The otherwise nondescript nation of Gabon made history last week as the first African country to “get paid” to preserve its rainforest. At the end of an arduous, four-year process of “conforming,” on June 24, the Norwegian government distributed a $17 million payment, with the fantastic sum of $150 million still in the wind. The payment was allocated under the UN-initiated Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI). While not technically a part of UN Climate czar Mark Carney’s over-hyped “climate offset” scheme, this deal provides a window into the process, and will likely serve as a model.
In June of 2017, under the CAFI program, the nation of Gabon signed a Letter of Intent with the nation of Norway, and the Multi Partner Trust Fund of the United Nations Development Program, under which Gabon would agree to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% below the 2005 level, as well as agree to perform a series of “milestones”– which ultimately saw Gabon creating 13 “national parks”– effectively locking up the vast majority of its land area, prohibiting logging and other access to resources. Only at the end of the long process would Gabon get paid. That final “millstone” was passed in 2019, with an announcement at the Climate Action Summit in New York. For all its efforts and sacrifices, Gabon would receive $150 million over the next 10 years (assuming continued compliance). Last Thursday’s $17 million payment was the first evidence that its years of sacrifice would amount to anything at all.
First established in 2015, the CAFI brought together European governments, specifically Norway, France, Germany and the UK, along with six central African (rainforest) countries, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, the Central Africa republic, Cameroon, and both “Congos.” The “rationale” behind CAFI was the reduction of carbon emissions. The year before had seen Norway sign a deal promising $150 million to Liberia, a model which CAFI then extended across the mid-section of the entire continent. In 2019, timed with the signing of Gabon in New York, a similar deal worth $65 million — between France and the Republic of Congo — was announced in Paris. There are likely similar efforts afoot in South America and the Indo-Pacific, the other “rainforest regions” of the world, which need to be investigated.
However, the idea that Africa needs to {reduce} its carbon emissions is farcical on the face of it, something which is slowly dawning on African leaders, as more and more evidence of this type of exploitation emerges. Africa’s total greenhouse gas emissions are 4% of the global total, yet CAFI used that global mantra to convince these six LNI (Low National Income) countries to mortgage their future with the promise of mere pennies.
The other hidden force at play here is the elusive “carbon market.” Norway, which now “owns” the Gabonese forests for the next ten years, now has an amount of carbon offset equivalent to 3X the national output of the entire United Kingdom. (The Gabon deal is celebrated for “setting a floor price of carbon” at $10 per certified ton.) Could Norway, for example– at some date in the future– put this “asset” (or a derivative based on it) up for sale, to be bought by a carbon-belching airline or steel foundry? If they did, and got a higher price for it, would Gabon see any of the profits?
These are the questions currently weighing down the heads of Mark Carney and friends in Davos, Switzerland. The weight may yet draw them down to Hell.
Dr. Kelvin Kemm insists that “technological apartheid” not be imposed upon continental Africa. Instead the deployment of advanced nuclear power plant designs, including the fourth generation pebble bed reactors designed in South Africa, as well as floating modular nuclear complexes–“nuplexes”–can leapfrog Africa into Into world industrial and scientific leadership by 2050.
As more becomes known about the provocation launched by the British warship HMS Defender, it is clear this was a provocation aimed at sabotaging any potential for better relations between the U.S. and Russia. It is an example of the kind of gunboat diplomacy which characterized the British Empire’s actions to dominate global trade and commerce, and force all nations to submit to Pax Britannica — an example of the kind of unilateral world order behind today’s drive for the Great Reset. But Russia and China will not submit. The big question today is, will the U.S. continue to carry out the agenda of the City of London, as it has on nearly all important strategic and economic issues since the assassination of John F. Kennedy nearly 60 years ago?
This past weekend’s Schiller Institute conference pointed the way toward an escape from the devastating consequences of the end of an imperial era, with a dialogue demonstrating the potential for sovereign nation states to cooperate for the benefit of all mankind. The Empire will not just go away quietly, though. Instead, they are engaging in one provocation after another, with special emphasis this week on the Black Sea and Syria. Watch the Schiller Institute conference, at schillerinstitute.com and join us to move humanity into a new era.
The devastating effects of the Texas Deep Freeze and the continued polarization pushed by those behind Russiagate make clear that the United States remains trapped in a Neocon/Neolib paradigm which is propelling the nation, and the world, to a perilous future.
