The Revolution will not be Corporatised!

Environmental Values 29 (2)

April 2020: 121–130.

By Clive Spash

© 2020 The White Horse Press. doi: 10.3197/096327120X15752810323968

 

 

Calls for ‘systems change, not climate change’ have been minority positions that have gained ground over the last year or so, aided by the likes of Extinction Rebellion, and the school strikes of FridaysForFuture, fronted by the now iconic figure of Greta Thunberg. These new environmental movements have pushed into the background the mealy-mouthed talk of avoiding negative ‘framing’, supressing terms that disturb people and dismissing catastrophic scenarios. I have previously noted problems with the promotion of such a conformist and conservative rhetorical strategy (Spash 2018). The plain speaking of the new environmental movements places emphasis on an imminent ecological crisis, which has become increasingly more real for many given the steady rise in the frequency of major extreme weather events. The planetary havoc promised by human induced climate change is deemed an ‘emergency’ entailing a sense of ‘urgency’. A primary and repeatedly expressed concern of Greta has been that politicians should ‘act’ on scientific advice; how they should act is left open but with the admonition that they have done little or nothing but talk for decades. Yet, the ‘new’ environmentalists appear to lack insight into what specific action is required, to what they stand in opposition and more generally the political and economic context within which they (as social movements) are operating.

The new environmental activists have not addressed the structure of the economic system, the dominant corporate institutions of which it is constituted, the political processes that maintain it, nor how such a system of political economy can realistically be transformed. There is much wishful thinking in their statements. While these movements are internally diverse collectives, elements of both Extinction Rebellion and FridaysForFuture have argued against becoming ‘political’, while simultaneously engaging in political acts of protest and having agendas that are highly political. There appears to be a belief in objective science informing a political elite, who can be nudged into action, regardless of the structure of the dominant economic system and its power relations. The primary concern has also been narrowly focused around human induced climate change, and often even more narrowly carbon emissions, not systemic social-ecological issues. The failures here go across the board from the political naivety of the protesters (both young and old) to the apologetics for the capital accumulating growth economies made by the exponentially increasing community of academics commenting on environmental policy and specifically climate change.1 A prevalent claim is that ‘the system’ can be ‘adjusted’ without removing corporate or capitalist structures let alone the global imperialism they have created under the guise of ‘free’ trade and unregulated
financialisation.

That neoliberal political leaders and the World Economic Forum (WEF), commonly known as the Davos elite, have been hosting Greta and promoting her speeches, raises the question as to what they expect to achieve by doing so. For example, the WEF website promotes a speech, given by Greta in Brussels last year to the international press corps, in which she calls for a new political system without competition, a new economics and a new way of thinking that includes living within planetary boundaries, sharing resources and addressing inequity.2 Greta has also been cited as calling for corporations to be held responsible for knowingly perpetrating harm and regards this as ‘a crime against humanity’ (Aronoff 2019), but how are they to be held responsible and what for exactly? And what is the appropriate ‘punishment’ for their crime? Diverting such general and unspecific criticism and calls for systems change away from radical and revolutionary reform would seem a likely concern for those profiteering from the current system. After the Paris Agreement the world’s five largest oil companies spent $1 billion on ‘green’ rebranding, while simultaneously undermining legislation and establishing new oil supplies.3 The Davos elite are also adept at borrowing their opponents’ language and far from averse to adopting and redirecting a sense of emergency and crisis.

The fact is that political and economic elites around the world have long been taking ‘environmental action’, to protect not Nature but themselves, against environmentalists and environmental regulation. The public relations end of the spectrum has been corporate social responsibility, green accounting, investment in new technologies, sustainable development and the rhetoric of a ‘Green circular inclusive sustainable smart economy’. The opposite end involves corporate funding of denialism and anti-environmental think tanks, media control of the popular discourse, lobbying and funding politicians, capture of environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and personal attacks on scientists. Most directly, protesters and activists are subject to police harassment and brutality, surveillance, infiltration and repression, and are being branded as terrorists, e.g. British police attempts to officially list Extinction Rebellion as such. The toll on both activist and academics is something recently highlighted in this journal (Spash 2018), and especially with regard to those opposing climate change (Hoggett and Randall 2018). In some countries environmental activists are also subject to assassination, especially where they oppose enforced and unjust ‘development’ in the rush for economic growth.

Indeed, urgency and emergency empower authoritarian regimes in overriding just, legal and democratic processes. They can also be used more subtly to create a sense of insecurity. The last two decades have seen the fear of ‘others’ being escalated and used to deconstruct post World War II multilateralism and create a new era of unilateralism, in which free-roaming American assassinations are openly bragged about, and respect for the law is increasingly replaced by a lynch-mob mentality. The rise of the extreme right and nationalism has relegitimised sexism, racial hatred, anti-immigrant policies, fortress building, promotion of imperialism, securitisation and militarisation amongst voters of the supposed democracies. The climate crisis, with its threat of mass migration, can therefore play to those claiming to protect jobs, maintain business as usual and defend the existing economic and social structures within which people have created their sense of self and community. However, environmentalism must then be neoliberal and corporate rather than revolutionary.

So the time is ripe for a new neoliberal agenda that adopts calls for urgent radical transformation and uses the environmental movement to support growth and financialisation of Nature. To this end a range of environmental ‘deals’ were announced in 2019, such as the European Commission ‘Green Deal’, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) ‘New Deal for Nature’, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) ‘Global Green New Deal’. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, has stated that ‘Supported by investments in green technologies, sustainable solutions and new businesses […] The European Green Deal is our new growth strategy. It will help us cut emissions while creating jobs’.4 Typical of all these ‘deals’ are claims of coordinating and organising stakeholders, having civil society and government work with, or more accurately for, ‘industry’, with promises of economic growth, jobs and climate stability. Similar ideas are touted under the term ‘stakeholder capitalism’, the theme of Davos 2020. In this ‘new’ era of corporate capitalism the environmental non-governmental organisations also have their role to play.

 

A prime example of the strategy in operation is the capture of the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature, which has fully committed itself to corporate capitalism since appointing Pavan Sukdev as its President in 2017. He was developing new financial instruments for Deutsche Bank, before heading a UNEP backed project on ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ (TEEB) with goals of capturing value and mainstreaming the economics of Nature (Spash 2011). Cynical financiers, out to make as much money as possible from bits of paper they transfer from one to another for profit, have been keen to join the environmental bandwagon: expanding emissions trading, wetland banking and biodiversity offsetting. Enter the UNEP Finance Initiative (UNEP FI). This is a partnership of the UN with the global financial sector. Its mission is to promote ‘sustainable finance’, which includes ‘hardwiring biodiversity and ecosystem services into finance’ (UNEP Finance Initiative 2010).

 

The latest project, entitled ‘The Net Zero Asset Alliance’, boasts being led by asset owners representing more than US$ 2 trillion (UNEP Finance Initiative 2020: 8), in a network controlling US$ 4 trillion.5 The public face is fronted by Sukdev and Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). She, Sukdev and WWF are meant to provide the corporate executives, bankers, billionaires and financiers with an air of respectability and environmental concern. After all, they desperately need it, given that investor returns, or more simply making money grow exponentially, has nothing to do with sustaining anything, let alone Nature, biodiversity or ecosystems.

As Schoppek explains in this issue of Environmental Values, neoliberalism was selected by powerful actors as conforming with their view of the world. It has been institutionalised in rules and regulations helping form identities and strategies. As a hegemonic discourse it promotes ideas of meritocracy, the individual as an ‘entrepreneurial self’ (innovative, independent and responsible for all that goes wrong in their lives), utility  maximisation, commodification, economic efficiency, and the market economy as the sole legitimate institution for social organisation. This dominant economic imaginary helps embed the system and ensure its reproduction. Forms of environmentalism that engage in the rhetoric of sustainable growth then evidence a Gramscian passive revolution. That is, a top down strategically designed alternative to radical environmentalism is offered to maintain business as usual. A successful passive revolution absorbs external critique, transforms it and stabilises existing power relations. The aim is to silence more critical perspectives and supress power disrupting alternatives. Ecological crisis is therefore altered into an opportunity for growth and profiteering via commodification and financialisation of Nature.

Shoppek then questions the extent to which even the apparently more radical degrowth movement has the potential to be co-opted. Her core argument is that degrowth contains elements that are counter-hegemonic but also those that are sub-hegemonic. She illustrates the point with two degrowth positions identified in the work of Eversberg and Schmelzer (2018). That of a politically informed progressive left, supporting an anarchistic continual struggle for freedom, is argued to be counter-hegemonic. This is described as supplying a structural critique in addition to the kind of moral perspective found under the second position, termed self-sufficiency discourses. This latter position, as advanced in Germany by Niko Paech (e.g., Paech 2017, 2012), is argued to be compatible with neoliberal thought and so sub-hegemonic. Its failure is due to the over-emphasis on individual action that actually supports spreading the concept of an ‘entrepreneurial self’ (e.g., the sharing economy) while ignoring the structure of the economic system. This encourages the creation of organisations that substitute for the role of the State in the care of those at the bottom, and so reduce the potency of those individuals contesting the system and its ever-growing inequities. Thus we might reflect upon how a neoliberal consumerist society, such as the UK, encourages the role of charity shops that assuage the guilt of the consuming middle classes while substituting elements of a Welfare State, and doing nothing to address the causes of poverty.

The importance of a structural systems perspective is also identified by Boscov-Ellen. He highlights the failure of environmental ethicists (e.g. Dale Jamieson, Simon Caney, Peter Singer and Henry Shue) to address the systemic aspects of human induced climate change and as a result to over-emphasise the role of individual agency and responsibility in debating who is meant to take action and what action they should take. Environmental ethicists are criticised for focusing on acts of consumption and their related emissions, ignoring production and producers, and so reducing humans to their role as consumers with ethical preferences. Historical and contextual understanding of poverty, wealth and inequity are lacking. There are also some clear strands of liberal political thought behind several of the ethicists’ positions, and an inherent conservatism (e.g., the unquestioned permanence of Nation States and capitalism). The supposed solutions of the likes of Jamieson and Singer adopt neoliberal polices of pricing and trading carbon despite their flaws (Spash 2010). In contrast, once the existing social and economic structure is identified as a causal determinant of ecological crises then attention shifts to an ethical responsibility to change that system.

As Boscov-Ellen remarks, current ethical debate has produced ‘a framing that dovetails perfectly with the longstanding (and successful) efforts of liberal governments and corporations to individualise responsibility for systemic ills, even as they single-mindedly pursue growth’. He goes on to develop the case for undertaking radical change in economic and political structures as a moral imperative. This would require expanding collective causal responsibility for harm to account for structural mechanisms that limit and shape behaviour. The emphasis is then placed on solidarity, as part of a collective, seeking political and economic transformation, rather than on individual actions.

Identifying the organisations and institutions reproducing the political and economic structure is necessary in the process of seeking radical change in those structures. Corporations are obviously key in modern society and their activities are directly linked to global greenhouse gas emission. In recent years the term ‘carbon majors’ has become associated with the 100 corporations most responsible for creating and perpetuating the climate crisis, as noted by Boscov-Ellen and picked up as the central focus of the paper by Grasso and Vladimirova. These top 100 polluters produced over 70% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gases (1988–2015), with just 25 producing 51%. The top 100 include 43 state owned or government run  corporations.6 Grasso and Vladimirova regard these corporations as moral agents whose activities they review in terms of their having violated the negative responsibility of doing no harm to others. Beyond a consequentialist causal aspect, they invoke a more stringent set of requirements related to appraising agents’ intentions, something they refer to as ‘moral responsibility’, which seems directed more towards assessing culpability (the phrase seems somewhat misleading, given that causal responsibility is also ‘moral’). The authors then assess this culpability in terms of corporate responsibility for human induced climate change, with specific reference to a priori knowledge of creating harm, awareness of doing so over a long time frame, capacity to avoid harm, denial of the truth (amounting to spreading lies in their own interest), and self enrichment by their harmful actions. Having been found guilty as charged what is the outcome?

Grasso and Vladimirova make the case for corrective justice involving decarbonisation and reparation. The former would involve gradually reducing emissions to zero, with some notion that an increasing supply of ‘cleaner energy’ will ‘avoid disrupting the global energy demand’ (something that seems highly unlikely given the scale and extent of fossil fuels in the economy). The latter is, on rather unclear grounds, restricted to corporations relinquishing part of their accumulated wealth from activities related to creating harm. Reparations are discussed in terms of restitution, compensation and disgorgement (relinquishing historically ill-gotten gains). There are perhaps more questions raised than answers given in the ensuing discussion, e.g. ideas of not endangering the wealth of the rich, not pursuing shareholders’ or employees’ gains and concerns over protecting pension funds. Most problematic of all is the claim that actions should ‘not financially prevent carbon majors from engaging in the just transition required by the duty of decarbonisation’. This idea of ‘just transition’ is itself problematic and is employed to justify the preservation of carbon majors in order to avoid being too disruptive to the ‘socio-economic system’. The contradiction is that the system and its capital accumulating corporate form is the problem that needs to be addressed and this cannot be avoided. The idea of a ‘just transition’ appears to offer a get out of jail free card to the corporations who will (as they are doing) argue for offsetting, subsidies for transition, waiting for new technologies and maintaining business as usual for as long as possible.

