Top Left Link Buttons
  • English
  • German
  • French

Environmentalism updates

Category Archives

Great Leap Backwards: Pushback to Biden’s “30×30” Cuts in Food, Water …

March 11, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Agriculture, Economic development updates, Environmentalism updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Green New Deal

Pushback Against Biden’s “30×30” Move to Cut Agriculture and All Human Use on 30% of U.S. Land, Water by 2030

Mar. 10 (EIRNS)–A key part of the Great Leap Backward is that land and water use must be dictated, first, by greening the environment, and only secondly, for agriculture use, which will produce far less food. This is explicit in the EU “Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies” May, 2020 document; and in the 2020 Agriculture Law of Britain. For the U.S., this green dictate appears in the “30 x 30” scheme, which says that by 2030, human use of any kind—agriculture, forestry, transportation, energy, minerals–must be reduced on 30 percent of U.S. land and water, including oceans.

Biden was programmed to say this during his 2020 campaign, and it was formally announced Jan. 27, in his Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” (86 Fed. Reg. 7,619).

A huge pushback is underway. On Feb. 22, 17 state governors signed a letter to Biden, opposing the Federal government overreach on this. Many also issued their own press releases. The states include most of the farmbelt, e.g. the Dakotas, Montana, Nebraska, Idaho and others.

There are local meetings of all kinds in opposition. For example, March 2 in Wyoming, a resolution opposing the 30×30 plan, and calling for local consultation, was introduced in the Uinta County Commissioners meeting, by the county’s Citizens Coalition for Sound Resource Use. The Commissioners will take it up March 16.

Last night in the small town of Valentine, Nebraska, a public briefing was held by Margaret Byfield, who has been holding meetings across the Plains states to mobilize people. Her organization is the American Stewards of Liberty, based in Texas. See https://americanstewards.us/

The usual citation is made that 12 percent of U.S. land area is already currently in Federal control. Most of it is in the Western states, and varies widely state by state. However a 2020 estimate by the Federation of American Scientists is much higher.

The text of the EO 14008, in Section 216, directs various Federal departments to provide a report within 90 days of Jan. 27, “recommending steps that the United States should take, working with state, local, tribal and territorial governments, agricultural and forest landowners, fishermen, and other key stakeholders, to achieve the goal of conserving at least 30% of our lands and waters by 2030.”

The save-nature groups are all issuing specifics on where human uses should be locked out first—Sierra Club, National Geographic, Conservation Foundation and others. The National Wildlife Federation, for example, has put out, through its Associate VP for Public lands Tracy Stone-Manning, a starter list of which lands to lock up: 80,000 acres in Montana; 1.3 million acres of the Mojave Desert in Nevada; 250,000 acres in California of redwood forest and river rapids; and over 400,000 acres in Colorado.

The 30×30 catchy concept is also pushed in other nations, as a benchmark on the way to “50×50,” the crazed idea—also called “half Earth”—that by 2050, half of the land and water area of the Earth should be in a state of nature, minus people, so that biodiversity can prevail, and this, it is asserted, will keep creature life in balance, so that zoonotic diseases won’t happen, and life will be peachy.

The “half Earth” lunacy was promoted a few years back in a book by E.O. Wilson, the so called biologist. The Center for American Progress has backed it; and it was in the 2020 Democratic Party Platform, it is reported. A resolution was introduced in Congress on this. There is a 30×30 Ocean Alliance.

On October 4, 2020, Scientific American carried an article sub-titled, “The so-called 30 by 30 plan would protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters from development by 2030.” Under the main headline, “An Ambitious Strategy to Preserve Biodiversity,” the author is David Shiffman. He wrote,  “Scientific American’s historic endorsement of Joe Biden noted that Biden ‘has a record of following the data and being guided by science.’ With his campaign’s incorporation of 30 by 30 goals, that’s also true when it comes to biodiversity conservation…”

In May, the U.N. Biodiversity Summit will be in China in Kunming.

U.S. States File Lawsuit To Stop Biden’s Climate Fraud

March 10, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, Environmentalism updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Green New Deal

U.S. States File Lawsuit To Stop Biden’s Climate Fraud; Defend Jobs, Food, and Energy for Americans and Millions of Poor Worldwide

March 9, 2021 (EIRNS)– Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, joined by the Attorneys General of the states of Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah, filed suit yesterday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, Eastern Division, challenging the constitutionality of Section 5 of President Biden’s Executive Order 13990, issued on his first day in office under the title “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.”

The twelve states intend to stop implementation of regulatory measures which they rightly contend will not only destroy U.S. jobs, energy production, energy independence, agriculture, and innovation, and impoverish its working families, but which will also deprive millions of people around the world of the affordable food and energy they urgently need to escape from poverty and hunger. And they are feeling pretty frisky about doing so. Schmitt proudly tweeted that “JoeBiden recently took executive action that will cost hardworking families, farmers & businesses trillions — crushing jobs & innovation. It’s a Trojan Horse for the #GreenNewDeal. Today we led a coalition to stop it. Missouri is fighting back.”

