Green Communism: “… eradicate the energy privilege of rich countries”

Essay by Eric Worrall

According to the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the “energy privilege” of nations like the USA will have to be “eradicated” to save the world from climate change.

Reduction of global inequalities in energy use necessary to stop climate change

Date:July 7, 2022
Source: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

Summary:A new study shows that existing climate mitigation scenarios perpetuate inequalities in energy use between the Global North and the Global South long into the future. These scenarios disadvantage the Global South and are therefore politically untenable, the study’s authors argue.

A new ICTA-UAB study shows that existing climate mitigation scenarios perpetuate inequalities in energy use between the Global North and the Global South long into the future. These scenarios disadvantage the Global South and are therefore politically untenable.

A just energy transition that keeps global warming below 1.5 or 2°C requires the wealthy countries in the North to reduce their energy use to sustainable levels of consumption, while allowing for a sufficient growth in energy use in the rest of the world.

These are the conclusions of a scientific study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), conducted by researchers Jason Hickel and Aljoša Slameršak and published today in The Lancet Planetary Health, in which they call for the development of new climate mitigation scenarios that would achieve energy convergence between the Global North and the Global South, and thus gradually eradicate the energy privilege of rich countries.

“Much of this excess energy is consumed by forms of production that support corporate profits and elite accumulation, such as fast fashion, sports utility vehicles, industrial meat and planned obsolescence, which have no relevance to wellbeing,” emphasises Aljoša Slameršak.

In the analysed scenarios, African and Middle Eastern countries are assumed to have their energy use limited at their existing rates for most of the century, i.e., less than 30 gigajoules per capita per year. By contrast, the OECD countries and the rest of Europe are on average allocated energy well in excess of 100 gigajoules per capita per year for the rest of the century. Even though Latin America and Asia see some increase in energy use, their energy consumption amounts to barely half of what countries in the Global North consume in 2100.

Read more: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220707100922.htm

The academics don’t describe how they plan to convince rich countries to give up their energy privilege, though going by the absurd antics of rich nation leaders the last few years, maybe they think rich countries are on track to surrender their “energy privilege” without additional help.

4.6 20 votes
Article Rating

Discover more from Watts Up With That?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

87 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
kenji
July 8, 2022 10:08 am

So the Global Warmists aren’t even trying to hide their Marxist ideologies. Good. Let them reveal themselves to the entire world’s population … not just the privileged (semi-capitalist) West … because they’re coming for YOU next

MarkW
Reply to  kenji
July 8, 2022 10:39 am

Marxists want the whole world to be as miserable as they are.

Bill Powers
Reply to  MarkW
July 9, 2022 9:44 am

Well not they. A select vocal few want to lead the miserable, thereby controlling how resources are distributed and consequently minimize the wastefulness of luxury by allocating it to, guess who? that’s right, the select vocal few, along with their chosen ones, family and friends, that serve their needs.

Its the rest of us Mark that get to go live in misery.

Old Man Winter
Reply to  kenji
July 8, 2022 12:14 pm

When the study’s authors divest themselves of Western luxuries & enlist the XR to demand fellow
Greenies follow suit, then we’ll know they aren’t just the usual Watermelons!

H2Omelo0.jpg
July 8, 2022 10:12 am

Anyone with any intelligence knows who’s been behind the climate scare all along.

Gyan1
July 8, 2022 10:12 am

Generation’s now have been brainwashed into believing that privilege is something given to the unworthy by an unjust society rather than something that is earned. The biggest victim wins is where they are going with this. The result being a dependent society on the whims of captured bureaucrat’s.

Doc Chuck
Reply to  Gyan1
July 9, 2022 12:22 am

And even their regional comparisons showing an energy usage ‘inequity’ demonstrate once again that simple-minded, blind resort to ‘one size fits all’ in addressing the actual needs, while higher latitude/altitude locales naturally require greater means of providing warmth to avoid hypothermia (the manifold greater threat of any extreme temperature-related peril) than applies to tropical locales. Oh how the mighty institutions of ‘higher learning’ have fallen for utterly incompetent doctrines with some emotive appeal! Makes one embarrassed to be counted as an alumnus of a couple of them.