An interesting question that arises in light of the discussion by Grasso and Vladimirova is why stop with carbon emissions? These same one hundred corporations produced 91% of global industrial emissions in 2015 (Griffin 2017: 7), and would therefore be culpable on the same grounds for the plethora of associated harms to human health and the environment. Grasso and Vladimirova have made a strong case for recognising that these corporations engage in deliberate cost-shifting, and are not innocent victims of unforeseen externalities that can be blamed on markets having the wrong prices. If all the other cost-shifting activities of corporations were taken into account, the grounds for maintaining such institutions would seem to disappear.

Private Property 2019, Anahita Mobarhan

In practice, the attempts by corporations to avoid any claims of wrongdoing in polluting activities have been extensive and have involved public relations firms being hired to strategise the undermining of science and scientists (Oreskes and Conway 2010). Responsibility for reparations is frequently shifted to the public purse, and ‘solutions’ displaced into the future via technologies, often requiring public funding both in research and development and (where realised) implementation. This technological strategy is evident in the increasing promotion of geoengineering for solar radiation management and/or greenhouse gas removal (GGR): e.g., direct air capture, enhanced rock weathering, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. The related ‘negative emissions’ approach is totally embedded in the hundreds of scenarios run by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).7 This allows business as usual with no reduction of greenhouse gases, and indeed their potential increase, because they are assumed to be removable after emission by application of an appropriate technological fix. Cox, Spence and Pidgeon note how media coverage has created a discourse on geoengineering that removes issues of justices, equity, fairness and distribution, while framing it as an ‘essential’ action in the face of the climate emergency. Similarly, in mitigation scenarios informing policy, GGR is not an additional policy measure but is rather modelled as critical for stabilising global average climate temperature at international target levels. Cox, Spence and Pidgeon are concerned to probe into the content of the related discourse and debate as occurring amongst experts (defined as those with pre-existing knowledge and opinions). Their research involves interviews with 17 people from the UK and USA, the majority of whom represent academia and the remainder the private sector, NGOs and policy/regulation. The two themes they find across the interviews are ‘risk’ and ‘responsibility’.

In terms of risk, GGR is described by interviewees as part of a ‘portfolio’ of measures, in contrast to the IPCC, media and policy framings. Reduced  energy demand and increased renewable energy supply are regarded as coming first and foremost. Urgency (i.e., doing something immediately), and the need to avoid dangerous climate change, support regarding GGR as essential, but this discourse is also noted by some interviewees as being top-down, expert driven and potentially dangerous for democracy. A classic risk and portfolio investment managers’ approach then raises the question of who gets to decide on the risks and the investments? This leads into how societal decisions are made, and an implicit technocracy appears to surface with the key players mentioned by interviewees being experts, policy-makers and (high emissions) industry. Although mistrust of the latter two was also evident, a naïve pragmatism appeared in a readiness to acquiesce to the wealth of corporations and their power to get action, summarised as ‘working with powerful institutions is more pragmatic than working against them’. GGR then offers a potential means for corporations and  governments to opt-out of actual emissions reductions, and plays the role of a ‘mitigation deterrent’. GGR measures, such as widespread use of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), were also seen as likely to have unjust outcomes, due to their being undertaken to maintain the lifestyles of the rich and powerful while being imposed on vulnerable communities who suffer negative consequences (e.g., land grabbing).

Such pragmatic arguments contrast strongly with the moral arguments against corporations of Grasso and Vladimirova, as well as with the case for revolutionary change made by Boscov-Ellen, and both link to the need for addressing the social and economic structure highlighted by Shoppek. In  the discussion by Cox, Spence and Pidgeon these conflicting positions appear as a core aspect of debate about human induced climate change, where the main question becomes the extent to which ‘strategies should aim to work within existing incumbent capitalist systems’. GGR then indicates failure to adequately challenge the system and instead to support top-down ‘solutions’ that maintain existing structure, power and wealth and so become part of another ecological modernist passive revolution. This appears as technological optimism, claiming sustainability and economic growth are compatible, and the legitimisation of corporations as profit seeking organisations and their beneficiaries as justified in their accumulation of wealth and power. There is today an on-going struggle for how environmental issues are to be perceived, described and explained, which determines what knowledge and which voices are deemed admissible to the policy debate.

The construction of knowledge and what knowing something means is a longstanding issue in philosophy. The term co-creation (mentioned by Cox et al. and Mancilla Garcia et al.) has become popular of late, and it covers a range of ideas that have for some decades been part of debates around participatory decision process and post-normal science. Mancilla Garcia et al. highlight the roles of process and relations, epistemology and ontology, and empiricism. Whether the social process involved is important to conceptualisation has divided philosophers, with the implications extending from the extremes that knowledge requires total exclusion of values (in a naïve objectivist methodology), to knowledge being a totally cultural and socially determined perspective (under a radical relativist position) (Sayer 1992). Both these extremes assume flat ontologies (the former empiricist and latter actualist) without attention to underlying structure. When trying to identify what lies behind experience and actualised events, and indeed to  understand our experiences, what come to the fore is the role of non-empiricist conceptualisation and inference (e.g. deductive, abductive,  retroductive), along with metaphysical concepts. The basis for the validity given to knowledge claims remains contentious, but what the papers on climate change in this issue hold in common is their identification of the same fundamental social and economic structures in human society as being central to the reproduction of the ongoing ecological crisis.

Stephanie McMillan

That the discourse of the environmental movement has been failing, captured and adopted by a ‘new environmental pragmatism’, is more evident every day with the spread of financialisation and commodification of Nature, often legitimised by environmental NGOs acting as fronts for corporate interests. For corporate capitalism the environmental crisis is not about the dangers posed by collapsing biophysical systems, but the threat of environmentalism to the growth economy and capitalism’s continuing existence. An escalation of attempts to reinforce the status quo means more passive revolutions, orchestrated by the incumbent leaders of the capital accumulating systems, who adopt even the apparently radical discourses of urgency, emergency and crises. Calls for immediate action without direction play straight into the hands of those seeking to maintain their hegemonic economic and social power. Those seeking social ecological transformation increasingly face the stark choice of either conforming to or opposing the structures reproducing social, ecological and economic crises. The former promises a technological future dependent upon experts and the noblesse oblige of billionaires, corporate interests and their protectors. It offers those living well today the comforting vision of a system that maintains their position in an increasingly divided and divisive world. The papers in this issue of Environmental Values set out a range of ethical arguments and concerns that bring corporate capitalism into question or oppose it, and reflect upon ethical responses to its ongoing infliction of harm on the innocent. They make it clear that conformity to the system that produced the crisis will not deliver the necessary revolutionary social ecological transformation.

 

1. For example, in 2019 over 3000, mainly American, economists, including twenty-seven Sveriges Riksbank (‘Nobel’) Prize winners, endorsed a ‘carbon tax’ because ‘[s]ubstituting a price signal for cumbersome regulations will promote economic growth’. (Economists statement on carbon dividends. https://www.econstatement.org/ Accessed 7th May 2019.)

2. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/climate-strikes-greta-thunberg-calls-for-systemchange-not-climate-change-here-s-what-that-could-look-like

3. Report by think tank InfluenceMap ‘Big Oil’s Real Agenda on Climate Change’ cited by
Aronoff (2019)

4. https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_en Accessed 11
January 2020.

5. https://www.unepfi.org/net-zero-alliance/ Accessed 11 January 2020.

6. ‘The highest emitting companies since 1988 that are investor-owned include: ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, Peabody, Total, and BHP Billiton. Key state-owned companies include Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, National Iranian Oil, Coal India, Pemex, and CNPC (PetroChina).’ (Griffin 2017: 8, emphasis original).

7. Kevin Anderson (2015: 899) notes that 344 of the 400 IPCC scenarios assume the successful and large-scale uptake of negative-emission technologies.

 

References

Anderson, K. 2015. ‘Duality in climate science’. Nature Geoscience 8 (12): 898–900.
Crossref

Aronoff, K. 2019. Don’t Be Fooled by Fossil Fuel Companies’ Green Exterior. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/dont-be-fooled-byfossil-fuel-companies-green-exterior-850285/ (accessed 22 January 2020).

Boscov-Ellen, D. 2020. ‘A responsibility to revolt? Climate ethics in the real world’. Environmental Values 29 (2): 153–174.

Cox, E., E. Spence and N. Pidgeon. 2020. ‘Incumbency, trust and the Monsanto effect: Stakeholder discourses on greenhouse gas removal’. Environmental Values 29 (2): 197–220.

Eversberg, D. and M. Schmelzer. 2018. ‘The degrowth spectrum: Convergence and divergence within a diverse and conflictual alliance’. Environmental Values 27 (3): 245–267. Crossref

Grasso, M. and K. Vladimirova. 2020. ‘A moral analysis of Carbon Majors’ role in climate change’. Environmental Values 29 (2): 175–195.

Griffin, P. 2017. ‘The Carbon Majors Database: CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017’. London: Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) UK.

Hoggett, P. and R. Randall. 2018. ‘Engaging with climate change: Comparing the cultures of science and activism’. Environmental Values 27 (3): 223–243. Crossref

Mancilla Garcia, M., T. Hertz and M. Schlüter. 2020. ‘Towards a process epistemology for the analysis of social-ecological systems’. Environmental Values 29 (2): 221–239.

Oreskes, N. and E. M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Paech, N. 2012. Liberation from Excess: The Road to a Post-Growth Economy. Munich: oekom verlag.

Paech, N. 2017. ‘Post-Growth Economics’. In C. L. Spash (ed), Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society, pp.477–486. Abingdon: Routledge.

Sayer, A. 1992. ‘Theory, observation and practical adequacy’. In A. Sayer (ed), Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach, pp.45–84. London: Routledge.

Schoppek, D. 2020. ‘How far is degrowth a really revolutionary counter movement to neoliberalism?’ Environmental Values 29 (2): 131–151.

Spash, C. L. 2010. ‘The brave new world of carbon trading’. New Political Economy 15 (2): 169–195. Crossref

Spash, C. L. 2011. ‘Terrible economics, ecosystems and banking’. Environmental Values 20 (2): 141–145. Crossref

Spash, C. L. 2018. ‘Facing the truth or living a lie: Conformity, radicalism and activism’. Environmental Values 27 (3): 215–222. Crossref

UNEP Finance Initiative. 2010. ‘Demystifying Materiality: Hardwiring Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services into Finance’. In CEO Briefing. Geneve: United Nations Environment Programme Finance Intiative.

UNEP Finance Initiative. 2020. ‘The Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance’. Geneve: United Nations Environment Programme Finance Intiative. unepfi.org/net-zero-alliance

2020 Spash Editorial EV

WKOG Response to the Slander & Empty Accusations Made by the Scientists Warning Group

WKOG

December 12, 2019

 

 

“I’m going to tell it like it is. I hope you can take it like it is.”

— Malcolm X

Collection of images, TIME, December 11, 2019

 

Foreword:

While Greta Thunberg is considered the consummate pristine vessel of youthful purity, Wrong Kind of Green’s steadfast position has not changed since we published the first segment of our series in January of this year. Considering we have never said anything disparaging against Miss Thunberg personally, we need to ask why are those surrounding this young person allowing her image to be used by the most nefarious of individuals and groups? … Barack Obama using Thunberg as a photo op for his chosen political party to attach her popular visage to its hopeful success in the coming 2020 elections? … Al Gore using his symbolic embrace of Thunberg to promote his ideology of “green capitalism” that will both enrich him personally and his descendants while at the same time supposedly saving the planet? … Leonardo DiCaprio, a symbol of privileged white male avarice if there ever was one from an ethnic, gender and class perspective, using Thunberg’s camaraderie as a sign of his laughable attempt at saving the Earth and his aforementioned privilege at the same time? … And as these various personages comprise the upper class from any type of unbiased analysis, a legitimate question to ask is why do the adults who are allegedly looking out for the best interests of Thunberg personally and, even more importantly, the professed message she is attempting to convey which is conservation of the planet for the entirety of humanity, allow her to congregate with the enemies against the actual implementation of her message? Those are legitimate questions if nothing else with all the evidence at hand.

In an analogy of what this kind of blind hero worship can elicit when not questioned, WKOG would like to proffer the previous mainstream adoration of the quintessential cherub of yesteryear named Shirley Temple. This child was in a total of four films with the black tap dancer and entertainer, Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson. In these films, Bill ‘Bojangles’ played the cinematic man servant reminiscent of the house slave to the young madam of the manor during chattel slavery times on the plantation. In fact, Robinson actually did play a slave to Temple’s “innocent” slave master even at that young age in the film “The Littlest Rebel”. And even given the argument that Shirley Temple was a cute child, the fact of the matter was that she was used as a tool to foster the emotional and psychological support of white supremacy as a benign component of the acceptable social dominance of one people over another. As she was a child at the time, Temple’s use from a social aspect is more than likely not representative of particular placement in these films as a personal choice. But, it must be asked at some juncture as to when and where she stopped being a mere tool, and actually became a purveyor of this same ideology she was used as a symbol of in her youth. Hence, as she was an octogenarian over a decade ago when she died, Shirley Temple continued to benefit personally from her usage as an infant from that time until the end of her days, even though it was personally disavowed to her death. As Temple’s memory is still utilized as an unquestioned sign of youthful purity from an ethnic aspect, it is seen as an assault against her personally to intellectually question her visage – not only back then, but even today as a continuous symbol of white supremacy.