The states recognized the deadly ramifications of Section 5’s seeming gobbledygook. Titled, “Accounting for the Benefits of Reducing Climate Pollution,” the section establishes a federal interagency Working Group which is charged with estimating the “social cost,” or “monetized damages,” allegedly incurred from incremental emissions of three so-called “greenhouse gases,” carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane. Those estimates, which supposedly will “capture the full costs of greenhouse gas emissions as accurately as possible … taking global damages into account,” then are to become the basis for regulating the activities producing those “emissions” out of existence, using rigged “cost-benefit analyses.”

 According to the lawsuit, the interim report issued by that Working Group, came up with the incredible figure of $9.5 trillion a year in “social costs” from those three gases, but repeatedly indicated that the group believes that these numbers “likely understate” the true costs of these gases and that higher numbers are likely in future calculations. “The potential regulatory impact of such numbers is enormous,” the suit warns. “These numbers are high enough to justify massive increases in regulatory restrictions on agricultural practices, energy production, energy use, or any other economic activity that results in the emission of such gases.”

The lawsuit summarizes the real world consequences if this EO is allowed to stand:

“In practice, President Biden’s order directs federal agencies to use this enormous figure to justify an equally enormous expansion of federal regulatory power that will intrude into every aspect of Americans’ lives—from their cars, to their refrigerators and homes, to their grocery and electric bills. If the Executive Order stands, it will inflict hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars of damage to the U.S. economy for decades to come. It will destroy jobs, stifle energy production, strangle America’s energy independence, suppress agriculture, deter innovation, and impoverish working families. It undermines the sovereignty of the States and tears at the fabric of liberty.

“The Biden Administration’s calculation of such `social costs’ of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane is also arbitrary and capricious. Affordable and reliable methods of agricultural and energy production—which these actions would stifle—have global benefits that the Biden Administration studiously ignores. Affordable food and energy production lift millions of people out of poverty, eliminate hunger, promote economic development and opportunity, create millions of jobs, enable innovation and entrepreneurship, encourage industry and manufacturing, promote America’s energy independence, and create the conditions for liberty to flourish. These benefits enrich the entire world, and yet the Biden Administration gave them little or no weight in its calculation of the `social cost’ of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.”

The defendants named in the suit start with President Biden, and continue with ten cabinet secretaries and agencies, plus the members of the interagency Working Group.

Top Renewable Energy Co. Fails

March 6, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, Environmentalism updates, Finance, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Green New Deal, New financial order updates

Leading Renewable Energy Company Abengoa, Once the Cat’s Meow, Fails

March 5 (EIRNS)–A leading renewable energy firm, Abengoa SA, which has been the darling of the City of London and Wall Street financiers, and green Malthusians, filed for bankruptcy, on Feb. 23. The Spanish company has carried out projects in the United States, and in 2010, it received a large United States loan guarantee from the Barrack Obama-Joe Biden administration to build a solar energy plant in Arizona. This is the second largest bankruptcy in Spanish history, according to the El Pais newspaper, and has global implications. This represents a snap shot of the significant vulnerability of a planned $40 trillion green speculative bubble in “renewables,” even before it is built.

This will be the third failure of Abengoa; having cooked its books in 2015—it was later found out—in order to present a picture of functionality, it collapsed in 2016 (wiping out almost all the value of its stockholders). It restructured its debt in 2018, and was in the process of attempting to restructure its current 6 billion euro/US$7.3 billion debt load, when the Spanish regional government of Andalusia unravelled a larger bail-out package by withdrawing its part of the package: an offer of a 20 million euro loan to the failing Abengoa.

The July 5, 2010 GreenTechMedia reported that in 2008, Abengoa ‘negotiated with the Obama-Biden administration, along with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, that the U.S. government would extend to Abengoa a $1.4 billion U.S. federal loan guarantee—a very large sum at that time for renewables—to build a “250 megawatt “Solana solar concentrating power plant near Gila Bend, 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, Arizona. It would be a parabolic trough plant, that would supposedly be able to store some of the solar rays in the form of thermal energy. But the trick was that the plant would generate about 38% of its rated capacity, meaning that it would generate almost two-thirds below what its rated capacity said.

Abengoa also built in Hugoton, Kansas a hybrid biomass plant, which would convert 350,000 tons of biomass/year into 25 million gallons per year of liquid fuel. Abengoa opened this plant in October 2014; the plant shut down operations in December 2015. Abenoga sold the plant, which cost more than $110 billion to build, to another company for $43 billion.

