Green New Deal

Great Leap Backwards: the Green Deal

March 2, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Environmentalism updates, Finance, General, Green New Deal, New financial order updates

UK Proposes Climate Change Have UNSC Veto

March 1 (EIRNS) — In typical “snow is black” fashion, the United Kingdom is attempting to declare the “fake news” Climate Change hoax as the biggest threat to global security, today. To argue their case, London resurrected the 90 year-old serial Malthusian Sir David Attenborough, who addressed the UN Security Council on Feb. 23. Although the virtual meeting was opened with a keynote by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, it was clearly organized by the UK — which held the rotating chair of the UNSC during February — and was intended as a primer for the COP 26 Climate talks, now (re)scheduled to take place in Glasgow in November, 2021.

Chaired by Boris Johnson, who presented the issue as “a matter of when, not if,” the central feature was an 8 minute video by Attenborough, who — speaking as a member of the “public” — likened the crisis to that of World War Two (“the Great War that took place during my youth”). Unlike WWII, however, {this} crisis is one “which should unite us,” said the voice from the crypt, since the threat is not rising global fascism, but “rising global temperatures!” Growing threats of wars, collapsing food supplies (from both land and sea), all was the product of our species’ failure to address Climate Change. “No matter what we do, it’s too late … and the poorest among us are(now certain to suffer,” Sir David told the united global security representatives. Climate Change is, he said, “{the biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced}” and only by recognizing this can we unite to avoid the worst. [emphasis added]

Also addressing the ministers was young Sudanese “activist” Nisreen Elsaim, who has been chosen as chair of the UN Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change. A very well-briefed Elsaim gave “on the ground” affirmation to the destruction that the elders had warned of.

Great Leap Backwards: the Green New Deal

February 28, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Environmentalism updates, Finance, General, General updates, Green New Deal

How Much of U.S. Must Be Covered by Windmills and Solar Panels To ‘Decarbonize’ the Nation?

Feb. 27 (EIRNS)—According to a 345-page study called “Net-Zero America,” released on Dec. 15, 2020 by a team from two environmental centers at Princeton University, land-based windmills and solar farms might have to cover some 231,660 square miles of U.S. territory by the year 2050, for the U.S. economy to be net-zero in emitting “heat-trapping gasses.” Think of it: An area slightly larger than the combined states of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois, covered over by inefficient energy technologies from the 14th century which have a well-proven track record of failing when most needed.

City of London weekly The Economist carries a 3,500-word monster article this week, discussing the ins-and-outs of “Decarbonising America: Joe Biden’s Climate-Friendly Energy Revolution,” promotes the Princeton study, and particularly its most solar- and wind-dependent proposal.

The study details five different “pathways” through which to reduce the U.S. economy to net-zero emissions, and brags that it is the first study to lay out options with great “granularity,” by which they mean, proposing very specific ideas for every geographic area of the country (e.g. maps showing where solar and wind farms might be located around different cities). Barack Obama’s anti-science advisor John Holdren explains in his Foreword to the study, that the intent of detailing the “multiple plausible and affordable pathways available” for decarbonizing the economy, is to induce Americans to fixate on discussing details of what kind of energy technology should go where (Rhode Island or Washington, D.C. would have to be covered with solar panels, in order to provide enough electricity for people to live and work there; but then, they couldn’t live or work there), and drop all debate over how the entire scheme itself means economic suicide and Malthusian population reduction. As Holdren puts it, with this report, “the societal conversation can now turn from ‘if’ to ‘how’ and focus on the choices the nation and its myriad stakeholders wish to make to shape the transition to net-zero.”

EIR has not read every “granular” detail of the study, but its summary reports that all five “pathways” assume that the share of electricity from “carbon-free sources” will have to roughly double from around 37% today to 70-85% by 2030, and reach 98-100% by 2050. Wind and solar power are to be the dominant source of energy in all their scenarios, with wind and solar farms providing about half of all U.S. electricity by 2030—up from 9% in 2019. Miles and miles of new transmission lines would be needed to shift the unreliable electricity supply around; the Princeton crew estimates that high-voltage transmission capacity would have to jump by 60% over the course of the coming decade. Naturally, we will have to pay through the nose to kill ourselves; the study authors estimate at least $2.5 trillion in additional capital investment will be needed over the next decade. See EIR’s special report, https://larouchepub.com/special_report/2021/green-new-deal/index.html.

