During her May 15 speech to The Beyond Growth Conference held by the European Parliament, European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen, citing a 1970s de-growth plan published by the Club of Rome, made reference to the European Union’s “social market economy” five times in a span of less than 150 words.
A “social market economy,” of course, is a reference to the sort of central economic planning engaged in by authoritarian socialist governments throughout history. “And this is exactly why we put forward our European Green Deal,” Von Der Leyen told the conference. “Building a 21st century clean-energy circular economy is one of the most significant economic challenges of our times.”
The agenda of the Beyond Growth Conference focused on devising plans to manage the destruction of economic growth that is a centerpiece of the real agenda of the energy transition. Limitations on energy minerals and other resources required by wind, solar and electric vehicles, and on the ability to continue printing trillions of debt-funded dollars and Euros in a vain attempt to subsidize them to the scale required to displace fossil fuels inevitably means the forcing of common citizens in the Western world to scale down their standards of living and limit their mobility to meet the net-zero by 2050 goals being dictated at the global level. Thus, the need for the EU to move “beyond growth” and back to a more primitive mode of living.
Rising recognition and acceptance of these limitations, along with the success by Western governments in enforcing authoritarian edicts on their populations during the COVID-19 pandemic, is now leading to a rapid evolution in the overarching narrative and talking points related to the energy transition. The former energy transition narrative of “we will scale up renewables and EVs and you won’t even notice the difference in your daily lives” has been transformed to “we will scale everything down and you will just have to live with it” with stunning speed during 2023.
A report titled “The Urban Mobility Scorecard Tool: Benchmarking the Transition to Sustainable Urban Mobility” issued by the World Economic Forum in May is another great example. Based largely upon a 2017 UC Davis report titled “3 Revolutions in Urban Transportation,” the WEF report advocates for authoritarian governments to force the reduction of the numbers of vehicles on the road from the current global estimate of 1.45 billion to just 500 million. The UC Davis report went largely unnoticed in 2017 because the climate alarmist lobby had not been sufficiently emboldened at that time to publicly discuss its real goals. But that mask is now coming off.
The authors of the WEF report claim citizens who can no longer own cars would still be allowed to move away from their planned cities of the future, but only via “shared transport,” i.e. electric buses and a new network of thousands of miles of high-speed rail. But California has clearly shown that thoughts of building a huge network of tens of thousands of miles of new high-speed rail in the western world in the next 27 years is a complete fantasy. California’s own high-speed rail boondoggle, originally proposed 27 years ago in 1996, has seen its budget blossom from $8 billion to over $130 billion, and still hasn’t managed to lay a single mile of rail.
The real world simply does not conform itself to fantasies like this plan, and everyone at the WEF is fully aware of that reality. Thus, what this plan really amounts to is a scheme to enable the speeding-up of implementation of socialist/authoritarian governments in the West to enforce the new restrictions on the lives of common citizens, an effort that began to accelerate during the COVID pandemic. Authoritarian governments always endeavor to restrict the free flow of information outside of approved propaganda, and restricting mobility is a key means of achieving that goal.
As we see the EU and the WEF now freely admitting, economic de-growth and forcing citizens of Western nations to live smaller, less prosperous lives are the real end goals of this energy transition. The narrative has officially shifted, and we would do well to take them at their word.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Americans are becoming neurotic worriers. COVID brought out the worst in us, as politicized medical leaders rushed us into a panic response that did far more harm than the disease itself without fundamentally affecting the net outcome of the pandemic.
But COVID is hardly the only example of Americans overestimating the dangers in their lives. We fret about everything from “Christian nationalism” arising due to court decisions protecting religious freedoms to alien-bearing UFOs.
Many Americans fear police officers kill unarmed Blacks by the thousands when the real number is about 10 to 20 annually. College students expect “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” to provide protection from exposure to opposing opinions and the supposed physical harm they are thought to cause.