We have warned that the Achilles Heel of the Trump presidency was to mistakenly claim that a stock bubble represents economic growth — instead, a tsunami of unpayable debt threatens to implode the economy, either through domino-style wave of bankruptcies, or hyperinflation. To prevent this from being competently addressed, the Russiagaters continue to target Donald Trump and his movement, in the aftermath of January 6, including by making completely unsubstantiated allegations against the former President in the second impeachment case, and against Roger Stone, just as the Mueller investigators did in their four-year witch-hunt. To defeat the increasingly dangerous neocon/neolib agenda, it is now time to implement LaRouche’s Four Economic Laws.
Panel 2, Saturday, June 26, 2pm EDT — The Real Science Behind Climate Change: Why the World Needs Seven More Terawatts of Energy
- Megan Dobrodt, President, Schiller Institute USA: “Why the Universe Needs More People”
- Dr. Kelvin Kemm, (South Africa), nuclear physicist, former Chairman of the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa
- Prof. Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, Physicist (Fluid Mechanics), Emeritus Professor, Saarland University for Technology and Economics
- Emanuel Höhener (Switzerland), Consulting Engineer in Energy Sector, Chairman of the Switzerland-based think tank Carnot-Cournot Network: “Swiss Vote ‘No’ to New CO₂ Law”
- Paul Driessen (US), Senior Policy Advisor, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)
- Prof. Nicola Scafetta (Italy), Department of Earth, Environmental and Resources Sciences, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
- Vincenzo Romanello, PhD (Italy), Nuclear Engineer, Research Center Rez, Founder, “Atoms for Peace,” Czech Republic
- Prof. Augustinus Berkhout (Netherlands); member, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau (2008), Emeritus Professor of Geophysics, the Netherlands and President of the Climate Intelligence Group, and Senior Member of the Dutch Academy of Engineering (AcTI)
- John Shanahan (US): Civil Engineer, Editor, allaboutenergy.net, MSc. Civil Engineering
Virtual Roundtable Forum sponsored by the Schiller Institute
Please register here
The devastation and death across major portions of the US and Mexico from the polar vortex was not a “natural disaster,” but the man-made result of the systemic takedown of reliable fossil fuel and nuclear power plants, replaced by the primitive and unreliable use of sun and wind. This result was warned against in the EIR Special Report, “Great Leap Backwards – LaRouche Exposes the Green New Deal,” released just days before the polar vortex, demonstrating that this is the disaster awaiting the entire world if the Green New Deal is not replaced by international cooperation to deal with the global pandemic and economic breakdown with modern technologies, infrastructure and industrial development.
Instead, we are witnessing the open mobilization by the US and its NATO allies for military confrontation with Russia and China, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation.
Experts on China and Russia, as well as experts on the actual, galactic causes of climate change, will join this Schiller Institute Roundtable Forum, to discuss the urgent steps required to avoid the twin disasters of war and economic disintegration, and pose the changes in international relations required to turn the current crisis into a new paradigm of peace through development. We invite you and your friends and associates to join us.
In the aftermath of the Texas Deep Freeze, which was caused by a combination of environmentalist insanity, and neoliberal deregulation, the Biden administration is doubling down, with a call for an international summit on “Earth Day”, to “fight climate change.” The issue of “climate change” is based on a fraudulent narrative, to impose drastic population reduction worldwide through reviving the British Empire’s Malthusian dogma, which was designed in the 18th century to defend the looting which sustained the empire.
Fear of “overpopulation” of the earth led to the first Earth Day in 1970, which was an attempt to harness the energy of youth engaged in the anti-war movement, to target industrial society. It became the basis of law, with the adoption in 1975 of Kissinger’s NSSM 200, which claimed that overpopulation threatened U.S. control over raw materials. It is at the heart today of the Great Reset and the Green New Deal, which would impose a global banker’s dictatorship, to protect a bankrupt financial system.
The British government at first denied there was a confrontation in the Black Sea with Russian naval vessels, then proclaimed they do not recognize that Crimea is Russian; and finally, a BBC reporter, on board the ship, admitted it was “a deliberate move to make a point to Russia.” At the risk of a nuclear war? And what exactly is that point, that the Brits can force the U.S. into a war with Russia? Join us tomorrow and Sunday, at Schillerinstitute.com, for a two-day online conference, to become part of the mobilization to flank the evil bastards from the City of London who keep playing such dangerous games.
A naval incident provoked by the British in the Black Sea yesterday led to shots fired over the bow of the HMS Defender. Former British Ambassador Craig Murray asked what business it had in the Black Sea, describing its deployment there as “lunacy.” Court documents released on the January 6 “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol demonstrate the involvement of a legion of FBI provocateurs embedded among the demonstrators. These actions have nothing to do with “protecting” us from “aggressive” Russians or domestic terrorists, but in justifying further war build-up and security state spying and psychological warfare in the U.S.
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