Great Reset/Green New Deal

February 28, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Environmentalism updates, General, General updates, Green New Deal

One Houston Home’s Electricity Bill Hits $9,340—for One Week

Feb. 27 (EIRNS)—A family in Chambers County, Texas, a suburb of Houston, has filed a class action suit against the electric company Griddy. Under the “variable rate plan,” one of the disastrous results of the deregulation which gave us Enron and more, the electric company was allowed to jack up the price almost without limit when the system nearly shut down. The family said that their normal monthly electric bill was $200 and $250. But during the collapse, they were charged $9,340 for seven days!

According to a news release, Mont Belvieu resident Lisa Khoury said the company engaged in “unlawful price gouging” during the storm and the breakdown caused by the freezing of the windmills and related breakdowns. “Griddy charged Khoury in the middle of a disaster,” the complaint said. “She and her husband mostly were without power in their home from Wednesday, February 17 to Thursday, February 18, 2021. At the same time, Khoury hosted her parents and in-laws, who are in their 80s, during the storm. Even then, she continued to minimize any power usage because of the high prices.”

Griddy’s response: “The lawsuit is meritless and we plan to vigorously defend against it.”

Great Leap Backwards: the Green Deal Swindle

February 26, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Environmentalism updates, Finance, General updates, Green New Deal

Soaring European “Carbon” Market Encourages London, but Worries Remain that U.S Is Not Securely on Board

Feb. 25, 2021 (EIRNS)—London’s The Economist magazine on Feb. 24 hailed the 60% surge in prices on the European carbon-emissions trading market since last November as a sign that the market is finally “Coming into Its Own,” as it headlined its report. The European market is far-and-away the biggest carbon trading operation in the world. The Economist points to the entry of some 230 “investment funds” into the trading—speculators like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and big hedge funds—as signalling that the market is “joining the financial mainstream.” And they are entering, because “carbon seems like a one-way bet.” The European Union’s Dec. 11th order to increase the required cuts in emissions by 2030 to 55% of 1990 levels, instead of “only” by 40%, combined with the entry of the big speculators, sent emission “allowance” prices soaring, with bets that the price will rise (“long positions”) doubling since November.

The Economist has spent much of the past week, however, in various articles, including a monster piece of over 3,500 words, ruminating about how to ensure that the United States joins the murderous decarbonization frenzy in the way it must, if London is to have a shot at imposing this scheme upon the entire world. “While few question Mr. Biden’s sincerity to turn things round, America’s ability to keep to its word on climate change looks vulnerable to the next Republican election win,” one article warned. Another reminded readers that the U.S. Congress has not passed any overall climate legislation since 2009, which forced Barack Obama to impose the desired messages by executive orders, which, however, were then overturned by President Trump. If Biden is unable to impose a sufficiently aggressive decarbonization program, no matter how strong John Kerry is, The Economist warns in its typically British way, the United States will lack “the license to persuade, shame, and where appropriate, bully” other countries—such as China.

While it presents many a suggestion, scenario, and order as to how to handle U.S. politics to secure London’s goal, the rag’s controllers make clear that they are pinning their hope of cracking opposition, on tightening the cut-off of financing to any who don’t play ball. Republican business donors being squeezed by “asset managers,” can be lined up behind “Biden’s” net-zero carbon plans. A January statement of support for a “durable climate policy” with “well designed market mechanisms” from the American Chamber of Commerce, once considered “an implacable adversary” to the Green fraud, is viewed as another hopeful sign that pressure from the corporate sector might break Republican and conservative Democrat opposition.

G20 Matera Summit: Long on Rhetoric, Short on Solutions

June 30, 2021by madeleine in Finance, General, General updates, Green New Deal, Healthcare

Foreign and Development Ministers of the Group of 20 and representatives of UN agencies met today in a one-day summit in Matera, Italy, hosted by Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio as Italy is currently the rotating president of the group. Several of the ministers appeared in person, but China’s, Russia’s, Brazil’s, and other ministers attended virtually. The major emphasis of the summit, whose unimaginative title was “People, Planet, Prosperity,” was combatting the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as food insecurity, famine, poverty, disease, and promoting “sustainable development,” and “sustainable” health systems–especially for Africa. Di Maio said in the closing press conference that the G20 has a special responsibility to help Africa to emerge from a “difficult period.” This must be done in such a way, he said, that people won’t feel the need to leave their countries and migrate to Europe.

