(Link added on Dec. 19, 2017: Tim Ball – The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owm25OHGglk
Link added Dec. 21, 2017 because it provides an initial cost-benefit analysis for the so-called « carbon tax ». Check around 1:06:00: « THE GLOBAL WARMING FAD – Paleoclimatologist Bob Carter: Climate Context As A Basis For Better Policy » in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XtIUx8bjeU
The inquisitorial mentality of many climatologists is courageously touched upon here. See Climate Change Hoax Update with Professor Willie Soon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe4V9HqiWww
I personally believe than it is much worse; it certainly is in the economic and social sciences fields, see : http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/negation-de-mon-droit-de-reponse-odieuse-censure-philosemite-nietzscheenne-en-france-et-au-journal-le-monde/ )
The main hot-air problem lies with the fallacious model used by the IPCC/GIEC. It flies very low. It does not even account for permafrost… And what about this demonization of fossil sources of energy?
In an earlier note posted on November 9, 2017, I pointed out the fallacious reasoning of the so-called Climatologists with respect to the acidification of the Oceans. (1) As a matter of fact , chemistry tells you that when the climate gets warmer, the Oceans do not absorb but rather emit CO2. During the last years climate warming actually slowed down. However, looking at it from a geological timeframe, it seems that we are in the early stages of a warming era. The seas of plastics and other pollutions, for instance those caused by cargo-ships and container-ships are real problems with tremendously damaging consequences for the whole food chain.
The same goes for permafrost but with a potentially bigger impact. Few years ago, I had pointed out that we still know very little about the chemistry of the high atmosphere. Although studies are now being conducted – even with the help of satellites – it is sadly still the case today. In an earlier essay (2), I had challenged the climatologists to consider other non-anthropogenic but powerful causes such as the precession of the equinoxes, the Coriolis force, and thus atmospheric and oceanic currents, the recurrent change in the Earth magnetic field, tectonic plates, the cycles of the Sun etc.
Today, I must underlie the fact that the IPCC model is grotesquely lacking given that it does not include the oceanic emissions of CO2 nor those caused by the permafrost! It seems to be a lethal flaw.
The political epigones of anthropogenic climate change are probably well aware of the IPCC flaws. However, just like in the case of the so-called « war on terrorism » together with the repressive domestics Patriot Act and Homeland Security, they need the instinctive mass fear induced by this silly narrative. They do so in order to dominate their citizens and to induce them to accept not only the ending but also the reversing of what the Trilateral Commission called in the 70s the « rising expectations » of the masses. It equally includes the forced return to a new « deference to (self-chosen) Authority » in order to implement the full « control of the flows of communication » (check for instance President Trump’s policy with regard to the management of the Internet ). Such control is necessary to impose their unprecedented domestic and global neoliberal philo-Semite Nietzschean regression.
This regressive project of the US Establishment is not new. It arks back to the post-World War II Report from the Iron Mountain (3), except that nowadays it is swallowed whole by the Western Right-Wing and Center-Left parties, pressure groups and ONG. This important secret Report rightly assumed that capitalism is presumed on the incessant growth of productivity which is vital to beat the competition. However, greater productivity means more machines – now more robots – and less workers and employees. The question was then simple: If, in the foreseeable future, only 20 % of the population were needed to do all the socially necessary work, what would you do with the remaining 80% ?
Of course, the right answer would be to push for the greatest possible productivity in order to better answer human and social needs while sharing the available work among all citizens fit to work. Post-war economics had demonstrated that a more equitable national redistribution of revenues was a powerful tool in securing a dynamic level of aggregate demand and in maintaining socio-economic prosperity. President Hoover’s infamous « rugged individualism » had failed miserably in dealing with the Great Depression as FDR and his News Dealers had brilliantly demonstrated. In effect, it turned out that ad hoc conservative assistance did cost more than the New Dealers’ Social Security and triggered less virtuous circuits of capital. But FDR had died as the WWII was ending, Wallace had been defeated by Truman and Truman was on the side of the most reactionary circles inherited from the Fascist-colored roaring Twenties and early Thirties: It was not only a matter of warmongering, of « containment » and « roll-back », but perhaps more seriously and ominously – given the pacifying effect of nuclear deterrence – it had a lot to do with the « return » to prominence of the Austrian-Jewish von Mises and of his insidious philo-Semite Nietzschean brand of economics, which he had helped implement when he was the trusted advisor of the Fascist Chancellor of Austria before the Anschluss of 1938. He then had to escape but typically never changed his ideas. Mussolini-Sarfatti before the racial laws of 1938 was and still is the ideal of these circles.