Even though the aforementioned cinematic relationship was fictional in nature, the emotional response from those in current mainstream society, “coincidentally” comprising those who have absorbed the efficacy of “white supremacy” at a conscious and even a reflexively subconscious level, is reminiscent of the past atmosphere that presently cloaks the mere presence of Greta Thunberg in a cocoon of compromised and unquestioned fealty. As no person’s presence on the planet can go unquestioned regarding the various ways that an individual’s placement by the people in power may be utilized to their advantage, it must always be asked why certain people are allowed to reside in the hallowed ground in which they inhabit, and any legitimate questioning of said residence elicits the most toxic response imaginable by the majority.

Our direct responses to the slanders and accusations put forth by Scientists Warning are as follows:

Scientists Warning: “Why Some So-Called Adults Are Attacking A Child – Greta Thunberg, the now famous Swedish child and prominent environmental activist who has focused the world on the risks posed by global warming, is being attacked by climate deniers, right wing politicians, major conservative media outlets like Breitbart, even President Trump and random bloggers like Lord Monckton, Miranda Devine, Cory Morningstar, climate skeptic Bjørn Lomborg, and many others.”

WKOG response: Our series published on WKOG in early 2019 (which Scientists Warning deliberately chooses not to link to) contains no attacks whatsoever on Greta Thunberg. To anyone who refutes this, we would ask for a specific example to be provided. Our only question relates to the SYMBOLISM of her presence and not her as an individual.

Scientists Warning: “This misogyny and defamation may be expected from the far right, but things have also been amok at far left wing media outlets as well. Wrong Kind of Green recently posted a blog asking Is Greta Thunberg a sock puppet for green capitalism? by Cory Morningstar who has repeatedly attacked Thunberg’s activism, while riding her coattails and even writing a for-profit book about Thunberg that further assaults Greta’s family and choices.”

WKOG response: The level of gutter journalism here is quite breathtaking. 1) The post titled “Is Greta Thunberg a sock puppet for green capitalism?” (June 16, 2019) was not published by Wrong Kind of Green, or by Cory Morningstar. It was published by the blog “Situations Vacant”, to which we have zero affiliation. We have never referred to Miss Thunberg as a “sock puppet”, nor do we ever have any intention of doing so. 2) Morningstar can hardly be accused of riding young Thunberg’s “coattails” having been an activist and independent journalist for just under two decades. Further, the series, volumes I and II, are accessible to all with no charge and no advertising on the WKOG website, which is run with zero funding in a volunteer capacity by a small working collective. A self-published book of the first volume is available for those who prefer reading offline. The book was also created by a volunteer. As for the accusation that the book (the series in book form) “further assaults Greta’s family and choices”, the author has been careful not to make any personal attacks, instead focusing on how genuine concerns are being exploited by vested interests. In fact, in one passage of the book Miss Thunberg is described of beautifully articulating her thoughts. If we are serious about tackling the root causes of climate change and ecological devastation, it is imperative that we all call out those seeking to profit from our concerns. Those offering false solutions which will only aggravate the crises we face, and more importantly only result in a boon for wealthy industrialists who increasingly drive policy decisions at a time when capitalism is in crisis while impoverishing further those groups least responsible for climate and ecological breakdown.

Scientists Warning: “Cory Morningstar’s take on Greta is part of a wider world view shared by Morningstar and others who reduce global events to the actions of the big powers over pipelines, and treat the masses as dupes and pawns without agency. This a fake left conspiracy theory that lumps eXtinction Rebellion (XR) and Greta together with other ‘actors’ who are supposedly manipulated and duped by powerful elites into defending capitalism.” – Redrave

WKOG response: This is a common trope administered by many in trying to lump that which is left activism and misconstrue it as “extremist” leftism with no basis in reality or fact and placing it in the same bucket of conspiracy theory that can at times be found on the right or admittedly on the left. In that vein, it is a facile attempt to denigrate the countless hours of research invested into the series by Cory Morningstar and a handful of volunteers who assisted her in this painstaking endeavor. This is a blatant attempt at marginalization for those who are unable to find anything wrong with the actual research. Hence, it is easier to question the motives of the work and even more easily, that of the author. In that regard, WKOG would just ask that anyone point to any conspiracy narrative that is in any portion of the work. Short of that, WKOG stands by every scintilla of the research and takes umbrage at the slander of conspiracy theory directed at the work by those attempting to marginalize it by such unfounded accusations.

“It never ceases to amaze me how many journalists today still don’t realise that calling someone a ‘conspiracy theorist’ is admission of having nothing intelligent to say to them!”

 

— Tim Hayward, professor of environmental political theory at the University of Edinburgh and director of the university’s Just World Institute, Who’s Afraid of Conspiracy Theory?

Scientists Warning: “Morningstar and Wrong Kind of Green followers are sometimes called “collapsitarians.” Near-Term Human Extinction (NTHE) groups (encouraged by Guy McPherson) also fall into this category.  Anti-natalist groups are also sometimes joining forces here. These groups desire devastation and collapse. Thus, they direct commentary in a well-maintained subterfuge campaign rife with psychological warfare techniques that barely camouflage the promotion of human extinction. In carefully contrived subtexts, they proffer extinction as the only solution for humanity (which they see as parasitic) in what has become a kind of popular, post-modern malaise-faire nihilistic doomer trope.

These groups have multiple hidden agendas. They rally behind inaction, defeatism, destruction, and ultimately avoidance of the issue through distraction and deflection. They assail Greta Thunberg while hypocritically claiming to support her. They often begin their attacks with virtue signalling and sociopathic distancing statements like “I fully support the 16-year old activist.” But then they proceed to openly marginalize Greta Thunberg’s activism by connecting it to neoliberal greenwashing or troubled political campaigns like the Green New Deal (GND) which they conveniently see as too little, too late. But they fail to notice that Greta Thunberg herself has criticized the GND as well, and they forget that Greta constantly reminds us that she is neither a politician nor a scientist; she’s a child activist.”

WKOG response: A common misconception is that those who are considered “doomers” are people who are one, the cause of the ongoing environmental catastrophe (that merely INCLUDES climate change, but is not the entirety of the problem) and two, the impediment to actually addressing climate change or any and all other environmental issues. “Doomers” are those who look at all of the intersecting planetary issues and are simply not willing to embrace the so-called solutions offered by the mainstream. Solutions which ultimately fail to address the root cause of  the problem and a desire to simply kick the can down the road. Corporate solutions to a problem caused in large part by corporate power represent a blatant attempt to continue to foist today’s problems upon coming generations, so that those groups who have caused the most damage can abdicate any responsibility to deal with the issues immediately, because doing so would ultimately hurt their bottom line. Thus, “doomers” are simply unwilling to set aside the truth in order to appease those around them for personal comfort and acceptance.

WKOG has never written anything about what particular people, group, organizations and/or legislation Greta Thunberg does or doesn’t support other than what has been documented through Thunberg’s own words or chosen affiliations. We have made no insinuations as to Thunberg’s positions outside of her own verbal positions carefully ensuring we do not put words in her mouth or trying to decipher her thoughts on things through clairvoyance. We have simply documented her presence and acceptance by individuals and institutions that support legislation which will not solve the climate crisis and only enrich a handful of people, groups and corporations with the price being the continued destruction of the planet.

Here we must also note that the lack of full disclosure by Scientists Warning. The fact that the We Don’t Have Time tech company is prominent member of Scientists Warning is one that readers deserve to be aware of. As We Don’t Have Time was the primary focus of investigation in the first segment of the series, this relationship  must be considered relevant. Further, Scientists Warning founder Stuart H. Scott maintains a personal relationship with Greta Thunberg and family, having made the arrangements for Thunberg and her father to attend COP-24 in Katowice Poland. [Source]
In conclusion:

Scientists Warning present themselves as an austere and fervent group of academics and experts. The list of team members and advisory board members suggests that this is the case. It is advised by well networked people in positions of public regard, people such as Richard Heinberg from the Post Carbon Institute and the Scientists Warning founder Stuart H. Scott who played a role in supporting Greta Thunberg’s rise. The publication of anonymous, poorly referenced and gross mischaracterizations presented as “debunking” is well beneath the standards of journalism expected of any group of “scientists” or academics. Scientists Warning ought to rise above the editorial turpitude that is so abundant among the ecological and leftist media, and provide authorship details for their debunkings. Most importantly, Scientists Warning should identify and commit to journalistic standards that reflect their commitment to good science and honest academic research. Smears and mischaracterizations only serve to defend narratives, and at this time in history we need the truth.

WATCH: The Ethics of Voluntary Carbon Offsets – Professor Clive Spash

November 10, 2019

 

“Sales of so-called carbon offsets are soaring: Myclimate, a Swiss nonprofit whose clients include Deutsche Lufthansa AG, reported a five-fold uptake in its credits in a year. At Ryanair Holdings Plc, Europe’s largest discount carrier, the number of customers making voluntary offset payments has almost doubled in 18 months.”

 

— Bloomberg, August 10, 2019

 

“Gold Standard [WWF] has reported a fourfold increase in income from individuals and small businesses paying for carbon offsets through its platform….‘We are seeing the Greta effect, the impact of Extinction Rebellion, the impact of the words of David Attenborough, the school strikes, all of these coming together.'”

 

— The Guardian, November 8, 2019

The following clip is an excerpt from the lecture The Brave New World of Carbon Trading by Professor and ecological economist Clive Spash, who discusses the limitations of emissions trading schemes. Video published March 11, 2010.

“Corporate power is shown to be a major force affecting emissions market operation and design. The potential for manipulation to achieve financial gain, while showing little regard for environmental or social consequences, is evident as markets have extended internationally and via trading offsets. At the individual level, there is the potential for emissions trading to have undesirable ethical and psychological impacts and to crowd out voluntary actions. I conclude that the focus on such markets is creating a distraction from the need for changing human behaviour, institutions and infrastructure.”

In 2009 Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) wrote to New Political Economy demanding that the paper entitled ‘The Brave New World of Carbon Trading’ not be published. [Nov 7, 2009: Censorship of Critique of Emissions Trading and Carbon-Offsets Schemes]

Website of Clive L. Spash, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria: https://www.clivespash.org/

 

Listen: How to Sell a Pretend Climate Movement: Reading Act IV of Cory Morningstar’s Series on the NGO Industrial Complex

Ghion Journal

September 18, 2019

By Stephen Boni

 

 

About 43% of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were lawyers. After the establishment of the United States government, over a near 250-year period, the number of lawyers in Congress has, by-and-large, mirrored that original percentage. In fact, our current Congress is made up of 43% lawyers. This is a powerful voting block of like-minded people.

Additionally, it isn’t much of a secret how important legal expertise is to modern corporations and how many lawyers exist among their executive ranks. And America’s most prominent corporations represent the financial backing of nearly all members of Congress.

The way lawyers have been trained to think, the skills they possess, the way they maneuver, and what they maneuver for casts a massive shadow over what kinds of decisions get made for our society—and what kind of loose consensus (or acquiescence) gets achieved in order for those decisions to stick.

What I’m talking about is how those decisions are sold to us. Because, at this point, there are very few societal decisions that are made from the ground up by regular citizens.

As I sat in front of the Words of Others podcast mic this week to read Act IV of Cory Morningstar’s multi-part series on how the corporate elite are using a string of nonprofits, foundations and advocacy organizations to engineer a specific set of likely ineffectual responses to the climate and pollution crisis, I noticed how she highlighted elite use of nuanced language—language that smacks of lawyerly thinking—as one of the key methods members of the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) industrial complex use to mask the basic assumptions behind the solutions they want the world to adopt.

It’s interesting to me that it was this aspect of Morningstar’s piece that jumped out. The issue of precise but deceptive language is not the focal point of the article. What her piece zeroes in on, actually, is the evidence of a coordinated, psychologically thought through marketing campaign cutting across the entire swath of NGOs currently inserting themselves into the climate crisis movement.

But a marketing campaign is about storytelling—and storytelling is, in large part, about the use of language. And the language used to sell us a movement is consciously connected by its salespeople to the language used to sell the movement’s solutions.

About a quarter of the way through the piece, Morningstar notes the use of a very specific phrase in the proposals of NGO-connected elites to define their specific goal for reducing carbon emissions: “Net Zero Emissions”.

As she explains, this is a very precise modification of carbon goals articulated by NGOs in previous years, and certainly a departure from what grassroots climate activists seek. Because “net zero emissions” doesn’t mean a massive reduction in the amount of carbon we’re pumping into the atmosphere:

“Rather, it is the amount of emissions being put into the atmosphere being equal to the amount being “captured.”

To achieve that carbon capture, the NGO industrial complex is seeking huge investments for carbon capture storage technology, investments they don’t want to make with their own money but want to take from pension funds and our tax dollars. And, as Morningstar laid out in Act III of her series (which you can listen to here), they want to securitize these investments in green technology so they can become a series of financial products that invigorate growth in a now perpetually sluggish capitalist economy.