The “Matera Declaration on Food Security, Nutrition and Food Systems,” announces a number of initiatives for addressing the developing sector’s most urgent problems, but all are couched in terms of “sustainability,” respecting biodiversity and gender equality, and adapting “agriculture and food systems to climate change.” The statement ends with a call for a “global mobilization” to solve these problems, while it presents none of the solutions that might actually yield results. This document cries out for the Schiller Institute and LaRouche Organization’s programmatic proposals for building a global health system, bankruptcy organization of the global financial system, and reconstruction of the world’s economies with major infrastructure projects.

During the conference itself, there was much rhetoric about “multilateralism,” loudly advocated by Secretary of StateTony Blinken, who had the audacity to say that the U.S. is leading the multilateral effort for vaccine distribution, to which Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi tweeted in response that “multilateralism is not a high-sounding slogan, let alone gift-wrapping for the implementation of unilateral acts.” In his public statements, Wang called for an end to the “zero-sum game” in foreign relations. For example, he said, in fighting the pandemic it is to everyone’s benefit that those nations which have vaccines and vaccine capacity lift their export restrictions. Forget about ideology, and get to work on stabilizing vaccine production and supply lines, he said. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas ignored that advice when he complained that Russia and China are only using their “vaccine diplomacy” for political leverage in the countries they aid. “We must openly discuss the fact that we do not think much of their vaccine diplomacy,” he harrumphed.

Michele Geraci, former Undersecretary of State at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, said in an interview with CGTN that there is a lot of talk about multilateralism, but if it means that 200 nations do their own thing, and there is retrenchment, this doesn’t work. It hurts production, people-to-people contact, international education, etc. What is needed is real collaboration, he insisted.

Di Maio and other Italian participants pointed out that in terms of protecting health, Rome is home to a number of international food organizations–World Food Program, Food and Agriculture Organization, etc.–and that they and Italy will host the July 26-28 World Pre-Summit of the Food Systems meeting that will be held at the UN in September. As this news service has pointed out, the Rome affair in July is terribly organized as a gathering of “stakeholders” — women, youth, climate, and biodiversity groups, etc. — and that its solutions are nature-based, not focused on ending famine. This is precisely the World Economic Forum/Davos model announced by Charles Schwab last January.

Unprecedented Support for Nuclear Power in Sweden

June 30, 2021by madeleine in Economic development updates, Environmentalism updates, General updates, Green New Deal, Power & Energy

A new survey has shown unprecedented support for nuclear power in Sweden, this is despite a referendum in 1980 mandating an eventual total exit and closure of nuclear power stations. A new study by pollster Novus revealed that 46 percent of respondents agreed that nuclear power should be expanded if necessary, which is up from only 28 percent in 2017. While 31 percent believe that while it should not necessarily be expanded, existing nuclear power plants should remain in use. By contrast only 14 percent wanted to phase out nuclear power. Support for Nuclear power is higher then support for wind and solar combined.

“That answer is higher than the other two together. This has never happened before”, Mattias Lantz, a researcher at Uppsala University and chairman of the Analysis Group, said according to an article in Sputniknews.

It also showed that almost six out of ten still think that nuclear power can be a means of meeting climate goals.

Men, the elderly, and Moderate or Sweden Democrat voters tend to be the most positive about new reactors. By contrast, women, those with lower incomes, and Social Democrat voters tend to be in favor of decommissioning nuclear power. Even more interesting is the trend that younger people are now tending to be more positive about nuclear power despite, or maybe because of, the antics of juvenile delinquent Greta Thunberg.

Lantz attributed the change to the surfacing of shortcomings of the power grid systems in southern Sweden as well as the fact that the liberal-conservative Moderates, the Christian Democrats, and the national-conservative Sweden Democrats have raised the need for nuclear power.

