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First published on Jul 01, 2019

Avtar Kamani from Pixabay

John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. Hannah Holleman is a director of the Monthly Review Foundation and an associate professor of sociology at Amherst College. Brett Clarkis associate editor of Monthly Review and a professor of sociology at the University of Utah. The authors would like to thank Fred Magdoff for his help.

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n May 21, 2019, the Anthropocene Working Group, established by the Subcommision on Quaternary Stratigraphy of the International Commission on Stratigraphy, voted by more than the necessary 60 percent to recognize the existence of the Anthropocene epoch in geological time, beginning around 1950. It defined this new “chronostratigraphic” epoch as “the period of Earth’s history during which humans have a decisive influence on the state, dynamics, and future of the Earth System.” Anthropogenic change, beginning in the mid–twentieth century, was designated as the principal force in the accelerated evolution of the entire Earth System. The Anthropocene Working Group will proceed next to the designation of a specific “golden spike,” or stratigraphic location, standing for the Anthropocene in the geological record, with the aim of getting the new epoch officially adopted by the International Commission on Stratigraphy in the next several years.¹

A strong international scientific consensus is thus emerging with respect to the designation of the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene—a term often said to have been “coined” by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000, though it first appeared in English decades earlier in “The Anthropogenic System (Period)” in The Great Soviet Encyclopedia.² The Anthropocene, in the scientific worldview, stands for both a quantitative and qualitative break with all previous geological epochs. Changes on a scale that can be seen as dividing major geological epochs, previously occurring over millions of years, are now taking place over decades or at most centuries due to human action. In this respect, the Anthropocene represents a sharp break from the relatively stable Holocene epoch of the last 11,000–12,000 years, the onset of which marked the end of the last ice age.

In the view of the Anthropocene Working Group and today’s Earth System scientists more generally, the advent of the Anthropocene epoch is the product of a Great Acceleration of economically driven change in the mid–twentieth century, associated with what is sometimes called by economists the “golden age” of capitalist growth after the Second World War. This led to the crossing of numerous planetary boundaries, generating various “anthropogenic rifts.”³

The mid–twentieth century was also a period of Cold War. Hence, one “primary marker” of the Anthropocene is “the artificial radionuclides spread worldwide by the thermonuclear bomb tests from the early 1950s.”⁴ Among the epoch-making changes associated with the Great Acceleration are vast hockey stick-shaped increases in: fossil fuel combustion, carbon dioxide emissions, ocean acidification, species extinctions (and losses in biological diversity more generally), nitrogen and phosphorus cycle disruptions, freshwater depletion, forest loss, and chemical pollution. The result is a planetary ecological emergency or Earth System crisis.⁵

The Anthropocene, in the scientific worldview, stands for both a quantitative and qualitative break with all previous geological epochs. Changes on a scale that can be seen as dividing major geological epochs, previously occurring over millions of years, are now taking place over decades or at most centuries due to human action. In this respect, the Anthropocene represents a sharp break from the relatively stable Holocene epoch of the last 11,000–12,000 years, the onset of which marked the end of the last ice age.

Today there can be no doubt about the main force behind this planetary emergency—the exponential growth of the capitalist world economy, particularly in the decades since the mid–twentieth century. Capital itself can be described as a social relation of self-expanding economic (commodity) value. Capitalism, or the system of capital accumulation based in class exploitation and conforming to laws of motion enforced by market competition, recognizes no limits to its own self-expansion. There is no amount of profit, no amount of wealth, and no amount of consumption that is “enough” or “too much.”⁶ In this system, the planetary environment is not viewed as a place with inherent boundaries within which human beings must live, together with Earth’s other species, but rather as a realm to be exploited in a process of growing economic expansion in the interest of unlimited acquisitive gain, most of which ends up in the hands of a very few. Businesses, according to the inner logic of capital, must either grow or die—as must the system itself.

Capitalism thus promotes a “madness of economic reason” that can be seen as undermining the healthy human metabolic relation to the environment.⁷ The mere critique of capitalism as an abstract economic system, however, is insufficient in addressing today’s environmental problems. Rather, it is necessary also to examine the structure of accumulation on a world scale, coupled with the division of the world into competing nation-states. Our planetary problems cannot realistically be addressed without tackling the imperialist world system, or globalized capitalism, organized on the basis of classes and nation-states, and divided into center and periphery. Today, this necessarily raises the question of imperialism in the Anthropocene.

Late Imperialism and the Anthropocene

Extra-high profits derived from imperialist rent, drained from the periphery or global South in the process of commodity production, as Samir Amin argued, have historically taken two forms: (1) exchange-value transfers, and (2) use-value transfers.⁸ The latter can be seen as a process of ecological imperialism whereby the extraction of resources has often devastated poor countries, which have been faced with the expropriation (appropriation without equivalent or reciprocity) of the “free gifts of Nature to capital” to be found in their territories, along with the ecological costs of extraction.⁹ According to Gyekye Tanoh, head of the Political Economy Unit of the Third World Network-Africa based in Accra, Ghana, recently released Bank of Ghana data show that,

of the $5.2 billion worth of gold exported by foreign-owned mining interests from Ghana [from 1990 to 2002], the government received only $68.6 million [in] royalty payments and $18.7 million in corporate income taxes. In other words, the government received a total of less than a 1.7% share of the global returns from its own gold. Since these figures grossly underestimate the value of gold exports, the returns to Ghana would be much less. What’s even more shocking is that—based on the analysis of the Bank of Ghana—the share of wealth that goes to the communities directly impacted by the mining is 0.11%.¹⁰

Although gold is a particularly clear and dramatic example, such plunder is a general phenomenon present to various degrees in relation to nearly all natural resources—whether gold, guano, oil, coffee, or soybeans—that are systematically drained from the global South by multinational corporations. The result is to impose enormous ecological and economic losses on poor, dependent countries—a process examined over centuries in relation to colonialism and neocolonialism in the Americas in Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America.¹¹Capitalist economic accounting, which measures exchange values but not use values, has served to disguise that portion of the imperialist rent associated with the expropriation of use values.¹² Hence, it is important to consider the full depth of the ecological robbery of the peoples of the periphery—an inherently violent process historically associated with “the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines” of populations in the periphery, which today is connected to other forms of expropriation and extreme exploitation, also violent in nature.¹³

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, imperialism has been characterized by the dominance of large, monopolistic corporations. This led V. I. Lenin to identify the imperialist stage of capitalism with monopoly capitalism (while expressly recognizing that “colonial policy and imperialism” in a more general sense had also existed prior to this and even prior to capitalism).¹⁴ In its most recent phase, since the 1970s, the imperialist system has taken the form of the growing dominance of monopoly-finance capital, representing a high level of globalization of production in the form of global commodity chains.

These global commodity chains are integrated with an accelerating long-term transfer of physical raw material resources from poor to rich nations with much larger “material footprints,” defined as “the global allocation of used raw material extraction to the final demand of an economy.” Utilizing material footprint analysis, it was found that, in 2008, 40 percent of total global raw material extraction was for the purpose of enabling trade in other countries. Some seventy billion tons of raw materials were extracted that year, the highest up to that point in all of history. Imports of raw material equivalents (embodied primary materials) in trade are highest per capita for rich economies, led by Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The overall trend in the mature economies is toward a “process of externalization of resource-intensive processes,” making them more and more dependent on raw material-equivalent imports from the rest of the world. At the same time, about two-thirds of the total material flow in extracted resources associated with exports remains in the exporting countries primarily as processed wastes and auxiliary material flows, often generating considerable ecological damage, categorized as economic externalities.¹⁵

Although China is often designated as the country with the largest material footprint, drawing on the resources of the entire world, the picture that this conveys is false, given that China is by far and away a net exporter of primary materials in embodied (material footprint) terms. Such a development pattern, associated with global South countries generally, leaves these nation-states with outsized ecological costs while, in consumption terms, the benefits of the natural resources go mainly to the rich countries under conditions dominated by unequal ecological exchange.¹⁶

If ecological plunder has occurred over centuries through various modes of expropriation and exploitation imposed directly on colonies and neocolonies in the global South, the effects of ecological imperialism are also evident in relation to the global commons, that is, in the oceans and the atmosphere. Since the passage of the 1982 Law of the Sea, nearly half of the world’s ocean falls under the jurisdiction of nation-states, mostly within “exclusive economic zones.” Eighty-three countries, most of them small island nations, but also larger states like the United Kingdom and the United States, now have more ocean than land in their territorial jurisdictions. This has facilitated the expropriation of ocean resources. It has also given dominance in this realm to the leading imperialist nations, which have the capital and technology to plunder these resources. These core nations are also frequently able to seize control from and take advantage of peripheral states, particularly with the economic leverage provided by states’ increasing introduction of privatization regimes of ocean management. The result in recent years has been what is known as ocean grabbing, shutting out small nations and small fishers, and allowing multinational corporations to move in and overexploit both fisheries and seabed resources. Meanwhile, the International Seabed Authority allows states and corporations to exploit, for their own benefit, oil, natural gas, minerals, and precious metals in and under the seabed in international waters, despite the fact that these are ocean commons.¹⁷

As United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, declared in 2012, “‘ocean-grabbing’—in the shape of shady access agreements that harm small-scale fishers…and the diversion of resources away from local populations—can be as serious a threat as ‘land-grabbing.'”¹⁸ Ocean grabbing is thus a process of enclosing the ocean commons. The Transnational Institute in 2012 determined that “large-scale fleets operating in territorial marine zones ‘capture’ resources from local fishers and the entire chain of people who rely on traditional fishing activities. The European Union’s (EU) fishing agreements with Morocco, Mauritius, Mauritania and Pacific Island States, for example, are fostering this kind of dispossession.”¹⁹ Global fishing fleets have doubled their capacity to 3.5 million vessels since the 1970s, but the 1 percent of these that are industrial ships account for up to 60 percent of the seafood catch. Small island countries often get a mere pittance for the sale of their fishing rights to international fleets.²⁰

What is sometimes called the atmospheric commons reveals the historical consequences of imperialism in an entirely different way. Anthropogenic climate change induced mainly by cumulative carbon dioxide emissions since the Industrial Revolution has compelled the world community to adopt an implicit climate budget based on limits on carbon emissions, determined by maximum acceptable levels of carbon concentration in the atmosphere. This means finding a way to get back down to 350 parts per million (ppm) from the present 414 ppm of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, while staying at all costs below 450 ppm. The goal is to limit the increase in global average temperature over preindustrial levels to 1.5ºC—with a 2ºC increase (corresponding to 450 ppm) representing the final guardrail, beyond which climate change is likely to spin irreversibly out of control. In accordance with these parameters, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has recently called for net zero carbon emissions by 2050, which would give at least a 50 percent chance of limiting the increase of global average temperatures to 1.5ºC.

At present, more than 60 percent of the allowable carbon under this budget—if the world is merely to seek to stay below a 2ºC increase in global average temperature (equivalent to 450 ppm)—has been emitted to the atmosphere. Today’s business as usual puts the world on a trajectory to hit the trillionth metric ton of carbon, reaching the 2ºC boundary—marking irreversible climate change—in 2035.²¹ Carbon dioxide emissions are cumulative, so what matters is the amount that each country or region has contributed. The United States, Canada, Europe (and Eurasia), Japan, and Australia have together contributed around 61 percent of the total, as compared to 13 percent for China and India taken together. Russia accounts for another 7 percent, and world ship and air transport are 4 percent. The entire rest of the globe accounts for 15 percent of cumulative emissions. These disparities are only increased if consumption-based rather than production-based emissions are used.²²

From the viewpoint of the global South, this means that the atmospheric space for the use of fossil fuels for their own development has already been taken up by the imperialist countries and very little remains for South countries to develop their own economies. In principle, the United Nations Climate Convention under the Kyoto Protocol had given much greater responsibility to wealthy countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, stipulating that the Annex I countries would drastically cut their emissions ahead of developing countries with fewer cumulative emissions.²³ Yet, U.S. emissions per capita have remained at about three times the global mean and its overall emissions continue to increase. Calculating the per capita shares of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions in 2012, the core capitalist countries had already exceeded their fair share by 568 billion metric tons, creating an enormous carbon debt or obligation to underdeveloped countries.²⁴

Although the poles are warming faster than the low latitude regions of the globe, the effects at the mid– to low latitudes, especially dry regions, can be very severe. Global warming is hitting the hotter, low latitude, tropical and subtropical regions of the earth especially hard. Many low latitude countries are facing temperature increases that threaten to make them unlivable. Earth System conditions thus determine which global regions are most affected geophysically by climate change, with countries in the tropics and subtropics initially more vulnerable. Thus, one crucial study in Environmental Research Letters in 2011 declared: “Those countries affected most by the warming are not the ones that are most responsible for it. The fact that locally significant warming emerges first in [low latitude] countries with low emissions has no underlying economic or societal cause.”²⁵ As stated by climatologists James Hansen and Makiko Sato, “temperature rise itself imposes a strong disproportionately large effect on low latitude countries.… Business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions result in some regions in the Middle East becoming practically uninhabitable by the end of the century.” The subtropics are particularly vulnerable to drought intensification. In contrast, countries located at higher latitudes, which are generally wealthier, while affected by climate change-induced increases in storm intensity, droughts, and heat waves, may in some cases actually find their average temperatures moving more toward the global optimum.²⁶

But if countries in hotter, low latitude regions are affected disproportionately by global warming, this is only made far worse by the fact that these countries are also generally poorer, which is the result of social-historical causes. One effect of climate change is therefore to exacerbate already existing global inequalities. The absolutely catastrophic effects of climate change are therefore expected to emerge first in the South. The North too is threatened, but, at least initially, to a lesser extent, due to both environmental and social factors. An analysis in Nature provided a benchmark estimate in which “average income in the poorest 40% of countries declines by 75% by 2100 relative to a world without climate change, while the richest 20% experience slight gains, since they are generally cooler.”²⁷ Although the numbers might be questioned, the divergence in trends is obvious.

This divergence in fates between the global North and South, strongly impacted by the imperialist dimensions of the metabolic rift, is already making itself felt. An article by Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Marshall Burke, “Global Warming Has Increased Economic Inequality,” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 14, 2019, indicated that “there is growing evidence that poorer countries or individuals are more negatively affected by a changing climate, either because they lack the resources for climate protection or because they tend to reside in warmer regions where additional warming would be detrimental to both productivity and health.” The combination of environmental and social factors suggests that there are some “warming-induced penalties in poor countries, along with warming-induced benefits in some rich countries.”²⁸ The complexity of climate conditions, and the multiplicity of dangers attending abrupt climate change, suggest that while poor countries in the South will experience catastrophic effects, the threats to the countries in the North are by no means negligible. Still, the most important factor in determining differential outcomes is undoubtedly the social one, related to the greater wealth and hence access to resources of the North.

Other climate change factors also point to greater impact in the global South than the North. Small island developing states, thirty-seven of which are members of the United Nations and another fifteen of which are classified as mere territories, are all endangered by sea-level rise, as are low-lying and often densely populated coastal nations such as Bangladesh and Vietnam.²⁹ The loss of “water towers” associated with mountain glaciers and headwaters that behave as reservoirs, storing water during winter and releasing it slowly in the summer, will have the greatest impact in the Indian subcontinent and China where as many as a billion or more people may have their water supply diminished by the melting of the Himalayan glaciers.³⁰ Climate change could disrupt the monsoons with enormous, but unpredictable, consequences. Tropical forests with their great diversity of life and their importance for regional and global climate stability are especially vulnerable to warming.

Given the reality of imperialism, the main response by the economic and military power structures in the North to this climate rift, pointing to more serious vulnerabilities to climate change in the global South than in the global North, has been mainly twofold: (1) to explore how these vulnerabilities in the South create new global security issues, and (2) how they might be exploited so as to increase imperial dominance. This is most obvious in the case of the United States, where the new grand strategy of the Donald Trump administration is one of global “energy dominance” through the expansion of fossil fuel production and the use of this to leverage greater geopolitical and geoeconomic power.³¹ The U.S. military, meanwhile, is preparing for a host of new vulnerabilities, related in particular to oil and water, and for interventions to secure U.S. global hegemony in these changing circumstances. Economic and military interests are working together to strategize means for securing global value and resource chains, so as both to strengthen Fortress America and secure its supply lines—working as well with its junior partners in the triad, Europe and Japan. This strategic repositioning of imperialism in the Anthropocene can best be seen by examining the race for control of natural resources in two areas: fossil fuels and water.

Energy Imperialism

In 2018, John Lehman, secretary of the navy in the Ronald Reagan administration, reflecting on the two major wars fought by the United States in the Middle East at the close of the twentieth and the opening of the twenty-first century, declared: “You don’t want to fall into the trap of the left and say that we only went into Iraq for their oil but depending [on] how you phrase it, the costs [of these wars] can be attributed to the strategic dependence we have on Gulf oil.”³²In other words, the issue, according to Lehman, was not just the immediate rewards from additional oil production—a naive view he attributed to the left—but the defense of an entire imperial economic system based on fossil fuels.