At a time when the US had saved the skin of many SS and other fascist characters quickly enrolled in the fight against communism and against the emerging National Liberation Movement World-wide, von Mises was backed by many others like Hayek, Milton Friedman, Hannah Arendt – the loving and loyal student of Nazi doctor Heidegger (4) -, to name just a few. These together with the Chicago University and the Committee on the Present Danger gained prominence with the election of Donald Reagan. Their Star Wars predilection was quickly followed with the (illegal) so-called Preventive War Doctrine.
The regressive thinking of these crews permeates the Report from the Iron Mountain and informs its narrative method. To solve the massive unemployment induced by the ineluctable growth of economic productivity, the Report proposed the return to a new domesticity and a new modern slavery. Masses – Nietzscheans call them « rubbles » – would not need higher education. (5) But they had to be kept busy – remember The Bridge on the River Kwai ? – with low wages; they also had to be kept in admiration and awe towards the self-chosen dominant classes, their new masters – you know, « meritocracy » Yale’s style, Sculls & Bones and all, and with similar tuition fees .. . When this interiorised or « voluntary servitude » (La Boëtie) fails, the so-called Nietzschean Hammer is always ready to strike. Witness the oversized budget of the Defence Department and that of the Homeland security. Social insurance and assistance conceived as citizen rights to Welfare (6) had to be replaced by what Reaganites later called Workfare. Nonetheless fundamental social rights are still a crucial part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
To keep them busy mass distraction was prescribed but it further had to assume a decisive Malthusian character to help control the population growth and reduce the size of the un-needed « rubbles ». Killing games were also advocated (7) and, of course, repression and wars. In this panoply of sadistic manipulations of the masses of citizen you will find the narrative, which is currently consciously or unconsciously fostered by the anthropogenic climate warming crew. The reasoning is simple: Temperature – easily traded for climate – affect everyday’s life so that dramatic climatic changes could be manipulated to inspire fear and to force a change in consuming behavior. If the « rubbles » can be made to feel guilt, so much the better as the biblical « original sin » narrative teaches. Paraphrasing E.P. Thompson you could call this process « the making of the Western classes of modern domestics and slaves ». However, these changes are ineluctable given the precession of equinoxes. As for the influence of the Sun cycles they were already emphasized by the economist Jevons when he dealt with the trading of wheat futures. Al Gore added his own peculiar and dramatic, if venal, scientific « brilliance » to this debate notwithstanding his own ludicrous « ecological footprint ». (8) So here you have that peculiar « genesis ».
Lately 15 000 scientists have issued a dramatic call for action updating their original 1992 appeal. (see the text in: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229 ) This was greatly manipulated by the organisers of the One Planet Summit, among whom the French President himself, a former trader employed by Rothschild and Nestlé. However, these scientists did not focus on CO2 alone, they also emphasised the need to ensure drinkable water to the billion Humans who still have not access in the XXI Century, as well as a minimal socio-economic and cultural development. True, they are poorly scientific when they deal with climate change. In particular, they write: « Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.». And from this rather unspecific diagnostic they concluded that the present change is anthropogenic! In Thus spoke Zarathustra the reactionary Grand Master – flanked and taught by right-wing exclusively chosen rabbis – Nietzsche had warned that the creators and propagandists of such narratives should avoid believing themselves in the crap cooked-up for the « rubbles » « Hi-han! », he warned …
Be it as it may, the truth is that the goals fixed at Kyoto were not respected. The path imagined to stop climate warming and to reverse it slowly over a few hundred years is already off by far. But we are promised years and years dedicated to the muzzling the « rising expectations of citizens » in a World that has never been so prosperous and scientifically informed. A proverbial empire lasting a thousand year perhaps? This walk away from the Kyoto objectives was slightly masked by the current economic crisis. For instance, Italy would have had to ruin itself buying green certificates just to offset its CO2 emissions, but it gained time because of the dramatic plunge – almost minus 30 % – of its industry starting in 2007. This made the Belpaese look virtuous again … Italy’s GDP is still below its pre-crisis level by almost 10 %.
You might have noticed that the French President seems to know about the fate of this path – which looks as ridiculous and far off as the fiscal consolidation path dictated to Eurozone members by a very inept neoliberal Fiscal Compact and the ensuing austerity programs. Blaming Trump for his repeal of the COP21 accords, he said: « International pledges put us now in a 3,5 degrees Centigrade path for the global warming of the planet. We are very far from the objective agreed with the Paris Accord to contain warming under a threshold of 2 degrees Centigrade and if possible 1,5 degree. Without a much stronger mobilisation, without a choc in our own modes of production and development, we will not be able to meet it. » (9) (translation mine) Meanwhile, soon after the Summit, the trader president went to the Château of Chambord – see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_de_Chambord – to celebrate his 40th birthday: He apparently shares Al Gore’s view on the « ecological footprint ». This is the same president which unleashed an unprecedented attack against the Social State – including social housing aid – and the labor code. Meanwhile, the social housing problem becomes worse and we now read of French mothers unable to heat their daughter’s room in wintertime! (10) Is this what they call « chutzpah »? This is only one illustration of the consequences for ordinary citizens and workers of this Climate change narrative dished out for the benefit of so-called green (speculative) finance.