Gabon Made To Mortgage Its Future for `Carbon Credits’

June 29, 2021by madeleine in Environmentalism updates, Finance, General, Green New Deal, Power & Energy

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.

Swiss Youth Among Big ‘No’ Vote against Switzerland’s CO2 Referendum

June 20, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, Environmentalism updates, General updates, Green New Deal

June 19 (EIRNS) — The big surprise with the No vote over the new Swiss CO2 law was the fact that the majority of young people voted against it. According to the website 20 Minuten website, 54% of those over 65 — that is to say the Boomers — voted in favor of the new law, while 58% of those under 34 voted against it, according to a 20 Minuten and Tamedia survey of 16,249 participants. See report here.

The leading Swiss weekly Weltwoche wrote that the result signaled a “turning point in international climate policy,” a “popular uprising” in which the Swiss electorate rebelled “against the dictates of the elites…. The Swiss are going on a climate strike, just differently than what those in power intended. They want less government action against climate change instead of more.”

The claim that was circulating, that many people voted against the new law because it was not “strong enough” also seems to have not been decisive, according to the survey, since only 2% of the no voters claimed they cast their ballot against it for that reason. According to the survey, fear of higher costs was the main argument against the CO2 law, including among young people.

Swiss Social Democratic Party parliament group leader Roger Nordmann claimed that the no vote was not a strike against climate policy, but had to concede that it showed that “the ‘green wave’ has ebbed — that’s clear. The rejected proposal has shown that the policy of big tones, of constant outbidding with even more ambitious climate targets has had its day.” He called for a climate policy of small steps, and not expensive and extravagant “wallet-regulated” ones.

The Swiss national broadcaster SRF had a similar take on the young no vote, quoting a 19-year-old saying: “You certainly have the money in the back of your mind, that you will have to pay more afterwards. In fact, that was the most important point when I think about it. “

Official statistics on the voting are expected to be released sometime in July.
Interestingly, another poll showed that 51% of Swiss would have voted against the framework agreement with the EU, which the government walked away from last month. Only 35% would have backed it, according to a survey. There was overwhelming support for suspending the talks.

The climate is heating up for those tyrants!

Green Deal Failure

February 16, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Environmentalism updates, General updates, Green New Deal

Southwest Power Blackout Disaster: What Can Save the U.S. Economy?

Feb. 15: By Monday night Americans in parts of numerous Southwest and western states were enduring rolling blackouts, some lasting hours in the deep sub-freezing cold of a polar vortex. Many lives were in danger for lack of power and/or electric heat. This shocking event must be a wake-up call to all those, from trade union members to high school and college students, who have been either accepting, celebrating or applying for work to the so-called “Green New Deal”.

“Green” technology – throwback technology – can kill you.

As in the electric grid emergency in Japan’s snowstorms in December, windmills are freezing up in Texas. That state’s 23% of rated electric power capacity which is wind, has largely stopped working, and more than 3 million Texans were without power Monday afternoon in near-zero temperatures. The {Austin Statesman} had reported Feb. 14 (“Frozen wind turbines hamper Texas’ power output”) that wind power, usually rated at 25,100 MW in the state, was rated at just 12,000 MW on Sunday, and actually generating considerably less than that. The state’s regulator, ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), was conducting load-shedding operations and warning of potential blackouts, which became actual with 10,500 MW of customer lode cut off on Monday. Late Monday, rolling blackouts were beginning to affect the Southwest Power Pool, involving parts of 15 other states.

The states of the Midwest, gripped by the same polar vortex cold, were saved from blackouts by {coal}. An energy attorney on the board of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the Missouri Public Service Commission, Terry Jarrett, wrote a Sunday column on the Upper Midwest situation on mainlinemedianews.com, called “Coal Rescues U.S. Power Grid During Polar Vortex”. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which distributes power in 15 states, said coal was on Sunday generating more than half of all power there in the polar vortex, some 41,000 out of 78,000 MW. Natural gas was generating 22,000 and nuclear 10,000 MW. Wind turbine output, predictably, fluctuated wildly, reaching 2,300 MW at most. Solar? 231 MW. “That means these much-vaunted renewable systems produced only about 4 percent of the electricity needed across 15 states,” Jarrett concluded.