Part of the problem of imagining all these boogeymen is that real threats can get lost in the shuffle. Impending financial doom, a rapidly changing world order, and millions of unassimilated aliens crossing our borders could all use better focused attention.
There is no better example of the trivial deflecting us from the critical than climate change. Sixty percent of the developed world truly believes that it will spell the end of humanity.
The World Health Organization declared climate change the most important public health issue of the 21st-century. The savants of the World Economic Forum named climate action failure as the greatest policy risk of the next decade.
Third World countries, unfortunately for them, find most of their foreign aid these days linked with resources to address climate change, rather than more pressing needs like economic development, malnutrition, clean water, education, or healthcare.
The fact that some degree of warming is real and related to human activity hardly justifies the catastrophe narrative. Facts derived from official sources tell a different story, for example, that 98 percent fewer people are dying from climate related disasters than a century ago.
Those who express doubt about any aspect of the catastrophe narrative are dubbed “climate deniers” by the mainstream and depicted as science-adverse Neanderthals. Joe Biden claimed he could change their minds just by showing them the climate-related fires he had personally witnessed.
About those fires, Joe. The undisputed fact is that 4.2% of the land in the world burned yearly in the early 1900s. Today it has fallen to 3% due to less heating from open fires, better forest management, and more resources available for fire suppression. Tilting at climate change will produce far less harm reduction from fires than will common sense, risk management, and prevention.
Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish economist, gives other reasons to doubt that climate change deserves its reputation as an existential threat. Hurricanes, despite claims to the contrary, are not increasing. In reality, the number of hurricanes in 2022 was unusually low, the second weakest batch of hurricanes since satellite data became available in 1980.
Landfall hurricanes, the most accurate way of charting hurricane frequency, appear to have declined slightly since 1900. Hurricanes each year cost 0.04 percent of global GDP. Projections from the scientific journal Nature, taking into account changes in climate as well as improved ability to protect ourselves from hurricane harm, indicate that by 2100 the damage will be 0.02% even without new climate policies.
The WHO claims that 95,000 worldwide deaths annually from malnutrition will be attributable to unchecked climate change between 2030–2050. That sounds like a lot, but the global total of deaths from malnutrition is 30 million or so annually, a number that is sure to come down as crop yields increase and economic development improves.
Even polar bears, the subject of one of Al Gore’s apocalyptic predictions, are doing okay. Polar bear specialists estimate that, due to hunting limits, the worldwide population is 21,000 to 31,000, up from 12,000 in the 1960s.
Nobel prize winner William Nordhaus estimates that if we stand pat, climate change will cost 4% of GDP by 2100. But the UN predicts that global GDP will rise by 450% in that time, dwarfing the climate induced harm.
Big-government tyrants love crises because of the power and prestige they bring. Instead of impoverishing ourselves with impractical boondoggles, we need to bear down on economic growth and innovation to pull us through. That’s what Americans do best.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
A Northern Arizona University (NAU) study declared that America needs to cooperate with China more for climate change.
The lead author of the study, Hubert Cheung, advocated for greater cooperation with the communist country. In addition to being adjunct faculty in NAU’s School of Earth and Sustainability, Cheung is part of the University of Tokyo in Japan as well as the University of Queensland in Australia. Cheung grew up in Hong Kong, China.
“We need to cooperate with China if we are to find effective solutions to climate change, for illegal wildlife trade, for sustainability transitions,” stated Cheung. “Understanding the Chinese leadership’s core strategic interests—and where political will already exists in Beijing to deliver on these strategic interests—will help conservation scientists and practitioners find opportunities and manage challenges.”
The paper’s abstract advocated for increasing China’s political power in order to advance sustainability and conservation. The paper went on to issue a defense of the Chinese government’s core interests, such as maintaining its current level of authority over its citizens and expanding its power onto the global stage.
“‘[A]n environmentally healthy and secure China can benefit the world, and this will only become more apparent over the course of the 21st century,’” stated the paper. “The scale and reach of China’s environmental footprint — and global geopolitical influence — is such that an exploration of its leadership’s political agenda and political will is valuable and timely for conservation.”