Fisht
Reply to  Gyan1
July 9, 2022 7:10 am

Millennials didn’t actually have to earn anything. Thats the problem. We handed it to them on a silver platter. Who is surprised they are destroying what we gave them like spoiled children?

Fred Hubler
July 8, 2022 10:19 am

I thought the problem was CO2.

Ebor
Reply to  Fred Hubler
July 9, 2022 6:35 am
Ron
July 8, 2022 10:24 am

I wonder if Xi Jinping will get on board…

Surrr
Reply to  Ron
July 8, 2022 8:34 pm

He is, millions of CCP comrades on western social media pushing ruinables everything in western nations, the left in the West are Xi Jipings useful idiots.

Tom Halla
July 8, 2022 10:29 am

Being basically Marxist, bringing up the downtrodden is nowhere as important as bringing down the rich. Or just someone a bit richer than you, as with the Kulaks.

MarkW
Reply to  Tom Halla
July 8, 2022 10:47 am

Unless they are party members, then the only limitation to their wealth is how much they can steal.

ResourceGuy
Reply to  MarkW
July 8, 2022 12:12 pm

Let’s see for the first time all the ledgers at the Swiss banks and other tax havens in detail, i.e. not pay-to-play partial lists that Hillary got with a donation to her Foundation account.

Reply to  Tom Halla
July 8, 2022 1:39 pm

the new term for what you are writing about is called trickle down poverty.

Reply to  Tom Halla
July 9, 2022 12:59 am

Exactly. It is a philosophy that feeds off envy and incites people to be envious, which is why socialism engenders so many degenerate behaviors like ratting out neighbors who try to get ahead by bending the perverse and self-defeating economic rules in an effort to survive.

Nolan Parker
Reply to  Tom Halla
July 9, 2022 10:01 am

Remember when they were pitching NAFTA as a way to Level the Playing Field? Normal people, people who don’t want others to live in poverty, thought NAFTA was gonna give them a leg up, not bring everyone else down. NAFTA craftily initiated the huge numbers of illegals coming in by forcing Mexico to accept our produce,from farmers who were able to sell cheaply, because we were subsidizing our farmers.
It was no Accident. What they TELL us was just Unintended Consequences is a load of crap. It was obvious what would follow. And some schmuck came on TV saying
We know NAFTA is unpopular, but We are going to pass it anyway. You’ll thank us later.
Sure wish I could remember his name.
At some point, Stewpid stops being cover for sabotage.

Kelvin Duncan
Reply to  Tom Halla
July 9, 2022 9:30 pm

But if you look deeply into communist revolutions, it is middle-class dreamers who fund and drive communistic thoughts and revolutions. However, they get their due deserts when the revolution succeeds. It all reminds me of a very old joke:
Communist speaker: When the revolution comes everyone will have a 10c cigar.
Listener: But I don’t smoke.
Communist: when the revolution comes, comrade, you will smoke.

We just have too many young middle-class younger people with too much time and money and not enough good education.

MarkW
July 8, 2022 10:35 am

A lot of leftists use terms like “planned obsolescence” without ever bothering to figure out what it means. They just assume it’s bad because that’s what they have been told to believe.

All it means is that when newer models come out, people want the newer models.
Yes, there are times when the only differences between the new version and the old version are cosmetic.
The vast, vast majority of the time, the new models are functionally better than the old models.

Now there may be people who insist that their flip-phones are good enough and that nobody really needs a smart phone, but there are a lot of people who want the new functions.

Drake
Reply to  MarkW
July 8, 2022 1:35 pm

The lowest priced American, Japanese, Korean or western European car sold today is better than almost all cars sold in the 60s for life expectancy and amenities.