What the French president does not tell you is that the singular focus on CO2 was mainly conceived to artificially create a carbon stock exchange and to impose a carbon tax. This would be quite efficient to force consumers’ behavioral changes (11), but it is also clearly planned to introduce new invisible trade barriers within the logic of the – already failed – asymmetrical interdependent world order. (12) This is threatening since the neoliberal France that followed the government of the « gauche plurielle » has intended to rehabilitate « colonialism » and is currently waging dirty wars, for instance in Africa, in this instance greatly increasing the already massive migration problem. Climate talk is fine but then Africa is still indecently rich in almost all raw materials, including uranium ore.
Yet, if such carbon tax would affect production cost and consumers’ buying power, it is not at all clear how effective it would be as a trade barrier, especially for high quality goods. How would one use the concept of energetic content, for instance? The French president is currently faced with a country sold by its transversal elites to hegemonic speculative finance. But at the same time it is affected by dwindling industrial base within a Eurozone whose rate of change is more favorable to German productivity. As a former trader working for Rothschild – general de Gaulle was famous for his phrase « La politique de la France ne se fait pas à la corbeille » – he also clearly underestimate the destructive impact of speculative finance on the real economy, consequently on the chronic trade deficit. In tune with mediatic climatologists he seems to underestimate the urgency of public climate change prevention, as we argue below.
Changes in national accounting were introduced in October 2014. In this, European nations were sheepishly following in the steps of the US. Accordingly, this change alone should have singlehandedly raised GDP by a minimum of 3 % . However, GDP is still far from it and signals instead a real, albeit masked, negative growth. (13) As for the fiscal contribution of speculative finance to GDP, it seems to be rather reversed when you take into account fiscal paradises – some $ 3 trillion offshore for the USA, at least € 30 billion only for the exonerations for the French Dom-Tom – and shadow-banking but also the flat tax propensity of neoliberal Sates and the gigantic so-called « tax expenditures » . These are real neoliberal marvels; they reached more than € 350 billion a year for France – a bit less for Italy – but are well-behaved since once granted they nicely fall below the budget radars. In this way the budget always looks in a precarious shape, in any case it appears enough in the red to help legitimize more austerity and sacrifices … for the « rubbles ». As we know the rich are an endangered species which requires the vigilant protection of the bourgeois State.
We should however emphasise the deleterious effect of harnessing speculative (green ) finance to fight climate change. What is achieved instead is the artificial creation of speculative green endeavors, knowing that the green certificates market has already collapsed 3 times since its recent creation. Indeed, they are better termed « certificates to pollute» because they are intended to protect the worse polluting industries in terms of CO2, for instance concrete producing enterprises and multinationals.
More importantly we know since the failure of Enron that the so-called Californian Model, which consists in the privatisation of public utilities and infrastructures, does not work and cannot ever work, simply because the short-term speculative Roe is not compatible with long-term investment. Years ago, I was literally blown out of my socks when – perhaps in reaction to my modest criticisms levied in my Tous ensemble (14) – the ineffable Frazer Institute proposed what I quickly termed the British Columbian model, namely let the State take care of the building of the infrastructures and when they are completed just transfer them to the private sector for a symbolic sum so that you can then enjoy the right market price! That is if, after you have been turned into a « client » rather than a « user », you can still manage to remain cash worthy. Failing that, in tune with the global warming disincentives and at time negative growth mantras, you will have to learn to « do without »!!! As a young kid I remember having read that Dr Pangloss ended up hanged in Voltaire’s satire of the Rosicrucian Leibnitz’s philosophy; in a nutshell, in a war devastated Europe, it defended the status quo with the motto that « Everything goes for the best in the best possible work ».
But the socio-economic barbarous – philo-Semite Nietzschean, in truth – consequences fostered by these sorry climatologic circles do not end here. Injury is now added to insult as their narratives have gained a – short-lived – political hegemony. Short-lived because the Paris Accords are just objectives with no real constraints attached. Moreover, deep-down, politicians know better and will shortly be faced with the inescapable conclusion that the targets are totally off track so that the narrative does not make any rational sense any longer. Because politicians do not like to fight lost battles, their focus will quickly change.