This tricky use of language as a sales technique is remarkably precise. It’s not just marketing-ese. It’s downright lawyerly. “Net Zero Emissions” sounds good, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t mean genuinely cutting carbon emissions, reducing consumption, or pollution, or anything, honestly, that would hinder corporate profits.

Since the biosphere has not a single care about what our economic system is, and is only reacting to our very physical waste, “net zero emissions” is no solution at all. There is nothing adaptive about it. It places perceived economic needs over the healing needs of the Earth—which we need healthy for our own precarious wellbeing. But you would only know that by digging into the phrase, and most of us don’t parse the world like that or have the time to think about such things too deeply.

These lawyerly manipulations are not only effective at diverting us from genuine adaptive solutions to climate change and pollution, they’re also tailor-made to make sense to the lawyerly sensibilities of Congress, which, as we remember, is made up of people who have a vested interest in pursuing “solutions” (and use of the public purse) that meet the needs of their corporate donors.

In both politics and astro-turfed movements, we see this linguistic move time and again. Barack Obama was one of the most gifted practitioners when he was campaigning to be president. He knew—as the elites who run the world’s NGOs know—that citizens understand instinctively that things are so bad that only some kind of systemic change will make them better. Since that type of change was not his goal, he concocted a rhetorical style so open to interpretation, so precise and conscious in its use of vague language, that he was able to convince most of the voting public that he was their voice for sweeping change.

Even thought he wasn’t.

That particular use of precision; precision as a way to conceal, is built in to marketing to be sure, but even more so, it’s built in to legal language. In our Constitution itself, written by men steeped in legal thinking, we can see the good and evil sides of legal language’s ability to both reveal and hide meaning.

We live in a complex, often faceless society. Inverted totalitarianism, as theorized by famed historian Sheldon Wolin, gets expressed through the anonymity of the corporate state. Large nonprofits, foundations, NGOs and their backers on Wall Street are an embedded part of that corporate state.

In her extensive research and her journalism, Cory Morningstar is not trying to shit on Greta Thunberg or the Extinction Rebellion activists currently shutting down parts of London. She’s trying to tear apart that legalese-influenced language so we can inoculate ourselves against propaganda—and pursue ground-up solutions that actually have a chance of ensuring us a healthier planet, a healthier society and a healthier life.

After all, wouldn’t it be interesting if those taking part in these movements, armed with a little knowledge on who’s running these organizations, turned on their putative masters and spun the movement out of their control?

Now wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?

Incidentally, here’s how you can listen to the first three parts of Morningstar’s series:

Act I

Act II

Act III

As always, thanks for reading and thanks for listening.

 

[Stephen Boni is both Ghion Journal’s current editor and a contributing writer. His main interest is in analyzing the workings of empire and exploring ways to dismantle and replace systems of oppression. A conflicted New Englander with an affinity for people, music and avoiding isms, he lives in Oakland, California with his wife and young daughter.]

 

Perfect Distractions and Fantastical Mitigation Plans

October 19, 2019

By Michael Swifte

 

 

 

The recent UN Climate Action Summit in New York delivered both spectacle and much ignored signifiers of political will. I would say it was a failure in terms of any meaningful or effective action to deliver anything like a fossil fuel phase out. At the centre of the spectacle was Greta Thunberg, the perfect distraction, urging us to honour Paris targets, recognise ‘the science’ and act on climate. Greta laments inaction from world leaders like most of us do – this is a continuing theme. And like most of us, Greta sees inaction as a result of the political will failing to deliver on decades of rhetoric. Sadly though, the mitigation plans of the powerful, the key signifiers of political will for continued relentless extractivism never enter the public conversation.

Perfect distractions come with talking points and bring framing to the issue they come to embody. Like the Extinction Rebellion leaders, and Green New Deal proponents, Greta, under advice from a range of experts, leaves the fantastical assumptions in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) mitigation plans well alone. Kevin Anderson, who has given Greta advice in the past, despairs at the “technical utopias”, unfathomable quantities of biomass burning, and as-yet-not-invented air capture machines that fill three of the four IPCC mitigation ‘pathways’. I’m astonished that even the one pathway commissioned by the IPCC that could be called a ‘degrowth’ pathway is also rarely discussed.

While the IPCC present fantastical mitigation plans supposedly representing the global consensus but with little basis in reality; the statements, networking activities, and research & development investments of fossil fuel giants tell another story. Events held, messages provided, and statements released during the UN Climate Action Summit show that the oil and gas industry are getting exactly what they want. Relentless extractivism in service of the consumer economy was the big winner around which climate action plans will be built.

Political will and the UN Climate Action Summit

On September 22, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) met for a dinner at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Emily Atkin reported on this event in her ‘Heated’ newsletter providing a transcript of a message presented by the Special Adviser to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

The transcript of Guterres’ message is the primary source for a significant moment. It wasn’t till the next day, the same day Greta was giving her “how dare you” speech that the substance of the OGCI mitigation plans was revealed.

Chris Lang from Redd-Monitor laid out how the summit failed saying “Obviously, none of the “action plans” involved leaving any fossil fuel in the ground.”, and noting that the OGCI also support the #NaturalClimateSolutions (NCS) campaign promoted by George Monbiot and Greta Thunberg.

The International Energy Agency’s Clean Energy Ministerial made public an embargoed media release from the OGCI at 12.01am on September 23 announcing their “Kickstarter” initiative in partnership with the OGCI to “unlock large scale investment” in CCUS with an emphasis on “low carbon industrial hubs” for CO2 export. [SOURCE]

 

On September 19, just in time for the summit George Monbiot and Greta Thunberg became spokesfaces for #NaturalClimateSolutions on the Guardian News, YouTube channel.

Stephen Corry from Survival International responded to the new video in worthy style pointing to the corporate relationships and big philanthropy behind the hashtag. In a September 20 Twitter thread, Corry takes Monbiot to task pointing to corporations that partner with the Big Conservation NGOs behind the NCS campaign.

On September 21, International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Tree Plantations, Gary Graham Hughes from Biofuelwatch and Souparna Lahiri from Global Forest Coalition sounded a warning to Greta and those who would meet under the banner of #NatureBasedSolutions at the summit. They made their position, a challenge to Greta and summit attendees very clear saying “Acres of monoculture plantations, bioenergy, and offsets are false solutions – bad for climate, undermining real solutions and bad for humanity.”

On September 26, Cory Morningstar published her detailed write up of the the extensive networks behind #NaturalClimateSolutions. The networks explicated demonstrate the deep connections between the corporate world, big conservation, environmental NGOs, media, governments and the global consensus apparatus of the United Nations.

Any well resourced emissions wonk at the summit would have known what the fossil fools want to do. Our global corporate energy leaders reveal certain details of their plans and they have to spruik their plans to particular people in particular ways. I suspect they’re grateful for the lack of scrutiny from the mainstream media and the NGO aligned press who routinely fail to report or unpack the political will.

When the Atlantic Council hosted the 2019 Global Energy Forum in January, it was made very plain that CCS was necessary for any future energy plans. A panel discussion included representatives of the International Energy Agency, OGCI, Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences, The Institute of Energy Economics-Japan, and Saudi Aramco. Saudi Aramco’s Chief Technology Officer, Ahmad Al Khowaiter, made a statement at this panel discussion that really stuck out for me. “CO2 is a valuable feedstock, we should not forget that”. It’s a statement that acknowledges a barely understood reality: the oil industry has retained latent demand for liquefied CO2 for decades. [SOURCE]

It stands to reason that the oil industry would fight to access liquefied CO2 as the best means to do enhanced oil recovery to get the last remaining drops of oil from depleted oil fields and get paid a subsidy to sequester CO2 in the process. The global consumer market demands throughput of oil for the full range of products derived from oil, not merely the transport fuel products.

National Defense Authorization Act

On April 10, I watched the C-SPAN live stream of the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) as it met to discuss and vote on the Utilizing Significant Emissions with Innovative Technologies Act (USE IT Act). The USE IT Act is crucial to the expansion of the 45Q tax credit which is an effective subsidy for CO2 enhanced oil recovery and the full gamut of carbon capture and storage projects including ‘clean coal’ and ‘clean hydrogen’.

The meeting began with chair John Barrasso outlining the purpose of the meeting before offering an opportunity for members to comment on the bills before the committee. Ranking member Tom Carper spoke to the bills before John Barrasso called a recess so that Democrat members could make quorum at which point Tom Carper said “I’ve asked my staff to reach out far and wide to get as many  Democrats here as quickly as we can so thank you for your patience.”

While C-SPAN may provide livestreamed content, the archive of video, audio and transcripts available on the their website is subject to the discretion of the individual committee chairs. The EPW committee did not provide video to the C-SPAN archive preferring to post an edited video to their YouTube channel and archived webcast on their website. They did however provide audio of the complete proceedings of the April 10 meeting. [C-SPAN audio] [Archived webcast]

In April, a WKOG member called the EPW Committee office to check the attendance records for both the February 27 and April 10 meetings. They discovered that on February 27, three of the Green New Deal cosponsors were in attendance, but Bernie Sanders was absent. None of the three Green New Deal cosponsors spoke to the USE IT Act on February 27. On April 10, all four Green New Deal cosponsors were absent. This means that Bernie Sanders was absent for both meetings. Was the absence of the four Green New Deal cosponsors the cause of the recess called by John Barrasso at the April 10 meeting? Were the four Green New Deal Resolution cosponsors absent to manufacture the eventual unanimous vote for the USE IT Act?

On June 27, the USE IT Act passed the Senate 86 votes to 8 as part of S. 1790 National Defense Authorization Act 2020. The four Green New Deal cosponsors, Ed Markey, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Bernie Sanders voted against the bill.

In an amendment to S. 1790 before it was voted up in the House of Representatives on September 17, Sec. 6001 which contained the USE IT Act provisions was removed.

[SOURCE]

On August 30, the Carbon Capture Coalition sent a letter to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate Committee on Armed Services asking that USE IT Act provisions be included as an amendment to HR. 2500. National Defense Authorization Act 2020.

It is time to pass this important and widely-supported climate and energy legislation, and the NDAA provides an appropriate opportunity to do so.

[SOURCE][SOURCE]

The vote on the House of Representatives NDAA will likely take place on November 20 or 21.

If the USE IT Act provisions pass then it will unleash an unstoppable wave of CCUS projects including fossil hydrogen projects and CO2 enhanced oil recovery projects. The success of the USE IT Act provisions will ensure the success of the 9+ bipartisan bills designed to deliver R&D, new pipelines and a raft of bureaucratic measures to support the implementation of 45Q tax credits. Cory Morningstar outlines most of these bills in her detailed investigation into the ‘Design to Win’ philanthropies.

Mitigation plans and technology

The truth about the mitigation plans of the powerful is masked in the public discourse by language, conflated logics and expansive silence. The political will that has been demonstrated for carbon capture and storage for fossil fuel extraction and refining should be held in contrast to the ‘pathways’ developed through the global consensus building processes of the IPCC.

Three of the four IPCC pathways rely heavily on what are called ‘negative emissions technologies’ (NETs). The ‘technology’ on which the IPCC rely most heavily is called BECCS, or biomass with CCS applied. Biomass is currently being used in Europe in place of coal, and is regarded by some as a ‘renewable energy’. Biomass is used as an offset against emissions created when it is burned in place of coal as it is regarded to have sequestered carbon when it was part of a plant. When you read articles about renewable energy beating out fossil fuel energy in the UK or Germany, you can be sure biomass offsets helped. The implementation of BECCS will require access to geological storage of CO2, the preserve of fossil fuel extraction companies like Equinor, Chevron, Woodside and Shell.

A ‘negative emissions technology’ is not a technology as such, but rather it is a collection of processes that upon the application of certain accounting can be said to have produced zero emissions. Geological storage of CO2 is a crucial process in transforming biomass burning into a negative emissions technology. If any implementation of the IPCC pathways were to take place any time soon then access to geological storage of CO2 would be absolutely necessary for BECCS to be effective.

On September 5, the Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy Kjell-Borge Freiburgh called for “international support” to amend the London Protocol to allow for under sea geological storage and export infrastructure to support the implementation of CCS. The full title of the London Protocol is the ‘London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter’. It is an international agreement to assist in making regional agreements. Amendments to the London Protocol have long been seen as the last regulatory hurdle to large scale under sea storage of CO2. [SOURCE]

The IPCC has three working groups covering three key areas: science and carbon budgets, social and ecological impacts, and mitigation. As observed by Kevin Anderson on Twitter, Greta Thunberg does not speak about the mitigation pathways presented by Working Group 3 on mitigation, rather she focusses on Working Group 1 on “physical science”. Having followed the discourse on mitigation pathways following Thelma Krug’s unheralded presentation at last year’s GHGT-14 conference in Melbourne, I can say with certainty that none of the four pathways have ever been discussed by XR leaders, Greta Thunberg or Green New Deal proponents. Indeed, the climate justice friendly media mouthpieces have rarely if ever examined the IPCC pathways.

[SOURCE: Thelma Krug]

 

One of the unexamined pathways presented by the IPCC Working Group 3 is called P.1. or Grubler et al ‘Low Energy Demand’ scenario, which is the only degrowth scenario they provide. Grubler LED is also the only scenario/pathway not reliant on BECCS. Jason Hickel writing in Real-World Economics Review outlines degrowth as a radical and positive strategy for tackling climate targets. It is highly significant that so very little has been said about the Grubler LED pathway as it is the only pathway that provides any opportunity to deliver a fossil fuel phase out, which is, at least through suggestion, a principle objective of all climate justice groups including XR leaders and Green New Deal proponents.

