular spelling?
(Interesting… I was looking up an “official” definition, and accidentally clicked on “Translate to Portuguese.” Translation: “blábláblá.” Practical language, there…)
I can’t remember the last “spit-take” I’ve ever had…
And to what end these things if I cannot live free to govern my own life as a human being? To what end my life if it is but to live in the cages of the human zoo they would make of society? We are not animals whose requirements are so easily met.
They dehumanize us.
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment), including racism, sexism, ageism, that denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, and normalizes color blocs (e.g. the racist designation “people of color”), color quotas, and affirmative discrimination.
When I was a kid, liberals declared that dividing people based on the color of their skin was the ultimate evil.
Today, liberals are demanding that unless you agree to their plans to divide people by the color of their skin, you are the ultimate evil.
The Chinese are clapping in unison , unbeknown to them there is a better life outside .
Aren’t they great with verbiage:
‘Paradigmatic provisioning factors’
Is that fast food?
No its a FAST peer review and publication in a humanities journal.
Judging by all the papers cited in this ‘study’ it appears none of these ‘scientists’ are aware of the replication crisis.
According to the Editor of The Lancet, up to 50% of medical studies are useless.
Climate science is even less well understood than medical science and, frankly, there’s no possibility of a double blind study anyway so conclusions are, at best, highly questionable.
Judging by those criteria alone, I would hazard a guess that substantially fewer that 50% of climate related studies are even moderately credible consigning this study to the garbage bin of life.
An interesting addition to your post, we are aware of only one experimental attempt to observe and measure the greenhouse effect in regard to Co2, it was done in Europe a little over a year ago peer reviewed and published.
They were able to observe and measure atmospheric Co2 absorbing long wave IR radiation and re radiating it in all directions as per the standard Greenhouse hypothesis, however in run after run try as they might they were UNABLE to observe and measure ANY atmospheric warming.
This WILL need replication (dont hold your breath, in this case i think the old barristers dictum will prevail, “Never ask your client if they are guilty”).
Now if they cannot measure warming in the simplest atmosphere inside an experimental chamber, without the many complicating factors of the real atmosphere, then either the warming produced is VERY small (too small to be detected with the devices used) or the experimental design was very poor, or perhaps re radiated IR radiation packets DO NOT warm, that would be in line with the dispute on the issue amongst physicists thats been going on for decades due to the second law of thermodynamics.
Time may tell, but the real point of this IS, this should have been settled decades ago by government funded scientific work before they started spending trillions.
I am reminded of Alice in Wonderland, drink from the little bottle and the temperatures get VERY BIG.
A Twilight faith (i.e. conflation of logical domains). A Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic, relativistic (“ethical”) religion. They think that they can abort the baby, cannibalize her profitable parts, sequester her carbon pollutants, and have her, too. A wicked solution to a purportedly hard problem (e.g. selective-child that denies the dignity and agency of women and men). From Jew privilege to White privilege to human privilege, they are playing with a double-edged scalpel, but precedent(s) shows us that people will take a knee to mortal gods and goddesses, experts, too, and bray in consensus or intimidation.
The people who wrote this need to read some history and then ask themselves what happened to the educated academia under Mao and Pol Pot among others. Same for the rich. The rich need people to purchase their goods in order to have money. Without people their riches will mean nothing unless tyranny is used to enslave the poor slobs to serve the riche peoples needs.
“...will require a fundamental political-economic transformation to remove structural and institutional growth dependencies.”
Big Brother is written all over that statement.
“Big Brother is watching you”:
“Big Brother loves you.”
Of course they mean that the 0.1%, i.e. our “Betters” the politically connected elites, will live on in their current private jet and mega yacht lifestyles.
China already has its Social Credit System, which the political leftist elites want to bring and impose of us in the West, and call it sustainability. What they mean is sustainability for indulgent lifestyles of the rich & famous. You and me, well… we will be transformed or we will be sent to re-education, like the CCP and Emperor Xi has lovingly done for the Uighurs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
“World government will decide what you need and provide it via 5-year plans.” Given that statement, there is no need for all this study. “You will own nothing and be happy (or else).” I guess this is the next step beyond Marxism.
“fundamental for avoiding catastrophic climate change”
Since catastrophic climate change is not going to happen all the rest is just bovine excrement.