The other NAU researcher involved in the study, Duan Biggs, is also part of the same school as Cheung. Biggs indicated that sustainability efforts were the way to brokering a unified front between governments.
“The environment and conservation represent an opportunity for soft-diplomacy and for countries and societies to maintain dialogue and collaboration despite growing tension,” stated Biggs.
The only researcher hailing from a Chinese university was Tien Ming Lee. He’s a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Biological Control and Schools of Life Sciences and Ecology at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China.
The other researchers hailed from Japan, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Africa.
The World Economic Forum (WEF), the leading organization attempting to create a new world order of global governance, identifies China as a leader in combating climate change on an international level. The WEF Global Future Council is also attempting to increase trust in China as a world leader.
Last year, China’s President Xi Jinping opened up the WEF’s annual meeting in Switzerland by calling on stronger international cooperation in overcoming COVID-19, revitalizing the economy, and addressing climate change. Jinping encouraged more open relations between all nations, not less.
“We should remove barriers, not erect walls. We should open up, not close off. We should seek integration, not de-couple,” said Jinping.
The WEF invented the social credit score system — similar to the one used by the Chinese government currently. China keeps a database on its citizens to ensure compliance with government interests.
CHINA – Staff no longer required this register recognises your face & the food and then deducts the price from your bank account.
But only if your social credit score is acceptable, dissidents wouldn’t be served.
Northern Arizona University (NAU) launched a climate change program geared toward a career focused on corporations’ Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) scoring. The program spans four courses, each costing $500 — $2,000 total.
NAU announced the online, non-credit certificate program last week. The courses will prepare students for greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting. GHG is a key part of ESG.
“[This will] help working professionals gain the skills needed to address climate change at the corporate or organizational level,” stated the press release.
In the program, students will quantify the greenhouse gas emissions from individual products or commodities, business or corporation operations, and local communities. Then, the students will propose and defend emission management, reduction, and mitigation strategies.
NAU explained in its course description of the program that most large corporations were expanding GHG accounting hires at a rapidly multiplying pace.
“Companies see aggressive emission reduction goals as good for business and a way to market themselves as climate-friendly. However, companies cannot manage what they don’t measure. Therefore, the need for skilled GHG accountants is growing exponentially,” stated NAU.
The university also pointed out that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a rule change in March requiring all publicly traded companies to report their climate-related finance risk.
The SEC rule would require companies to include these ESG findings in their registration statements and periodic reports. This would include governance and risk management processes of climate-related risks; the potential or current material impact of climate-related risks; the potential or current strategy, business model, and outlook impact of climate-related risks; and the impact of climate-related events on financials. It would also require disclosures of a GHG emissions target or goal, and GHG emissions from purchased electricity (or other energy forms) as well as upstream and downstream activities in its value chain.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler declared that mandatory ESG disclosure would better serve investors’ decision-making and hold corporations accountable.
“I believe the SEC has a role to play when there’s this level of demand for consistent and comparable information that may affect financial performance,” said Gensler.
The timing of this course is significant, given that state leaders such as Treasurer Kimberly Yee oppose ESG. In September, Yee modified the state’s investment rules to prevent ESG ratings from investment considerations.
NAU sustainability professor Deborah Huntzinger stated that environmental policymaking required quantifiable data that ESG approaches like GHG accounting offer. Huntzinger and NAU Online director of continuing education Brenda Sipe created the new GHG accounting program.
“To design effective policies, whether at the corporate or national level, to mitigate rising emissions and human-driven climate change, we need to accurately track emissions,” stated Huntzinger. “Robust training in the best practices in GHG accounting will lead to a more educated workforce that can better inform corporate, organizational, community and national discussions about effective climate change mitigation strategies.”
Along with Huntzinger, carbon analyst Heather Aaron will teach the courses.