At that stage, one hopes that they will become rational ecologists and consider the needs to wisely apply the precaution principle and to publicly finance the badly neglected but urgently needed public infrastructure to prevent foreseeable catastrophic events. Perhaps they will also understand the logic of Ecomarxism, a logic too simplified by its rendering as « circular economy ». (15) Obviously, these events are much less linked to the climate and much more to the now decade-long neglect of public infrastructures or common goods due to the hegemony of speculative finance. Any engineer from the Civil Engineer Corps of the United States could confirm this sad evidence. Add the emblematic fact that people well versed in technology and mathematics are now following in the path of a Louis Bachelier, a forerunner of Dermon, Black and Scholes et al., and a student that was quickly turned away by Henri Poincaré. This is quite a pity but it tells a lot about the degeneration of what Gramsci’s called the ethico-political level of a given group or of an entire society. Similarly a Mandelbrot who was capable to treat Dow Jones data as hard empirical data, was told to look outside of France … at the time!!! Things have now change for the worst even in the Hexagon …
It gets even worse when you look at the fate reserved to the domestic « rubbles » alias sovereign citizens and to the « rubbles » in the emerging countries.
The domestic « rubbles » are daily fed the exclusivist narrative of anthropogenic global climate warming to change their behavioral consumption patterns and to force induce them to nurture lower socio-economic and cultural expectations. It has become virtuous to develop so-called alternative green sources of energy. The truth is that without enormous public subventions these alternatives would remain too costly and inefficient. We had already touched on this subject years ago when nuclear energy was valued around 4 to 6 cents the kWh compared to around 15 to 20 cents for solar and wind energy. True, the technology improved a lot and data must be updated; however, real and trustful comparisons are not provided, at least not honest and comprehensive calculations that would take everything into account from the extraction and production to decommissioning.
For instance, the construction of wind towers implies the use of huge quantities of rare metals. Like solar energy it is an intermittent source of energy, aside from its aesthetic disfiguration of the landscape. Moreover, it is known to cause problems to wildlife – birds, in particular – and health problems to humans and animals who happened to live within a 1700 or 1500 meter range. According to well-informed scientists like Butré or d’Arguin (16) these alternatives explain the rising of almost a third of the electricity and energy cost for households. These go hand in hand with so-called « free market for energy », meaning the wall-to-wall privatisation and liberalisation of the sector against the oft expressed will of citizens deeply attached to public or common goods. The raised taxes are then used to finance parasitic and often Poujadist green so-called « entrepreneurs », in order to make them « competitive ». Their intermittent energy in send to the public transportation and distribution networks which are obliged to buy it whenever it is sent to them. They cannot refuse nor even ask for non-intermittent delivery. None of these problems appear in the comparative cost currently provided. It is just propaganda, demagogy and false representation. The public – and thus the taxpayers – is legally captive.
Such a policy adversely affects industrial and economic strategies. For instance, Italy has high public incentives to push solar and wind energy. At the citizens’ level, it gets even nastier and unequal given that installation costs can be deducted from income taxes, that is for the fewer households who still pay income taxes – mainly some so-called dependent workers but above all wealthier employees and cadres. When an important aluminium multinational asked for a 10 year stable delivery of electricity in Sardinia, Italy could not satisfy this basic demand. It now imports close to € 80 billion a year in energy including electricity – France exports 15 % of its electricity production because of its exemplar nuclear plants …
The pace and volume of the transition to the alternatives are not viable and always necessitate other sources to maintain the viability of the grid, despite the so-called smart grids. The bouquet of classic and alternative energy is skewed in an a-economical fashion in favor of the latter, over and above what would be necessary or advisable to respect the precaution principle – We do not mention here the well-known fact that a dollar spent in prevention goes further than a dollar spent in exploration. For instance, almost half the CO2 emissions is caused by urban transportation. It is clearly harmful in an urban context although perhaps much less than the associated small particles. In the country-side – as well as in the Prairies, Alaska and Siberia etc – the CO2 increase would have a beneficial effect in that, as is documented in the Earth History, it helps the vegetation and cereals to grow … As a matter of fact, History and other social sciences have come to include climatic considerations in their studies. They all concord in noting the very high correlation between warming periods and qualitative civilisational leaps …
In reality, France has a good image for CO2 emission, because it has an important and very secure nuclear park. (17)
It is hard to understand the obsession with fossil sources of energy that has mesmerized the organisers of this One Planet Summit. Are we dealing with zealots again? This comes at a time when science has learned to cheaply reproduce oil and gas from algae mixed up with selected bacteria. During the WWII Germany had already liquefied coal. Furthermore, in retrospect, the Oil Pick did not materialise. Huge oil deposits exist not only in the deep see but also in the Arctic. Some studies published by Science et Vie years ago, noted that France had potentially more oil than Saudi Arabia but at a depth of 2 to 3 km. We are not talking here about the oft nefarious shale oil and gas productions, which have huge potential for causing earthquakes and poisoning the underground water. Molten-salt plants should we revisited etc.