People should study what Kevin Anderson has to say about IPCC scenarios. He is very concerned about the abundance of negative emissions technologies. He can’t see how the three BECCS and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) ‘technologies’ can deliver enough mitigation in time. In a video entitled ‘Delivering on 2 degrees,’ he notes that the IPCC scenario data base is loaded with NETs reliant scenarios.

In his response to the UK government’s “net zero” proposal following its declaration of a ‘climate emergency,’ makes it very clear that the fantastical quantities of BECCS and reliance on undeveloped air capture machines were already damaging the possibility of decisive action.   

Already the tentative potential of NETs is being used to undermine the requirement for immediate and widespread decarbonisation, passing further unacceptable burdens and risks onto the next generation.

[SOURCE]

Shortly after announcing a ‘climate emergency’ the UK’s Committee on Climate Change indicated that they would much prefer to produce ‘clean’ hydrogen from steam reforming LNG than through renewable energy and electrolysis with water. Steam reforming is a process where fossil gas is coverted into hydrogen and other gases producing a stream of pure liquefied CO2 for enhanced oil and gas recovery, geological storage or other commercial applications. Clearly the renewable option was being discarded by the Committee on Climate Change, but this was not a concern for the XR leaders who don’t appear to be doing what it takes to keep fossil fuels in the ground.  

Our scenarios assume that hydrogen production at scale is done via gas-reforming with CCS rather than electrolysis

[SOURCE]

Here is a remarkable interview with the Coordinating Lead Author of Chapter 4 (on mitigation) of the IPCC AR6 Special Report, Heleen de Coninck. It is remarkable because it reveals how the language and framing of technologies and extractive processes has shifted around carbon capture and storage over several IPCC reports. The interviewer was compelled to ask a rather absurd sounding question that highlights how IPCC reports have framed and reframed technologies and extractive processes in producing mitigation scenarios.

Ah, so you’re saying in AR3, CCS was still weird?

[SOURCE]

Rob Urie is one of the few writers to take an honest look at the technologies that the IPCC modelling requires. I think this is one of the most important pieces of writing that any informed person can read to understand where we are right now and where we are likely to be heading in the near future.

Three of the four scenarios to keep the rise in global temperatures at or below 1.5 degrees Celsius presented by the IPCC in their 2018 paper require ‘negative emissions’ technologies—methods of actively removing carbon from the atmosphere. Some of these, like reforestation, are superficially attractive to the environmentally inclined. The problems come both through the fine print and the focus on climate rather than the environment.

 

 

[Michael Swifte is an Australian activist and a member of the Wrong Kind of Green critical thinking collective.]

 

 

 

 

 

Greta Thunberg, Green Barbarism and #ClimateStrike

To Adapt to the Escalating Climate Crisis, Mere Reform Will Not Be Enough

Greanville Post

October 16, 2019

By Rainer Shea

 

 

Just ten years from now, this transition will be far enough along that the basic structures of capitalist society will no longer be stable. In June, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights issued a report which said that more than 120 million people could be forced into poverty by 2030 due to the destroyed property and resource scarcity that climate change-related disasters will cause. In response, more social services will be cut, society will become more militarized, and more immigrants will be deported, imprisoned, or left to die in disease-riddled concentration camps.

Such cruelties against the victims of climate change are realistic, and are all already being carried out because in a world that’s falling to pieces, the feeling of desperation drives a survival instinct that makes people devalue the lives of their fellow human beings. Capitalism, with its fixation on competition, is a key driver behind this impulse to exclude and eliminate the immigrants who seek to share in the West’s relative stability. This is why Philip Alston, the author of the U.N.’s June report, said that barring radical systemic change, “Human rights might not survive the coming upheaval.”

As the warming continues, increasing food and water scarcity, flooding, deadly heat waves, epidemics, and inequality will set off wars and civil unrest. Where stable states still exist, the prevailing paradigm will range from heightened government vigilance to outright martial law. Otherwise, borders will become less clearly defined and the existing governments will lose their power, making for a global version of the Middle East in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Syria. The vacuum will be filled with militant groups. In the Arab world these new monopolies on violence have been ISIS and Al Qaeda, and in North America they could easily become white supremacist paramilitaries.

None of this can be prevented by voting for Democrats, or changing one’s personal lifestyle, or participating in climate demonstrations that are sanctioned by the corporatocracy. The momentum of the climate’s destabilization is unstoppable, and the fascistic political forces that have emerged amid the crisis aren’t going away. However, my message with this essay isn’t to become apathetic in the face of what’s happening to us, but to embrace a worldview of realism that allows us to actually combat the problem.

 

[Rainer Shea uses the written word to deconstruct establishment propaganda and to promote meaningful political action. His articles can also be found at Revolution Dispatch]

The Global Climate Strikes: No, this was not co-optation. This was and is PR. A brief timeline

October 6, 2019

By Cory Morningstar

 

 

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent series has been written in two volumes.

[Volume I: ACT I • ACT II • ACT III • ACT IV • ACT V • ACT VI • Addenda I] [Book form]

[Volume II: An Object Lesson In Spectacle • ACT I • ACT II • ACT III • ACT IV • ACT V • ACT VI] [ACTS VIII & IX forthcoming]

• A 100 Trillion Dollar Storytelling Campaign [A Short Story] [Oct 2 2019]

• The Global Climate Strikes: No, this was not co-optation. This was and is PR. A brief timeline [Oct 6 2019]

 

 

Financial Times, September 16, 2019

 

No, this was not co-optation. This was and is PR. A brief timeline:

2009: G20 gathering in London: The world’s major economies come together to stem the global financial panic triggered by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in the US (and subsequent unprecedented bailouts for corporations and banks). They assure society that they will establish a more stable growth path going forward.

2009: UN works on the prospect of a Global Green New Deal to reboot the global economic system. It simultaneously works on tools to assign monetary value to all nature, global in scale, with the goal of creating new markets (TEEB – later to be absorbed by the Natural Capital Coalition).

2009-2019: In the years that followed the 2009 assurances to contain panic in markets and salvage a battered financial system, growth – crucial to keeping the capitalist economic system afloat – failed to find a firm footing.

2011: IMF: “We have entered what I have called a dangerous new phase… today, we risk losing the battle for growth. With dark clouds over Europe, and huge uncertainty in the United States, we risk a collapse in global demand. This challenge could not be more urgent. In our interconnected world, we are all on one boat. Any thought of decoupling is a mirage.” — The Path Forward—Act Now and Act Together, opening address to the 2011 Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, managing director, International Monetary Fund

2014: Global economy continues to spiral downward. “Capitalism is in danger of falling apart”, Al Gore, Generation Investment, The Climate Reality Project

2014: Purpose (PR arm of Avaaz): Language of “green economy” is killed in order to save “green economy”. They will build it, but they won’t say they are building it.

2014: People’s Climate March. The march was organized by GCCA/TckTckTck (co-founded by 20 NGOs including 350.org, Avaaz, Greenpeace), the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Climate Nexus (a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors), 350.org (incubated by the Rockefeller Foundation), the Rasmussen Foundation and USCAN.

2014: We Mean Business is launched. Created with the assistance of many including then UNFCCC executive secretary Christina Figueres, Purpose (PR arm of Avaaz), and Greenpeace.

2015: Global Youth Summit takes place (Keynotes: UN Figueres, Kumi Naidoo Greenpeace, 350.org McKibben), Climate Strike website is created.

2015: The Paris Agreement largely attributed to Christina Figueres comes into fruition. [Further reading: This Changes Nothing – Clive L. Spash]

2015: Mission Innovation (Breakthrough Energy, Bill Gates, Richard Branson et al.) partners with 23 states and the EU. Similar coalitions and partnerships follow (Under 2C, The Climate Group, etc.).

2017: World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab: “Capitalism is in crisis”

2018: A teleconference led by a 350.org/Fossil Free representative with Climate Reality Project (Al Gore’s NGO) proposes a large climate march. Greta Thunberg partakes in this call as well as others that transpire. The idea of a strike is presented. Thunberg is receptive

May 2018: Ingmar Rentzhog, founder and CEO of We Don’t Have Time, is featured at a climate event with Greta’s mother Malena Ernman.

June 2018: Greta Thunberg social media accounts are created.

Summer/Fall 2018: The Green New Deal (promoted by UN in 2009) is resurrected.

July 2018: The Climate Group, co-founder of We Mean Business, promotes This Is Zero Hour climate strikes in the US utilizing the hashtag #WeDontHave Time [“Join the youth revolution!”]

August 20 2018: Greta sits on a sidewalk with a sign. Rentzhog discovers “the lonely girl”. We Don’t Have Time, partner of The Climate Reality Project, and Global Utmaning (Global Challenge) are interconnected by board relationships.

August 20 2018: On the first day of strike, the third person to respond to the “lonely girl” plight on Twitter is We Mean Business co-founder Callum Grieve. He adds the hashtag #WeDontHaveTime and tags five additional accounts: The Climate Museum, Youth Climate March LA, This is Zero Hour Ft. Lauderdale, Greenpeace International, and the UNFCCC, the “official Twitter account of UN Climate Change”.

August 20 2018: Also on the first day of the strike – the “lonely girl” plight is shared Sasja Beslik, international financial expert (WEF), head of Sustainable Finance, Nordea Bank.

Fall 2018: New Deal for Nature and Voice For The Planet campaigns commence. Exploiting an increasingly anxious citizenry, utilizing emotive images and language, these campaigns are in fact, not to “save nature”, rather, they are to monetize nature, global in scale.

September 1 2018: Only 12 days after her first day sitting on a sidewalk, Greta is featured in The Guardian.

September 2018: The largest-ever philanthropic investment to combat climate change is announced by ClimateWorks, largest recipient of climate philanthropy in the world.

September 26 2018: Thunberg appears at a seminar organized by The Climate Reality Project and Global Utmaning (Thunberg’s father denies any relationship or affiliation with Global Unmanning).

September 26 2018: The Climate Finance Partnership – a vehicle for blended finance – is unveiled at the One Planet Summit.

October 31 2018: Launch of XR global expansion is highlighted by The Guardian and endorsed by an array of liberal celebrity signatories.

XR global expansion takes place in partnership with The Climate Mobilization Project.

January 3 2019: “Global economic growth ‘now in free fall'”

January 2019: Christiana Figueres brings Greta Thunberg to Davos where they share accommodations.

January 2019: International media amplifies “The House is on Fire” Thunberg speech delivered at WEF. The message and delivery mirror the stratagem laid out in The Climate Mobilization (XR partner) paper “Leading the Public into Emergency Mode: A New Strategy for the Climate Movement.” (“Imagine there is a fire in your house.”)

January 2019: Davos, Switzerland – “Standing outside in the pitch-black cold at the World Economic Forum on January 23, 2019, a panel including Future Earth and partners announced to a live audience their intent to launch an Earth Commission.”

February 2019: Joint event with European Commission president and Thunberg where it is announced that 25% of the EU budget will go to climate change initiatives. Unbeknownst to the public, this decision was made in 2018.

July 2019: Business For Nature is launched. The coalition founders are We Mean Business, the World Economic Forum, The Nature Conservancy, WWF, the Natural Capital Coalition, the World Resources Institute, the IUCN, The Food and Land Use Coalition, Confederation of Indian Industry, Entreprises pour l’Environnement (EpE), Tropical Forest Alliance, and the International Chamber of Commerce.

August 2018 to Summer 2019: An international media assault on the populace featuring Greta Thunberg, adored and promoted by the ruling classes, corporations, institutions, World Bank and finance – this is coupled with apocalyptic media saturation. In effect – the multiple ecological crises which have been increasing over decades, is now being fully exploited as a means to manufacture consent. Corporations and institutions seek 100 trillion dollars for “climate solutions”. The unlocking of pensions is identified as a prime target.

August 2018 to Summer 2019: The emergence of a green fascism. Those criticizing the said solutions or “movements” designed by the ruling class for our collective consumption are ridiculed and subjected to hate.

August 2018 to Summer 2019: Western “environmentalism” creates demand for the further plundering of the planet in order to “save” the climate – in essence, a globally mobilized de facto green lobby group. The planned “climate” infrastructure eyes the Global South. The scale is massive: equates to the building of a New York City – every single month for the next forty years. Despite the fact that this cannot be squared with protection of biodiversity or the climate, the populace clamours for those in power (who are responsible for the crisis) to “do something” and align with the suicidal Paris Agreement.

February 20 2019: We Mean Business and Global Optimist (founded by Christiana Figueres, funded by We Mean Business), highlight the reaction to the climate campaign now well underway: “People are desperate for something to happen”.

April 2019: The Rockefeller Foundation closes its 100 Resilient Cities initiative, joins the Atlantic Council to launch a new center. [Explored in Volume II, Act VII]

June 13 2019: The World Economic Forum – representing the richest and most powerful people on the planet – forms a partnership with United Nations.