Today, following the fracking revolution, the United States is officially pursuing a strategy of total energy dominance in what is seen as a global competition for fossil fuels, against a backdrop of planetary ecological disruption.³³ The role of climate change in altering the conditions of U.S. imperial dominance permeate U.S. military and security discussions. And while global warming itself is not mentioned in the official 2017 National Security Strategydocument of the United States, its very absence, coupled with the insistence on defending U.S. “sovereignty” with respect to fossil fuels and the criticism of “antigrowth” approaches to fossil fuel energy, point to its overriding significance in the Anthropocene crisis even there.³⁴

The general approach in the U.S. military and strategic community is to see climate change as a “threat multiplier,” associated with such facts as: political instability, negative effects on food availability and prices, water and energy shortages, spread of disease, extreme weather emergencies, mass migration, disruption of maritime transport, economic collapse in vulnerable nations, and increased threats to economic global supply chains—particularly in strategic materials.³⁵ The prevailing viewpoint is one of looking outward from Fortress America and its various global bastions, encompassing the United States (and Canada); its military bases overseas of which there are more than six hundred; its dependencies; its European and Japanese so-called allies; the Greater Middle East, where it has been in perpetual war for almost three decades; and its various critical supply lines.³⁶

As early as 2003, a report commissioned by the Pentagon on abrupt climate change declared that it was necessary to “create vulnerability metrics” as to which countries would be hit hardest by climate change in order to make it possible for the United States to act effectively in safeguarding its own geostrategic interests. It was suggested that, under these circumstances, relatively well-off populations with ample natural resources and food producing capabilities, such as the United States and Australia, would be likely driven to build walls and “defensive fortresses” around themselves to keep massive waves of would-be immigrants out, no doubt in the name of defending their national sovereignty.³⁷ As the report explained,

violence and disruption stemming from the stresses created by abrupt changes in the climate pose a different type of threat to national security than we are accustomed to today. Military confrontation may be triggered by a desperate need for natural resources such as energy, food, and water rather than conflicts over ideology, religion, or national honor. The shifting motivation for confrontation would alter which countries are most vulnerable and the existing warning signs for security threats.³⁸

As the world’s carrying capacity declines under harsh climatic conditions, the authors of the report indicated that warfare would become more widespread, producing increased dangers of thermonuclear conflagration.

The military and security literature in the United States has continued to promote this general strategic outlook, affirming the reality of climate change while focusing on the means of advancing U.S. global hegemony in the context of the current planetary emergency. Implicit in this is the recognition that the United States will be less directly hit initially than most of the rest of the world by the effects of global warming. Washington can then concentrate on using its global economic, political, and military power in these circumstances of growing worldwide chaos and catastrophe to advance its own agenda of full-spectrum dominance.

In this respect, the U.S. military, imperial state, and economy remain tightly linked to the major U.S. fossil fuel corporations. This has led to the development of a new strategy of energy imperialism, in which U.S. preeminence in the control of world energy and a commitment to maximal fossil fuel extraction have been placed at the center of today’s national security objectives. With the fracking revolution, U.S. production of oil and gas rose massively, causing the Barack Obama administration to remove regulations limiting the export of U.S. crude oil. Between 2015 and 2018, U.S. crude oil exports increased fourfold and its liquid natural gas exports increased by thirty-five-fold. The United States in 2018 exported two million barrels of crude oil a day, making it one of the world’s leading oil exporters. At the same time, decreased dependence on oil imports has allowed it to impose stringent economic sanctions on major oil powers to which it is opposed, such as Venezuela, Iran, and Russia.³⁹

The Trump administration has sought to remove all regulatory restrictions that would limit the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. This has resulted in a vast expansion in fossil fuel production and infrastructure, with the United States emerging as the leading fossil fuel producer of both oil and natural gas in the world. Even as debates are taking place on a Green New Deal in the United States and in the world as a whole, oil- and gas-pipeline expansion globally has tripled since 1996, with over half of the ongoing pipeline expansion projects (and over a third if measured by pipeline length) located in North America, connecting points of extraction with refineries and export terminals. Oil- and gas-pipeline expansion plans (preconstruction and construction) in North America currently amount to $232 billion (over $600 billion globally), with total oil and gas infrastructure expansion in excess of $1 trillion for North America and $2.9 trillion globally.⁴⁰

The U.S. pipeline boom is directed at exports since the expansion of oil and gas extraction is far more than can be absorbed by domestic consumption. Under a Current Policies Scenario (or business as usual), by 2040 world demand for natural gas relative to 2017 prices is projected to rise by 55 percent, while oil demand is expected to increase by 26 percent. Globally, “banks, equity investors, and bondholders are in the process of placing over $600 billion in bets on an expanded pipeline system [which includes over 300 pipelines in development globally] with an expected lifespan of 40 years or more.”⁴¹

According to Ted Nace, lead author of a Global Energy Monitor report on the Pipeline Bubble, “these pipelines are locking in huge emissions for 40 to 50 years at a time, with the scientists saying we have to move in 10 years. These pipelines are a bet that the world won’t get serious about climate change, allowing the incumbency of oil and gas to strengthen.”⁴² The pipeline infrastructure creates a path dependency, ensuring investment and support for burning fossil fuels, dramatically shortening the climate horizon associated with the trillionth metric ton of carbon. In the United States alone, the natural-gas output made possible by these pipelines, either under construction or in the preconstruction stage, would add over half a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year by 2040, above 2017 levels.⁴³ ExxonMobil, the leading U.S. oil multinational, has declared that it plans on pumping 25 percent more oil and gas in 2025 in its world operations than it did in 2017.⁴⁴

It is on the back of this expansion of oil and natural gas production and pipelines that the Trump administration has erected its new imperialist strategy of global energy dominance in defiance of all concerns over climate change. As Trump declared in June 2017: “We will be dominant. We will export American energy all over the world, all around the globe,” especially Asia. The fossil fuel industry had saved U.S. “sovereignty.” U.S. energy policy is to expand not only oil and gas production but coal production worldwide. The United States, he declared, was working on financing overseas coal plants in Ukraine and elsewhere.⁴⁵

The U.S. National Security Strategy document released in December 2017 insisted that “energy dominance”—giving the United States the central position in all aspects of global energy production and consumption, based on “unleashing” its abundant fossil fuel resources—was the key to economic growth and to “countering an anti-growth energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests.”⁴⁶ Michael Klare notes: “From the White House perspective, the U.S. is engaged in a momentous struggle for global power with rival nations and, it is claimed, the country’s abundance of fossil fuels affords it a vital edge. The more of those fuels America produces and exports, the greater its stature in a competitive world system, which is precisely why maximizing such output has already become a major pillar of President Trump’s national security policy.” This “militarization of energy policy” is not occurring so much in ignorance of climate change or of the advent of the Anthropocene, as based on a bet that fossil fuels are the means to increased imperial power, overriding all other considerations, and need to be locked in so that no alternative-energy revolution is possible.⁴⁷Humanity be damned.

On May 28, 2019, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a press release rebranding natural gas as freedom gas and referring to its carbon dioxide molecules as “molecules of U.S. freedom.”⁴⁸

Water Imperialism

One of the most immediate and profound impacts of climate change for people around the world is the acceleration of the global water cycle caused by excessive greenhouse gases (trapping heat/energy) in the atmosphere. Essentially, as science writer Richard A. Kerr put it, since 1950 “wet places have been getting wetter while dry places got drier.”⁴⁹ More violent storms and excessive precipitation in the form of flooding heightens the risk to agriculture in wet regions. The growing threat of extreme, long-term drought in many other regions of the world, the fact that the majority of the world’s agricultural lands suffer from high levels of soil degradation and loss, and the displacement of people due to such anthropogenic ecological disasters are indicative of a renewed expansion of dust-bowlification at an unprecedented pace and scale.⁵⁰

While deforestation is a well-known contributor to climate change, it also has direct effects on the world’s hydrological cycle. Forests are critical components of the world’s water cycle and are responsible for providing life-giving rainfall to regions around the world. Widespread deforestation results in the loss of “giant rivers of water in the air”—formed from the water vapor released into the atmosphere by the world’s vast forests as trees and other plants exhale through their foliage moisture drawn from the ground via complex root systems.

Fred Pearce writes: “As we shave the planet of trees, we risk drying up these aerial rivers and the lands that depend on them for rain. A growing body of research suggests that this hitherto neglected impact of deforestation could in many continental interiors dwarf the impacts of global climate change. It could dry up the Nile, hobble the Asian monsoon, and desiccate fields from Argentina to the Midwestern United States.”⁵¹

In the present imperial economic context, the impact of the acceleration and disruption of the global water cycle on everyday water availability and food production is severe enough to contribute to hunger levels rising once again, especially in Latin America and most of Africa.⁵²In fact, while Bain and Company recently reported that in 2019 “the luxury goods market continues to shine” with “gourmet food and fine dining…up 6%,” severe hunger is currently higher than in 2014 in every region except North America and Europe.⁵³ Unusually dry conditions in Central America are partly responsible for the migrants heading north to the United States.

In this new Dust Bowl era, pollution, unsustainable water withdrawals (especially for agricultural, industrial, and energy production), inadequate and failing infrastructure, deforestation, and the melting of the world’s mountain glaciers—the apex of the world’s water towers—compound the threats of freshwater and food scarcity.⁵⁴ A 2016 study published in Science Advances indicated that already “about 66% [of the global population] (4.0 billion people) lives under severe water scarcity…at least 1 month of the year.… The number of people facing severe water scarcity for at least 4 to 6 months per year is 1.8 to 2.9 billion.… Half a billion people face severe water scarcity all year round.”⁵⁵

Further adding to the woes of the most vulnerable are those profiting from the misery imposed on millions by the pursuit of accumulation without end. Recognizing the return potential of controlling the dwindling resources most critical for life, “corporations and investors in wealthy countries are buying up foreign farmland and the freshwater perks that come with it.” The United States is one of the leading countries in this regard. Recent trends in international land deals indicate that investors “don’t grab land in places without access to water,” as geographer Wendy Wolford put it. In recent decades, about 66 percent of these purchases were in countries with high levels of hunger. Environmental scientist Paolo D’Odorico, who has helped document these neocolonial trends, said that “in many of these countries, the sum of the water being grabbed would be enough to eliminate malnourishment.”⁵⁶

This situation is clearly untenable for billions of people on the planet, leading even Trump to recognize that “water may be the most important issue we face for the next generation.”⁵⁷ It is no wonder under these conditions that, as scholars of international affairs from George Washington University write, water problems are an “accelerator of violence” and “scholarly literature and intelligence forecasts have also raised doubts that water stress will continue to engender more cooperation than conflict.”⁵⁸ A report by the Center for Climate and Security outlines the struggle for control of the world’s limited freshwater and the “weaponization of water” as “epicenters of climate and security” in “the new geostrategic landscape of the Anthropocene.” In other words, they are critical issues for global security, impacted by a rapidly changing climate and affecting regions around the world.⁵⁹

In the face of all of this, foreign-policy analysts have focused on “who controls the tap” and urged a more aggressive approach to securing U.S. strategic interests with respect to water, integrating government and private-sector efforts in regions around the world and taking leadership against the encroachment of competitors like China. They highlight the centrality of water and the control of key freshwater sources to leveraging soft power and consolidating hegemony in regions, especially under conditions of increased water scarcity.⁶⁰ Of particular concern is control of the world’s water towers or mountain glaciers and headwaters that account for more than half the world’s freshwater. These water resources are critical ecologically, socially, and economically because “all the major rivers of the world have their headwaters in highlands and more than half of humanity relies on freshwater that accumulates in mountain areas.”⁶¹ China’s control of the Tibetan plateau and the potential conflict with India over infrastructure projects that divert water from downstream users are particular concerns. Analyst Troy Sternberg writes that “in transboundary environments water infrastructure exemplifies assertion of hegemonic rights and control” and “the future of water towers very much reflects a power game, both in terms of who is able to control and manipulate the water, and whether or not this actor can rebuff any challenge from downstream users.”⁶²

As water scarcity increases and glacier retreat and disappearance hasten under climate change, the stakes will only be higher in contests for control of the larger repositories of freshwater in the world’s highest peaks. The downstream impacts of glacier shrinkage indicate that the scale of potential changes is enormous. More than 1.4 billion people rely on water from the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers as well as the upstream snow and ice reserves that feed them. Not all of these rivers, however, appear to be equally subject to the effects of climate change, with the Brahmaputra and Indus basins most directly affected.⁶³

In 2012, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an intelligence community assessment report on Global Water Security, outlining particular risks and opportunities of interest to the United States in regard to river basins around the world. It highlights the threat of increased water problems in countries “important to the United States,” which will hamper economic growth and U.S. policy objectives. The report also outlines the opportunities these problems present for the United States, whose expertise and technology will be sought to address water problems, and for U.S. businesses that will profit from increased agricultural exports to regions made less self-sufficient due to freshwater scarcity. It is stressed that “active engagement by the United States to resolve water challenges will improve US influence and may forestall other actors achieving the same influence at US expense.”⁶⁴

The emphasis on “water as an opportunity” is a prominent theme in the 2017 Global Water Strategy released by the Trump administration, which notes that “water is an entry point to advance core democratic values.” Engaging in international water issues, it is indicated, is a profit-making opportunity for the private sector and an avenue through which to “encourage global institutions and organizations to promote best policies and approaches aligned with U.S. interests.” Water crises are deemed as important opportunities to promote U.S. interests through strategic foreign aid and assistance.⁶⁵

Despite the strategy outlined by the current U.S. administration, Wilson Center analysts and others suggest the U.S. government is not doing enough. They propose that “to enable such strategic direction on hydro-diplomacy, the president should establish a public-private Center for Water Conflict Prevention. This would mobilize a unified government approach while leveraging the private sector to harness the economic opportunities created.” Such coordination through an established center would, they argue, create “hope and potential opportunity for shifting the water-related balance of power in critical regions.”The same analysts argue that the inevitable consequence of not implementing full-throttle engagement with water issues, especially in the context of climate change, is the decline of the U.S. position. They warn that “if left unchecked, the effects of climate change on Asia’s water security could drive China’s neighbors to align more closely with the country that controls the tap. This alignment could both undermine U.S. presence in the region and drive the region toward a multipolar leadership structure that favors China. Defense and security policymakers ignore the implications of water security in Asia at their peril.”⁶⁶

Yet, while U.S. foreign-policy and security analysts, such as Marcus D. King and Julia Burnell, discuss “The Weaponization of Water in a Changing Climate” and point out that the “U.S. intelligence community suggests that as water becomes scarcer, states may begin employing water as an interstate ‘weapon,'” the notion that the United States as the leading imperial power might engage in such actions is left out of consideration altogether. Nevertheless, Washington is in full support of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen where it has weaponized water in one of the most water-scarce countries in the world, repeatedly bombing dams, reservoirs, and sanitation facilities, leaving nineteen million people in the country without clean water.⁶⁷

While the foreign-policy establishment hones in on the world’s water, and the potential regional, national, and subnational conflicts that now seem likely, at the local level, water and earth defenders are murdered with impunity in record numbers by the henchmen of some of the core industries at the center of the world’s water crisis: agribusiness, the oil and mining industries, poachers, and loggers.⁶⁸

Extinction Rebellions

The failure to put the issue of imperialism in the Anthropocene at the center of its analysis is the greatest weakness of the Western ecological movement. It is often acknowledged that the effects of climate change and the crossing of planetary boundaries in general are having their greatest effects on the global South, where millions are already suffering from climate change. This is often connected to global inequality and to the long history of colonialism and imperialism. It is also recognized that the detrimental effects of global warming are magnified by global inequality. Finally, it is often understood on the left that climate change is a planetary issue and requires a global rising of humanity to overcome the capitalist power structure that is driving it.⁶⁹ Nevertheless, there is very little consciousness at present that imperialism, representing the global rift inherent in the world capitalist system, is an active force organized against ecological revolution, seeking to lock in the fossil fuel system and the current regime of maximal environmental degradation and human exploitation. Twenty-first-century imperialism is, in this sense, the exterminist phase of capitalism.

All of this points to the fact that any critique of capitalism that does not include imperialism is insufficient to confront our current epochal crisis. To be sure, any realistic attempt to face up to the crisis of the Anthropocene must begin with a general critique of capitalism as a system that puts the accumulation of capital before all else. It is this that constitutes the root of today’s planetary climacteric, necessitating an anticapitalist movement devoted to ecological sustainability and substantive equality—that is, to socialism. The fact that capitalism is a threat to human survival makes it obsolete as a social system.

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.

In these new no-analogue historical conditions, an emergent “species consciousness” is rapidly arising, based on the identification with humanity as a whole and even with other species, as described by famed psychologist Robert J. Lifton in his book, The Climate Swerve.⁷⁰ It is this sense of a shared global material reality—arising in dialectical form alongside new revanchist nationalistic movements associated with the very same epochal crisis—that has proven to be a major motivating factor behind Britain’s Extinction Rebellion movement and the student strikes throughout Europe. It is increasingly understood, especially by the young, that the rich nations have a historic responsibility for climate change along with the greatest capacity to stop it and requiring the fewest sacrifices, and that this involves nothing less than the fate of the earth and humanity as a whole. Lifton calls the new “species consciousness” a “swerve” after the philosophy of indeterminacy and freedom of the great ancient materialist philosopher Epicurus—the significance of whose thought in this respect was first recognized by Karl Marx.⁷¹

But such a swerve, focusing on the needs of working humanity as a whole, if it is to come to fruition, must recognize that capitalism in its most concrete, most intensive, and most deadly form is the imperialist world system, and can only truly be countered in those terms. It follows that there can be no ecological revolution in the face of the current existential crisis unless it is an anti-imperialist one, drawing its power from the great mass of suffering humanity. The global ecological movement must thus be a movement for the unification of the oppressed, emanating from innumerable Extinction Rebellions, and leading to the first true International of the world’s workers and peoples. The poor shall inherit the earth or there will be no earth left to inherit.