Just compare a 1965 mustang to a Kia Rio. Rio is under 18K, 10 yr/100,000 mile drive train warranty, 0 to 60 for both is 8.2 seconds, but the Mustang did it with the better gas of the 60s. The 1965 Mustang was $20,000 as adjusted for inflation in an article from Dec of 2021.

Then think of the crap breaks, no airbags, no cruise control, no AC, etc.

MarkW
Reply to  Drake
July 8, 2022 3:59 pm

AM only radio, assuming it had a radio. Radios used vacuum tubes and took a minimum of 30 to 40 seconds to warm up enough so that you could hear something. Forget CD or cassette players, those were years in the future, even 8-tracks hadn’t been developed yet.
Hand crank windows
Carpeting for the foot wells was an upgrade, most people had only bare metal.
Heck, back then, seat belts were an upgrade.

Rich Davis
Reply to  Drake
July 8, 2022 5:18 pm

I think you meant brakes, Dreak.

paul
Reply to  MarkW
July 8, 2022 5:20 pm

I have a flip phone that is a smart phone. Works great, no problems in 4 years now.
It;s made by Samsung, called the Galaxy Z Flip.
They also got one that folds lengthwise. Galaxy Z Fold.

Their prices are a whole lot better than Apple also.

MarkW
July 8, 2022 10:37 am

SUV’s and meat have no relevance to well being?

Sounds like someone who can’t afford either and wants to make sure that nobody can have what he doesn’t.

HOJO
July 8, 2022 10:43 am

Watermelon the perfect fruit for a new green world.

July 8, 2022 11:06 am

Ha ha! Demonstrating once again the dystopian thinking that results from an education steeped in leftist ideology; tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Apparently they didn’t get the news that Marxist dogma was proved to be a spectacular disaster over the 20th century by the “lived experience” of billions of people who suffered deeply under socialist regimes, and still do today in North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and China.

Pro tip for leftist academics: take a sabbatical and try working with your hands or creating something useful for a change; being productive instead of a leech on society. It might open your eyes. Too much thinking and not enough learning.

MarkW
Reply to  stinkerp
July 8, 2022 12:31 pm

Since they consider themselves to be the smartest people in any room, they are convinced that they will be the ones who can make communism work.

paul
Reply to  MarkW
July 8, 2022 5:23 pm

Yeah, they gonna do it right this time……… /sarc

Olen
July 8, 2022 11:14 am

I felt like I was in groundhog day the way they repeated the same thing.

The energy rich countries created the energy they are talking about and if the wealthy countries won’t willingly give up their creation they intend to force it with regulation and threats and violence.

Philip CM
July 8, 2022 11:16 am

And no doubt the self-loathing, anti-industry, anti-American Democrat, clapped like trained seals upon hearing this great plan to destroy American production. 😣

Vuk
July 8, 2022 12:04 pm

Daily Telegraph:
Germany’s education minister has warned that school classes could be cancelled if Russia cuts gas supplies to the country later this month.

Reply to  Vuk
July 8, 2022 5:13 pm

We know it’s serious if it cuts into the indoctrination time

John Bell
July 8, 2022 12:05 pm

A just energy transition…

Definition – “just”: based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair:
“a just and democratic society” · “fighting for a just cause”

Just, according to frothing marxists, that is.

Papers like that one make me ill.

MarkW
Reply to  John Bell
July 8, 2022 12:33 pm

The left wing definition of “just” is: I get everything I want.

Richard Page
Reply to  MarkW
July 8, 2022 2:25 pm

The reality of the leftwing definition of “just” is that nobody gets what they want; the haves are brought down to the same level as the have-not’s.

Rick C
Reply to  Richard Page
July 8, 2022 5:24 pm

Exactly. Marx, Engels and Lenin saw unequal outcomes between rich and poor and considered it unfair. They understood that there was no economic system that could make everyone equally rich so the only way to achieve “equity” was to make everyone equally poor. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was their slogan. But they failed to recognize that no one produces according to their ability without meaningful incentives. Thus communism always results in a spiral to the bottom and all but the party elites ultimately starve.