July 2019: “US philanthropists vow to raise millions for climate activists” – The Climate Emergency Fund is launched. Serving on the board is 350.org founder Bill McKibben and Margaret Klein Salamon founder and executive director of The Climate Mobilization (partner to Extinction Rebellion) and author of the paper “Leading the Public into Emergency Mode: A New Strategy for the Climate Movement.”

September 2019: Greta Thunberg sails across the ocean in a yacht to attend the United Nations Climate Action Summit organized and led by We Mean Business and the World Economic Forum (now partnered with the United Nations).

September 16 2019: The Financial Times unveils its largest campaign since 2009: The New Agenda – a re-booting of the capitalist system

September 18 2019: Conservation International and the *Food and Land Use Coalition finance the “Natural Climate Solutions” promotional video featuring Guardian’s Monbiot and Greta Thunberg. The video reaches more than 1 billion people in less than 24 hours. [*Member foundations include ClimateWorks, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, Good Energies, and Margaret Cargill.]

September 19 2019: WEF releases promotional video featuring Greta Thunberg for “Voices For The Planet”. This is the WEF-WWF campaign for the financialization of nature, global in scale (payments for ecosystem services) that accompanies the “New Deal For Nature” promoted by WWF, CI, The Natural Capital Coalition, TNC, etc.. Supported by Greenpeace, 350.org, etc. who are not yet publicly promoting it.

September 20 2019: Global Climate Strikes take place.

September 2019: Many smaller NGOs, including those from the Global South oppose the WEF-UN Partnership. Avaaz, Greenpeace, 350, etc. are conspicuously absent from the signatories.

September 26 2019: The UN calls for a Global Green New Deal (bailout).

September to October 2019: Arnold Schwarzenegger arranges a Tesla for Greta to tour Canada and visit Standing Rock reservation.

 

Take Away Points

We dance to the tune of our oppressors

 

“The ruling class exists, it’s not a conspiracy theory. They operate as a class, too. They share the same values, the same sensibility and in Europe and North America they are white. They act in accordance with their interests, which are very largely identical. The failure to understand this is the single greatest problem and defect in left discourse today.”

 

— John Steppling

 

Climate change is real – but capitalism is the crisis.

The structure of the system is working exactly as it is designed to. The NPIC exists to insulate the current power structures and capital itself.

Economic growth is sacrosanct – to those in power, and those it serves. Economic growth trumps all priorities including life itself.

The Thunberg campaign belongs to the ruling class, not to the people.

A decade of social engineering (“together”) has effectively erased class analysis, which is a massive blow, and even a betrayal, to the working class and peasantry.

The West is under the rule of a corporatocracy, therefore voting is a massive distraction and spectacle that will never solve or mitigate our ecological crisis.

The same system that created the crisis will not and cannot now rectify the crises. The same people that protected and defended this system will do anything and exploit anyone to keep it intact.

The NGOs comprising the NPIC must be isolated, shamed and abandoned. The exact methods they use against radical activists and radical grassroots groups. Without the support of the people, they lose all power and influence (and then funding).

A litmus test must be placed on all organizations that claim to fight for ecological and social justice: They must be united in opposition to imperialism/colonialism, militarism, white supremacy and patriarchy – all leading drivers of climate change and ecological devastation.

Capitalism will destroy everything in its path. Either we kill capitalism, or capitalism will kill us.

 

[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation and Counterpunch. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can support her independent journalism via Patreon.]

No Class

Dissident Voice

October 4, 2019

By John Steppling

 

 

 

 

 

 

[John Steppling is an original founding member of the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, a two-time NEA recipient, Rockefeller Fellow in theatre, and PEN-West winner for playwrighting. He’s had plays produced in LA, NYC, SF, Louisville, and at universities across the US, as well in Warsaw, Lodz, Paris, London and Krakow. He has taught screenwriting and curated the cinematheque for five years at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, Poland. Plays include The Shaper, Dream Coast, Standard of the Breed, The Thrill, Wheel of Fortune, Dogmouth, and Phantom Luck, which won the 2010 LA Award for best play. Film credits include 52 Pick-up (directed by John Frankenheimer, 1985) and Animal Factory (directed by Steve Buscemi, 1999). A collection of his plays was published in 1999 by Sun & Moon Press as Sea of Cortez and Other Plays. He lives with wife Gunnhild Skrodal Steppling; they divide their time between Norway and the high desert of southern California. He is artistic director of the theatre collective Gunfighter Nation. Read other articles by John.]

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: Natural Climate Manipulations [Volume II, Act VI]

September 26, 2019

By Cory Morningstar

 

 

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent series has been written in two volumes.

[Volume I: ACT I • ACT II • ACT III • ACT IV • ACT V • ACT VI • Addenda I] [Book form] [Volume II: An Object Lesson In Spectacle • ACT I • ACT II • ACT III • ACT IV • ACT V • ACT VI] [ACTS VII & VIII forthcoming]

• A 100 Trillion Dollar Storytelling Campaign [A Short Story] [Oct 2 2019]

• The Global Climate Strikes: No, this was not co-optation. This was and is PR. A brief timeline [Oct 6 2019]

 

 

“I’m convinced of my disagreement with the counterrevolution – imperialism – fascism – religions – stupidity – capitalism – and the whole gamut of bourgeois tricks – I wish to cooperate with the revolution in transforming the world into a classless one so that we can attain a better rhythm for the oppressed classes.”

 

— Frida Kahlo

 

“The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.”

 

—Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

 

“Capitalism, a vicious system, does not merely seek to rip off our labor and resources but it seeks to confound our thinking. It seeks to make us think we’re thinking when in fact we’re not thinking but merely reacting to stimuli.”

 

—Stokely Carmichael

 

 

“Greta Thunberg’s video on natural climate solutions, done with George Monbiot, has reached more than 1 billion people in less than 24 hours.  More than a third of the events of Climate Week focus on nature-based solutions, demonstrating the huge amount of innovation and progress taking place on the ground.”

 

— Nature4Climate, September 22, 2019

On September 19, 2019, a short film featuring Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot was launched in advance of the September 20 global climate strikes organized by GCCA NGOs. The film (trending and recommended on YouTube), emphasizing the urgency of funding “natural solutions”, was paid for by Conservation International and the *Food and Land Use Coalition, with “guidance” provided by Nature4Climate (The Nature Conservancy, We Mean Business, WWF, UN-REDD, et al.) and Natural Climate Solutions. [*Member foundations include ClimateWorks, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, Good Energies, and Margaret Cargill.]

 

YouthWashing

Here, Greta Thunberg becomes the official face for, and of, corporate capture. The rebranding of REDD (the UN “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation” market mechanism), and the coming New Deal for Nature – under the auspices and brand of “natural climate solutions”.

To understand how this transpired, we need to step back in time to April 3, 2019.

 

“It all sounds so simple and reassuring. No one needs to change anything. The airline industry can continue to expand. The oil industry can continue drilling. We can stop worrying and leave it to the experts. Just a few techno-fixes, and nature will solve climate change for us. Obviously, this is bullshit. It’s a form of climate denial – pretending that we can address climate breakdown without even talking about keeping fossil fuels in the ground.”

 

— March 3, 2019, Chris Lang, The REDD Monitor, “Natural Climate Solutions: ‘It really is time that governments stopped trying to find more ways to offset their fossil fuel emissions'”

April 3, 2019 – The Launch

 

On April 3, 2019, The Guardian published an open letter entitled “A Natural Solution to the Climate Disaster – Climate and ecological crises can be tackled by restoring forests and other valuable ecosystems, say scientists and activists”.

The letter, written by The Guardian’s George Monbiot, is co-signed by establishment-endorsed eco-celebs Greta Thunberg, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and other “leaders”/celebrities associated with the liberal climate “movement”. The “movement” that evades all systemic drivers of climate change and ecological devastation (militarism, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, patriarchy, etc.).

The letter –  addressed to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), governments and NGOs – is republished on the Natural Climate Solutions website.

Launched on April 3, 2019 (coinciding with The Guardian coverage), the Natural Climate Solutions project was created “for the promotion of an important and exciting environmental initiative, led by journalist and author George Monbiot.” [Source]

The said mission of Natural Climate Solutions (website created March 15, 2019) is to “catalyse global enthusiasm for drawing down carbon by restoring ecosystems: the single most undervalued and underfunded tool for climate mitigation.”[Emphasis added]

In real life, this mission to “catalyse global enthusiasm” effectively serves the United Nations carbon market mechanism UN-REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation). In addition, it is a construct being created that will build the acquiescence required for the coming “New Deal For Nature” to be adopted in 2020. That is, the privatization, commodification, and objectification of nature, global in scale. That is, emerging markets and land acquisitions. That is, “payments for ecosystem services”. That is the financialization of nature, the corporate coup d’état of the commons that has finally come to wait on our doorstep.

[A #MeToo scandal engulfs The Nature Conservancy].

To be clear, as this research will demonstrate, the very same NGOs which set the Natural Capital agenda and protocols (via the Natural Capital Coalition, which has absorbed TEEB) – with the Nature Conservancy and We Mean Business at the helm, are also the architects of the term “natural climate solutions”.

Monbiot has consistently and publicly voiced disapproval for “putting a price on nature”. [One such example: May 15, 2018]. Yet, consider that Monbiot has never utilized his influential platform to oppose the coming “New Deal For Nature”.

The said purpose of Natural Climate Solutions is to “direct public attention towards this issue and champion the work of others.” [Emphasis added]

The “work of others” that Natural Climate Solutions seeks to direct the public’s attention to takes one to the “Our Allies” page:

“There are several wonderful organisations already working hard to highlight and implement Natural Climate Solutions. Please follow these links and support their efforts.” [Emphasis added]

The allies (“wonderful organizations”) that Natural Climate Solution highlights [1], which it encourages people to follow and support, include many at the helm of the “New Deal For Nature” such as WWF, Conservation International, Avaaz, Greenpeace, Nature Needs Half, etc.

 

“Conservation: The Quiet Spread of Imperialism.”

 

— Mordecai Ogada

Here, we find perhaps the most grotesque aspect of the Monbiot/Guardian project of all. The deliberate endeavour to rally support for and redirect citizens to WWF. As both Monbiot and The Guardian are fully aware, WWF bears responsibility for decades of human rights violations including torture, rape and murder, a direct result of “conservation” schemes. In March 2019 in part 1 of an investigative series, BuzzFeed News revealed that WWF, “funds, equips, and works directly with anti-poaching forces that have beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted, and killed people living near wildlife parks across Asia and Africa.” Part 4 of the investigation (published July 11, 2019) reported that “WWF-Backed Guards Raped Pregnant Women And Tortured Villagers At A Wildlife Park Funded By The US Government.”

Such “conservation projects” have been consistently displacing Indigenous peoples under the guise of conservation while inflicting misery. This has been meticulously documented by Survival International and others. By presenting WWF as an “ally” amongst many “wonderful organizations” Monbiot demonstrates a complete disregard for the decades of work by conservationists such as Mordecai Ogada, Noga Shanee, Reclaim Conservation, and Stephen Corry, executive director of Survival International. By extension, Monbiot turns a willful blind eye to the plight of Indigenous peoples who have been separated from the land they defend. Whose lives and tribal communities have been completely destroyed by these very organizations to which Monbiot directs his followers.

 

 

[Watch: WWF – Silence of the Pandas, © Wilfried Huismann, Germany 2011] [Further reading: The Big Conservation Lie, The Untold Story of Wildlife Conservation in Kenya, John Mbaria & Mordecai Ogada, 2017]

 

 

“Guardian joins growing chorus for natural climate solutions –N4C is delighted that the Guardian and in particular George Monbiot has catalyzed so many diverse voices to champion the cause of natural climate solutions”

 

– Nature4Climate News, Guardian joins growing chorus for natural climate solutions, April 3, 2019

Upon its launch on April 3, 2019, the Natural Climate Solutions project had 29 allies (today it lists 48). The most important one to look at, to demonstrate the leveraging of market solutions via the branding and terminology of “natural climate solutions”, is the first ally listed: Nature4Climate, an initiative created by The Nature Conservancy.

Nature4Climate

 

 

The Nature Conservancy’s Nature4Climate

 

Launched on June 20, 2018, (on the first day of the two-day Ministerial on Climate Action) as a five-year initiative, the Nature4Climate initiative was created as an instrument for strategic communications to escalate the “solutions” (i.e. market solutions) sought by the Nature Conservancy, WWF, We Mean Business et al:

“Nature4Climate (N4C) is a new campaigning vehicle which is supported by a multi-stakeholder coalition. Its purpose is to use strategic communications to drive action on natural climate solutions.”

“Nature4Climate (N4C) is an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN-REDD, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Conservation International (CI), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Woods Hole Research Center, World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), World Resources Institute (WRI), We Mean Business (WMB) and WWF that aims to increase investment and action on natural climate solutions in support of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The N4C partners work together to catalyze partnerships between governments, civil society, business and investors that use nature-based solutions to climate change.” [Source]

Here, we can add that We Mean Business (co-founder of the Nature4Climate initiative as stated above) was formed with the assistance of both Greenpeace and Purpose, the public relations arm of Avaaz specializing in behavioural change. [Further reading: They Mean Business, Volume II, Act IV].