Notes

↩ Anthropocene Working Group, “Results of Binding Vote by AWG,” May 21, 2019, available at http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org. For a full discussion of the issues related to the geological dating of the Anthropocene, see Jan Zalasiewicz, Colin N. Waters, Mark Williams, and Colin P. Summerhayes, The Anthropocene as a Geological Time Unit: A Guide to the Scientific Evidence and Current Debate(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
↩ V. Shantser, “The Anthropogenic System (Period),” in Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 140; John Bellamy Foster, foreword to Facing the Anthropocene, Ian Angus (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016), 11.
↩ Clive Hamilton and Jacques Grinevald, “Was the Anthropocene Anticipated?,” Anthropocene Review2, no. 1 (2015): 67.
↩ Anthropocene Working Group, “Results of Binding Vote by AWG.”
↩ Angus, Facing the Anthropocene, 44–45; J. R. McNeill, The Great Acceleration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).
↩ Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2014), 43.
↩ David Harvey, Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
↩ Samir Amin, Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx’s Law of Value (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018), 110–11.
↩ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 37 (New York: International, 1975), 732–33; John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, “The Expropriation of Nature,” Monthly Review 69, no. 10 (March 2018): 1–27.
↩ Gyekye Tanoh, interview with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, in Resource Sovereignty: The Agenda for Africa’s Exit from the State of Plunder, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Dossier no. 16, May 2019; Celina Della Croce, “3 Percent of Ghana’s Gold Remains in the Hands of Multinational Corporations,” Salon, May 25, 2019.
↩ Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997).
↩ There is now a growing literature on unequal ecological exchange. See, for example, Andrew K. Jorgenson and Brett Clark, “The Economy, Military, and Unequal Exchange Relationships in Comparative Perspective,” Social Problems 56, no. 4 (2009): 621–46; John Bellamy Foster and Hannah Holleman, “The Theory of Unequal Ecological Exchange,” Journal of Peasant Studies 41, no. 1–2 (2014): 199–233.
↩ Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), 915.
↩ I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York: International, 1939), 81–82, 88.
↩ Thomas O. Wiedmann, Heinz Schandl, Manfred Lenzen, Faniel Moran, Sangwon Suh, James West, and Keiichiro Kanemoto, “The Material Footprint of Nations,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 20 (2015): 6271–76.
↩ Weidmann et. al., “The Material Footprint of Nations,” 6272–73.
↩ Florian Doerr, “Blue Growth and Ocean Grabbing,” Colloquium Paper No. 18, International Institute of Social Studies, International Colloquium, February 4–5, 2016, 1–20 ; Transnational Institute Agrarian Justice Program, The Global Ocean Grab: A Primer (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2014); Nishan Degnarain and Greg Stone, “83 Countries Are More Ocean than Land,” World Economic Forum, October 16, 2017; Stefano B. Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark, The Tragedy of the Commodity (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015).
↩ “‘Ocean-Grabbing’ as Serious a Threat as ‘Land-Grabbing’ —UN Food Expert,” United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, October 30, 2012, http://srfood.org.
↩ Transnational Institute Agrarian Justice Program, The Global Ocean Grab, 7.
↩ Doerr, “Blue Growth and Ocean Grabbing,” 6, 8.
↩ http://trillionthtonne.org, accessed May 27, 2019. The trillionth ton is measured in terms of metric tons of carbon (not carbon dioxide).
↩ James Hansen and Makiko Sato, “Regional Climate Change and National Responsibilities,” Environmental Research Letters 11 (2016): 6; Glenn P. Peters, “From Production-Based to Consumption-Based National Emission Inventories,” Ecological Economics 65, no. 1 (2008): 13–23; World Resources Institute, “6 Graphs to Explain the World’s Top 10 Emitters,” November 25, 2014.
↩ On the early climate negotiations and the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, see John Bellamy Foster, Ecology Against Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002), 13–22.
↩ Hansen and Sato, “Regional Climate Change and National Responsibilities,” 5–6; Martin Khor, “The Equitable Sharing of Atmospheric and Development Space: Summary,” paper for UNFCCC AWG-LCA Workshop on Equity Bonn, May 16, 2012.
↩ Mahlstein, R. Knutti, S. Solomon, and R. W. Portmann, “Early Onset of Significant Local Warming in Low Latitude Countries,” Environmental Research Letters 6 (2011): 4; Sebastian Bathiany, Vasilis Dakos, Martin Scheffer, and Timothy M. Lenton, “Climate Models Predict Increasing Temperature Variability in Poor Countries,” Science Advances 4, no. 5 (2018): 1–10.
↩ Hansen and Saito, “Regional Climate Change and National Responsibilities,” 1, 7.
↩ Marshall Burke, Solomon M. Hsiang, and Edward Miguel, “Global Non-Linear Effect of Temperature on Economic Production,” Nature 527 (2015): 238.
↩ Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Marshall Burke, “Global Warming Has Increased Global Economic Inequality,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 20 (2019): 9808–10.
↩ United Nations Security Council, “Issues Facing Small Island Developing States,” July 30, 2015; Degnarain and Stone, “83 Countries Are More Ocean than Land.”
↩ Tony Sternberg, “Water Towers: Security Risks in a Changing Climate,” in Epicenters of Climate and Security: The New Geostrategic Landscape of the Anthropocene, ed. Caitlin E. Werrell and Francesco Femia (Washington, D.C.: Center for Climate and Security, 2017), 20–27.
↩ National Security Strategy of the United States of America, December 2017, 22–24.
↩ “The Military Cost of Defending the Global Oil Supply,” Securing America’s Future Energy, September 21, 2018, 9.
↩ “The Military Cost of Defending the Global Oil Supply.”
↩ National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 2017; Donald J. Trump, “Remarks by President Trump at the Unleashing American Energy Event,” June 29, 2017, http://whitehouse.gov.
↩ Susan Maret, “Climate Change and National Security Through the Lens of Key Federal Publications,” Project Censored, January 8, 2019; Marcus D. King and Julia Burnell, “The Weaponization of Water in a Changing Climate,” in Epicenters of Climate and Security, 37–40; Robert McLeman, “Migration and Displacement in a Changing Climate,” in Epicenters of Climate and Security, 100–107.
↩ “Blank Spots on the Map: Almost All the U.S. Army’s Secret Military Bases Across the Globe Revealed on Google and Bing,” Daily Mail, December 15, 2013.
↩ Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States Security, October 2003, 18; John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), 114.
↩ Schwartz and Randall, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario, 14.
↩ Jie Jenny Zou, “How Washington Unleashed Fossil-Fuel Exports and Sold Out on Climate,” Center for Public Integrity, October 16, 2018; International Institute for Strategic Studies, “U.S. Oil Import Dependence Reaches 60-Year Low,” December 11, 2018; U.S. Energy Information Administration, “The United States Remains the World’s Top Producer of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hydrocarbons,” May 21, 2018, http://eia.gov; “The U.S. Exports 2 Million Barrels Per Day of Crude Oil in 2018 to 42 Destinations,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, April 15, 2019, http://eia.gov.
↩ Ted Nace, Lydia Plante, and James Browning, Pipeline Bubble: North America Is Betting Over $1 Trillion on a Risky Fossil Infrastructure Boom (San Francisco: Global Energy Monitor, 2019).
↩ Nace, Plante, and Browing, Pipeline Bubble, 7–8.
↩ Oliver Milman, “North American Drilling Boom Threatens Big Blow to Climate Efforts, Study Shows,” Guardian, April 25, 2019.
↩ Milman, “North American Drilling Boom.”
↩ “The Truth About Big Oil and Climate Change,” Economist, February 9, 2019, 9.
↩ Trump, “Remarks by President Trump at the Unleashing American Energy Event.”
↩ National Security Strategy, 22–23.
↩ Michael T. Klare, “The Strategy of Maximal Extraction,” TomDispatch blog, February 11, 2018.
↩ S. Department of Energy, “Department of Energy Authorizes Additional LNG Exports from Freeport LNG,” May 28, 2019, http://energy.gov.
↩ Richard A. Kerr, “The Greenhouse Is Making the Water-Poor Even Poorer,” Science 336, no. 405 (2012): 405.
↩ Hannah Holleman, Dustbowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of “Green” Capitalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018); Hannah Holleman, “No Empires, No Dust Bowls,” Monthly Review 70, no. 3 (July–August 2018); Marian Corera, “The Cost of Climate Change?,” NATO Association of Canada, September 26, 2018.
↩ Fred Pearce, “Rivers in the Sky: How Deforestation is Affecting Global Water Cycles,” Yale Environment 360, July 24, 2018.
↩ FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018: Building Climate Resilience for Food Security and Nutrition (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 2018), xiii, 39.
↩ Claudia D’Arpizio, Federica Levato, Filippo Prete, Elisa Del Fabbro, and Joëlle de Montgolfier, “The Future of Luxury: A Look into Tomorrow to Understand Today,” Bain and Company, January 10, 2019; FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018, iii, 3.
↩ Harry Fountain and Ben C. Solomon, “Glaciers are Retreating. Millions Rely on Their Water,” New York Times, January 16, 2019; Stephen Leahy, “From Not Enough to Too Much, the World’s Water Crisis Explained,” National Geographic, March 22, 2018.
↩ Mesfin M. Mekonnen and Arjen Y. Hoekstra, “Four Billion People Facing Severe Water Scarcity,” Science Advances 2, no. 2 (2016).
↩ Brian Bienkowski, “Corporations Grabbing Land and Water Overseas,” Scientific American, February 12, 2013.
↩ S. Government Global Water Strategy, 2017, 2.
↩ King and Burnell, “The Weaponization of Water in a Changing Climate,” 68, 70.
↩ Werrell and Femia, eds., Epicenters of Climate and Security, 1, 6.
↩ Sherri Goodman and Zoe Dutton, “Who Controls the Tap? Addressing Water Security in Asia,” Council on Foreign Relations, October 10, 2018; Joshua W. Busby, “Water and U.S. National Security,” Council on Foreign Relations, January 18, 2017; “Countdown to Day Zero: Water Scarcity and Security,” Council on Foreign Relations, June 1, 2018.
↩ “The Importance of Mountain Snowpack to Water Resources,” The Water Footprint Calculator, October 12, 2018; Hanspeter Liniger and Rolf Weingartner, “Mountains and Freshwater Supply,” Unasylva 49, no. 195 (1998); “How Much of the Earth’s Water Is Stored in Glaciers?,” United States Geological Survey, Accessed May 23, 2019.
↩ Sternberg, “Water Towers,” 22, 24.
↩ Walter W. Immerzeel, Ludovicus P. H. van Beek, Mark F. P. Bierkens, “Climate Change Will Affect the Asian Water Towers,” Science 328, no. 11 (2010): 1382–85; Alexander M. Milner et al., “Glacier Shrinkage Driving Global Changes in Downstream Systems,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 37 (2017); Harry Fountain and Ben C. Solomon, “Glaciers are Retreating. Millions Rely on Their Water,” New York Times, January 16, 2019. It should be noted that there are current efforts to make artificial glaciers during winter using streamwater.
↩ Global Water Security, Intelligence Community Assessment 2012-08, February 2, 2012, 11.
↩ S. Government Global Water Strategy, 5, 10.
↩ Goodman and Dutton, “Who Controls the Tap?”
↩ King and Burnell, “The Weaponization of Water in a Changing Climate”; Ahmed Abdulkareem, “Saudi Strikes on UNICEF Water Facility in Yemen Compounds Cholera Risk,” Mint Press, July 25, 2018; Martha Mundo, The Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War (Somerville, MA: World Peace Foundation, 2018); “About 19 Million Lack Access to Clean Water in Yemen,” Al Jazeera, January 23, 2019.
↩ Jonathan Watts and John Vidal, “Environmental Defenders Being Killed in Record Numbers Globally, New Research Reveals,” Guardian, July 13, 2017; Elaina Zachos, “Why 2017 Was the Deadliest Year for Environmental Activists,” National Geographic, July 24, 2018.
↩ Asad Rehman, “A Green New Deal Must Deliver Global Justice,” Red Pepper, April 29, 2019; Minerwa Tahir, “Why It Is Important to Connect Anti-Imperialism to Climate Action,” SOAS blog, May 1, 2019.
↩ Robert J. Lifton, The Climate Swerve (New York: New Press, 2017).
↩ Cyril Bailey, “Karl Marx on Greek Atomism,” Classical Quarterly 22, no. 3–4 (1928): 205–6; John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 52–53.

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2019, Volume 71, Issue 03 (July-August 2019)

About the author(s)

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Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

[google-translator]

Keep truth and free speech alive by supporting this site.
Donate using the button below, or by scanning our QR code.

And…PLEASE!

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THE DEEP STATE IS CLOSING IN

The big social media —Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—are trying to silence us.

First name

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

Cory Morningstar

THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – FOR CONSENT: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX [ACT II]

World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

January 21, 2019

This is ACT II of the six-part series: The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Political Economy of the Non-profit Industrial Complex

In ACT I of this new body of research I opened the dialogue with the observations of artist Hiroyuki Hamada:

“What’s infuriating about manipulations by the Non Profit Industrial Complex is that they harvest the goodwill of the people, especially young people. They target those who were not given the skills and knowledge to truly think for themselves by institutions which are designed to serve the ruling class. Capitalism operates systematically and structurally like a cage to raise domesticated animals. Those organizations and their projects which operate under false slogans of humanity in order to prop up the hierarchy of money and violence are fast becoming some of the most crucial elements of the invisible cage of corporatism, colonialism and militarism.”

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

Volume I:

In ACT I, I disclosed that Greta Thunberg, the current child prodigy and face of the youth movement to combat climate change, served as special youth advisor and trustee to the burgeoning mainstream tech start-up, “We Don’t Have Time”. I then explored the ambitions behind the tech company We Don’t Have Time.

In ACT II, I illustrate how today’s youth are the sacrificial lambs for the ruling elite. Also in this act I introduce the board members and advisors to “We Don’t Have Time.” I explore the leadership in the nascent We Don’t Have Time and the partnerships between the well established corporate environmental entities: Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, 350.org, Avaaz, Global Utmaning (Global Challenge), the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum (WEF).

In ACT III, I deconstruct how Al Gore and the Planet’s most powerful capitalists are behind today’s manufactured youth movements and why. I explore the We Don’t Have Time/Thunberg connections to Our Revolution, the Sanders Institute, This Is Zero Hour, the Sunrise Movement and the Green New Deal. I also touch upon Thunberg’s famous family. In particular, Thunberg’s celebrity mother, Malena Ernman (WWF Environmental Hero of the Year 2017), and her August 2018 book launch. I then explore the generous media attention afforded to Thunberg in both May and April of 2018 by SvD, one of Sweden’s largest newspapers.

In ACT IV, I examine the current campaign, now unfolding, in “leading the public into emergency mode”. More importantly, I summarize who and what this mode is to serve.

In ACT V, I take a closer look at the Green New Deal. I explore Data for Progress and the targeting of female youth as a key “femographic”. I connect the primary architect and authors of the “Green New Deal” data to the World Resources Institute. From there, I walk you through the interlocking Business & Sustainable Development Commission, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, and the New Climate Economy – a project of the World Resources Institute. I disclose the common thread between these groups and the assignment of money to nature, represented by the Natural Capital Coalition and the non-profit industrial complex as an entity. Finally, I reveal how this has culminated in the implementation of payments for ecosystem services (the financialization and privatization of nature, global in scale) which is “expected to be adopted during the fifteenth meeting in Beijing in 2020.”

In the final act, ACT VI [Crescendo], I wrap up the series by divulging that the very foundations which have financed the climate “movement” over the past decade are the same foundations now partnered with the Climate Finance Partnership looking to unlock 100 trillion dollars from pension funds. I reveal the identities of individuals and groups at the helm of this interlocking matrix, controlling both the medium and the message. I take a step back in time to briefly demonstrate the ten years of strategic social engineering that have brought us to this very precipice. I look at the relationship between WWF, Stockholm Institute and World Resources Institute as key instruments in the creation of the financialization of nature. I also take a look at what the first public campaigns for the financialization of nature (“natural capital”) that are slowly being brought into the public realm by WWF. I reflect upon how mainstream NGOs are attempting to safeguard their influence and further manipulate the populace by going underground through Extinction Rebellion groups being organized in the US and across the world.

With the smoke now cleared, the weak and essentially non-existent demands reminiscent of the 2009 TckTckTck “demands” can now be fully understood.

Some of these topics, in addition to others, will be released and discussed in further detail as addenda built on the large volume of research. This includes stepping through the looking glass, with an exploration of what the real “Green New Deal” under the Fourth Industrial Revolution will look like. Also forthcoming is a look at the power of celebrity – and how it has become a key tool for both capital and conformity.

[*Note: This series contains information and quotes that have been translated from Swedish to English via Google Translator.]