In Texas, some natural gas wellheads also froze, along with refining facilities in some locations. The great demand came both from the extraordinary cold, and from the freeze-up and failure of wind and solar power, the ready back-up power for which is almost always natural gas turbine electric plants.

The Green New Deal has been coming at us for 20 years and more from an instigating center – where? In the British royal family, particularly Prince Charles, who is known along with his father Prince Philip for wishing, {very publicly}, that there were far fewer human beings on this planet than there are. Wind power is just one of the dangerous technological leaps backward it promotes. Just two weeks ago, a big five-day conference of the World Economic Forum, Europe’s center for the Green Deal, targeted “the cement, steel, aluminum and chemical industries, as well as the ships, planes, and trucks that move them.” It claimed these sectors “exceeded the total amount of carbon the world can emit”. And don’t get them started about food – the Royal Institute of International Affairs reported to that conference that you should eat no meat, only plant food, and less of that than you do now.

Do you need any of these to live? Food? Electric power? Do you farm with animals? Work with chemicals or steel or cement? Stop kidding yourself that the Green New Deal is “infrastructure” and “jobs”. Put yourself in a car in Austin or Houston looking for heat in zero weather and to charge your phone. The Green New Deal is physical economic collapse, and deadly.

What will save us? Cooperating with the other major countries that don’t accept this green nonsense – especially China and Russia. Build real infrastructure, especially nuclear and fusion power and space travel technology. Listen to the late Lyndon LaRouche, in a speech eight years ago, “No to the Green Policy; Build the Credit System”:

“So mankind has to change his policy: Dump the Green policy, which is presently the greatest single threat to humanity, that’s a killer! And we have to understand that it is the increase of man’s intelligence, which means also scientific intelligence, the ability to create, the ability to generate higher energy-flux densities per capita and per square kilometer of territory—these are the standards on which credit is generated. It’s to increase the population of the planet: increase it! Stop this killing people: increase it! Because we need more work done. We need, also, increases of the energy-flux density of the work being done. These are absolute necessities for us…. So the point is, we need every human being. We need them to live longer and better. We need them to become more creative. We need to have their children better educated, and developed. We need an increase of the potential productivity of the human force, per capita and per square kilometer, and those are the missions that we must fulfill.”

Green Dealers Have To Digest Swiss Vote against Them

June 15, 2021by madeleine in Environmentalism updates, General, Green New Deal

The fact that with 51.6 and 61% respectively, the Swiss population defeated plans backed by special legislation for a CO2 tax and for a total ban of pesticides in referenda yesterday, implies, as Germany’s leading news weekly {Der Spiegel} notes, that for the time being, the Swiss government’s ambitions to make its country the first in the world that bans pesticides, have been crushed. It remains a totally open question how Switzerland will now meet its promises signed at the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, the weekly says.

Germany’s state-run Deutsche Welle tries to still push the illusion that things might be corrected sooner or later in Switzerland, quoting Swiss Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga as claiming that the referenda were “not a vote against climate protection,” that “the debates of the past weeks have shown that many people want to strengthen climate protection—just not with this legislation.” How new legislation would come about, however, as other media note, is yet rather uncertain, because government and parliament have worked on the defeated laws for several years.

Freakouts in Germany seem to be moderate still, which may change once the full impact of the Sunday referenda has been digested. There is so far more of a freakout on the anti-terrorism law which the Swiss backed in a parallel referendum: Radical pro-climate actions like occupation or blockades of bank building, road blockades and the like which have repeatedly occurred in the past can now be termed “threat to public security” and punished much more harshly. And: police can now pre-emptively detain people suspected of planning a disruption or terrorist act even under “climate-protection” pretexts.

The science of climate change is not settled, and much of what is presented is not based on science at all. Leading scientists with the integrity and courage to buck dangerous “popular” dogma will discuss so-called manmade climate change, and the most-advanced science including the galactic science of astronomical-scale oscillations during the upcoming Schiller Institute conference. The suicidal trend in some European countries to stick with anti-nuclear attitudes will also be discussed.

For the Common Good of all People, not the Rules Benefiting the Few!

International Schiller Institute/ICLC online conference, June 26/ 27, 2021

RSVP today →

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