I could only manage to read the first few paragraphs without gagging and severe eye-rolling.
Academic masturbation here, nothing more.
We, the people, can be both prosperous and sustainable. There is no need to return to the age of wind mills and horse carts. Just add freedom, market economy, rule of law and innovations do the rest.
Seems like a paper that someone like Bjorn Lomborg could easily disprove. If the data sources are World Bank and and “the Standardized World Income Inequality Database” the presentation is hollow argument from the start.
In the Graphical Abstract, all of the Beneficial provisioning factors are enhanced by economic growth and prosperity, yet Economic Growth is listed as a Detrimental provisioning factor. Only an ivory tower could generate such a massive logical disconnect.
These buffons are post-modern Death Cultists: anything to do with life — like growth or breath (CO2) — they are dead-set against.
This is what happens when stupid people try to cover their ignorance with big words.
And it isn’t a coincidence that the result always pushes a leftist totalitarian ideology. Stupid people think totalitarianism is the “smart” solution.
They’re not stupid or ignorant, they’re evil. If one wanted to be charitable, one could say they’re ignorant of the misery that socialism / central planning has brought about since the beginning of the last century, but I son’t see how any sentient creature could be so unaware. So that leaves either stupid {incapable of learning) or evil (willing to cause human suffering) as choices. Since they’re highly educated, that leaves evil as the only choice. QED.
When you read the writings of the early 20th century Fabian socialists, it is clear they think like sociopaths.
Shirley they can’t be Sirius.
The Chinese are starting to realize that, under socialism, working harder does not lead to economic reward.
The solution: “lying Flat”.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/radiichina.com/laying-flat-involution/amp/
sigh
Poor old Leeds again.
and that timid mouse like (and rather creepy) little Stoneburger woman who got a round of applause from the lecture theatre when she, barely audible, told the assembled throng that she ‘cycled to work’
Its coming though:
Headline:”MPs vote for ‘draconian’ protest laws“From the Independant
Why are our leaders so paranoid, so frightened of the folks who voted for them
wtf is going on/wrong here
No way our economy grows much once the millenials take charge. People who think they’ll get historic rates of return on their stock portfolio really need to look at reality.
As I read this on the day we celebrate the birth of the United States, it makes me even more thankful. I am thankful that we have a 2nd Amendment to our Constitution that the Founding Fathers were smart enough to write in so the citizens could protect themselves against morons like these.
2nd amendment wasnt written for peoples protection against politicians. Their idea was that the military forces would support the President as the commander and he might overthrow the republic with that support – example was the Roman republic became a monarchy.
The Militia , not the general public, was so the local leaders could resist that, which is why the national Guard is state controlled.
There is no danger from a German PhD students thesis
“There is no danger from a German PhD students thesis”
Per se, no. But if the substance of the thesis accurately reflects the ‘zeitgeist’ of any government, the population subject to that government is in big trouble.
Democracy is the answer not the 2nd amendment which for citizens makes them effectively powerless with only a handgun for use at home the only weapon that cant be regulated– according to the Supreme court
People go hunting with handguns?
Just where the heck are you digging this nonsense up from?
About the only thing people hunt with Hand Guns is Money at the Corner Store and empty cans. Although sometimes the Endangered Home Invader presents itself in the middle of the living room
I don’t know where you are getting your nonsense from, but the writings of the actual founding fathers directly contradicts what you want to believe.
It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote that the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
This was also a group of people who had just finished using their own guns against the politicians of their day.
The birth date is March 4th, 1789, the day the Constitution took effect. The Declaration of Independence has no legal authority
” The Declaration of Independence has no legal authority”
Maybe not under our so-called Constitutional case law system. But you have to admit it seems odd that the Declaration would go on at length to define what type of government would be worthy of the consent of the governed for purposes of declaring independence from Britain, and then just become moot as subsequent rulers under the Constitution enacted whatever powers they deemed expedient. Sorry, but if you buy that, you are implicitly accepting Lysander Spooner’s argument that the Constitution has no authority.
The reality is the basic law is the Constitution and all other laws follow from that. Declaration of Independence was superseded once the revolution had been won, as of course it must. The principles are largely enduring, but not in a legal form.
They just equaled and analyzed the family jewels off Western Civilization, Their qualifications are certified by job title.