A C T T W O

We Don’t Have Time Players

The We Don’t Have Time board of directors is comprised of the following people:

Ingmar Rentzhog, We Don’t Have Time founder and CEO
Anette Nordvall, We Don’t Have Time chairwoman/shareholder, private tech investor, works with STOAF (venture capital and private equity firm in Sweden), venture partner with Capital A Partners
David Olsson, We Don’t Have Time chief operating officer, chairman of the Swedish climate think tank Global Utmaning
Christian Emmertz, We Don’t Have Time co-founder, business unit director at Hewlett Packard (HP) Sweden, partner at RealCap Investment, The Climate Reality Project leader, trained by Al Gore
Stella Diesen, “Changing the world with Microsoft tech Innofactor” (formerly Microsoft), The Climate Reality Project leader, trained by Al Gore
Gustav Stenbeck, CEO of Mestro, founder and executive chairman of Gain Sustain (investment banking)

Global Utmaning, which translates to Global Challenge in English, was founded in 2005 by economist Kristina Persson, Sweden’s former Minister of Strategic Development and Nordic Cooperation. Persson was tasked with building cooperation with Nordic countries in order to leverage strength within the international community (“together we are an actor with clout”). Her position involved the fostering of long-term development for “the green transition, jobs and distribution, and initiatives to influence the global agenda for sustainable development.” [Source] She is heir (with her siblings) to the business empire established by her father, Sven O. Persson which has a revenue of approximately SEK 3 billion USD (approx. USD 332,500,000.00) per annum. Persson is also the founder of the Freja Foundation established in 2017.

The We Don’t Have Time Foundation board of directors include:

Cathy Orlando, national director, Citizen’s Climate Lobby in Canada
Stuart Scott, The Climate Reality Project leader, trained by Al Gore
Per-Espen Stokenes, researcher in behavioural economics
Ingmar Rentzhog, founder and CEO, We Don’t Have Time
David Olsson, chief operating officer, We Don’t Have Time
Greta Thunberg, special youth advisor and trustee
Jamie Margolin, special youth advisor and trustee

Acquisition International Magazine Issue 10, 2018

“Citizen Climate Lobby international outreach manager Cathy Orlando, centre, is pleased with the Trudeau government’s new carbon tax plan. She’s seen here with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, husband Sanjiv Mathur, and their daughter Sophia Mathur. (Supplied)” [Source]

The We Don’t Have Time advisory board includes the following individuals:

Daniela Rogosic, global press officer, the IKEA Group
Tove Ahlström, CEO of Global Utmaning, affiliate of Al Gore’s The Climate Reality Project
Anna Svahn, CEO of Feminvest, CEO and co-founder at Cygnus Capital [http://annasvahn.se]
Andra Farhad, founder and CEO of Borshajen
Kaj Török, chief reputation officer and chief sustainability officer of Max Burgers, co-founder of Futerra Marketing and Advertising
Sweta Chakraborty, renowned risk and behavioural scientist (behavioural change) [Bio]
David JP Phillips, founder of davidjpphillips.com, speakerrating.com and presentationsteknik.com. (Phillips delivers training in presentation skills in over 16 countries. His expertise is based on the latest research in neurology, psychology, and biology as a means of effective storytelling and communicating.)

The presence of Ikea on the We Don’t Have Time advisory board should be duly noted. In 2017 Ikea awarded a $44.6m grant from the IKEA Foundation to the We Mean Business coalition (founded in 2014). This grant was in fact “the second largest single donation ever made by the charitable arm of retail giant IKEA.” The We Mean Business coalition founding members include The B Team, the Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), the Carbon Disclosure Project, Ceres, The Climate Group, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and the Prince of Wales Corporate Climate Group. Other We Mean Business partners include the United Nation Global Compact, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), UNEP Finance, the World Bank, and World Wildlife Fund. [Full list] [Further reading:“1 00 Billion for Everyone Who Signs”]

The B Team is managed by Purpose, the for-profit public relations firm run by Avaaz co-founder Jeremy Heimans, co-author of the book “New Power”. Ikea is a client of Purpose and partner to the Purpose NGO “We Are Here Now” (“Here Now”).

In the following excerpt from the January 28, 2016, Maclean’s article, Have We Hit ‘Peak Stuff?’ Ikea Says There’s Röom to Grow, the collective corporate climate fervor now sweeping the globe is demonstrated once again:

“So how to square Ikea’s “peak stuff” talk with its “buy more” actions? A spokesperson volunteered in an email that [Steve] Howard’s [head of sustainability at Ikea] comments were made as “part of a wider global context where many people still have very limited means” while Sjostrand suggested the goal was “to continue to grow our business, but grow it in a more sustainable way.” Translation: Ikea will sell you more furniture and home furnishings, but it will try harder not to make you feel guilty about it. Which explains why the company’s corporate reports are festooned with examples of sustainability initiatives, from selling only LED-compatible lighting to serving responsibly harvested fish in the cafeteria.”

Sustainability and capitalism are like oil and water. The two are incompatible. They cannot co-exist.

The “climate revolution” sought by We Don’t Have Time et al doesn’t contract mass-consumption, it delivers new products in order to expand it.

The “clean energy revolution” doesn’t threaten big oil – it secures it. It doesn’t weaken capitalism. It strengthens it. It doesn’t inspire resistance – it quells it – into oblivion.

Here we can reflect on the most simple things that shed light on the ideologies shared by the majority of those at the helm of decision making in addressing our climate crisis. In plain sight, what companies and institutions a person is most interested in are made public on one’s LinkedIn account. Selected groups to follow shared by the average non-profit industrial complex (NPIC) professional, are rarely if ever groups, institutions or people working within the realms of ecology, Indigenous rights, social justice, environmental sciences, or other critical areas associated with climate change and environmental depletion. Nor are smaller institutions or individuals working toward small-scale local solutions of any interest.

Rather this interlocking directorate of “Ted talkers” and “thought leaders” most commonly select and follow the world’s most powerful and successful finance and tech companies, and the marketing firms that propel them to their success. Rarely are institutions, groups or people within the environmental sciences of interest, nor are smaller institutions or individuals working toward small-scale local solutions. The most popular institutions followed, and shared by most of this crowd, are comprised of white Western leadership, predominantly male. Some of the most admired ones chosen by the many are the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Economist, the Green Climate Fund – groups and institutions they wholly identify with, and seek to assimilate/belong.

Here we must recall the fact (disclosed in ACT I) that Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project is a partner to We Don’t Have Time. (Al Gore’s priorities to be discussed in ACT III.)

“Rentzhog wants to affect ‘change within business, not against business.'” — Anette Nordvall, Chairman of We Don’t Have Time [Source]

The Sacrificial Lambs

“The same hormones and neurotransmitters can be released by a good story. These include dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins, which Phillips refers to as the “angel’s cocktail.” The effects of oxytocin make you more generous, trusting, and ready to bond. This is what is released in your blood when you hear a sad story. It makes us feel relaxed and more human as we bond to the storyteller.” — based on the TEDxStockholm Talk, “The Magical Science of Storytelling,” by David JP Phillips, We Don’t Have Time board of directors [Source]

To begin this segment, we can look at the “WE” movement (“ME to WE”, Free the Children and WE Day). [1] The 2015 exposé “Unleashing Voluntourism” produced by the Canadian Public Broadcasting (CBC) was originally scheduled to air on March 19, 2015. The documentary investigated the privatization of, the NGOization of, and the explosive growth of, what has morphed into a billion dollar industry – tourism masquerading as volunteerism – for privileged youth in the West.

Celebrity, fetishized in an rapidly eroding society void of meaning and culture, has resulted in such a powerful asset to capitalism and militarism, that the subject has become an active area of study by academics such as Dan Brockington and Ilan Kapoor. The power of celebrity was not lost on WE whose keynote speakers for massive gatherings and endorsements have included: Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau in 2008 (video), and again, in 2015 following Obama’s election win, former “first lady” Michelle Obama, Hollywood’s Natalie Portman, and a stream of others. Indeed, renting celebrities for galas and events has too become a niche industry.

Shortly before it was to air, the documentary was pulled after WE requested unauthorized footage be removed from the exposé. When it did air, on April 7, 2017, two scenes had been cut from the film. The following clip is one of the two deleted clips (running time: 1m:1s), “Volunteers Unleashed: suppressed Me to We clip #1″:

The controversy regarding WE is far from over as the NGO grapples to protect its million dollar brand. On January 17, 2019, WE announced they would commence legal action against a small podcast network and news outlet in Manitoba, Canada, where journalists have no explicit legal protection from SLAPP lawsuits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation). This news outlet had been reporting on the WE movement since 2015.

The following images and brief commentaries are but a tiny glimpse into the world of NGOization and co-optation of both resistance and youth. Today we bear witness to what can aptly be described as the mechanisms and orchestrated movements of the non-profit industrial spectacle.

To illustrate the co-optation of youth, we will now look at the celebrity youth activists and Climate Reality leaders Greta Thunberg and Jamie Margolin. We focus on these two individuals as they are directly connected to the We Don’t Have Time campaign and business plan.

The Climate Reality Project and Global Utmaning. Greta Thunberg at far left. “How do we ensure that today’s decision-makers benefit and learn from young people’s commitment to the future? On September 26, the question attracted over 250 visitors to Kulturhuset Stadsteatern where Global Utmaning and Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project arranged seminars.” [Source]

Thunberg has stated repeatedly that her strike will continue “until Sweden is aligned with the Paris Agreement.” Therefore, by her own statements, this is the singular, overall purpose and goal of the strike. The foundation of the Paris Agreement is the expansion of nuclear, the financialization of nature, further privatization at an unprecedented scale, “large scale CO2 reduction” (carbon capture storage), a desperate attempt to revitalize economic growth, and more market “solutions” that will further perpetuate our multiple crises. Therefore, the Thunberg campaign is in part to create a demand upon governments across the globe to align with the Paris Agreement. (A demand to obtain what the ruling classes have already decided to unleash on us, our planet, and all life.) As adherence to the Paris Accords is a running theme in the mainstream NGO movement, the marketing campaign is helped along by 350.org, Avaaz, WWF, Greenpeace, in tandem with the UN (“Changing Together”), the World Bank (“Stepping Up“)[2], and more recently, the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The Global Utmaning think tank cites its main asset as its network of over 90 senior advisors. From its homepage:

“The global market economy has lifted millions of people out of poverty. Meanwhile, inequality increased significantly. The financial system must be globally regulated and the current economic stagnation broken. It requires a new green, circular and inclusive growth model that creates value, labor and welfare. What is tomorrow’s new economic story?”

Global Utmaning recently announced a partnership with Global Shapers – an initiative of the World Economic Forum that brings together young leaders worldwide: “The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019 will be held from 22-25 January in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. Over 3,000 global leaders will come together under the theme Globalization 4.0: Shaping a Global Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” [Emphasis added]

AVAAZ

Here we will make some brief observations of both Avaaz and 350.org in relation to the global “Climate Strike” campaigns. An exhaustive body of research that lays bare the function and ancestry of both NGOs, based on investigations from 2012 to present, now exists on the Wrong Kind of Green website. I encourage readers to familiarize themselves with the two entities.

On December 14, 2018, 350.org sent out a press release containing the following excerpts:

“Katowice, Poland – Today- 30 school children from three local schools in Katowice, answered the call of Greta Thunberg and brought the global #ClimateStrike into the final day of the UN Climate talks in Katowice.

The 30 students were granted special access to enter the UN talks and carry their message to the delegates and Polish government: with only 12 years left to get the world off fossil fuels, leaders must act now.” [emphasis in original]

On cue, the international media would publish photos such as this one:

Here is what you don’t see:

Preconference: The youth are being organized for the December 14, 2018 press event. Photo: David Tong / WWF New Zealand

Directions are given. Listen up kids. Photo: David Tong / WWF New Zealand

And here, we see a media franzy, clamouring to get the attention of a single man. The youth stand silent, ignored in the background. Yet the youth were supposed to have been exactly what the action was about. "Adults sometimes forget about the young people," said Ma?gorzata Czachowska, one of the Polish students inspired by Thunberg." Photo: David Tong / WWF New Zealand

Here we have youth - bored out of their minds. Is this activism? Is this what revolution looks like? Photo: David Tong / WWF New Zealand

Hello Iain Keith. Ian Keith - campaign director for Avaaz. Photo: David Tong / WWF New Zealand

At the bottom of the 350.org press release under the heading “For more information”, the press release discloses: “NOTE that 350.Org and Avaaz are NOT organising these actions but are helping the students to spread their message.” [Emphasis in original]

And yet it certainly appears that Avaaz did in fact play a leading role in organizing the action – while orchestrating the media spotlight. [See photos in the above slider.]

On the day following the 350.org-Avaaz press release, December 15, 2018, NGOs and institutions alike scrambled to catapult the words of Thunberg into the hearts and minds of citizens all over the world. From the UN, to Avaaz, to the World Bank, to grass roots resistance, they all clamoured to spread young Thunberg’s words. But one NGO took it upon itself to redact many of Thunberg’s words, releasing an abbreviated version (79K views on Facebook). With no disclaimer to its audience, Avaaz removed four excerpts from Thunberg’s speech. [4] The two excerpts that follow, which were cut by Avaaz, are most revealing:

Two of the excerpts that have been cut from Greta’s speech, are most revealing:

“You only speak of the green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake.”

“But I don’t care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet. Our civilisation is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money.”

It is not surprising Avaaz would strike Greta’s comments considering a primary function of Avaaz is to promote market solutions that accelerate “green” economic growth – in servitude to “a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money.”

In the following Avaaz campaign, the NGO employs Thunberg’s face to place pressure on Sweden for corporate non-solutions, such as in this instance, “large scale CO2 reduction”. This is holistic framing for carbon capture storage technologies.

Here it is imperative to refer to the August 24, 2017 press release “Bellona seminar on Nordic CCS cooperation”. From the release:

“Now politicians have to go ahead so that we can build full-scale CO2 capture facilities as quickly as possible,’ said Tandberg. Three full-scale facilities in Norway are planned, but not yet granted, with a preliminary price tag of NOK 12.6 billion (EUR 1.28 billion)…

Norway is leading in capture, transportation and storage technologies, and can export the knowledge and facilities. There is potential for a completely new industry to be built. However it depends on whether Norway is able to keep its position. It is urgent to build the CCS plants, develop the technology further and get full-scale CCS infrastructure, and a Nordic cooperation can facilitate this process.”

This is a prime example of one of the main functions of NGOs. To generate popular demand from the citizenry that will in turn support the legislation required for projects that serve to benefit industry, rather than people and planet. Prior to the contracts being signed or a shovel breaking ground to build the infrastructures that will comprise the “global architecture in the age of the fourth industrial revolution” – legislation is required. And just like a proverbial snowball turning into an avalanche, the legislation begets money for a budget with bidding and construction to commence shortly thereafter.

What better way to create a demand for something detrimental to both the environment and the populace, than to package it under climate change solutions, with the lovely and innocent face of Greta. With reality turned on its head, industry doesn’t have to impose its will on the people – the people will impose it on themselves, via Avaaz et al. The people are thus engineered to demand the very false solutions that the corporations have had up their sleeves for years and even decades.

Hence, the non-profit industrial complex and the media, both financed/funded by the word’s power elite, are amalgamated with and by corporate power. Together they work in unity, toward one common goal: economic growth. Hence, market solutions are always THE solutions. It is not simply a matter of placing the economy first before everything else. Rather, its placing the economy first at the EXPENSE of everything else. And everyone else. And all life on this planet.

To look at the scale of such so-called solutions, one need look no further than the 2013 Carbon Tracker “Unburnable Carbon Report” – page 12:

“Given that the average annual rate of storage in 2015 is projected by the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (2012) to be about 2.25 million tonnes for 16 CCS projects, a total of nearly 3800 CCS projects would need to be operating by 2050 under the idealised scenario.”

The idealised scenario “offers about an 80% chance of not exceeding a warming of more than 2°C.”

May 14, 2015:

“As with all the shaping of our shared futures by the elite, the pathway to CCS is clear in the 2008 Green Alliance paper, A Last Chance for Coal, with contributions from Ben Caldecott while at the Policy Exchange think tank. The paper notes that it is critical Europe’s commitment to CCS be realized before 2020; 12 short years away from the paper’s publication date. The year 2020 is a critical date of vast significance – a recurring deadline for all environmental market solutions to be in place.”

[Further reading: AVAAZ: The Globe’s Largest & Most Powerful Behavioural Change Network]

[Further reading: McKibben’s Divestment Tour – Brought to You by Wall Street]

Jamie Margolin – Zero Hour

Jamie Margolin is the teenage founder of This Is Zero Hour and “one of the 13 plaintiffs suing Washington State for its failure to take adequate action on climate change.” (As disclosed in ACT I of this series, Margolin – and her NGO Zero Hour – accounted for two of the six accounts tagged by We Don’t Have Time on the very first post reporting Greta Thunberg’s school strike.) Margolin attended Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps (a three-day conference) that took place in Seattle on June 27-29, 2017. [Source] In July 2017, Margolin began organizing for a youth climate march in Washington, D.C. and launched Zero Hour. On February 27, 2018, exactly eight months after her first day at the Climate Reality Leadership Corps, Margolin would be featured in Rolling Stone magazine. Prior to her meteoric rise to stardom, Margolin interned in Hillary Clinton’s campaign office in Seattle. The following passage demonstrates what has now become the normal corporate promotion of youth:

“The youngest speaker at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco this week is Jamie Margolin of Seattle, who founded the Zero Hour youth climate march this past July and led its flagship action in Washington, D.C. At 16, Margolin presents a youthful contrast to most of the GCAS leadership, like California Governor Jerry Brown (80); former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (76); and China’s top climate diplomat, Xie Zhenhua (68).” [Source]

In the 21^st century manufactured movements and revolutions, today’s “leaders” (fabricated by corporate owned and funded media) are no longer enemies of the establishment. Rather, they do events together – with establishment figures such as New York City Mayor, Bill de Blasio adulating over our new “revolutionaries” while tagging them and tweeting their praises. When the establishment itself loves our movements and our “faces of the future” – we know we have already lost tomorrow.