In other words, we are dealing here with the worst kind of societal engineering devised by the present – pace Popper! – philo-Semite Nietzschean capitalists. Their master plan is the return to a society of modern domesticity and slavery. Piketty has already told them that if the richer 10 % of the population were to sacrifice a very modest portion of their revenues, they could employ the 50 % less well-off as domestics. (see : http://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/Book%20ReviewsFrame1Source1.htm ). They are thus consciously engineering the scarcity of needed energy sources in the same fashion as they are artificially creating so-called « green markets ». Their main zealots’ obsession now is to curtail investments in the oil and gas industries and to turn down the civilian nuclear power plants. This is dramatic because the modern economy is basically a transformation economy. Capitalism unleashed to power of energy-propelled machines. Nor, should we underestimate the fact that data farms are more energivor than old traditional industries. Some of you might be up to date with the increasingly forbidding cost of mining bitcoins: That cost is essentially the energy cost needed to churn out numbers and data.
Be it as it may, it seems to me that the person or group that will come up with new and efficient filters for coal, gas and oil energy producing plants will quickly make a bundle and render quite a service to Humanity, a species which, contrary to philo-Semite Nietzschean narratives, is inherently composed of equal members: this is mathematically ascertained by the fact that , despite all exclusivist bibles, gospels and other narratives, Humanity is a species that has to rely on sexual reproduction and therefore on biological equality despite – fortunate ? – outside differences … Human reproduction implies a revenue that is large enough to sustain it and to sustain the worker when « through no fault of his/her own » s/he is unable to work. Confusing production cost with labor cost understood as the individual capitalist salary, is economically and socially irrational, yet, together with the exclusion of any environmental criteria, it is embedded in the current and devastating definition of anti-dumping at the WTO. As far as coal is concerned, it is the most readily available source of energy on Earth as it is found almost in every region and country on our Blue Planet. The filters should include a narguilé reservoir to filter the dangerous small particles. The CO2 should be captured and chemically changed into other carbon, solid or non solid, forms. The technologies already exist. It is a matter of wise and foreseeing and socially sensible investments. These should aim at massifying these new technologies, something that could be done more advantageously than the over-used and socially costly solar or wind energy sources.
At this Summit, emerging countries are offered a promise, namely a compensation of $ 100 billion a year if they chose to follow these exclusivist climatologist bibles, gospels and narratives. But, in exchange, they must muzzle their own socio-economic development. They know what to expect. If not, they should meditate these two examples.
First, the CFC narrative. In a mature economy – as François Perroux aptly described it in the 70s – once a product has saturated the domestic demand, production growth rests only in the replacement of obsolete and used items and in exporting. Export markets are quickly saturated too and the development of quickly obsolescent products provides little relief. The ozone depletion was therefore attributed to CFCs, although we still know precious little about the chemistry in high altitude and the real impact of these components. But DuPont de Nemours had an alternative patent and could therefore gain considerably if the parks of existing fridges, air-coolers etc., were banned and replaced by the brand-new products based on its new technology. We then had the Montréal Protocol. To help adopt it vague promises of technology transfers were offered to the Third World countries and green certificates to pollute were devised. Soon after scientific reports noted that the new technology seemed to be more harmful than the one it had replaced. But then the ozone layer and hole disappeared from the media radars. Soon things seemed to have improved a little, although no one really knows to what it might be due; it could well be the influence of the Earth magnetic field despite the massification of the allegedly more harmful technology… This could be an interesting case study, if done rigorously.
Second, the excellent president of Ecuador R. Correa proposed his creative Yasuni-ITT Initiative (18) by which he would forego drilling in exchange for a modest annual compensation from the international community. In 2013, he was forced to abandon this generous proposal because the financial compensation never came. It remained symbolic at best. In these circumstances going alone with this proposal would have strongly penalised the development of his country. Still Ecuador has adopted a very sensible and ecologically informed policy for the management of the Yasuni park and other environmental issues. Bolivia is equally sensible and rigorous, keeping wisely away from exclusivist demagoguery. Both countries have also understood the fundamental distinction between a food and agricultural sovereignty policy and the food security policy that goes hand in hand with speculative derivatives.
Anthropogenic global climate change is nothing but an obscurantist narrative, now openly working in tandem with the philo-Semite Nietzschean economic narrative fostered by global stateless speculative finance. More ominously, it makes matter worse for the society and for citizens because it blocks all avenues likely to lead to real preventive and badly needed actions. This is because it is uniquely devised to lower the « rising expectations » of the masses of sovereign citizens, which are now seen as new « rubbles ». If you doubt this just take a look at my essay entitled « Nietzsche as an awakened nightmare » freely accessible in the Livres-Books section of www.la-commune-paralcet.com as well as at the essays in English listed there. Particularly the Synopsis and the Methodological introduction. All are mentioned in the Category « Another America is possible » in this same site
Paul De Marco, Former professor of International Relations- International Political Economy.