The World Economic Forum (WEF), the globalist lobbying organization that serves as a pioneer for ESG scoring systems, identifies GHG accounting as a critical component of ESG. In a July publication, the WEF issued guidelines advising that GHG was key to quantifying the “carbon value” of corporations.
The WEF, along with numerous powerful corporations and advocates of progressive reforms like ESG such as George Soros, BlackRock, Vanguard, JP Morgan Chase, Amazon, General Motors, the Sierra Club, issued comments or engaged in meetings with the SEC in support of the ESG mandate (though many offered suggestions for improvement).
NAU will also offer its GHG program at the graduate level, requiring students to complete a minimum of 12 credit hours. The regular course commences on Jan. 30 and remains open for six months of access.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
A political action committee (PAC) financed by Democrat billionaires is making good on its promise to spend millions to ensure Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s defeat.
The Republican Accountability PAC, an advocacy arm of the Republican Accountability Project (RAP), spent nearly $3.7 million on advertising against Lake according to trigger reports on the secretary of state’s campaign finance website. They began spending their millions a week after the primary election, and haven’t spent for or against any other candidates.
Those expenditures break down as follows: Trilogy Interactive, over $1 million; Google, over $840,000; Longwell Partners, over $441,000; Tegna, over $284,000; Scripps Media, nearly $245,000; Fox Corporation, nearly $230,000; Gray Media, over $222,000; Meta Platforms, over $202,000; Allen Media Broadcasting, over $100,000; Clear Channel Outdoor, over $83,000; and Extreme Reach, over $1,000.
It appears that one of the RAP leaders benefits greatly from the PAC money. Sarah Longwell, RAP executive director and the PAC’s treasurer, owns Longwell Partners. In addition to the over $441,000 her communications firm received for anti-Lake advertising, her firm has received at least over $554,000 for advertising and political consulting according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Longwell, a self-described “Never Trumper” is also the Defending Democracy Together co-founder (the parent organization behind RAP, and one of the top-spending dark money groups in the 2020 election), The Bulwark publisher, and former Log Cabin Republicans national board chair.
The only media company with an Arizona address that received Republican Accountability PAC money was Tegna. The listed address is the building that houses 12News and the Arizona Republic. Tegna was formerly part of Gannett before the media giant split into two publicly traded companies in 2015: Tegna, the broadcasting and digital operations, and Gannett, the publishing operations. Gannett shareholders retained the shares that became Tegna shares.
Gannett’s primary shareholder is BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and one of 100 strategic partners for the World Economic Forum (WEF). The WEF is the globalist lobbying organization that invented the social credit score system similar to one used currently by the Chinese government, called ESG investing or scoring, short for “Environmental, Social, and Governance” scoring.
Tegna’s board of directors consists of major corporate players representing nearly all sectors: its chairman is also a president of Dell Technologies, while other members include the executive vice president of Pfizer, the CFO of global sports entertainment giant DAZN Group and former Morgan Stanley executive, the former vice president of Coca-Cola, the former president of HBO, the former vice president and CFO of E*Trade, the president and CEO of WNET and former president of NBC, and former vice president of Time Warner Cable and HBO.
Last year, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer and Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates teamed up with RAP for a video speaking against the Arizona Senate’s audit of the 2020 election. About a month before Richer and Gates released their RAP video, RAP’s executive director Sarah Longwell donated $250 to Richer’s PAC, Pro-Democracy Republicans of Arizona.
A week before Longwell’s donation, Richer’s PAC also received $100 from Mindy Finn (formerly Feinberg), the founder of another self-described Never Trumper advocacy group called Stand up Republic. Both Defending Democracy Together and Stand Up Republic receive funding from nonprofit networks associated with Pierre Omidyar, eBay’s founder, a partner organization of the lucrative leftist dark money network originating with Arabella Advisors.
The other top PACs spending millions against candidates are the Future Forward PAC and MoveOn.org PAC: both leftist dark money groups, both spending to defeat Trump-backed Arizona candidates. In addition to Lake, they spent to defeat attorney general candidate Abraham Hamadeh and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