So when you hear the wokesters talk about fairness and equity its just plain old communist rhetoric.

MarkW
Reply to  Rick C
July 8, 2022 8:54 pm

They also failed to realize that everyone’s “needs” are limitless.

ResourceGuy
July 8, 2022 12:08 pm

Well, at this point they and the UN do look like enablers of Putin invasions.

July 8, 2022 12:13 pm

If only all those clowns got an actual job …

MarkW
Reply to  Petit_Barde
July 8, 2022 12:34 pm

Demanding more free stuff is their job.

Drake
Reply to  Petit_Barde
July 8, 2022 1:41 pm

Getting a job and having children is how the leftists of the ivory towers become conservatives after leaving the ivory towers.

If they stay in the ivory towers or work for the government or “non-profits” they never learn about responsibility, and stay leftists.

July 8, 2022 12:20 pm

Those who haven’t learned their history are doomed to repeat it.
Apparently these academics never learned about the failures of past Marxist regimes.
Capitalism / free markets / democracy may not be perfect but I defy anyone to show a system that has worked better or lifted up more people to a better standard of living.

Reply to  Jeff L
July 10, 2022 11:30 am

I posted this on another thread, but it’s appropriate here. If only the leftards would pay attention…

5894c280591cbfde86508b436178817a9a446b3dd94dbe01cad24d878bb6749e.jpg
CD in Wisconsin
July 8, 2022 12:35 pm

Marxist-socialist climatism.

Workers Climate alarmists of the world unite!”

Walter Sobchak
July 8, 2022 12:40 pm

The envy of the poor for the rich will not be slated by impoverishing the rich. The poor want what the rich have now. They will achieve that by exploiting their own resources of fossil fuel, and they will not change course no matter how the rich hector them. The only way to stop them is to use nuclear weapons, and the rich might want to do that, but they no longer have the huevos.

John Galt III
July 8, 2022 12:42 pm

What has Spain done in the last 100 years? Not one Nobel Prize in the hard sciences of medicine, chemistry or physics except Severo Ochoa who was born in Spain but became an American in 1956 before he won teh Nobel.

Then again Spain was good at Communism and Fascism so there is that. Now it’s just another Euro Wimp state.

Drake
Reply to  John Galt III
July 8, 2022 1:44 pm

Spain is so wimpy that after a couple of trains were bombed they elected leftists by a large margin in an election the polls showed was leaning right of center before the bombings.

paul
Reply to  John Galt III
July 8, 2022 5:44 pm

Spain is just pissed off that these days yu just can’t go around invading undeveloped countries, killing the natives & stealing everything worth anything that isn’t tied down. The days of colonialism have been over for a long time but it seems their mindset is still to steal anything they covet that someone else has.

July 8, 2022 1:11 pm

I was never comfortable with the term
Warmunism, only because too many people didn’t get it.

I like the term Climate Howlers to describe climate alarmists.
Funny and accurate.

I think the term Greenunism might work, or something similar.
The name has to be accurate and insulting at the same time.

Any other suggestions to describe the green dreamers?

I already use computer games for climate models,
and Nut Zero instead of Net Zero.
And Al “the climate blimp” Gore
And Alexandria Occasionally Coherent
And Greta “thundering” Thunberg

I do not insult leftists to be mean.
I insult them for medical reasons.
My doctor said, concerning my high blood pressure:
“Insulting a leftist every day keeps the doctor away”.
At least that’s what I think I heard.
And within a week my blood pressure
was back to normal
after 16 years of being high.

Richard Page
Reply to  Richard Greene
July 8, 2022 2:28 pm

I still prefer the term “watermelons” to describe them – green on the outside and red to the core.

john harmsworth
July 8, 2022 1:16 pm

Why the U.S.? Why not Spain? They’re right there! Makes it really easy to spot that it’s pure propaganda.