NOTES:
1 ) See « ACIDIFICATION DES OCÉANS ET CHANGEMENT CLIMATIQUE, 9 nov. 2017 » in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/acidification-des-oceans-et-changement-climatique-9-nov-2017/
2 ) See « Défi aux écologistes, au Giec et à tous les apôtres du réchauffement climatique » 14 juin 2007, in the Section Commentaires d’actualité of www.la-commune-paraclet.com
3 ) This Report has been said to be an hoax by a putative author. However, the original edition contained a preface by the great economist and diplomat – and President J. Kennedy’s friend – John Galbraith in which he testified on his honor about the authenticity of the frightening document. Moreover, the Report was based on numerous studies most of which are or should be in the public domain; are they all an hoax and by the same putative author?
4 ) On Heidegger see the essay in the section Livres-Books of www.la-commune-paraclet.com
5 ) The great American Marxist economist Harry Braverman studied the evolution of industry and of work. He was the first Marxist I know who analysed the lasting impact of the Babbage universal machine. He predicted that the development of modern capitalism would imply the overspecialisation of the few and the massive disqualification of the many. Christian Palloix confirmed this later as he was involved with the work of the French Commission du Plan. Braverman pointed out that Grade 9 would suffice to carry out most of the repetitive and tedious tasks linked to increasingly automated capitalist work. See: Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_and_Monopoly_Capital:_The_Degradation_of_Work_in_the_Twentieth_Century
6 ) This was already advocated by the Fathers of the Constitution, most prominently by Thomas Paine in his most important Rights of Man.
7 ) Marcello Mastroianni played in a movie based on this idea of killing games whereby preys and hunters would be lured into such games with important sums of money going to the winners. See https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_decima_vittima . At one point there was also a TV series called Hunters, if I remember correctly. (I do not have a TV set …)
8 ) On Al Gore see Note 2 of the following article: « Le Pacte Hulot: Nouvelle écologie du charbonnier ou pacte socio-économique communiste? » in http://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/Commentaires%20d’actuConstructionFrame1Source1.htm#hulot Of course, the main scientific reference he used denounced his manipulation before he died.
9 ) Emmanuel Macron : « Il faut un choc dans nos modes de production ». Le chef de l’Etat prône une série de changements majeurs, comme la fin de l’exploitation des ressources fossiles mondiales et la réorientation de la finance publique et privée vers la transition énergétique. LE MONDE | 12.12.2017 à 11h30 • Mis à jour le 12.12.2017 à 12h46 | Propos recueillis par Bastien Bonnefous, Luc Bronner, Sophie Landrin et Simon Roger http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2017/12/12/emmanuel-macron-il-faut-un-choc-dans-nos-modes-de-production_5228401_3244.html
10 ) « Précarité énergétique : « Il fait 12 degrés dans la chambre de ma fille, quand elle a de la chance », Alors que les premières vagues de froid touchent la France, la nécessité d’un logement chaud se fait plus pressante pour 12,2 millions de personnes. LE MONDE | 11.12.2017 à 10h40 • Mis à jour le 11.12.2017 à 11h44 | Par Eléa Pommiers http://www.lemonde.fr/logement/article/2017/12/11/precarite-energetique-il-fait-12-degres-dans-la-chambre-de-ma-fille-quand-elle-a-de-la-chance_5227864_1653445.html
Lately a newspaper reported about a French mother complaining that her young daughter was obliged to sleep in a room at 12 degrees centigrade during the winter because of the higher energy prices and because of the austerity programs imposed by the current trader president which openly favor the very rich and crushes all others, particularly the most vulnerable « citoyennes et citoyens » of the République. As noted in this article, the subventions afforded to solar and wind energy had one immediate consequence, the almost doubling of the energy and electricity prices for the households. Enterprises – as in Italy – get an energy subvention probably in violation of fair competition, whereas paradoxically such aid to households would not be!!!