Oh, all that reading to say “totalitarianism”.
Jefim Vogel, the lead researcher is only a PhD student…. this would seem to be his thesis
Has no background in economics or even ecology as it appears he trained as meteorologist in Germany and Norway
Why don’t these people just come out and say we need to kill 6/7th of the world’s population (and not my 1/7th. pof course).
Just propose they be given a tesla powerwall battery and solar roof panels and told to live within that. When it runs out on the second day or so , which it must without a mains backup feed, and they dont wont to live around one light bulb. They will reconsider
Sorry guys. Life is just too short for me to spend more than a few seconds scanning this kind of crap. Based on that scan it seems to me the authors would probably approve of the handlers of the sock puppet in the WH sending federal troops down to try and end the enforcement of immigrations laws congress passed by the reinforcement sent to Texas from other states.
You are as much a fantacyst as they are
Quite fascinating. Please indulge us. I want to observe you living out this prescription, for, let’s say, your whole life. THEN, I can say, with certainty, you have found the answer to no problem. Let your life be a testimony, whether for or against your own prescription. Carry on!
Poorly educated authors evaluating quality of education. Authors who ver earned riches describing the satisfaction of wealth. Would not surprise me to find one or more of the authors was fat from overeating, while telling others how much food they need. Pots, black kettles. Horrible junk paper. Geoff S
Exactly the argument tyrants throughout history have made: “I know the answer to all your problems and will force you to accept it because I am smarter, wiser, and more righteous than you.”.
Key sentence, “Democracy is not significantly correlated with the environmental efficiency of life satisfaction (Knight and Rosa, 2011) nor with the energy intensity of life expectancy…”
Their “study” is a nothing but a re-write of “The Communist Manifesto.”
So the Swiss should be OK with Russia annexing them and maybe lowering their quality of life (just a little).
There should be no need for these….they spew massive amounts of C02:
Switzerland Just Ordered Dozens of F-35s, Despite Opposition (interestingengineering.com)
Really, the Swiss are going to go into aerial combat ? Just talk things over and save the planet.
Centralist planners somehow always seem to plan more for themselves than for the peasants.
“From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.”~ Karl Marx…..
We all knew CAGW was never a physical threat to the earth, but rather a political threat to man’s inalienable rights of life, liberty, property and inalienable rightson a global scale.
As history clearly shows, Marxist central control of land, labor, capital and human rights always fails miserably, as opposed to a decentralized free enterprise system where land, labor and capital are efficiently allocated based on merit, supply/demand, and price discovery and the sole purpose of a decentralized government is to protect and defend our inalienable God-given rights (or natural rights for my atheist friends) and perform a few basic enumerated tasks best done by a decentralized government.
My hat is off to the Fascists for coming so close to pulling this scam off, but the gig is up, and people are getting fed up with all the Marxist BS and just want their lives and freedoms back.
Apparently, the “geniuses” who did this study, more like this Book of Mao, never read Heinlein.
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Trooper?
Help me to translate this, please. What, exactly, is “higher need satisfaction?”
Basically, all the have done is identified what the human body needs – nutrition, shelter, warmth, health care, education, minimum wage etc. Then they propose that you can reduce energy use if you can change society to eliminate all activities that don’t meet these basic needs – everything that makes life worth living, in fact.
Where are the palatial estates these scumbags live in? Time for pantifa and black lies matter to pay them all a visit.
Come on cut them some slack. Judging from the verbiage and ludicrousness of much of their phrasing they were all obviously as high as kites when writing it and submitted it as a joke.
It such a shame, the waste of time resources and effort to produce this output when a single cow and a grassy field can produce something far more useful in a matter of hours. Just watch where you step.
Wow.
Economic growth is BAD?
They say “We understand what defines and characterises human needs, and what levels of which goods, services and conditions generally satisfy these needs”
Then define those sufficient needs as:
It reads pretty much like they’re suggesting this for pretty much everyone. Except the “elites” of course. Economic growth and affluence are not good – that takes too much energy.
Here’s your green future. Hope you enjoy it.
Bah! Keep your multi-variate “analysis” off of my life.
oh my gosh what an incredible pile of garbage
Another overly elaborate ragbag of word-salad academic horseshit. Boil it down and it still spells communism.