July 8, 2022 1:21 pm

It’s another study based on per capita CO2 emissions, and IPCC RCP models.
– – – – – – – – –

Existing climate mitigation scenarios perpetuate colonial inequalities
The challenge of climate mitigation is made more difficult by high rates of energy use in wealthy countries, mostly in the Global North, which far exceed what is required to meet human needs. In contrast, more than 3 billion people in poorer countries live in energy poverty. A just transition requires energy convergence—reducing energy use in wealthy countries to achieve rapid emissions reductions, and ensuring sufficient energy for development in the rest of the world.

(4 page PDF, link here)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542519622000924

Elliot W
Reply to  Cam_S
July 8, 2022 1:56 pm

I thought CO2was the problem, not “climate mitigation”, whatever that is.
Guess what? — doesn’t take a genius to figure out cold weather countries that invent and make things use more energy than hot countries with no jobs. Saying the energy usage must be equal per capita is promoting communism, which is misery for all.

CD in Wisconsin
Reply to  Cam_S
July 8, 2022 2:25 pm

“A just transition requires energy convergence—reducing energy use in wealthy countries to achieve rapid emissions reductions, and ensuring sufficient energy for development in the rest of the world.”

Cam_S,

How do you, ScienceDirect and The Lancet all plan on doing accomplishing this? A Marxist revolution? Your hard leftist dreams are worthless without a detailed game plan to which everyone involved has agreed.

MarkW
Reply to  Cam_S
July 8, 2022 4:07 pm

What perpetuates “colonial inequalities” is socialism/communism. Those former colonies that threw off the yoke of socialism have done very well.

Reply to  Cam_S
July 9, 2022 12:22 pm

Hey Gang! I’m just the messenger.
If you read the study, the social justice authors use computer models to justify wealth redistribution. Models!

Nefty Ivan
July 8, 2022 1:28 pm

The last paragraph from the article: “The academics don’t describe how they plan to convince rich countries to give up their energy privilege, though, going by the absurd antics of rich nation leaders the last few years, maybe they think rich countries are on track to surrender their “energy privilege” without additional help.”

It should read: The academics and their governmental rat minions — because they have NO EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE of any kind — CAN NOT PROVE, beyond a reasonable doubt, how anthropomorphic activity — carbon-based or otherwise — in any way and to any degree, contributes to any measurable changes in global temperature and/or weather, and/or climate. End of sentence. End of chapter. End of book. Period!

IOW: along with untold happy millions — billions, perhaps — who have not yet surrendered our critical thinking skills and our morality, to all dictator-wannabe climate alarmists … I call BULLKRAP!

July 8, 2022 1:43 pm

So now we all know what’s on their Christmas wish list.

Children eh.
Who’d ‘ave them?

Nobody these these days and this crop explain why.
A couple of days ago even the Grauniad couldn’t believe its ears.
Seemingly they’d got wind of a UK plan to tax childless people.

Yes, you read it right, UK Gov is toying the idea of taxing folks for **not** making babies in an effort to reverse the plummeting birthrate. It’s not like most places, the French notably, who reward folks for making babies

Is there an antidote, how do we rid ourselves of these clowns…..

Richard Page
Reply to  Peta of Newark
July 8, 2022 2:33 pm

Hmm. How, exactly, are they to tell which have chosen not to have babies and which are simply unable to have them? Are they going to tax single people for not being in a relationship or gay men/lesbians?
The clear signs of an idea never properly thought through.

Reply to  Peta of Newark
July 9, 2022 2:40 am

I thought population growth was bad and we were heading for a cull of the undesirables?

Reply to  Peta of Newark
July 9, 2022 9:59 am

If they are concerned about the birth rate that much, shouldn’t they ban abortion on demand, also? Regardless if you are pro-life or pro-choice, the logic is unassailable.

Verified by MonsterInsights