“Donate”: Jamie Margolin, teenage founder of This Is Zero Hour | Climate Reality Project webpage banner

On cue. On December 5, 2018, Time Magazine voted Greta Thunberg as one of the most influential teens (now the most sought after and targeted demographic by corporations) of 2018 while Jamie Margolin, founder of Zero Hour, Climate Reality leader and teen influencer, was lauded over by Teen Vogue. [July 19, 2018, Climate Change Puts the Future at Risk, So I’m Taking Action; November 5, 2018, 21 Under 21: Jamie Margolin Knows Climate Justice is the Key to All Justice; December 1, 2018, The Teen Vogue Summit 2018]

December 5, 2018, Teen Vogue: “15-Year-Old Activist Greta Thunberg Schooled World Leaders on Climate Change at a United Nations Summit”

In this image, Margolin lends her celebrity status to prop up the brands Global Citizen and Johnson & Johnson.

Global Citizen is perhaps the most egregious NGO in the non-profit industrial complex with its grotesque model of shallow, hollowed-out “activism” and corporatization. Recently Global Citizen has introduced “points” that can be accumulated by clicking on actions. In a blatant emulation of credit cards (the more money you spend, the more points you acquire), the more actions you click, the more points you acquire. These points can then be redeemed for access to celebrity events and concerts.

This is the social engineering of unquestioning compliance and instantaneous acquiescence. In order to receive the reward, one must perform the action requested. If you do not comply, you simply do not receive the points. Here, the encouragement for critical thought and debate is deliberately and strategically erased from the equation.

NGOs are not the only entities to exploit youth. Corporate partners that finance their endeavours also provide lofty sums of money to have their toxic legacies greenwashed. In July 2018, Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay “nearly $4.7 billion US in total damages to 22 women and their families after they claimed asbestos in Johnson & Johnson talcum powder contributed to their ovarian cancer, in the first case against the company that focused on asbestos in the powder… Six of the 22 plaintiffs in the latest trial have died from ovarian cancer. … Mark Lanier, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement that Johnson & Johnson had covered up evidence of asbestos in their products for more than 40 years.” [Source]

Par for the course, partnerships and endorsements for corporations inflicting violence upon both children and planet are a hallmark of the non-profit industrial complex. This is not the only lawsuit that has been launched against Johnson & Johnson nor will it be the last. There are also 1200 pending lawsuits in the US alone against this corporate entity. Johnson & Johnson is not the exception – it is the norm.

TWO PHONIES AND WORLD CLASS CRIMINALS: Bill Gates (Breakthrough Energy, Mission Innovation) with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for Global Citizen. Montreal, Quebec, Canada, September 17, 2016. (REUTERS/Geoff Robins/POOL)

June 30, 2017, Twitter: Jamie Margolin – teenage founder and executive director of This Is Zero Hour, founded in 2017

Jamie Margolin, speaking via Skype at the Climate Emergency Plan presentation, (We Don’t Have Time, Global Utmaning, the Club of Rome), November 24, 2018:

“We don’t just think about, oh there’s carbon in the air and we need to lower it, we think of how did the carbon get there?, like how did we allow a system that could lead us to such destruction?”

The system that Margolin refers to is that of global capitalism, an economic system that is devouring everything in its path. A promise to destroy the planetary ecosystems of our shared futures. And it’s not as though Margolin has not begun to understand the glaring systems intersecting at the nexus of our multiple crises, such as capitalism, colonialism, racism and patriarchy.

Rather, Margolin does in fact possess the basic building blocks of knowledge that are required for the long road ahead of instilling and inspiring the revolutionary changes that are required amoungst the youth. Yet, by positioning herself with those that bring into fruition and profit from everything Margolin touches upon, she tragically denigrates her own analysis by merely calling for better cups for Starbucks rather than the elimination of Starbucks altogether. Hence, on her current path, Margolin does more harm than good for the very systemic issues she articulates so well.

With “crude capitalists“, such as Gore, de Blasio and others, now capturing the last vestiges of youth that even have such awareness (an awareness that is slowly dying out), soon the systemic structures that allow capitalism and oppression to flourish will have no opposition whatsoever. We are reaching the point where there is no distinction between our “movements” and the coalitions created to further our oppression and servitude. The fact that Margolin serves as a face for Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project – when saving capitalism is Gore’s number one priority (as we will learn in ACT III), grinds all of Margolin’s articulate words – and actions – to dust. Gore uses Greta, Margolin and all the youth they mobilize – by destroying the very futures these youth are hoping to save – all in servitude to economic growth and capitalism for the world’s power elite.

Also of relevance to the Thunberg campaign is the race to capture the Millennial and Generation Z. With increasing frequency, this capture is primarily achieved by the manufactured and heavily funded youth “movements”. “Movements” teeming with potential consumers, fully exploitable by those that benefit from, and in many cases contribute to, the steady stream of funding. The title Generation Z has been applied to those connected from birth to online media, to whom “instant gratification is the norm.” Today, this demographic is the most powerful and sought after audience in North America. As an illustration of the terms popularity, Zero Hour’s Margolin actually refers to herself as “Generation Z.”

The November 8, 2018 Barclays article, Gen Z: Step Aside Millennials reports that this demographic (children born between 1995 and 2009), the same demographic that youth leaders like Greta Thunberg and Jamie Margolin belong to, appeal to and influence, are quickly becoming the new “consumer giants” and “mega influencers”:

“By 2020, Generation Z will be the largest group of consumers globally. They will account for 40% of consumers in the US, Europe and BRIC countries and 10% in the rest of the world. Companies that don’t engage with Gen Z successfully could rapidly lose market share. Some of them may only be 9 years old, but Gen Z already have huge spending power. In the US, Gen Z currently have $200 billion in direct buying power but $1 trillion in indirect spending power by influencing household spending*. Gen Z’s advanced digital knowledge and ability to assess factors such as price and availability from a young age make them increasingly influential in family spending decisions.”

In the eyes of bankers and capitalists, this group of youth are mere consumers. Dollar signs. Not children, youth or even people.

Faux activism comes with many perks inclusive of six-figure salaries, jet-setting, and “Ted Talks”. Plus, the best hipster eco-brands money can buy. Perhaps the most enticing perk – is access. Access to the halls of power. With the media fawning all over every reformist word, the faux activist can fall in love with his/her/x own image all over again. Everyone wants to be a star. Everyone wants to live the luxurious life. Everyone wants to belong to the champagne circuit.

All on the backs of the most oppressed. All on the backs of the most vulnerable. Yet the paradox is this – we are their vehicle. Our resistance captured and channeled directly back into the very systems crushing us.

A Coup De Grace

Greta Thunberg is being strategically exploited by the World Bank, the UN, and the non-profit industrial complex that serves the ruling classes. They are using her to advance their own self-interests and objectives – that are in direct opposition to everything this young woman brilliantly articulates. This is being presented as a “leaderless movement” – very much the “New Power” methodology and religion for the capitalists – theorized by Jeremy Heimans (Avaaz/Purpose) for mass movement building – that serves the most powerful and destructive forces on the planet.

The manipulation of young, malleable minds is at the foundation of Western indoctrination in order to insulate a failing system and mask the market solutions being designed to address it. Market “solutions” that benefit the rich at the expense of the environment. Hence, the youth are always the sacrificial lambs of the non-profit industrial complex.

[Further reading: From Stable to Star – The Making of North American “Climate Heroes”]

[Further Reading: Targeting Millennials: The 30 Trillion Dollar Jackpot]

[Further Reading: The Pygmalion Virus in Three Acts [2017 AVAAZ SERIES, PART II]

End Notes:

[1] “According to WE.org, ‘WE is made up of WE Charity and ME to WE. Both are part of the WE Movement, also known as ‘WE’ and ‘We.'” – “WE Charity used to be called Free The Children, and before that, Kids Can Free The Children. ME to WE is a private, for-profit business, but WE prefers to call it a ‘social enterprise.'” [Source]

[2] The COP24 Stepping Up Climate Action is a campaign initiated by the UN with Connect4Climate. The campaign of “global leaders, thinkers, activists and influencers” includes Greta Thunberg. “Connect4Climate is a global partnership program under the Communication for Climate Change Multi-Donor Trust Fund of the World Bank Group. The Trust Fund was initiated by the Italian Ministry of Environment, and in 2014 it was joined by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.”

[3] Video: Greta & Svante Thunberg – Straight Talk, Dec 9, 2019 [ 15:31 in]; Grist, December 5, 2018: “I will sit there every Friday until Sweden is aligned with the Paris Agreement,” she told a packed auditorium in Katowice.

[4] 1) “You only speak of the green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake.”

2) “But I don’t care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet our civilisation is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money.”

3) “Until you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope. We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.”

4) “We have run out of excuses and we are running out of time.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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.

Edited with Forrest Palmer, Wrong Kind of Green Collective.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

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[dropcap]G[/dropcap]ood investigative journalism doesn’t only reveal hidden mechanisms of our time; it also exposes those who refuse to confront the mechanisms. Remember when the late Bruce Dixon courageously and cogently called Bernie Sanders “a sheep dog candidate”? Remember when Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley and others truly stood with Syrian people in opposing the western intervention? I do. Those who could not face the reality came up with all sorts of profanities and ill conceived theories to demonize the messengers.

Cory Morningstar has been a dedicated environmental activist with a sound track record, who has closely worked with various NGOs. She is a mother. She is an avid gardener. She is an honest person with empathy, passion, love for people, love for our fellow creatures and love for nature. Her human character and sense of justice has culminated in her keen insights, observations and analyses. Her writings have inspired many of us to see the depth and scope of capitalist institutions as part of the social dynamics affecting our consciousness. Her meticulous pursuit of facts in illustrating mechanisms of our world evokes a sense of awe. She is a respected colleague in our struggle toward a better tomorrow.  

While her latest series, The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg—for Consent: The Political Economy of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex Volume I and Volume II, has been wildly praised as a ground-breaking milestone in depicting the vast mechanism of exploitation and subjugation involving the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, it has been also maliciously misrepresented.  

One of the very common, yet blatantly erroneous criticisms, centers around the series’ focus on the young activist Greta Thunberg. Why do they attack the author as a child abuser? The series does not attack the 16-yearold activist at all. It points out those organizations and individuals which closely surround her in forming a momentum for their agenda. It delineates how the mobilization fits within the larger framework of corporate “environmentalism”, colonialism, global capitalism and imperialism. The trickery of the accusation that the work attacks a child and smears the youth-led activism follows the same pattern of lies and deceptions unfolding against serious journalism for some time. It reflects how the establishment successfully dominates our minds as it dominates the hierarchy of money and violence. The ruling class actually abuses children by making them pawns for lucrative business projects—such as carbon capture and storage, "renewable energy" schemes, carbon trading and so on (the series discusses why they do not work extensively). They trick the innocent youth into digging their own graves while making profits out of it. Remember people called you racist, when you pointed out President Obama's drone killings? Remember people called you misogynist when you criticized Secretary Clinton's colonial policies? Those who did didn't mind brown people blown into pieces, and didn't mind the colonial oppression of women in colonized lands. The capitalist hierarchy structurally forces us to embrace the values, norms and beliefs of the ruling class, as it trains people to climb the social ladder as expected. The momentum to accuse Morningstar’s work as a child abuse stems from the same psychological projection of accusers' own complicity in consecrating a teenager as an invincible saint of their movement.

Then there is the most typical argument to condone obvious institutional tendencies of inhumanity: “things aren’t always black and white”. Of course there are good environmentalists doing good work as well. We have gone through this in so many incarnations. When we point out police brutality, we hear “not all police officers are bad”. When we point out obvious racism among us: “not all white people are racist”. Those are certainly true. But could we also say “not all slave masters were evil”, “not all Kings and queens were evil”, “not all colonizers were evil”, and so on? Well, sure. But does that mean we can bring back slavery, feudalism or colonialism? No. Refusal to talk about the systematic inhumanity inflicted by the system tolerates the status quo as acceptable.

  And please do stop with the “but the movement gives us hope” nonsense. What happened when we were sold “hope”, “change” and “forward”, and received colonial wars, big bank bailouts, global surveillance and loss of legal protections during the Obama presidency? We got Donald Trump. When the system squeezes already oppressed people while shuttering their hope and making them embrace fear, people try their best to hold onto whatever they have. They embrace an illusion of salvation in authoritarian lies and hatred against “others”. It is extremely important that we strive to discuss such a mechanism among us instead of jumping into the same momentum. We must discuss the true hope of building a momentum moving beyond the lies and deceptions coming out of the destructive hierarchy.

Morningstar states in The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg—for Consent: The Political Economy of Non Profit Industrial Complex Volume II Act IV:

“Consider that collectively, the populace appears to believe that not only is it possible to colonize another planet, but that we will do so in the not-so-distant future. This is incredible considering the massive odds of and colossal barriers to such an endeavour succeeding. Thus, it is alarming, that this same populace appears not to believe it is not possible to create new societies where necessity is detached from want (superfluous consumer goods). This begs the question – have we been fully conditioned to believe only those that represent hegemonic interests? It is a sound question considering the billionaires of the world are currently petrified of the capitalist system collapsing – while those oppressed by the capitalist system believe it cannot be dismantled. Yet we can dismantle institutions. We can dismantle the capitalist economic system devouring what remains of the natural world – but not if we identify with our oppressors and the very system that enslaves us. It is our natural world and her living natural communities that sustain us. Not industrial civilization – not technology.”

Hopelessness and cynicism do creep up to justify the status quo. But we also must recognize that such a position does away with putting our efforts toward standing with the truly oppressed ones.

Morningstar’s series meticulously documents how powerful global organizations seek ways to cultivate a consensus for their trajectory. And it carefully states, with facts, why the trajectory does not lead to achieving their promises—preventing climate change and other environmental calamities. The illustrated mechanism has been revealed over and over through their past crimes—the co-ordinated actions of industries, bankers, politicians, NGOs, UN, global financial institutions and media have culminated into colonial wars, cover-ups of nuclear disasters, regime change, and other corporate, colonial and imperial policies. There is nothing speculative, coincidental or conspiratorial about the series. It is based on careful research, honesty, courage to face the real issue and true love for humanity. It is again curiously indicative that those who engage in a conspiracy to mobilize the people according to their agendas accuse those who see through the attempt as “conspiracy theorist”. The use of the derogatory term invented by the US intelligence agency to label dissidents as tin-hat wearing nuts jobs hardly proves their legitimacy.

  Moreover, I must say that it is extremely odd and disingenuous that the series has been portrayed as a refusal to take any action, instead insisting on ideological purity. Such an attack has been coming from those who have been pointing out the same moneyed network in forwarding corporatism, colonialism and militarism by manipulating popular opinions. What is the difference between opposing destructive colonial wars and opposing colonization of nature/co-optation of activism? More specifically, what prompts some of them to say "what is your solution?", "we can't wait for capitalism to be overthrown to solve climate change” and so on. The obvious falsehood of such an angle is the stark absence of solutions within their own “green momentum”. Morningstar’s research does not talk about the necessity of establishing a communist statehood or overthrowing capitalism in order to solve the impending crisis. It simply states facts in a cohesive manner. Consequently, it certainly indicates the systematic structural issues presented by the hierarchy of money and violence. The research clearly names individuals and organizations that are involved in mobilizing the population in installing government policies that are lucrative to the associated corporations and beneficial to the imperial framework. Capitalist hegemony does present itself as a source of predicaments of our time. But is that new to us?

Needless to say, for those of us who believe in the Marxist perspective, the solution amounts to a structural transformation of our society into one that doesn’t monopolize the means of production for the ruling class. Economic activities must be subservient to harmonious existence of the people, environment and other species. And our social interactions must be under a control of such aims, instead of financial and social power of the ruling class. But make no mistake that that is simply an ultimate direction. Just as we voice our objections against any form of inhumanity regardless of our systematic problem, when we see certain environmental policies being subservient to the corporate agenda, likely to result in worsened conditions for the people, we discuss them. There shouldn’t be anything different about pointing out the US military aggression and the fallacy of US environmental policies, especially when they are forwarded by the same western establishment. When we find the carbon capture schemes to be disingenuous, for example, we simply point it out. We demand an answer to why corporate “solutions” are upheld as people’s “solutions”. And people who buy into false narratives should be noted as not credible leaders in people’s movement. So the question "what is your solution?" really should be directed at those who subscribe to those erroneous “solutions.” They need to be asked how those solutions would be a worthy cause at the first place, and why cogent criticisms against implementations of destructive schemes cannot be embraced because “we can’t wait for a socialist revolution”.  

What people desperately need today is good investigative reports like those presented by Cory Morningstar, along with our educational efforts to reveal the mechanisms of our time. We must learn how the unprecedented wealth accumulation among the very few ends up protected by layers and layers of moneyed social institutions co-ordinating to perpetuate the system, while progressively oppressive financial pressure and state violence against already oppressed people keep herding people into the capitalist framework. When we face the sad reality of people embracing policies that allow the powerful minorities to exploit and subjugate them over and over, what we need is not a popular mobilization guided by vague slogans easily subsumed by the imperial framework. Such a method would lead to draconian enforcement of corporate "solutions” according to their definition of “problems”. It is a recipe for bringing about a fascist order. What we need is openness and willingness to learn how we are domesticated by the authoritarian framework so that the actions are guided by the interests of the people in forming a society that allows true liberation of the people in a mutually respectful and harmonious manner.

