Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s definition of the intelligentsia — those educated beyond their intelligence — illuminates the current gathering of global powerbrokers and intellectuals in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum.
Discussing sophisticated and lofty issues like climate change and the transition to green energy, attendees nod and applaud at one another’s remarks, marveling at their own detached brilliance all while ignoring their own enormous carbon footprint spewed by their private jets and yachts.
One can only wonder if they are reading the same headlines the rest of us are.
“Much of the U.S. could see power blackouts this summer,” declares National Public Radio. “Blackouts possible this summer,” affirms CNN. And to be sure this isn’t just titillating headlines for clicks, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy has recently published a how-to guide preparing your home for a blackout.
Our current energy crunch, both domestically and internationally, is a direct result of the Davos crowd, these misanthropic interlopers feigning energy expertise. It’s akin to Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee, the crow’s nest sailors on RMS Titanic, catching sight of the iceberg and deciding to engage in a lengthy debate about the Darwinism. “We are going through this incredible transition,” Biden recently bragged in response to a question about high gas prices. Iceberg? What Iceberg? Keep dancing.
What the Davos crowd will not admit — cannot — admit since it unravels their entire narrative — is that we are headed for a summer of blackouts because of their own green agenda. Biden promised to punish energy, and has he ever.
Since the first day where he signed multiple executive orders to end land access and cripple energy infrastructure projects with unaccountable bureaucracies such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), he has scared off investors and caused a dwindling supply.
Biden knows we have a supply problem. It’s why he is asking for more oil from OPEC or lifting sanctions on the rogue, murderous regime in Venezuela. It’s why he has released oil from strategic reserves.
Team Biden knows only an increase in supply will bring down prices. Yet, he has done nothing to increase domestic production. That is something he will not — cannot — do since it undermines his one core campaign promise.
In their hearts, the Davos attendees know their policies have never actually worked. Not one country that has embraced the green agenda has seen success as measured by factors like prosperity, opportunity, costs, or even output. Even the holy grail of metrics, emissions, have gone up in Germany. The only measurable success is self-righteousness. Going green makes the Davos crowd feel good. Judge Davos not on its outcomes, but on the nobility of its intentions.
It is sailors Fleet and Lee shouting, “full steam ahead, Captain!”
The Davos glitterati celebrate the green agenda because they are immune from it. Bureaucrats like WEF Chairman Straus Kahn and European Central Bank Chair Christine Lagarde are safe in their cushy, bubble jobs, blithely unaware that for many $4.60 gas prices are budget busting and forcing difficult choices. Similarly, high gas prices are no problem for Joe Biden’s weekly commute home to Delaware; he’s not paying the jet fuel on Air Force One. We are.
When Davos comes to its merciful end, its cadre of highly educated global elites will have accomplished nothing which improves the life of mankind. A quilting convention has more utility than the lofty thoughts of the Davos disconnected.
Sadly, they have tremendous power and influence. As long as America is run by impressionable and weak men like Joe Biden, men longing to matter and desperate to emit the substance and principles they lack ontologically, then the rest of us are doomed to suffer Davos’ green stupidity.
Editor’s Note: The Democratic Party is not likely to maintain control over the U.S. House of Representatives after the upcoming 2022 mid-term elections (should honest elections actually be held in the swing states), therefore these radical leftists are eager to distract not only from its incompetence at governing under Biden, but its ineptness in managing the alleged COVID-19 pandemic response, the stupidity of ignoring an invasion of illegals and criminals at the southern border with Mexico, hyperinflation, energy-policy, etc. The Russia-Ukraine conflict, and its postering for world war, gives the Democratic Party a small boost among war mongers and defense contractors, and their war mongering allies in the Republican Party as well.This show is all partisan politics and dangerous media theatrics which may very well be the end-game for civilization and a fast-track for species (human) extinction.
During an ABC interview today, White House Spokesperson Jennifer Psaki gave away the game for the Biden Administration’s intent on exploiting the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
Keep in mind, as the Biden team were getting pummeled for negative economic outcomes, massive inflation, skyrocketing energy costs and gas prices set to double, the White House worked to create an urgent defense by manufacturing the crisis.
While Joe Biden ate his pudding, the people behind the scenes told Zelenskyy and Putin that Ukraine was about to enter NATO {December 2021}. The White House then seeded details through China knowing the intel would get back to Putin. Russia took the bait and intervened.
The collective left (far more western leader beneficiaries on a global scale) now have a quick and strategic pivot point to go from COVID-19 as the excuse for all the economic ills, to Russia. The Russia-Ukraine crisis transfers the cost of the Build Back Better climate change agenda from COVID-19 to Russia/Ukraine. We can now watch COVID just disappear.