11 ) The name of the game is disincentive, aggressive and intrusive as far as households and individual citizens are concerned. Their consuming patterns must change. They are even told to stop wasting food and to carefully sort out their garbage while agribusiness is free to add large amount of sugar – which is more addictive that cocaine – of salt and other additives … Some characters in tune with the indoctrination strategy churned out by Samuel Huntington’s Trilateral Commission and by the Club of Rome – which as Cambridge university pointed out at the time even managed to get its geometrical progression metaphor wrong – even push for negative growth in a world where precariousness and « shitty jobs » are generalised and where the 1 % and even the 0,01 accumulate ever growing portions of the socially produced wealth, etc. These are down-to-earth characters, they back up their daily mass-media and pseudo-academic preachings with real fiscal and monetary desincentives. The electricity and gasoline bills tell only part of this story …
12 ) In truth, this ineptitude was proposed by the Chair of Intelligence – sic! – Joseph Nye with the help of Keohane while the Gatt was being dismantled and replaced by the neoliberal WTO. It had to go hand-in-hand with a renewed American imperialism fostered in the guise of « soft power ». At the time, I had loyally pointed out the major flaws of this rather condescending argument. It presumed a scientific and technological dominance of the USA backed up by financial power and foreign investments – all sustained by the US rather useless, costly and numerous foreign military bases. A one point, the British Empire recognised the cost of this « Imperial burden » and started granting independence to its Dominions! Well, today, while the US is forced to import many scientists in the hard disciplines – the warning of Lester Thurow at the MIT in his book Head to Head had little real impact – , China graduates more engineers and deposits more patents and develops more brands. Furthermore, it wisely stayed away from speculative stateless controlled finance and developed its own « socialist » credit management. The US is now ruining itself with irrational defence and security budgets amounting close to $ 600 billion, when it could more wisely spend this money on social safety nets, education, transport and public infrastructures etc., all known to be great countercyclical economic tools and also known to prevent the recurrent disasters induced by climate change, anthropogenic or not. To access needed raw material and markets the only thing needed is a peaceful world organised around « the most favored nation » principle.
13 ) The new national accounting notoriously adds drugs, prostitution, and even some armaments to GDP … It seems that last year prostitution or what is accounted for in this striving industry contributed some 9 billion to GB national wealth (sic), the other countries being slower in providing these kind of data. As for drugs, we know the potential they could have, even though a better policy would be to legalise the use of drugs under strict State control in order to rapidly ruin the mafias, industry and the ensuing societal and political corruption while helping people to manage their own healthy and emancipated life style with the due social and public support.
14 ) My Tous ensemble is available in Download Now in the livres-books section of www.la-commune-paraclet.com
15 ) On Ecomarxism see my book III entitled Marxism, Keynesianism, Economic Stability and Growth (2005) This book was the first to point to the real causes of the current structural and financial crisis. Its « Appendix » solves the illogic reasoning of Ricardo’s imperialist « comparative advantages » theory. On that basis, we arrived at ecomarxism. In brief, the economic calculus should include the cost of replacement of the raw materials used. This would go hand-in-hand with the natural or artificial replenishment of the available resources and deposits while massifiable substitutes would be looked for, especially when the natural resources are rather scarce. The product-life cycle would include an optimum recycling and so on and so forth.
16 ) Jean Louis Butré : “La COP21 est basée sur un mensonge général” (05-11-2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVj3l5q7ROQ ; Jean-Louis Butré, président de la Fédération environnement durable, est venu évoquer avec nous l’imposture du sommet sur le climat, la COP21. Il est également revenu sur le danger des éoliennes et sur les incohérence du gouvernement en matière d’énergies. Zoom – Jean-Louis Butré : Eolien, une catastrophe silencieuse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Hx_qfyt7g; Zoom – Alban d’Arguin : éoliennes un scandale d’État https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvnTVoJxDUk
17 ) This explains why just before the catastrophe at Fukushima most countries were operating a return to the nuclear sources of energy. However, the Fukushima catastrophe was in no way attributable to the nuclear industry itself, but rather to hegemonic short-term speculative finance and its needs to pay dividends. It is a tribute to Japanese engineers that the plant actually survived an unprecedented earthquake – 10 on the Richter scale – followed by a devastating tsunami. However, although it should have been closed 5 years earlier, it remained open because its depreciation was completed and dividends were generous. Furthermore, for economic reasons the reactor core used zirconium, a metal which creates highly explosive hydrogen when exposed to water at high temperatures. Without this zirconium – or at least if azotes would have been used from the start to saturate the hydrogen, no explosions would have happened and the catastrophe would have remained a serious but intra-plant accident. It is sad to see that supposed ecologists, at least media-savvy ecologists now taken with their new preaching star-system, do not face these issues rationally. One of the historical leaders of Greenpeace had notoriously made the same point. We should add that current civilian nuclear industry was derived from a military technology chosen because it had the potential to produce the plutonium needed for the nukes and to be contained enough to power a military submarine. But other purely civilian nuclear technology existed even at that time, for instance molten-salt plants – which are said to be able to safely burn most of the accumulated nuclear wastes.
18 ) See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Correa#Yasuní-ITT_Initiative
THE ONE PLANET SUMMIT SELLOUT TO SPECULATIVE FINANCE, Dec. 16, 2017(Updated links)
Posted: 16th Dicembre 2017 by rivincitasociale in Another America is possible, Commenti rapidi(Link added on Dec. 19, 2017: Tim Ball – The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owm25OHGglk
Link added Dec. 21, 2017 because it provides an initial cost-benefit analysis for the so-called « carbon tax ». Check around 1:06:00: « THE GLOBAL WARMING FAD – Paleoclimatologist Bob Carter: Climate Context As A Basis For Better Policy » in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XtIUx8bjeU
The inquisitorial mentality of many climatologists is courageously touched upon here. See Climate Change Hoax Update with Professor Willie Soon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe4V9HqiWww
I personally believe than it is much worse; it certainly is in the economic and social sciences fields, see : http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/negation-de-mon-droit-de-reponse-odieuse-censure-philosemite-nietzscheenne-en-france-et-au-journal-le-monde/ )
The main hot-air problem lies with the fallacious model used by the IPCC/GIEC. It flies very low. It does not even account for permafrost… And what about this demonization of fossil sources of energy?