It has not been made known what will happen to the $1.4 billion Obama-Biden loan guarantee that was made to Abengoa.

It should be noted that many solar and wind turbine companies survive only through U.S. government tax breaks and subsidies. According to the America’s Power organization, solar and wind have received $82.1 billion in tax subsidies just between 2010 and 2018.

The failure of Abengoa is a cautionary tale of what may unfold from a $40 trillion geen speculative bubble. That would take down the energy and electricity generating process, and slash agro-manufacturing processes, and human population. It would also, through its insanity, collapse financially.

Mexico Seeks Energy Security

March 4, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, Environmentalism updates, Finance, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Mexico, United States

Mexico Stands Firm: Texas Shows We Are Right To Put Energy Security Before Profit

March 3 (EIRNS)—In the middle of the Texas energy crisis, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked leaders of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to brief the nation on how that crisis proves that his policy to restore national energy self-sufficiency and a  national electricity grid regulated by the government, fed by all energy sources, emphatically including fossil fuels, is urgent, and its opponents are dead wrong.

The climate mafia has launched war against AMLO’s “vision of energy sovereignty” and mandate for fossil fuels to be used before subsidized and unreliable wind and solar. “No other G20 country has such abnormal or retrograde energy policies as this government. It’s not going to advance us toward our climate goals,” one leading climate activist told the London Guardian in mid-February. International energy “investors” are preparing lawsuits against AMLO’s new Electricity Law to drive out the speculators, which was passed by the Chamber of Deputies last week and is expected to pass the Senate shortly. Rating agencies are preparing to lower Mexico’s credit rating, if it becomes law.

The CFE team, led by its chairman, Manuel Bartlett, who has been outspoken against the wind and solar energy frauds, detailed how the selling off of Mexico’s public sector electricity generation and distribution to a bunch of unregulated international speculators under the previous two administrations were the cause of the blackouts in Mexico when the cold wave hit, as happened in Texas. The officials pointed to the absurdity that Mexico, an oil producer with plenty of its own natural gas, now found itself with 64% of its national electricity powered by natural gas imported from Texas. Mexico was knocked out when the cold wave hit because the pipelines from Texas froze, and after that Texas stopped all export of natural gas because its wind and solar “renewables” failed, they
reported.

The CFE managed to cover 75% of the gap from the loss of natural gas imports by activating 11 hydroelectric plants, coal plants fed by mines which the López Obrador government had recently reopened, diesel supplied by the state oil company PEMEX at low prices, existing reserves of natural gas and purchase of some shiploads of the latter—at the wildly-high speculative prices on the international markets. Officials stressed that they could only do these things because under the energy sovereignty policy, thermoelectric plants which were under-utilized, nonetheless were maintained, against just such an emergency.

López Obrador then drew the lessons out: What just happened in Texas makes clear that it is not possible to give equal treatment to private foreign companies, he stated. The state needs to control the energy production and national electricity grid as an integrated whole. Under the previous governments, the energy sector was being taken apart, sold off in pieces, and looted. “It is important to recognize that these two public companies [Pemex and the CFE] do not have profit as their purpose, but to guarantee electricity service, and at fair prices, also, because we are going to continue fulfilling our commitment to not increase electricity prices, even with the speculation and increases in gas prices which are occurring in Texas and the United States.”

Great Leap Backwards: the Green Deal

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

Biden Drops a `Green’ Hammer on American Industry

March 1 (EIRNS) – The Biden White House on Feb. 26 announced that it would multiply the “price of carbon” by more than seven times, to $51 per ton of CO2, for all cost-benefit analyses of industrial technologies – and was likely to more than double that again after “further analysis”. The “carbon price” set by the Federal government since the Bush 43 Administration in 2004 is not a purchase price but rather the price assumed for all use of carbon in materials – energetic, chemical, industrial, agricultural – whose use can form CO2, and is supposed to govern the valuation of bids for government contracts of all kinds. Obviously it would also then affect the valuation of industrial and agricultural products and even the valuation of capital goods and/or entire companies for investment.

The Biden Administration’s proposed price announced by the Department of Energy under new Secretary Jennifer Granholm is supposed to be the price that greenhouse gas emissions impose on society. The $51/ton of CO2 is not only seven-plus times the Trump Administration’s “price”, but double that of the Obama Administration. And it is likely soon to be adjusted to the “price” the Andrew Cuomo government of New York State adopted in 2020, which is a range of $79-125/ton.

A UC-Santa Barbara Environmental Science assistant professor, Tamma Carleton, responded giddily, “A new social cost of carbon can tip the scales for hundreds of policy decisions facing the Federal government. Any policy, project or regulation that lowers emissions will now have a higher dollar value.” And any decision to use carbon products, a lower one. This will hit all industries, not just the energy and power production sector.

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.

Page 5 of 8First...456...Last