The BBB agenda, domestically known as the Green New Deal, intentionally makes energy costs skyrocket. By creating the Ukraine crisis, gas prices specifically are no longer blamed on COVID-19 (the original fraudulent justification). Gas prices are now rising because of Russia and the villainous Vladimir Putin. Climate change policy outcomes are made palatable by blaming Putin.
As we exit the pandemic, expect to hear much more about The Great Reset and building back better. Far from resulting in a low-carbon dream life, though, it’s a cartoonish fantasy that will hand the global elite even more power.
‘The Great Reset’ is a term that has been bandied about quite readily by most Western neo-liberal politicians. So often, in fact, and without proper explanation, that it strikes the prudent observer as a kind of paid advertisement.
But what is it exactly? The term rose to prominence at the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in June 2020. It was initially launched by the Prince of Wales, before being absorbed into the philosophy of the sartorially dystopian sci-fi villain Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the WEF.
The Great Reset refers to a plan to rebuild the world’s infrastructure ‘in a sustainable way’ following the economic ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic and to establish a global treaty to prevent future pandemics, or as it is described more formally, to “build a more robust international health architecture that will protect future generations.” If you ever hear people talking about “building back better,” they are referring to The Great Reset.
Probably the most disturbing part of The Great Reset is how much it strongly resembles business-as-usual, only with EXTRA globalism. Most of the plan’s outlines include a further weakening of national boundaries and individual national autonomy, in favour of a more ‘universal governance.’ As usual, it is the rapidly vanishing Western middle class which must shoulder this burden, as their freedoms are further curtailed to meet the quotas of corporate-media-fuelled activism.
Regardless, many world leaders, no doubt charmed into acquiescence by Schwab’s commandingly sinister Blofeld-esque wardrobe, agreed to the Great Reset, including Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Mark Rutte, Pedro Sánchez, Erna Solberg and Volodymyr Zelensky. According to John Kerry, Joe Biden’s administration is on board, too.
But the general agreement of the Western leaders is absolutely typical of any agenda which is espoused by NATO, the UN, or the WEF. If an emotionally charged, politically vague and ultimately ineffectual edict or bill is proposed by one of these entities – each resembling a shabby, globe-trotting team of insurance salesmen – our effete politicians line up to show the most fervent compliance.
As a rule, it seems their solutions to specific environmental or scientific problems mysteriously become entwined with LGBTQ+ rights, workplace equity, open borders initiatives and other unrelated social justice causes. It’s as though any goals they have are somehow unilaterally from the same source, or entail the same solution, regardless of causality or consequence. Therefore, a united response to a global pandemic mysteriously also equals trans rights activism.
In their own words, “No single government or multilateral agency can address this (pandemic) threat alone. Together, we must be better prepared to predict, prevent, detect, assess and effectively respond to pandemics in a highly co-ordinated fashion.”
There are many other sweeping sentiments expressed by Schwab and his acolytes which can seem either trite or threatening. Consider“the gulf between what markets value and what people value will close” and “we want more attention paid to scientific experts. No one can “self-isolate” from climate change so we all need to “act in advance and in solidarity.” There is much talk of the pursuit of “fairer and equitable outcomes.”
International treaties always tend to be about concentrating power. It’s one of those rules of life, for realists, as there is no escaping power dynamics in human affairs. Real problems don’t often have feel-good solutions. Often, they require ‘solutions that sound mean’, that don’t sound good on a corporate goals bulletin. Initiatives like The Great Reset all entail the gradual loss of the autonomy of individual nations, as their decision-making power is transferred to an international, disembodied rule-maker.
It has been, without a doubt, a globalist fantasy for a long time, but the key question is: do they realise what they are doing or not?
As far as their amazing coordinated pandemic response goes, this appears to be nothing more than forced world-wide vaccinations for EVERYBODY. According to Klaus Schwab himself: “As long as not everybody is vaccinated, nobody will be safe.” To which the attendant neo-liberal world leaders nodded in re-affirming unison, repeating in unison their mantra: “Global public good.”
Schwab, despite appearing like an immortal brothel-keeper at Kublai Khan’s Xanadu, is really cut from the same cloth as your typical EU technocrat. His ideas are not creative, they are quite staid and pedestrian, and research of his career shows they have been unchanged since the 1970s. He has consistently been preaching the very same thing, like a broken record.
Schwab believes we can achieve environmental solutions without altering capitalism in the slightest, by creating treaties of “mutual accountability and shared responsibility, transparency and co-operation within the international system.” His idea involves ‘ethical capitalism’ – where the excesses of capitalism will somehow be held at bay by ‘ethical stakeholders,’ to whom the corporations will be held accountable, while (conveniently) the elites and systems already in place will continue as they are. This is the master plan of the World Economic Forum, largely unchanged for 40 years.