  Please do read The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg—for Consent: The Political Economy of Non Profit Industrial Complex Volume I and II. It gives us an excellent starting point in learning how to build a better tomorrow for all of us.

Editor's Note: As suggested by Hiroyuki, The Greanville Post has begun republishing Cory Morningstar's entire series. The first installment can be found at:

THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – FOR CONSENT: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX [ACT I]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HIROYUKI HAMADA, Senior Contributing Editor, Arts & Politics. Hiroyuki is a political affairs blogger and recognised avant garde sculptor. Hamada grew up in Japan until the age of eighteen, then moved with his family to Wheeling, West Virginia where his father held a temporary post in the steel industry; the culture shock Hamada experienced was underscored by the linguistic gap, and it was through the study of drawing while in college that Hamada found an outlet to bridge the gap. He changed his major from psychology to studio art, then went on to earn a Masters in Fine Art from the University of Maryland. Hiroyuki Hamada has been awarded residencies at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Edward F. Albee Foundation/William Flanagan Memorial Creative Person’s Center, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the MacDowell Colony, Studios Midwest in Illinois, and the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts.In 1998, Hamada was the recipient of a Pollock–Krasner Foundation grant, and in 2009 he was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. The artist lives and works in East Hampton, New York.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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THE DEEP STATE IS CLOSING IN

The big social media —Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—are trying to silence us.

First name

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

Cory Morningstar

THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – FOR CONSENT: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX [ACT I]

World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

Dateline: January 17, 2019

“What’s infuriating about manipulations by the Non Profit Industrial Complex is that they harvest the goodwill of the people, especially young people. They target those who were not given the skills and knowledge to truly think for themselves by institutions which are designed to serve the ruling class. Capitalism operates systematically and structurally like a cage to raise domesticated animals. Those organizations and their projects which operate under false slogans of humanity in order to prop up the hierarchy of money and violence are fast becoming some of the most crucial elements of the invisible cage of corporatism, colonialism and militarism.” — Hiroyuki Hamada, artist

1958: “17-year-old Bianca Passarge of Hamburg dresses up as a cat, complete with furry tail, and dances on wine bottles. Her performance was based on a dream and she practised for eight hours every day in order to perfect her dance.”

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]

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

Volume I:

In ACT I, I disclose that Greta Thunberg, the current child prodigy and face of the youth movement to combat climate change, serves as special youth advisor and trustee to the burgeoning mainstream tech start-up, We Don’t Have Time. I then explore the ambitions behind the tech company We Don’t Have Time.

In ACT II, I illustrate how today’s youth are the sacrificial lambs for the ruling elite. Also in this act I introduce the board members of and advisors to We Don’t Have Time. I explore the leadership in the nascent We Don’t Have Time and the partnerships between the well-established corporate environmental entities: Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, 350.org, Avaaz, Global Utmaning (Global Challenge), the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum (WEF).

In ACT III, I deconstruct how Al Gore and the planet’s most powerful capitalists are behind today’s manufactured youth movements and why. I explore the We Don’t Have Time/Thunberg connections to Our Revolution, the Sanders Institute, This Is Zero Hour, the Sunrise Movement and the Green New Deal. I also touch upon Thunberg’s famous family. In particular, Thunberg’s celebrity mother, Malena Ernman (WWF Environmental Hero of the Year 2017) and her August 2018 book launch. I then explore the generous media attention afforded to Thunberg in both May and April of 2018 by SvD, one of Sweden’s largest newspapers.

In ACT IV, I examine the current campaign, now unfolding, in “leading the public into emergency mode”. More importantly, I summarize who and what this mode is to serve.

In ACT V, I take a closer look at the Green New Deal. I explore Data for Progress and the targeting of female youth as a key “femographic”. I connect the primary architect and authors of the “Green New Deal” data to the World Resources Institute. From there, I walk you through the interlocking Business & Sustainable Development Commission, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate and the New Climate Economy – a project of the World Resources Institute. I disclose the common thread between these groups and the assignment of money to nature, represented by the Natural Capital Coalition and the non-profit industrial complex as an entity. Finally, I reveal how this has culminated in the implementation of payments for ecosystem services (the financialization and privatization of nature, global in scale) which is “expected to be adopted during the fifteenth meeting in Beijing in 2020.”

In the final act, ACT VI [Crescendo], I wrap up the series by divulging that the very foundations which have financed the climate “movement” over the past decade are the same foundations now partnered with the Climate Finance Partnership looking to unlock 100 trillion dollars from pension funds. I reveal the identities of individuals and groups at the helm of this interlocking matrix, controlling both the medium and the message. I take a step back in time to briefly demonstrate the ten years of strategic social engineering that have brought us to this very precipice. I look at the relationship between WWF, Stockholm Institute and World Resources Institute as key instruments in the creation of the financialization of nature. I also take a look at the first public campaigns for the financialization of nature (“natural capital”) that are slowly being brought into the public realm by WWF. I reflect upon how mainstream NGOs are attempting to safeguard their influence and further manipulate the populace by going underground through Extinction Rebellion groups being organized in the US and across the world.

With the smoke now cleared, the weak and essentially non-existent demands reminiscent of the 2009 TckTckTck “demands” can now be fully understood.

[*Note: This series contains information and quotes that have been translated from Swedish to English via Google Translate.]

A C T O N E

“How is it possible for you to be so easily tricked by something so simple as a story, because you are tricked? Well, it all comes down to one core thing and that is emotional investment. The more emotionally invested you are in anything in your life, the less critical and the less objectively observant you become.” — David JP Phillips, We Don’t Have Time board of directors, “The Magical Science of Storytelling”

Greta holding her powerful and convincing no frills sign. What could be more authentic?

October 26, 2018, Facebook: Greta Thunberg, We Don’t Have Time

August 2018, Finance Monthly: co-founder of We Don’t Have Time, Ingmar Rentzhog

WE DON’T HAVE TIME

As this term is quickly becoming the quote du jour as a collective mantra to address the ongoing environmental disaster that can best be described as a nod to the obvious, it’s true that we don’t have time. We don’t have time to stop imperialist wars – wars being the greatest contributor to climate change and environmental degradation by far – but we must do so. Of course this is an impossible feat under the crushing weight of the capitalist system, a US war economy, and the push for a fourth industrial revolution founded on renewable energy. Yet, inconvenience has nothing to do with necessity in regards to addressing a particular situation. What is never discussed in regard to the so-called “clean energy revolution” is that its existence is wholly dependent on “green” imperialism – the latter term being synonymous with blood.

But that’s not what this series is about.

This series is about new financial markets in a world where global economic growth is experiencing stagnation. The threat and subsequent response is not so much about climate change as it is about the collapse of the capitalist economic system. This series is about the climate wealth opportunity of unprecedented growth, profits, and the measures our elite classes will take in order to achieve it – including the exploitation of the youth.

WHAT IS WE DON’T HAVE TIME?

“Our goal is to become among the biggest players on the internet.” — Ingmar Rentzhog, We Don’t Have Time, December 22, 2017, Nordic Business Insider

On August 20, 2018 a tweet featuring a photo of “a Swedish girl” sitting on a sidewalk was released by the tech company, We Don’t Have Time, founded by its CEO Ingmar Rentzhog:

“One 15 year old girl in front of the Swedish parliament is striking from School until Election Day in 3 weeks[.] Imagine how lonely she must feel in this picture. People where [sic] just walking by. Continuing with the business as usual thing. But the truth is. We can’t and she knows it!”

Rentzhog’s tweet, via the We Don’t Have Time twitter account, would be the very first exposure of Thunberg’s now famous school strike.

Above: We Don’t Have Time tweet, August 20, 2018

Tagged in Rentzhog’s “lonely girl” tweet were five twitter accounts: Greta Thunberg, Zero Hour (youth movement), Jamie Margolin (the teenage founder of Zero Hour), Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, and the People’s Climate Strike twitter account (in the identical font and aesthetics as 350.org). [These groups will be touched upon briefly later in this series.]

Rentzhog is the founder of Laika (a prominent Swedish communications consultancy firm providing services to the financial industry, recently acquired by FundedByMe). He was appointed as chair of the think tank Global Utmaning (Global Challenge in English) on May 24, 2018, and serves on the board of FundedByMe. Rentzhog is a member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Organization Leaders, where he is part of the European Climate Policy Task Force. He received his training in March 2017 by former US Vice President Al Gore in Denver, USA, and again in June 2018, in Berlin.

Founded in 2006, Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project is a partner of We Don’t Have Time.

The We Don’t Have Time Foundation cites two special youth advisors and trustees: Greta Thunberg and Jamie Margolin. [Source]

SCREENSHOT

Mårten Thorslund, chief marketing and sustainability officer of We Don’t Have Time, took many of the very first photos of Thunberg following the launch of her school strike on August 20, 2018. In the following instance, photos taken by Thorslund accompany the article written by David Olsson, chief operating officer of We Don’t Have Time, This 15-year-old Girl Breaks Swedish Law for the Climate, published August 23, 2018:

“Greta became a climate champion and tried to influence those closest to her. Her father now writes articles and gives lectures on the climate crisis, whereas her mother, a famous Swedish opera singer, has stopped flying. All thanks to Greta.

And clearly, she has stepped up her game, influencing the national conversation on the climate crisis—two weeks before the election. We Don’t Have Time reported on Greta’s strike on its first day and in less than 24 hours our Facebook posts and tweets received over twenty thousand likes, shares and comments. It didn’t take long for national media to catch on. As of the first week of the strike, at least six major daily newspapers, as well as Swedish and Danish national TV, [1] have interviewed Greta. Two Swedish party leaders have stopped by to talk to her as well.” [Emphasis added]

The article continues:

“Is there something big going on here? This one kid immediately got twenty supporters who now sit next to her. This one kid created numerous news stories in national newspapers and on TV. This one kid has received thousands of messages of love and support on social media…. Movements by young people, such as Jaime Margolin’s #ThisIsZeroHour that #WeDontHaveTime interviewed earlier, speaks with a much needed urgency that grown-ups should pay attention to…” [Emphasis in original]

Yes – there was, and still is, something going on.

It’s called marketing and branding.

“Yesterday I sat completely by myself, today there is one other here too. There are none [that] I know.” — Greta Thunberg, August 21, 2018, Nyheter newspaper, Sweden [Translation via Google]

The “one kid immediately got twenty supporters” – from a Swedish network for sustainable business. What is going on – is the launch of a global campaign to usher in a required consensus for the Paris Agreement, the Green New Deal and all climate-related policies and legislation written by the power elite – for the power elite. This is necessary in order to unlock the trillions of dollars in funding by way of massive public demand.

These agreements and policies include carbon capture and storage (CCS), enhanced oil recovery (EOR), bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), rapid total decarbonisation, payments for ecosystem services (referred to as “natural capital”), nuclear energy and fission, and a host of other “solutions” that are hostile to an already devastated planet. What is going on – is a rebooting of a stagnant capitalist economy, that needs new markets – new growth – in order to save itself. What is being created is a mechanism to unlock approximately 90 trillion dollars for new investments and infrastructure. What is going on is the creation of, and investment in, perhaps the biggest behavioural change experiment yet attempted, global in scale. And what are the deciding factors in what behaviours global society should adhere to? And more importantly, who decides? This is a rhetorical question, as we know full well the answer: the same Western white male saviours and the capitalist economic system they have implemented globally that has been the cause of our planetary ecological nightmare. This crisis continues unabated as they appoint themselves (yet again) as the saviours for all humanity – a recurring problem for centuries.

Source: WWF

+++

“Our goal is to become at least 100 million users. It is an eighth of all who have climbed on social media. Only last month we managed to reach 18 million social media accounts according to a media survey that Meltwater news made for us. At Facebook, we are currently seven times the number of followers among the world’s all climate organizations. We are growing with 10,000 new global followers per day on Facebook.” — Ingmar Rentzhog interview with Miljö & Utveckling, October 15, 2018

We Don’t Have Time identifies itself as a movement and tech start-up that is currently developing “the world’s largest social network for climate action”. The “movement” component was launched on April 22, 2018. The web platform is still in the progress of being built, but is to launch on April 22, 2019 (coinciding with Earth Day). “Through our platform, millions of members will unite to put pressure on leaders, politicians and corporations to act for the climate.” The start-up’s goal to rapidly achieve 100 million users has thus far attracted 435 investors (74.52% of the company’s shares) via the web platform FundedByMe.

The start-up intends to offer partnerships, digital advertising and services related to climate change, sustainability and the growing green, circular economy to “a large audience of engaged consumers and ambassadors.”

We Don’t Have Time is mainly active in three markets: social media, digital advertising and carbon offsets. [“In the US alone estimated market for carbon offsetting amount to over 82 billion USD of which voluntary carbon offset represents 191 million USD. The market is expected to increase in the future, in 2019 estimated 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions to be associated with any kind of cost for offsetting.”] As the company is a niche organization, social networks are able to provide services tailored to platform users. The start-up has identified such an opportunity by offering its users the ability to purchase carbon offsets through the platform’s own certification. This option applies to both the individual user of the platform, as well as to whole organizations/companies on the platform.

One incentive of many identified in the start-up investment section is that users will be encouraged to “communicate jointly and powerfully with influential actors.” Such influencers are Greta Thunberg and Jamie Margolin who both have lucrative futures in the branding of “sustainable” industries and products, should they wish to pursue this path in utilizing their present celebrity for personal gain (a hallmark of the “grassroots” NGO movement). [Further reading: The Increasing Vogue for Capitalist-Friendly Climate Discourse]

The tech company is banking on creating a massive member base of “conscious users” that will enable “profitable commercial collaborations, for example, advertising”:

“Decision makers – politicians, companies, organizations, states – get a climate ratingbased on their ability to live up to the users’ initiative. Knowledge and opinion gather in one place and users put pressure on decision makers to drive a faster change.”

“The main sources of revenue come from commercial players who have received high climate rating and confidence in the We Don’t Have Times member base.[2] … The revenue model will resemble the social platform of TripAdvisor.com’s business model, which with its 390 million users annually generates over $ 1 billion in good profitability…We will work with strategic partners such as Climate Reality leaders, climate organizations, bloggers, influencers and leading experts in the field.”

Video: We Don’t Have Time promotional video, published April 6, 2018 [Running time: 1m:38s]

A “state of conscious and permanent visibility assures the automatic functioning of power.” — Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish

Comparable to other social media endeavors where “likes”, “followers”, and unfathomable amounts of metadata determine financial success, the fact that the business is virtual enables high profit margins. The return on investment, best described as mainstream acquiescence and desirability by way of exposure, will be obtained through future dividends. In anticipation of this projected success, the tech company plans to take its business to the stock exchange in the near future (think Facebook and Instagram.) The most critical component to the success of this start-up (like its predecessors) is achieving a massive member base. Therefore, according to the company, it “will work actively with both enlisting influencers and creating content for various campaigns linked to the hashtag #WeDontHaveTime.”

PROSPECTUS WE DON'T HAVE TIME (PDF)

We Don’t Have Time Business Plan Swedish

On April 18, 2018, the crowdfunding platform FundedByMe (utilized by We Don’t Have Time to enlist investors) acquired Ingmar Rentzhog’s Laika Consulting. Excerpts from the press release are as follows:

“FundedByMe today announced that they acquire 100% of the shares in the established financial company Laika Consulting AB, a leading communications agency in financial communications. As a result, the company doubles its investment network to close to 250,000 members, making it the largest in the Nordic region. The acquisition is a strategic step to further strengthen FundedByMe’s range of financial services…

[Ingmar Rentzhog] will continue to work on strategic client projects for FundedByMe and Laika Consulting in part-time. Moreover he takes a role in the company’s board. The majority of his time he will focus on climate change through the newly established company, “We Don’t Have Time”, as a CEO and founder.” [Emphasis added] [Source] [3]

WE DON’T HAVE TIME SOFTWARE APP: THE LATEST WAVE OF WESTERN & CORPORATE IDEOLOGY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

In October 2016, Netflix aired the third season of Black Mirror, “a Twilight Zone–esque anthology TV series about technological anxieties and possible futures.” The first episode “Nosedive” posits a shallow and hypocritical populace in which “social platforms, self-curation and validation-seeking” have become the underpinning of a future society. [Black Mirror’s third season opens with a vicious take on social media]. The disturbing episode shares parallels to the concept behind We Don’t Have Time. The difference being instead of rating people exclusively, we will be rating brands, products, corporations and everything else climate related.
Acquisition International Magazine Issue 10, 2018

The not unintended results will be tenfold. The corporations with the best advertising executives and largest budgets will be the winners. Greenwashing will become an unprecedented method of advertising as will the art of “storytelling” (no one ever said a story has to be true). Small or local businesses with little financial means will more than often be the losers. Especially hit, will be migrant entrepreneurs whose cultures differ from ours in the West – where “Western democracy” is the only democracy that is valid.

Adding to the conversation as to who is ultimately benefiting from this endeavor from a cultural, social, geographical and ethnic perspective is the fact that “subconscious biases about race or gender, is a proven problem on many crowdsourced platforms.” [Source] Ultimately, this means that in order to acquire the needed support as a multimedia platform, the self-interest of the Western world must be at the fore with no concern for the Global South – other than what we can continue to steal from her. The inconvenient truth is that all roads lead to the same collective (if even subconscious) goal: the preservation of whiteness.