“We bring voices from governments, IGOs, NGOs, and business – underpinned by a steering group with communications and advocacy representation currently from CBD, CI, TNC, the UNDP, WHRC, WRI and WWF.”

The NGOs and institutions represented on the Nature4Climate steering committee include CBD (United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity), CI (Conservation International), TNC (The Nature Conservancy), the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), WHRC (Woods Hole Research Center), WRI (the World Resources Institute) and WWF (World Wildlife Foundation). All of the aforementioned are leading “natural capital” architects and advocates of the “New Deal For Nature” – that is, the financialization of nature, global in scale.

“Countries are in the process of negotiating a new global biodiversity framework through the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which has been called a “New Deal for Nature.” This pact, expected to be agreed in Beijing in late 2020, will lay out the global strategy for protecting nature through 2030. Conservation International will contribute our expertise to this process, to ensure the recognition of the value of nature for all aspects of human well-being.”

 

— DEAL FOR NATURE, Conservation International and the post-2020 global biodiversity framework [Source][Emphasis added]

Here again, we have the same high-level institutions, NGOs and individuals corralling millions of people toward a fourth industrial revolution sought by the ruling classes. A “New Climate Economy“, largely targeting the Global South. A new era of “green” colonialism, under the guise of saving the planet.

“It’s impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can’t have capitalism without racism.”

 

— Malcolm X, 1964, speech at the Militant Labor Forum Hall, New York City, May 29, 1964 [In response to the Harlem “Hate-Gang” scare]

 

 

 

 

In 2018, Nature4Climate launched the “The Forgotten Solution”(conceptualized in 2016, see image above) – a glossy advertising campaign featuring a Hollywood-esque movie trailer. Featuring its own newsroom, The Forgotten Solutions website utilizes the 350.org font that has proven to resonate with the public.

“THE FORGOTTEN SOLUTION (2018) – Official Trailer [HD] – Movietrailers” [Running time: 1m:18s]

Corporations, institutions and NGOs promoting “The Forgotten Solutions” include Connect4Climate (the World Bank), UN-REDD+, WBCSD, We Mean Business, UNREDD+, the Global Landscapes Forum, Shell, the Ford Foundation, and billionaire Richard Branson (The B Team, We Mean Business), to name but a few.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the first institutions to highlight Monbiot’s Natural Climate Solutions launch (April 3, 2019) was the Food and Land Use Coalition. This coalition was initiated under the Business and Sustainable Development Commission leadership led by Paul Polman, former Unilever CEO, and Mark Malloch-Brown, former UN Deputy Secretary-General and Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) who conceptualized the International Crisis Group in 1993 (with Mort Abramowitz), where he serves as chair. Member foundations include ClimateWorks, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, Good Energies, and Margaret Cargill. [Source][Board] [Further reading: Controlling the Narrative,Volume II, Act II]

The Food and Land Use Coalition is supported by partners, including the Business and Sustainable Development Commission (housed at SYSTEMIQ), the EAT Foundation, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and the New Climate Economy (housed at World Resources Institute). [Source] SYSTEMIQ, is advancing the blended finance vehicle (leveraging public funds for private investments into emerging markets) for the Climate Finance Partnership.

 

 

 

 

As the corporate social media accounts demonstrate, the branding of the term “natural climate solutions” was already well established prior to Monbiot’s project launched on April 3, 2019, with a surge in its promotion in December 2018 for COP24 (following the launch of Nature4Climate in June 2018). In fact, the term was being promoted by The Nature Conservancy in 2016 to highlight a parallel revenue stream generated from carbon offset permits.

In the 2016 video below by The Nature Conservancy, Justin Adams remarks:

“In many other parts of the world you have forest dependent communities, you have indigenous communities, who know very well how to protect their natural environment. They see the natural world and their own world as much more integrated.”

The Nature Conservancy, February 8, 2016 [Running time: 4m:5s]:

The question here is why those in the Global South should be expected to retain their critical roles as protectors of the natural world, simply because the Western societies are too unaware, or too insatiable, to do so. The “other” – are expected to continue protecting their natural environment so the white man in the West can continue to pollute. We can also observe that these communities, in many parts of the world Adams speaks of, do not inflict war, displacement or any misery whatsoever on other communities in the world.

The Big Sell

The Monbiot Natural Climate Solutions “plan” (“by supporting the efforts of others, we want to help bring together two issues that have mostly been considered in isolation: climate breakdown and ecological breakdown”) lends itself as a vehicle for “herding cats”. This is an expression attributed by Forbes, to the efforts of the GCCA alliance in 2014. It was used in reference to the method in which GCCA mobilized the populace for 2014 the People’s Climate March. A march orchestrated to serve the interests of those that financed and organized it (the trial version of what we witnessed on September 20, 2019), with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund at the helm. The herding is essential in order to attain acquiescence and, even demand, for something so ugly it requires the utilization of extraordinarily beautiful imagery, holistic linguistics, coupled with celebrity power, Hollywood trailers, slick marketing and emotive imagery to bring it into policy. Natural Climate Solutions deliberately stays at arm’s length from any direct association with a “New Deal For Nature” (the financialization in nature to be implemented in 2020) and instead sends the new supporters it “herds” into the clutches of the big “conservation” NGOs that are privatizing nature. From the Natural Climate Solutions website:

“Our plan is to generate the publicity and enthusiasm required to bring this issue to the front of people’s minds. In doing so, we hope to catalyse and accelerate the work of the excellent organisations already operating in this field.”

 

—Natural Climate Solutions website [Emphasis added]

Like magic, with the sleight of hand, the very corporate term “natural capital solutions”, is transformed into the benevolent “natural climate solutions”. In the transition from the corporate boardroom, into the public realm, the two terms are thus entwined and at once largely indistinguishable. What we have is a rebranding exercise. Thus we have George Monbiot, The World Bank, the World Economic Forum, the UN REDD Programme, The Nature Conservancy (via Nature4Climate), Conservation International, Natural Capital Partners, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), WWF – all sharing the identical branded term.

Here it is imperative to highlight the fact that Conservation International, WWF, IUCN, WBCSD, are all founding members of the Natural Capital Coalition. [Natural Capital Coalition founders]

The architects of the financialization of nature enjoy the penthouse suite of what constitutes a five-star de facto clearing house for institutions, corporations and “conservation” NGOs that serve capital.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Art of Playing Obtuse

 

 

On the first day of the launch, Monbiot announces: “We’ve launched a website explaining #theforgottensolution and directing people to the wonderful organizations seeking to help nature to help stop #ClimateBreakdown.”

Yet nature doesn’t need man’s “help” to “help stop climate breakdown”, she simply needs to be left alone. Released from the corporate chokehold killing her. And she certainly does not need help from egregious “conservation” NGOs notorious for land acquisitions (in servitude to corporations and ruling classes), and displacement of Indigenous peoples which has been long documented.

 

 

 

 

Following the April 3, 2019 launch of “Natural Climate Solutions” Monbiot is challenged by a person who understands the intent behind the branding of “natural climate solutions” by institutions, corporations and “conservation” NGOs that serve capital. Monbiot, a recognized influencer with global reach, responds as follows: “Just because some people hijack this approach for their own ends does not invalidate it. It’s like saying that because David Cameron cynically promoted his Big Society as a substitute for government, all community projects “played into his hands”. Perspective please.”

The individual who challenged Monbiot responds: “Some people”? You’re evidently unaware that this concept has already been thoroughly co-opted by the WBCSD, Shell, Equinor, the International Emissions Trading Association, International Paper etc.”

Monbiot’s response? – “All the more reason to reclaim it from them.”

Monbiot’s weak defense does not hold water.

This would be akin to anti-imperialists “reclaiming” the term “responsibility to protect” – to protect citizens of targeted states. While at the same time, US-led NATO forces are preparing to annihilate a sovereign state for resources – building consent by using the identical term. If this were to take place, the said “anti-imperialists” repetition of this term would expose them as fraudulent, as individuals deliberately in servitude to empire.

“As the cognitive linguist George Lakoff points out, when you use the frames and language of your opponents, you don’t persuade them to adopt your point of view. Instead you adopt theirs, while strengthening their resistance to your objectives.”

 

— George Monbiot, The UK government wants to put a price on nature – but that will destroy it, May 15, 2018

In the same article cited above, Monbiot writes: “…Tony Juniper – who in other respects is an admirable defender of the living world – says he will use his new post as head of campaigns at WWF to promote the natural capital agenda.”]

Today, Monbiot is essentially herding the populace to WWF. The most important campaign of both WWF and Conservation International is the “New Deal For Nature” (also marketed as “Voices or the Planet”). Finance, corporations, government, industry, institutions (UN, IPBES, CBD), and those at the helm of the non-profit industrial understands exactly what it is. Everyone that is, except the public.

Trondheim, Norway, 2 July, 2019– WWF issued a rallying cry for an urgent New Deal for Nature and People for halting biodiversity loss by 2030 at conference for Biodiversity in Trondheim Norway which starts today. [Emphasis added]

Monbiot informs his audience that “new scientific studies reveal #rewilding has a much greater potential for carbon drawdown than almost anyone imaged” – yet Monbiot did not call his project “Rewilding the Earth” or “Rewilding for Climate” or any other name with the word rewilding.

“The Panda Bare”, on Twitter, further elucidates: “The vast majority of what is typically described as #NaturalClimateSolutions” has got nothing to do with rewilding – in fact massive areas of new plantation.”

 

As the launch day wears on, Monbiot again reiterates his desire for people to follow the groups he lists. He writes: “Usually writing and thinking about #ClimateBreakdown is pretty soul-destroying. But these new discoveries thrill and delight me. Please help us to spread the message, by RTing this thread, directing people to the site and encouraging them to support the group we list.” Tagged users include Greta Thunberg, Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman, Michael Mann, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, RSPB, Tim Christopherson, and Nature4Climate.

 

 

 

On social media (Twitter) Monbiot feigns aggravation that, despite a concerted effort working with a public relations firm, his campaign is being ignored by broadcast media. This is fairly ironic considering his access to and subsequent exposure from The Guardian alone. It also reveals the privilege and entitlement held by white liberal “activists” who have been deemed safe for public consumption by the establishment. Most legitimate grassroots groups are given zero exposure for new campaigns by mainstream media, let alone colossal exposure by The Guardian.

 

 

Other tweets accompanying the launch included one in which Monbiot tagged “some wonderful people whom I think will love this approach:” who could help spread the word. The tagged individuals (influencers) included Caroline Lucas, Chris Packham, Avaaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Gore, Mark Lynas, Russell Brand, and Ai Weiwei. If only we could all be as environmentally conscious as Leonardo DiCaprio, especially those in the Global South, perhaps then we could save the planet. [Further reading: The Age of Storytelling, Volume II, ACT II]

The Natural Climate Solutions Project

 

The first “follows” chosen by for the Natural Climate Solutions Twitter account are its three founders (inclusive of Monbiot who is #1). The next accounts chosen to follow are Wetlands International (#4), followed by Nature4Climate (#5) and the aforementioned James Lloyd (#6), the project lead at Nature4Climate and Natural Climate Solutions stakeholder manager at The Nature Conservancy. [“Working at the interface of strategic communications and external affairs for nature and climate change. [Nature4Climate Steering Committee] The fifth is Youth4Nature, which is partnered with Nature Conservancy.

 

Following the April 3, 2019 launch of Natural Climate Solutions, we see Extinction Rebellion, YouthStrike4Climate, and those flying under the “grassroots activism” banner, in unison with the most egregious corporations and “conservation” NGOs on the planet (which work in servitude to these very corporations) all sharing the same branding meme #naturalclimatesolutions.

This is yet another step forward in the engineered evolution of “together” – an orchestrated effort to bring corporations and civil society together as one. The employment of soft-power to give the illusion that class divisions no longer exist.

“It’s odd, to say the least, to hear a spokesperson for Shell promoting natural climate solutions, and to hear George Monbiot apparently promoting the same thing.”

 

— Chris Lang, The REDD Monitor, April 5, 2019

In the same way that global “green new deals” are setting the stage for the “new deal for nature” which is slowly and cautiously being introduced to the public, “natural climate solutions” can help achieve public acceptance for the “new deal for nature”. These are the applications of behavioural change strategies as outlined by Avaaz/Purpose founder Jeremy Heimans. Akin to “killing green” to build the “green economy”, [“we’ll build the green economy, we just won’t talk about it and we won’t say that we’re doing it.”] today corporations, states and financial institutions intend to fully privatize and monetize every aspect of nature – to build the “new” capitalist economy. They just won’t talk about it and they won’t say that they’re doing it.

This is the new agenda.

“However, while the critique of capitalism is the starting point, the analysis cannot simply stop there; it must confront the reality of generalized monopoly-finance capital now operating on a world scale and the deep, systematic division of the world into center and periphery, global North and global South—a division only worsened by climate change. It is in this larger imperialist context that capitalism exists as an actual historical system in the twenty-first century, and it is this that must be opposed.”

 

— Imperialism in the Anthropocene, May 21, 2019

The methodology of marketing “natural climate solutions” is this: We will “kill market solutions – to save market solutions”. Here, it can be added that Purpose and Greenpeace assisted in the creation of Nature4Climate co-founder, We Mean Business.

The ruling classes have devised a marketing strategy to sell us the unthinkable (the monetizing of nature, global in scale) by not divulging what lies beneath the surface.