The result? A green technocracy, one assumes, with a WEF-mandated ‘ethical stakeholder’ apparatus, a worldwide spiderweb organisation ruling by the threatened fears of pandemic and carbon doom. No section of society would be exempt from edicts of ‘the new treaty.’
The Great Reset website appears to be little more than an advertisement for modern pod-living. It seems to style itself as a low-carbon dream-life (without loss of modern convenience) to effeminate hipsters. One can see slovenly-looking neo-liberal youths, frequent references to LGBTQ+ values, and an overall urgency about carbon footprints.
There is a hint of Adbusters about the website, creator of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Despite the fact that the WEF and Davos and all associated entities are entirely elite institutions, the website styles itself on grassroots urban activism. There is much cringeworthy symbology in its white papers, such as a green and rainbow flag-combination with fey slogans like ‘we salute you, zoom queen!’
Schwab refers to the aim of The Great Reset as “the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” with the first being powered by water and steam, the second introducing mass production, and the third electronic automation. The fourth will blur the lines between “physical, digital and biological spheres.”
In this grab-bag of magical advances, he lists, “fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage and quantum computing.”
This sounds like cartoonish optimism, as many of these technologies are anything but clean and don’t seem to de facto relate to side-stepping out of industrialism or anything else. On top of that, fewer than 9% of companies use the machine learning, robotics, touch screens and other advanced technologies listed as somehow ‘changing everything.’ Stakeholder capitalism, as a concept, does not explain itself as foolproof, and will no doubt be freely interpreted by the likes of Silicon Valley or supply chain conglomerates.
The jewel in the crown of Great Reset optimism has to be the belief that the advent of AI will alter everything positively, again without specifics, to somehow create a low-carbon new world.
It appears at best to be all be smoke and mirrors, a childish corporate fantasy manufactured by isolated bean counters. At worst, it is an intentional power-grab by unaccountable international agencies and hidden oligarchs.
Either way, it is a fake utopia at the price of privacy and autonomy, sold to us by used-car salesmen who think they are princes.
Editor’s Note: At first I was not interested in watching yet another Michael Moore film, but after getting half-way through the film I realized the importance of the message. Renewable and green energy such as solar and wind, as beautiful a notion that is, still requires a massive industrial infrastructure to manufacture and deploy. That infrastructure is still dependent upon fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and nuclear. So the lofty idea of a Green New Deal somehow independent of the existing fossil fuels/industrial infrastructure may very well be a pipe dream. For a counterpoint opinion do read “A Bomb in the Center of the Climate Change Movement”.
By Jeff Gibbs
Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It’s too little, too late.
Editor’s Note: I include this post as an interesting conversation starter, but do not consider the Green New Deal a sound proposal for addressing climate change (unless you intend on bankrupting the country to achieve it).
By Gregory King
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday added progressive meat to the bones of the Green New Deal with the release of his comprehensive $16.3 trillion climate change program ahead of a campaign stop in Paradise, California, the city leveled by a devastating 2018 wildfire.
Sanders was an early backer of the activist-inspired Green New Deal framework and introduced, with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Earl Blumenauer, a resolution in July to declare climate change a national emergency.
“Young people, advocates, tribes, cities and states all over this country have already begun this important work,” the campaign says in its new pitch, “and we will continue to follow their lead.”
The Sanders plan channels the rhetoric of the climate movement, calling for a World War II-style mobilization to halt and reverse the effects of global warming over a decade. In the process, the campaign claims, it would create 20 million new jobs in “steel and auto manufacturing, construction, energy efficiency retrofitting, coding and server farms, and renewable power plants.” Sanders’ blueprint will be compared to proposals put forward by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who released a robust suite of cross-sector plans before ending his campaign on Wednesday.
In a CNN poll from late April, 96% of potential Democratic voters said “aggressive action to slow the effects of climate change” was somewhat or very important — the closest to a unanimous finding in the survey. The Democratic National Committee has so far not hosted a climate-specific debate, but 10 of the 2020 primary candidates will take part in a September 4 CNN town hall focused exclusively on the crisis.
During his time in office, President Donald Trump has rolled back dozens of environmental rules and regulations. Sanders in his plan promises to “aggressively enforce” the Clean Air Act, through the Environmental Protection Agency, to restrict dangerous emissions.
But the proposals unveiled Thursday go much further.
Sanders’ prime targets include meeting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s goal of 100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030; cutting domestic emissions by 71% over that period; creating a $526 billion electric “smart grid;” investing $200 billion in the Green Climate Fund; and prioritizing what activists call a “just transition” for fossil fuel workers who would be dislocated during the transition.
The Vermont independent would also cut off billions in subsidies to fossil fuel companies and impose bans on extractive practices, including fracking and mountaintop coal mining, while halting the import and export of coal, oil and natural gas. Additionally, he would use his Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to pursue criminal and civil cases against energy companies that hid or withheld information — over decades — about the damage their businesses were doing to the environment.