Rentzhog assures his audience that “our core, though, will remain, namely to empower our users to put pressure on world leaders so that they move faster towards an emission-free world and environmentally sustainable solutions and policies.” [Acquisition International Magazine Issue 10, 2018]

An “emission-free world” sounds enticing – yet there are no plans whatsoever to retract our growth economies. “Environmentally sustainable solutions” … according to who? According to a tribal elder who upholds the principles of “the seventh generation” (the Indigenous belief that humans must properly provide for its descendants by ensuring that our actions in the present allow the Earthly survival of seven succeeding generations – not to be confused with Unilever’s Seventh Generation acquisition) – or according to the World Bank? (We all know the answer to this rhetorical question.)

Another inconvenient truth, regarding the above premise, is that there is growing pressure on governments to increase Federal research and development funding to develop and deploy “deep decarbonization” technologies as one of the primary “solutions” to climate change. This was proposed at the Paris Climate Accord with Bill Gates’ “Mission Innovation” initiative which committed to doubling government investment in energy technology.

“We want it to cost more, in terms of revenue, public support and reputation, to not work on lowering emissions and improve environmental sustainability, whereas those that lead the way should be recognized for this. Our vision is to create a race towards environmental sustainability and CO2 neutrality, making it the core priority for businesses, politicians and organizations worldwide.” — Acquisition International Magazine Issue 10, 2018

Here again, we must look closely at language and framing. Who are “those that lead the way”? Are they referring to Western citizens who can fit all their belongings in a duffle bag? [Here it must be said that the environmental heroes in the West are NOT the Richard Bransons or Leonardo DiCaprios of the world. The real heroes for the environment, due to their almost non-existent environmental footprint, are the homeless – despite the scorn they receive from society as a whole.] Are they referring to the African Maasai who, to this day, literally leave no trace? Or are “those that lead the way” Unilever and Ikea (represented on the We Don’t Have Time board)? This is another rhetorical question we all know the answer to. Notice the mention of CO2 “neutrality” rather than a drastic reduction of CO2 emissions. Convenient language when one of the main pillars of the business model is the sale of carbon offsets – rationalizing a continuance of the same carbon-based lifestyle by constructing a faux fantasy one, that anyone with monetary wealth, can buy into.

As online reviews and ratings systems have become a Western staple of determining the worthiness of a person, group or corporation, the internet presently is a primary source of determining the quality of an entity. One example of this type of system is the online site Trip Advisor, which utilizes user feedback as a measuring stick of a hotel, airline, car rental, etc. As the Trip Advisor rating system is the revenue model We Don’t Have Time seeks to emulate, we will explore this particular rating system.

Whereas a reputable and established website such as Trip Advisor is based on an actual experience – We Don’t Have Time evaluations are more geared toward promises into the future regarding a green technology revolution and/or the effectiveness of advertising in making people believe the veracity of these promises. By utilizing fake accounts (think Twitter and Facebook), strategically orchestrated campaigns will effectively allow the app to break political careers and demonize people and countries based on the numbers of ratings (“climate bombs”). These bombs can be administered against any foe that does not embrace the technologies (sought by the West to benefit the West) of this so-called revolution, regardless if the reason for doing so is justifiable or not.

The word “bomb” itself will become reframed. Rather than associating bombs with militarism (never touched upon by We Don’t Have Time) the word bomb will eventually become first and foremost associated with ratings, bad products, bad ideas and bad people. Such is the power of language and framing when combined with social engineering. Here, the behavioural economics of hatred can be weaponized – a virtual new form of soft power. The Nicaraguan Sandinista government who did not sign onto the Paris Agreement because it is too weak (and serves only Western interests) could quickly become a pariah on the global stage – as the West controls the stage. Already a target for destabilization, the soft power app would be applied as the ruling class sees fit.

When one contemplates the non-profit industrial complex, it must be considered the most powerful army in the world. Employing billions of staff, all inter-connected, today’s campaigns, financed by our ruling oligarchs can become viral in a matter of hours just by the interlocking directorate working together in unity toward a common goal to instil uniform thoughts and opinions, which gradually create a desired ideology. This is the art of social engineering. Conformity and emotive content as tools of manipulation has been and always will be the most powerful weapons in the Mad Men’s toolbox. If 300,000 people have already voted with “climate hearts” on a “trending” topic in under 48 hours – it must be a great idea.

“Nobody wants to be bottom of the class.” Ingmar Retzhog, We Don’t Have Time, December 22, 2017, Nordic Business Insider

To be clear, the West is in no position to “teach” (nudge/engineer) the “correct” value system regarding sustainability to the world, when the biggest polluters on the planet are manufactured into “climate leaders” and “climate heroes”. This is reality turned on its head. A reality we are conditioned to accept. Institutions such as the United Nations in tandem with the media, spoon-feed this insanity (that defies all logic) to the global populace, in servitude to the ruling classes.

“Nudging”: Acquisition International Magazine Issue 10, 2018

Finally, this behavioral science platform lends itself to the continued devolvement of critical thinking. With virtually everything and everyone to rate all day long – who has time to look in depth at any given policy or product that after all, sounds, looks and feels simply amazing due to sophisticated marketing coupled with behavioural change tactics? It is vital to keep in mind that social engineering – and massive profit – are the key merits and purpose of this application.

End Notes:

[1] TV 2 Danmark Danish public service, SVT Swedish public service, TV 4 News, Metro TV, Dagens Nyheter, Aftonbladet(August 20, 2018), Sydsvenskan, Stockholm Direkt, Expressen (August 20, 2018) , ETC, WWF, Effekt Magazin, GöteborgsPosten,Helsingborgs Dagblad, Folkbladet, Uppsala Nya tidning, Vimmerby Tidning, Piteå Tidningen, Borås Tidning, Duggan, VT, NT, Corren, OMNI, WeDontHaveTime CEO viral FaceBook post that mention it first. [Source]

[2] Click-based advertising based on highly rated companies that want to drive traffic to their websites; Targeted web advertising for companies that want to reach out to environmentally aware users in different segments; Business subscriptions where companies and organizations have the opportunity to interact with the members and get the right to use the We Don’t Have Times brand and the company’s rating in their marketing [Source]

[3] “Laika Consulting was one of the first companies in Sweden to work with crowdfunding when we established the brand in 2004. I look forward to follow the company’s growth closely. A combination of Laika’s expertise in listed companies, together with FundedByMe with its international and digital presence, can create new opportunities for growth.”says Laika’s CEO, Ingmar Rentzhog.” [Source]

APPENDIX
Select Comments from original thread

Richard S on Jun 12, 2019

The idea that TripAdvisor is less gamed by fake accounts than Twitter or Facebook and is a reputable company seems a pretty naive one. Really it’s the same model, pretty much you could throw it in the basket with Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Amazon & amazingly expensive electric scooters as things we don’t need, and in fact would be a lot better off without.

Wrong Kind of Green on Jul 01, 2019

In the above investigative report, WKOG is not implying that Trip Advisor is “less gamed” than any the other groups. We are just using that company in a comparative aspect. And if you read the article closely, we never intimate that the groups you mentioned were more or less susceptible to any type of subterfuge. We simply made an analysis in comparing Trip Advisor to ONE company in particular, which was We Don’t Have Time. In your attempt to somehow negate our analysis, you utilized a falsehood in saying that we compared Trip Advisor to these other companies when in fact, we were focusing on the differences between We Don’t Have Time and its particularly shoddy way of doing business.

Therefore to say that some companies aren’t anymore shoddy than others in a capitalist system is to say that you can get the same quality of food or shelter or water or anything else at any given place. Although capitalism puts profit above everything else, including life, there are still various entities that provide goods and services at different levels under that paradigm. Nothing and no one is monolithic as individual people and groups have different reasons and rationales for their actions. The end result is to garner profit. But how it is done varies like the direction of the wind.

David Blackall on Apr 29, 2019

For forty-five years I ran a wildlife refuge in a rainforest in Australia. Biology and science were my first teaching subjects and this earned the money to pay for it. I have recently conducted fieldwork with university master of science students in determining biodiversity on my refuge. Carbon Dioxide has nothing to do with the loss of species; rather deforestation, in particular, has everything to do with it. Next is the increasing amount of pollution that poisons soils, water and ocean. The theoretical greenhouse effect does not have an effect on species diversity, they have survived temperature increases and decreases in many times before. This is evidenced in the rocks and ice cores and such temperature changes are driven by the sun. It is criminal to mislead the public on such important matters and those at the front of these campaigns are likely to be making profit or power gains. I have always supported clean energy production, free of the toxic gases like sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides that come from the burning of coal. It is time to get this straight – carbon dioxide is a trace gas that is not toxic, and it is the least worrisome of the greenhouse gases. Stop land clearing, especially in the Amazon, as large forests are critical for cloud formation throughout the world and we must reduce to nothing the pollution that poisons everything from microbes to man. It is the giant corporations that pollute in vast quantities, as does war.

Frank Green on Apr 29, 2019

So far I have only read Act 1. I have now subscribed and will read through all of your offerings in due course. I read for my BSc Environmental Studies, graduating in 1991 and was well aware of man’s impact on the planet even before then. Now in my 60th year, what is left of this planet is of no consequence to me (this crusty old body) except insomuch as it impacts my children, Grandchildren, and humanity in general. That said, according to James Lovelock (Gaia hypothesis) it is of no real consequence to the planet either, only to the human species. For, those below us on the sentient scale, perhaps have no current understanding of the global threat to life. Ergo only humans are cognisant individually to a greater or lesser extent of what we, if it is us, and or the planet’s cyclical events have in store for us and our demise.

Of course I would love to spend whatever time I have left in glorious and selfish enjoyment, providing that does not adversely impact on others. Furthermore, I would love the same to extend to my progeny. Sadly, I fear it will not.

So whilst I agree with your synopsis of what is in part the wrong kind of green, and your (limited by my only reading Act 1) suggested solutions, I feel it is all too little too late. Because, every day we argue over who is right or wrong and the corporatocracy in stealth or otherwise, continue down the road to self destruction, we move one day closer to our species’ final armageddon.

We (Humans) can change, of course. we can resolve the issue and possibly reverse the trend. But will we? I’ll leave that hanging.

My final thoughts on your article are in respect to Greta Thunberg. I accept entirely your assertion that you neither meant nor indeed did, cast aspersions as to her intent, her integrity or her credibility. But, I suggest that using the term ‘manipulated’, to some extent does exactly that. at least in respect the her integrity and credibility. Had you said instead that her actions were being hi-jacked by the (hopefully) well meaning, if erroneous mainstream Climate Change movement organisations I would have been in much more agreement.

You also fail to take account of her statement issued on 11 February 2019 where she states:
“Many people love to spread rumors saying that I have people ”behind me” or that I’m being ”paid” or ”used” to do what I’m doing. But there is no one ”behind” me except for myself. My parents were as far from climate activists as possible before I made them aware of the situation.
I am not part of any organization. I sometimes support and cooperate with several NGOs that work with the climate and environment. But I am absolutely independent and I only represent myself. And I do what I do completely for free, I have not received any money or any promise of future payments in any form at all. And nor has anyone linked to me or my family done so…

I was briefly a youth advisor for the board of the non profit foundation “We don’t have time”. It turns out they used my name as part of another branch of their organisation that is a start up business. They have admitted clearly that they did so without the knowledge of me or my family. I no longer have any connection to “We don’t have time”. Nor does anyone in my family. They have deeply apologised for what has happened and I have accepted their apology.

In the light of her statement, the point or at least very heavy inference in your article that she is intrinsically nestled in ‘We Don’t Have Time’ is simply wrong and disingenuous. A correction by yourselves would be honourable.

Otherwise. Go raibh mile maith agat, maith thú.

Wrong Kind of Green on Apr 29, 2019

Thank you for your comment. In response to “You also fail to take account of her statement issued on 11 February 2019 where she states…”

Act I of our series was published January 17, 2019. ACT II would be published January 21st, and ACT III on Jan. 28th. Miss Thunberg’s much publicized statement was released February 11, 2019 – almost a full month after ACT I of the series was published. At this juncture, the series was gaining much traction.

The Thunberg statement claims that that the CEO of We Don’t Have Time, Ingmar Rentzhog, highlighted Thunberg’s participation with his tech foundation, in his company’s *financial prospectus (published and made public in November of 2018), without Thunberg’s knowledge or permission. That’s fair enough. It still doesn’t change any of the facts presented in ACT I of the series. [*”Financial prospectuses must describe the company’s organizational structure and operations as transparently as possible, to provide decision-making data for potential investors.”]

February 5, 2019 “We Don’t Have Time” newsletter:

“As you undoubtedly know, Ms. Greta Thunberg has become one of this planet’s most sought-after people. She therefore needs to fully devote herself to the worldwide climate strike movement that she has started, and no longer has the time to commit herself to being an advisory board member of the WeDontHaveTime Foundation. She continues to believe in and support our organisation and we will, of course, continue to give her our full support in the future.”

L. Kach on Apr 27, 2019

And even beyond the Non Profit Industrial Complex being paid by the plutocrats to serve their own interests, the strategies that focus on climate change inherenctly divert attention from the root cause of this and all other issues, especially in the context of the US empire: the systemic plutocratic corruption of politics. The following linked ebook provides an analysis that “professional activism” as such is the core reason why progressives lack a coherent strategy to recover democracy: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2904722
This book takes a wider view of the same phenomenon uncovered by this excellent series.

denise ward on Apr 26, 2019

Just know that anything sponsored by the United Nations has an underlying agenda. I see this “We have no time” mantra as massaging the public into thinking of rushing a decision and that decision my friends will be this you can bet your boots – to bring in some hairbrained scheme of the geoengineers. And all their schemes are hairbrained. All of them. Because for them it’s about spending wads of YOUR money on more damage to the environment. What we need to do is reduce our consumption and have a rewards system that encourages such actions, grow hemp and kenaf and use rapidly renewable resources to replace petrochemicals. This is not rocket science people! And anything that comes from a centralized agency such as the UN should be automatically dismissed. Local is where it’s at – what you do locally is where our efforts must go. Use citizen media to promote these ideas

A P Broomfield on Apr 24, 2019

Excellent blog confirming thoughts I have been having for quite a while now, and certainly well before Greta came along.
When the CEO/COO of one of these NGO’s takes home more money than the equivalent in a Multinational Corporation, you know the wheels have fallen off the wagon.
Keep doing what you are doing please its vitally important

Drew on Apr 20, 2019

Epic work. And tireless patience with those who appear to be skim-reading and/or trolling. Your research efforts and journalistic and analytical standards are incredible. And your publishing of these analyses is seemingly too difficult for many to grasp, yet most of these issues are so in all of our faces whilst we collectively choose to ignore or – as so many have been trained to do recently, brand as fake news. Being vegan, I sympathize with the mountainslide of hate and scorn just for wanting to help humans dig their way out of the global shithole we have handed all life on Earth. Subscribing.

Glenn Albrecht on Mar 24, 2019

Emotional investment? A standard view is “The more emotionally invested you are in anything in your life, the less critical and the less objectively observant you become.” (David JP Phillips, We Don’t Have Time board of directors, “The Magical Science of Storytelling”). I think the opposite is true. Here is my reasoning.
Emotions are an integral part of what makes us human. I have suggested, with respect to the current environmental and climate change issues, that there are two sets of emotions at play, terraphthoran (Earth destroying) and terranascient (Earth creating) emotions. The Earth creating emotions are supported by all that we currently know about biological and climate science.
The terranascient emotions, when connected to science, form an objective foundation for personal and social commitment to certain courses of action, namely, avoiding the sixth great species extinction and catastrophic climate chaos.
We have then, a foundation for hope as the causes we are committed to are not arbitrary or nebulous, they are the strongest possible reasons to do something positive. For life to continue on Earth, particularly human life, we must connect our terranascient emotions to the objective order of life as understood and described by science.
Hence, I re-write the Phillips statement:
“The more terranasciently emotionally invested you are in anything in your life, the more critical and the more objectively observant you become.”

Michele Fox on Mar 20, 2019

Could you clarify your position and thoughts on the climate degradation caused by Animal Agriculture following on Earl’s comments and your response of 20th March? Some 2.7 trillion fishes and other marine life and 70 billion land mammals (estimated) are slaughtered annually. Then there is species extinction in respect of free living animals, also as a direct result of commodification and interference by humans. The requirement for everyone to adopt a plant-based diet and prioritisation of education on anti-speciesism is being ignored across the board, other than a little lip service here and there.

Wrong Kind of Green on Mar 27, 2019

The Most Important COP Briefing That No One Ever Heard | Truth, Lies, Racism & Omnicide [December 10, 2012]

“Also Ignored by the Non-Profit Industrial Complex at COP15: That industrialized livestock contributes over 50% of all GHG emissions.”

The Real Weapons of Mass Destruction: Methane, Propaganda & the Architects of Genocide | Part III [January 17, 2011]

“What is rarely discussed is the fact that as much as half of the annual worldwide greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change are now being attributed to the lifecycle and supply chain of domesticated animals raised for food. The livestock industry also contributes to massive deforestation, causing further acceleration of climate change. Due to the fact previously stated, that methane is a powerful greenhouse gas 72-100 times more powerful than carbon in the short term (5 to 20 years), how can it be that this issue is barely being discussed? Like heart disease – denying this issue constitutes a silent killer.