Patterns appear as branding to target youth broadens its scope. [Nature4Climate, YouthStrike4Climate, Fridays4future, Youth4Nature.]

 

 

 

 

Leads on the Natural Climate Solution project led by Monbiot include Charlie Latimer (Charotte Lattimer, Charlotte Martineau), consultant (clients include UNDP, UNICEF, UN OCHA and UNRWA), Patrick Sterling, former director of product for The Guardian, and Al Boardman, a graphics designer whose clients include “some of the most respected international brands, organisations and agencies in the world; the likes of Apple, Google, Twitter, IBM and BBC amongst them.”

Further, we have Sandrine Dixson-Declève, John Elkington, Paul Simpson, all identified as members of the advisory panel of Guardian Sustainable Business. Dixson-Declève served as the chief partnership officer for UN Agency Sustainable Energy for All. Prior to this position, she served as the director of the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group (also referred to as EU Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, a corporate partner of GCCA/TckTckTck in 2009); vice chair, European Biofuels Technology Platform; board member, We Mean Business; and the advisory board of the oil and gas major Sasol. [Bio] Today Dixson-Declève serves as co-president of the Club of Rome. [Further reading: “Emerging From the emergency: Harnessing the momentum”]. Elkington is the founder of Volans, a B Team expert and Extinction Rebellion Business Signatory. Paul Simpson is the CEO of CDP, a co-founder of We Mean Business.

Here we can add that The Guardian’s Sustainable Business Leadership section is sponsored by Xynteo, a group that includes Shell, Woodside, and Statoil. Xynteo: “We are reinventing growth”. [Source]Dixson-Declève serves as special advisor to the Xynteo & Energy Transition Commission (ETC). [Source]

The Guardian Sustainable Business (GSB) Australia advisory council membership has included representatives of WWF, ClimateWorks, 350.org, and Greenpeace (2015) [Source] [An inquiry submitted on September 1, 2019, to The Guardian on members and status of Guardian Sustainable Business advisory panel/panels was unanswered.] Greenpeace International director Jennifer Morgan clearly supports the “new deal for nature” as demonstrated in ACT VI, Volume I of The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg for Consent series, while Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard has co-founded Earth Economics which aims at “identifying, monetizing, and valuing natural capital and ecosystem services”. All hands are on deck.

 

The Natural Climate Solutions “call to action” page offers holistic proposals and states that it is opposed to offsets. Yet on April 8, 2019, the carbon certification corporation Verra (formerly the Verified Carbon Standard) was added to the list of allies on the Natural Climate Solutions website. Further, the REDD projects that Shell purchases carbon credits from are certified by Verra. [Source] The Natural Climate Solutions-Verra alliance was disclosed by the REDD Monitor on April 9, 2019. On May 21, 2019, Verra disappeared from the list of allies.

REDD+ (the UN’s program to “Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation”) was devised as a strategy to enable business as usual to continue in the face of irrefutable evidence of the role of fossil fuel emissions in driving climate change.

Rather than cut emissions at the source, forests and their ability to store carbon became the sole focus of the UN and the World Bank.  The REDD+ scheme allows corporations and states to buy the carbon stored in forests elsewhere to supposedly “offset” the fossil fuel emissions they are producing.  However, because the carbon stored in the forest has to be verifiably protected, anyone living in the forest – including those who historically protected it in the first place – have to be removed to ensure they do not use any of that carbon.  On the other end of the equation, people living around the polluting industry’s that have “offset” their emissions continue to suffer the health impacts of living in a toxic environment.  Finally, there is no legitimate scientific evidence that temporarily stored biological carbon, in the form of forests, can “offset” fossil carbon, which is a highly condensed permanent form of carbon that was previously locked underground for millions of years. [Learn more at the Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP). GJEP explores and exposes the intertwined root causes of social injustice, ecological destruction, and economic domination.]

What Natural Climate Solutions does not reference, or oppose, is the “new deal for nature”. In fact, this “new deal”, which is advancing quickly, is not opposed by any environmental “leaders” that have been placed at the vanguard of the spectacle by the ruling classes. This is the foundational structure of the system, functioning exactly as intended.

Consider that while earlier this year, over 100 NGOs publicly condemned Shell’s launch of a 300 million USD “natural climate solutions” carbon offsetting scheme, there is no dissent whatsoever over Shell’s major partnership in the Natural Capital Coalition. There is practically little to no dissent to the Natural Capital Coalition, its “conservation” partners, nor its plans to commodify the global commons. For the past decade; The Natural Capital Coalition (which absorbed TEEB, initiated in 2008) has been developing the tools and protocols for a new global system of finance where all nature will be assigned a monetary value. It is now time to present the unthinkable to the public in a manner in which it will not only be accepted, but demanded. This requires building global acceptance which will only be possible utilizing unprecedented global behavioural change strategies, methods and manipulations.

[Natural Capital Coalition advisory council][Natural Capital Coalition partners]

 

 

Chris Lang of the REDD Monitor asks the question: “Natural Climate Solutions – in whose interest?” This is the fundamental question given that the massive advertising campaign behind this effort – and foundations (with investment portfolios in the billions) do not invest in any solutions other than market solutions, or solutions that serve to expand their influence and power (such as societal behaviour modification). “Natural climate solutions” must not be perceived as altruistic or holistic – it is a branding term to increase profits and land acquisitions for corporations.

Monbiot cites “three crucial opportunities over the next two years for ensuring that Natural Climate Solutions receive the global attention they deserve”. [1) The UN Climate Summit this month, 2) COP 15 of the Convention on Biodiversity in 2020, and 3) the UN COP 26 in 2020, at which countries are supposed to put forward their new Nationally Determined Contributions.] [Source]

Yet, as pointed out by the Redd Monitor, “Two-thirds of the countries who signed on to the Paris Agreement have already included Natural Climate Solutions in their Nationally Determined Contributions. More than 100 countries include natural solutions in their adaptation plans, and 27 countries include them in their mitigation plans. They are doing so in order to allow continued pollution from fossil fuels – either in their own country or elsewhere.” [Source]

This clearly demonstrates that the intent of the campaign is hardly to influence states, rather the purpose is to influence and shape public perception.

Monbiot, June 26, 2019, “Shell is not a green saviour. It’s a planetary death machine”:

“But the company’s strategy is working. A remarkable number of people who should be fighting Shell instead see it as a green alternative to Exxon, persuaded by what is, in comparison with the company’s filthy investments, a tiny sop. Shell has longstanding relationships with four “environmental partners”: the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Nature Conservancy, Wetlands International, and Earthwatch. I believe it is just as wrong for these groups to take its money as it is for the RSC to take money from BP. It surprises me that there is not as much pressure on them to break their links as there has been, for example, on the British Museum, whose relationship with BP is becoming a national embarrassment.

Monbiot places quotation around “environmental partners” in reference to the NGOs – two of which are “allies” of his own project, and one, that being Nature Conservancy, which created Nature4Climate, led by The  Natural Climate Solutions stakeholder manager at The Nature Conservancy. The British Museum should be embarrassed, but Monbiot should be embarrassed even more.

The final paragraph:

“But naivety about Shell is not confined to its partners. Plenty of well-intentioned organisations and people, who share my enthusiasm for natural climate solutions, appear so desperate to clutch at any straws of hope that they are prepared to see this company as part of the solution. Shell is not our friend. It is an engine of planetary destruction.”

And here we can paint Monbiot’s “allies” with the identical brush. And so desperate are the citizenry, that they will clutch the “natural climate solutions” straw that has been produced for mass consumption.

From Strategy to Implementation

The WWF-WEF campaign for the New Deal For Nature (Voice for the Planet) is supported by Nature4Climate.

 

The overlap between the New Deal For Nature public partners (Voice For the Planet) and the Natural Climate Solutions partners is as follows: WWF, Conservation International, International Union For The Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the United Nations Environment Programme, Nature4Climate, Royal Society For The Protection of Birds and Birdlife International.

And while The Nature Conservancy (Voice for the Planet partner) is not listed as an “ally” of Natural Climate Solutions, as demonstrated, it remains at arm’s length. A single degree of separation made possible by the creation of Nature4Climate, the primary ally of Natural Climate Solutions.

The research for this article was compiled on September 1, 2019. Since this time, we can observe how this branding strategy has been implemented, in real time.

Corporate Knights – The Voice for Clean Capitalism, April 20, 2015

September, 19, 2019, Climate Change and Nature-based Solutions: Top 30 Influencers and Brands:

“Onalytica have analysed an audience of 3.5k sustainability influencers to understand current perception and awareness of Nature-based solutions within the Climate Change debate and how organisations can leverage those influencers to drive policy change.”

Onalytica’s report opens with an introduction from Lloyd [“This conversation needs to be reflected in the real economy.”]It then identifies the top 100 influencers on the Twitter for “nature-based solutions”. The number one influencer identified is George Monbiot with an influencer score of 100%. Second to Monbiot is Greta Thunberg with an influencer score of 67.56%. Onalytica directs its readers to the nature4climate website for more information.

 

The top 30 “brands” identified by Onalytica in driving the most engagement on the “nature-based solutions conversation” include the World Resources Institute [Volume I, Act IV], The World Bank, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, WWF, C40 Cities and Extinction Rebellion. [Full list]

At this juncture we can recall the question imperative put forward by John Elkington, founder of Volans and initial signatory to Extinction Rebellion Business (which quickly disappeared after its public launch).

 

Global Strike

 

 

On September 19, 2019, the United Nations, the Government of Norway, Conservation International, Environmental Defense Fund and The Nature Conservancy celebrated that the California Air Resources Board adopted the Tropical Forest Standard, a new vehicle for the expansion of carbon offsets into tropical forest regions. Prior to approval by California Air Resources Board (CARB) the standard was narrowly reviewed by a self selected group state legislators through an exclusive stakeholder process dominated by Conservation International, TNC and EDF. [“The purpose of the California Tropical Forest Standard is to establish robust criteria against which to assess jurisdictions seeking to link their sector-based crediting programs that reduce emissions from tropical deforestation with an emissions trading system (ETS), such as California’s Cap-and-Trade Program.”]

“Forest carbon offsets neither protect forests nor reduce emissions. Forest carbon offsets are an unjust false solution to climate change that enables business and pollution as usual, condemning forests and communities globally to its devastating impacts. If what is proposed as a solution to catastrophic climate change jeopardizes other people or ecosystems it cannot claim to be just or sustainable.” [Source]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 18, 2019

On cue, We Mean Business co-founders – united with NGOs, global institutions, and media – coordinate their efforts in promoting the video, ensuring it will go viral. At once, We Mean Business co-founders – united with NGOs, global institutions – and the hundreds of corporations they represent, are now affiliated with Thunberg. The citizenry is encouraged to “love thy enemy”, “changing together” in order to save the power elite. [The Behavioural Change Project “To Change Everything”, Volume II, Act V]

 

 

 

[1]

• NATURE4CLIMATE
• ROYAL SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS
• UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME*
• REWILDING BRITAIN
• FRIENDS OF THE EARTH
• AVAAZ
• GREENPEACE
• LEONARDO DI CAPRIO FOUNDATION
• NATURE NEEDS HALF
• DAVID SUZUKI FOUNDATION
• WILDERNESS SOCIETY
• REWILDING EUROPE
• WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY
• EQUATOR INITIATIVE
• FOUNDATION EARTH
• CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL
• TREESISTERS
• CLIMATE LAND AMBITION AND RIGHTS ALLIANCE
• THE GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP ON FOREST AND LANDSCAPE RESTORATION
• GLOBAL LANDSCAPES FORUM
• WILD FOR LIFE
• WWF | WORLD WIDE FUND FOR NATURE
• GLOBAL PEATLANDS INITIATIVE
• SIERRA CLUB
• NATURE BASED SOLUTIONS INITIATIVE
• FERN
• EU BIOMASS LEGAL CASE
• HEALTH IN HARMONY
• EUROPEAN OUTDOOR CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION
• SANCTUARY ASIA
• SCOTLAND: THE BIG PICTURE
• PLAN VIVO
• NORTHEAST WILDERNESS TRUST
• WILD FOUNDATION
• BIRDLIFE INTERNATIONAL
• JOHN MUIR TRUST
• IUCN | INTERNATIONAL UNION FOR THE CONSERVATIONS OF NATURE
• WETLANDS INTERNATIONAL
• URBAN BIODIVERSITY HUB
• PUBLIC PASTURES – PUBLIC INTEREST
• GO CONSCIOUS EARTH
• OCEANSWELL
• PLANT-FOR-THE-PLANET
• ALLIANCE FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN AFRICA
• AFRICAN CONSERVATION FOUNDATION
• TRUE NATURE FOUNDATION
• A ROCHA
• THE EUROPEAN NATURE TRUST

[April 4, 2019][April 6, 2019][June 13, 2019]

In support of the commitments of TFA 2020 partners to reduce deforestation in tropical forest countries, TFA 2020 has throughout the years grown its partner members and continues to bring on board those key actors committed to tackling deforestation. Since June 2015, the Tropical Forest Alliance Secretariat is hosted at the World Economic Forum offices in Geneva, with financial support of the governments of the Norway and United Kingdom.” [Source]