Sanders in 2015 and 2016, during his first presidential campaign, memorably called climate change the foremost national security threat. In recent remarks on the campaign trail, he has promised to reassert US power internationally by taking a more assertive role in climate talks.
“Climate change cannot only be addressed by the United States. It is a global issue,” Sanders said this week in Iowa. “But my promise to you is, instead of ignoring this issue as Trump does, I will help lead the world in bringing countries together to address the issue.”
The proposal is the most in-depth to date from Sanders, who says it will “pay for itself over 15 years” and includes new details on the potential funding sources.
The most significant, at an estimated $6.4 trillion, would come from revenue generated by the sale of clean energy — which will be administered by publicly owned utilities — between 2023 and 2035. Before that, Sanders would cut military spending used to protect global energy interests by more than $1.2 trillion while hitting up fossil fuel companies for more than $3 trillion in “litigation (against polluters), fees, and taxes.” An additional $2.3 trillion, the campaign says, would be raised from the taxes paid on the 20 million new jobs it promises to create.
Part of that money would go toward mitigating the damage already done by climate change — with $162 billion set aside for coastal communities under threat and an additional $18 billion going toward firefighters to combat a spike in dangerous wildfires like the one in Paradise.
To deliver the political will for such a radical transformation, Sanders, as he has throughout his presidential campaigns, is counting on the youth-led activists and progressive movements that he has often inspired and, now, hopes to count on as a source of electoral strength.
Their continued vigor and ability to successfully pressure elected officials is written into the plan.
“We will do this,” the campaign says, “by coming together in a truly inclusive movement that prioritizes young people, workers, indigenous peoples, communities of color, and other historically marginalized groups to take on the fossil fuel industry and other polluters to push this over the finish line and lead the globe in solving the climate crisis.”
Healthy green trees in a forest of old spruce, fir and pine trees in wilderness of a national park. Sustainable industry, ecosystem and healthy environment concepts and background.
The cheapest way to halt the effects of climate change could be planting 1 trillion trees, according to a new study.
The study in the journal Science, first reported by The Associated Press, found that planting trees could be the most effective way to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but cautioned that it would have little effect without a reduction of emissions around the globe.
“This is by far — by thousands of times — the cheapest climate change solution” study co-author Thomas Crowther, an ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, said.
“It’s certainly a monumental challenge, which is exactly the scale of the problem of climate change,” he added.
Though, Crowther cautioned, “None of this works without emissions cuts.”
Scientists with the United Nations have called for a major reduction in carbon emissions over the next decade to stave off the worst effects of climate change, including rising sea levels and dangerous weather phenomena.
Lawmakers around the world have debated on how to address the issue, and in 2017 the U.S. withdrew from a major accord meant to battle climate change due to President Trump‘s opposition to the pact.
Democratic candidates for president, including former Vice President Joe Biden, have called for the U.S. to rejoin the agreement. Progressives are pushing an ambitious plan to cut U.S. carbon emissions, the Green New Deal, introduced earlier this year by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
If enacted, the Green New Deal calls for the transition of America’s energy grid away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
When you think of Detroit, ‘sustainable‘ and ‘agriculture‘ may not be the first two words that you think of. But a new urban agrihood debuted by The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MUFI) might change your mind. The three-acre development boasts a two-acre garden, a fruit orchard with 200 trees, and a sensory garden for kids.
If you need a refresher on the definition of agrihood, MUFI describes it as an alternative neighborhood growth model. An agrihood centers around urban agriculture, and MUFI offers fresh, local produce to around 2,000 households for free.
In a statement, MUFI co-founder and president Tyson Gersh said, “Over the last four years, we’ve grown from an urban garden that provides fresh produce for our residents to a diverse, agricultural campus that has helped sustain the neighborhood, attracted new residents and area investment.” Through urban agriculture, MUFI aims to solve problems Detroit residents face such as nutritional illiteracy and food insecurity.
Now in the works at the agrihood is a 3,200 square foot Community Resource Center. Once a vacant building, the center will become a colorful headquarters and education center. As MUFI is a non-profit operated by volunteers, they’ll receive a little help to restore the building from chemistry company BASF and global community Sustainable Brands. Near the center, a health food cafe will sprout on empty land.
MUFI describes the agrihood as America’s first sustainable urban agrihood. There are other agrihoods around the United States, such as this one Inhabitat covered earlier in 2016 in Davis, California. But the California agrihood is expensive; many people couldn’t afford to live there. The Michigan agrihood is far more accessible.
MUFI isn’t stopping with the community center. They’re also working on a shipping container home, and plan to restore another vacant home to house interns. A fire-damaged house near the agrihood will be deconstructed, but the basement will be turned into a water harvesting cistern to irrigate the farm.
Liberty International News 