Livestock now accounts for up to 51% (Worldwatch Institute) of all greenhouse gas emissions. [19] Methane accounts for a vast amount of these emissions. Meat counts for more damage than all transportation combined on our finite planet. In June 2010 the United Nations issued a second urgent plea for a global united transition to a meat-free and dairy-free diet: “A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change.” Yet despite urgent warnings from the United Nations (the first in 2006) that countries must reduce meat consumption, this is just another lifestyle change the well-off would rather not discuss, even when this massive dent in emissions would cost nothing – we could all do it today, at our next meal. We could at least begin a transition today. Especially in light that this is one of the few solutions in the mitigation of climate change where citizens are free of government-asserted control over our decision of choice. The fact that it would be more effective in the fight to prevent catastrophic climate change to eliminate animal products from our diets than it would be to eradicate the entire globe of all vehicles of transportation combined is nothing less than incredible.

The fact that we dismiss such a simple action at the cost of future generations is revealing. What it sadly reveals is an increasingly unenlightened society that is effectively becoming more and more corroded by unadulterated individualism.

The Right to Destroy Ourselves

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” – Albert Einstein

But why give fair and just transition programs and subsidies to independent farmers for making the critical transition to organic plant-based agriculture when we can just keep giving the billion dollar multinational corporations the vast subsidies to keep destroying our planet? And why give our children – who are at the mercy of our poor decisions – a healthy and compassionate diet when we can slowly kill them with an escalating epidemic of obesity and diabetes, costing the health care system billions? But hey, as long as the cost belongs to the taxpayers while the profits from disease line the pockets of the rich, what’s the problem?

Let’s face it, there is too much money to be made by the multinational corporations, who view our families, and especially our children, as nothing more than neon-flashing dollar signs. There is just too much money to be made on drugs, treatment and disease. Prevention is the enemy of corporate profit. And why even consider transitioning to a healthy plant-based diet when, instead, corporations can set another unknown disaster into motion – in this instance, cloned meat. Our “brilliant” species can do anything – except change the very patterns that destroy our own habitat and ultimately ourselves. Burn baby burn. Drill till we’re dead. Message from corporations to consumers (formerly known as citizens): Stuff yourself with meat, hormones and additives until you explode (or the planet explodes – whichever comes first).

As an exporter of meat, dairy and wool, New Zealand’s highest climate gas emission is methane, despite having a per capita car ownership that rivals California’s. How to fix this? Simple – like the IPCC, the government simply accounts for greenhouse gas emissions but doesn’t add in agricultural methane, even though methane is far more potent than CO2. Presto! Methane is no longer a problem.

There is no choice – if we want to continue living, there must be generous subsidies to assist a global conversion from industrial livestock farming to organic, primarily plant-based, small-scale agriculture rich in biodiversity. Intensive livestock production and the intensive food production for livestock contributes to massive deforestation and loss of biodiversity. Much of the cleared land for livestock could be reforested or returned to grassland – becoming lush carbon sinks rather than degraded lands that emit deadly methane. Conserving biodiversity, as well as feeding humanity, must be a global priority over sustaining factory-farmed livestock.

Like fossil fuels, states must eliminate the massive livestock and dairy subsidies. Such subsidies continue to be accepted and relatively unchallenged as states vie for export dollars by selling meat to other nations. Trade is set to be the number one sector of all fossil fuel consumption by 2030. Further, both the fossil fuel industry and the livestock industry must internalize the full costs of all pollution, including water pollution, CO2 from deforestation, methane from decaying animal parts (among other sources) and nitrous oxide from animal waste.

Will governments create such legislation? Not likely. For behind the red velvet curtain, the corporations run the greatest puppet show on Earth. This certain cause of CO2 and methane is the easiest (and most affordable) one to tackle – yet, almost five years after the initial UN warning we are not even discussing it.

October, 2010: Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food states unequivocally:”There is currently little to rejoice about,” and “worse may still be ahead…. Current agricultural developments are… threatening the ability for our children’s children to feed themselves,” he said. “A fundamental shift is urgently required….” He continued that “giving priority to approaches that increase reliance on fossil fuels is agriculture committing suicide.” Today agriculture continues to decline because of accelerating climate change. Feeding factory-farmed livestock rather than feeding people is just one more slap in the face to human rights and social equity.

October, 2010: Scientists warn of a livestock greenhouse gas boom: “Soaring international production of livestock could release enough carbon into the atmosphere by 2050 to single-handedly exceed ‘safe’ levels of climate change.… The livestock sector’s emissions alone could send temperatures above the 2 degrees Celsius rise commonly said to be the threshold above which climate change could be destabilising.” They also make a more conservative estimate: “The sector will contribute enough greenhouse gas emissions to take up 70 per cent of the ‘safe’ 2 degree temperature rise.” The authors of the study called on governments to prioritize the reining in of the livestock sector, adding that “mobilising the necessary political will to implement such policies is a daunting but necessary prospect.” They suggest the world will have to reduce emissions by roughly 87 per cent relative to performance at a global scale in 2000.

And again, remember that 2ºC was never considered safe. From the 1990 United Nations AGGG report: “Temperature increases beyond 1°C could trigger rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage.” The absolute temperature limit of 2°C in the same report was motivated as the limit beyond which the risks of grave damage to ecosystems and of non-linear responses are expected to increase rapidly.

In the video below (2011:13:57), The Genetics Myth, Dr Robert Sapolsky, Dr James Gilligan, Dr Gabor Maté and Richard Wilkinson speak of how a society void of ethics, effects our behaviours and emotional health.”

Post Cop15 | Time to be Bold [October 20, 2010]

“There must be generous subsidies to assist a global conversion from industrial livestock farming to organic, primarily plant based small scale agriculture rich in biodiversity. Intensive livestock production and the intensive food production for livestock contributes to massive deforestation and loss of biodiversity. Conserving biodiversity, as well as feeding humanity must be a global priority over sustaining factory-farmed livestock and bio-fuel production.”

10:10:10 – Marketing, Manipulation, and the Status Quo [October 8, 2010]

“Pablo Eisenberg at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute has stated, “although we know that our socioeconomic, ecological, and political problems are interrelated, a growing portion of our nonprofit world nevertheless continues to operate in a way that fails to reflect this complexity and connectedness.” This unwillingness to confront the broader issues of climate change such as militarism, livestock, and the capitalistic practices inherent in the current corporatocracy, is at the heart of the crisis of the climate change movement. Behind closed doors, the organizations manipulating and exploiting 10:10:10 know and understand the dilemma created by their infatuation with the corporate power structure. Yet the big greens refuse to advance these fundamental issues. And to be fair, they can’t. For if they were to be effective, in a meaningful way that actually started a paradigm shift, they would quickly be cut off from their generous ‘partners’. These groups have become barriers to the movement. They no longer represent civil society, but stand as walls to protect the system. They utilize the coercive tactic of inviting supposed leaders of civil society into sanitized circles of power, and simultaneously repress the rank and file climate movement.”

whole series is already here, of course.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edited with Forrest Palmer, Wrong Kind of Green Collective.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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THE DEEP STATE IS CLOSING IN

The big social media —Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—are trying to silence us.

First name

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

F. William Engdahl

December 2018—Tens of thousands demonstrate in Paris in "March for the Climate". Participants included many Gilets Jaunes and Gilets Verts, now uniting forces to demand the elimination of capitalism. This went unreported in the American press.

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]limate. Now who wudda thought. The very mega-corporations and mega-billionaires behind the globalization of the world economy over recent decades, whose pursuit of shareholder value and cost reduction who have wreaked so much damage to our environment both in the industrial world and in the under-developed economies of Africa, Asia, Latin America, are the leading backers of the “grass roots” decarbonization movement from Sweden to Germany to the USA and beyond. Is it pangs of guilty conscience, or could it be a deeper agenda of the financialization of the very air we breathe and more ?

Whatever one may believe about the dangers of CO2 and risks of global warming creating a global catastrophe of 1.5 to 2 degree Celsius average temperature rise in the next roughly 12 years, it is worth noting who is promoting the current flood of propaganda and climate activism.

Green Finance

Several years before Al Gore and others decided to use a young Swedish school girl to be the poster child for climate action urgency, or in the USA the call of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a complete reorganization of the economy around a Green New Deal, the giants of finance began devising schemes for steering hundreds of billions of future funds to investments in often worthless “climate” companies.

In 2013 after years of careful preparation, a Swedish real estate company, Vasakronan, issued the first corporate “Green Bond.” They were followed by others including Apple, SNCF and the major French bank Credit Agricole. In November 2013 Elon Musk’s problem-riddled Tesla Energy issued the first solar asset-backed security. Today according to something called the Climate Bonds Initiative, more than $500 billion in such Green Bonds are outstanding. The creators of the bond idea state their aim is to win over a major share of the $45 trillion of assets under management globally which have made nominal commitment to invest in “climate friendly” projects.

Bonnie Prince Charles, future UK Monarch, along with the Bank of England and City of London finance have promoted “green financial instruments,” led by Green Bonds, to redirect pension plans and mutual funds towards green projects. A key player in the linking of world financial institutions with the Green Agenda is outgoing Bank of England head Mark Carney. In December 2015, the Bank for International Settlements’ Financial Stability Board (FSB), chaired then by Carney, created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), to advise “investors, lenders and insurance about climate related risks.” That was certainly a bizarre focus for world central bankers.

In 2016 the TCFD along with the City of London Corporation and the UK Government initiated the Green Finance Initiative, aiming to channel trillions of dollars to “green” investments. The central bankers of the FSB nominated 31 people to form the TCFD. Chaired by billionaire Michael Bloomberg of the financial wire, it includes key people from JP MorganChase; from BlackRock–one of the world’s biggest asset managers with almost $7 trillion; Barclays Bank; HSBC, the London-Hong Kong bank repeatedly fined for laundering drug and other black funds; Swiss Re, the world’s second largest reinsurance; China’s ICBC bank; Tata Steel, ENI oil, Dow Chemical, mining giant BHP Billington and David Blood of Al Gore’s Generation Investment LLC. In effect it seems the foxes are writing the rules for the new Green Hen House.

Bank of England’s Carney was also a key actor in efforts to make the City of London into the financial center of global Green Finance. The outgoing UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, in July 2019 released a White Paper, “Green Finance Strategy: Transforming Finance for a Greener Future.” The paper states, “One of the most influential initiatives to emerge is the Financial Stability Board’s private sector Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), supported by Mark Carney and chaired by Michael Bloomberg. This has been endorsed by institutions representing $118 trillion of assets globally.” There seems to be a plan here. The plan is the financialization of the entire world economy using fear of an end of world scenario to reach arbitrary aims such as “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”

Goldman Sachs Key Actor

The omnipresent Wall Street bank, Goldman Sachs, which spawned among others ECB outgoing President Mario Draghi and Bank of England head Carney, has just unveiled the first global index of top-ranking environmental stocks, done along with the London-based CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project. The CDP, notably, is financed by investors such as HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, American International Group, and State Street Corp.

The new index, called CDP Environment EW and CDP Eurozone EW, aims to lure investment funds, state pension systems such as the CalPERS (the California Public Employees’ Retirement System) and CalSTRS (the California State Teachers’ Retirement System) with a combined $600+ billion in assets, to invest in their carefully chosen targets. Top rated companies in the index include Alphabet which owns Google, Microsoft, ING Group, Diageo, Philips, Danone and, conveniently, Goldman Sachs.

Enter Greta, AOC and Co.

At this point events take on a cynical turn as we are confronted with wildly popular, heavily promoted climate activists such as Sweden’s Greta Thunberg or New York’s 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal. However sincere these activists may be, there is a well-oiled financial machine behind promoting them for gain.

Greta Thunberg is part of a well-connected network tied to the organization of Al Gore who is being cynically and professionally marketed and used by such agencies as the UN, the EU Commission and the financial interests behind the present climate agenda. As Canadian researcher and climate activist, Cory Morningstar, documents in an excellent series of posts, young Greta is working with a well-knit network that is tied to US climate investor and enormously wealthy climate profiteer, Al Gore, chairman of Generation Investment group. Gore’s partner, ex-Goldman Sachs official David Blood as noted earlier, is a member of the BIS-created TCFD. Greta Thunberg along with her 17-year-old US climate friend, Jamie Margolin, were both listed as “special youth advisor and trustee” of the Swedish We Don’t Have Time NGO, founded by its CEO Ingmar Rentzhog. Rentzhog is a member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Organization Leaders, and part of the European Climate Policy Task Force. He was trained in March 2017 by Al Gore in Denver, and again in June 2018, in Berlin. Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project is a partner of We Don’t Have Time.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who made a huge splash in her first days in the US Congress for unveiling a “Green New Deal” to completely reorganize the US economy at a cost of perhaps $100 trillion, is also not without skilled guidance. AOC has openly admitted that she ran for Congress at the urging of a group called Justice Democrats. She told one interviewer, “I wouldn’t be running if it wasn’t for the support of Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress. Umm, in fact it was it was these organizations, it was JD and it was Brand New Congress as well, that both, that asked me to run in the first place. They’re the ones that called me a year and a half ago…” Now, as Congresswoman, AOC’s advisers include Justice Democrats co-founder, Zack Exley. Exley was an Open Society Fellow and got funds from among others the Open Society Foundations and Ford Foundation to create a predecessor to Justice Democrats to recruit select candidates for office.

The Real Agenda is Economic

The links between the world’s largest financial groups, central banks and global corporations to the current push for a radical climate strategy to abandon the fossil fuel economy in favor of a vague, unexplained Green economy, it seems, is less about genuine concern to make our planet a clean and healthy environment to live. Rather it is an agenda, intimately tied to the UN Agenda 2030 for “sustainable” economy, and to developing literally trillions of dollars in new wealth for the global banks and financial giants who constitute the real powers that be.

In February 2019 following a speech to the EU Commission in Brussels by Greta Thunberg, then-EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, after gallantly kissing Greta’s hand, appeared to be moved to real action. He told Greta and the press that the EU should spend hundreds of billions of euros combating climate change during the next 10 years. Juncker proposed that between 2021 to 2027, “every fourth euro spent within the EU budget go toward action to mitigate climate change.” What the sly Juncker did not say was that the decision had nothing to do with the young Swedish activist’s plea. It had been made in conjunction with the World Bank a full year before in September 26, 2018 at the One Planet Summit, along with the World Bank, Bloomberg Foundations, the World Economic Forum and others. Juncker had cleverly used the media attention given the young Swede to promote his climate agenda.

On October 17, 2018, days following the EU agreement at the One Planet Summit, Juncker’s EU signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Breakthrough Energy-Europe in which member corporations of Breakthrough Energy-Europe will have preferential access to any funding.

The members of Breakthrough Energy include Virgin Air’s Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Alibaba’s Jack Ma, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, HRH Prince Al-waleed bin Talal, Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio; Julian Robertson of hedge fund giant, Tiger Management; David Rubenstein, founder Carlyle Group; George Soros, Chairman Soros Fund Management LLC; Masayoshi Son, founder Softbank, Japan.

Make no mistake. When the most influential multinational corporations, the world’s largest institutional investors including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, the UN, the World Bank, the Bank of England and other central banks of the BIS line up behind the financing of a so-called green Agenda, call it Green New Deal or what, it is time to look behind the surface of public climate activist campaigns to the actual agenda. The picture that emerges is the attempted financial reorganization of the world economy using climate, something the sun and its energy have orders of magnitude more to do with than mankind ever could—to try to convince us ordinary folk to make untold sacrifice to “save our planet.”

Back in 2010 the head of Working Group 3 of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Otmar Edenhofer, told an interviewer, “…one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.” Since then the economic policy strategy has become far more developed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

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Keep truth and free speech alive by supporting this site.
Donate using the button below, or by scanning our QR code.

And before you leave

THE DEEP STATE IS CLOSING IN

The big social media —Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—are trying to silence us.

First name

Imperialism in the Anthropocene

John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman and Brett Clark

MONTHLY REVIEW

Late Imperialism and the Anthropocene

Energy Imperialism

Water Imperialism

Extinction Rebellions

Notes

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

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And…PLEASE!

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Inconvenient Truth Behind Youth Co-optation [ACT II]

Cory Morningstar

A C T T W O

We Don’t Have Time Players

A Coup De Grace

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

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And before you leave

In Defense of Cory Morningstar’s Manufacturing for Consent Series

Hiroyuki Hamada

THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – FOR CONSENT: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX [ACT I]

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

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And before you leave

THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – FOR CONSENT: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX [ACT I]

Cory Morningstar

A C T O N E

WE DON’T HAVE TIME

WHAT IS WE DON’T HAVE TIME?

SCREENSHOT

PROSPECTUS WE DON'T HAVE TIME (PDF)

WE DON’T HAVE TIME SOFTWARE APP: THE LATEST WAVE OF WESTERN & CORPORATE IDEOLOGY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

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And before you leave

Climate and the Money Trail

F. William Engdahl

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

Keep truth and free speech alive by supporting this site. Donate using the button below, or by scanning our QR code.

And before you leave

Keep truth and free speech alive by supporting this site.
Donate using the button below, or by scanning our QR code.

Keep truth and free speech alive by supporting this site.
Donate using the button below, or by scanning our QR code.

Keep truth and free speech alive by supporting this site.
Donate using the button below, or by scanning our QR code.

Keep truth and free speech alive by supporting this site.
Donate using the button below, or by scanning our QR code.

Keep truth and free speech alive by supporting this site.
Donate using the button below, or by scanning our QR code.