In an earlier note posted on November 9, 2017, I pointed out the fallacious reasoning of the so-called Climatologists with respect to the acidification of the Oceans. (1) As a matter of fact , chemistry tells you that when the climate gets warmer, the Oceans do not absorb but rather emit CO2. During the last years climate warming actually slowed down. However, looking at it from a geological timeframe, it seems that we are in the early stages of a warming era. The seas of plastics and other pollutions, for instance those caused by cargo-ships and container-ships are real problems with tremendously damaging consequences for the whole food chain.
The same goes for permafrost but with a potentially bigger impact. Few years ago, I had pointed out that we still know very little about the chemistry of the high atmosphere. Although studies are now being conducted – even with the help of satellites – it is sadly still the case today. In an earlier essay (2), I had challenged the climatologists to consider other non-anthropogenic but powerful causes such as the precession of the equinoxes, the Coriolis force, and thus atmospheric and oceanic currents, the recurrent change in the Earth magnetic field, tectonic plates, the cycles of the Sun etc.
Today, I must underlie the fact that the IPCC model is grotesquely lacking given that it does not include the oceanic emissions of CO2 nor those caused by the permafrost! It seems to be a lethal flaw.
The political epigones of anthropogenic climate change are probably well aware of the IPCC flaws. However, just like in the case of the so-called « war on terrorism » together with the repressive domestics Patriot Act and Homeland Security, they need the instinctive mass fear induced by this silly narrative. They do so in order to dominate their citizens and to induce them to accept not only the ending but also the reversing of what the Trilateral Commission called in the 70s the « rising expectations » of the masses. It equally includes the forced return to a new « deference to (self-chosen) Authority » in order to implement the full « control of the flows of communication » (check for instance President Trump’s policy with regard to the management of the Internet ). Such control is necessary to impose their unprecedented domestic and global neoliberal philo-Semite Nietzschean regression.
This regressive project of the US Establishment is not new. It arks back to the post-World War II Report from the Iron Mountain (3), except that nowadays it is swallowed whole by the Western Right-Wing and Center-Left parties, pressure groups and ONG. This important secret Report rightly assumed that capitalism is presumed on the incessant growth of productivity which is vital to beat the competition. However, greater productivity means more machines – now more robots – and less workers and employees. The question was then simple: If, in the foreseeable future, only 20 % of the population were needed to do all the socially necessary work, what would you do with the remaining 80% ?
Of course, the right answer would be to push for the greatest possible productivity in order to better answer human and social needs while sharing the available work among all citizens fit to work. Post-war economics had demonstrated that a more equitable national redistribution of revenues was a powerful tool in securing a dynamic level of aggregate demand and in maintaining socio-economic prosperity. President Hoover’s infamous « rugged individualism » had failed miserably in dealing with the Great Depression as FDR and his News Dealers had brilliantly demonstrated. In effect, it turned out that ad hoc conservative assistance did cost more than the New Dealers’ Social Security and triggered less virtuous circuits of capital. But FDR had died as the WWII was ending, Wallace had been defeated by Truman and Truman was on the side of the most reactionary circles inherited from the Fascist-colored roaring Twenties and early Thirties: It was not only a matter of warmongering, of « containment » and « roll-back », but perhaps more seriously and ominously – given the pacifying effect of nuclear deterrence – it had a lot to do with the « return » to prominence of the Austrian-Jewish von Mises and of his insidious philo-Semite Nietzschean brand of economics, which he had helped implement when he was the trusted advisor of the Fascist Chancellor of Austria before the Anschluss of 1938. He then had to escape but typically never changed his ideas. Mussolini-Sarfatti before the racial laws of 1938 was and still is the ideal of these circles.
At a time when the US had saved the skin of many SS and other fascist characters quickly enrolled in the fight against communism and against the emerging National Liberation Movement World-wide, von Mises was backed by many others like Hayek, Milton Friedman, Hannah Arendt – the loving and loyal student of Nazi doctor Heidegger (4) -, to name just a few. These together with the Chicago University and the Committee on the Present Danger gained prominence with the election of Donald Reagan. Their Star Wars predilection was quickly followed with the (illegal) so-called Preventive War Doctrine.
The regressive thinking of these crews permeates the Report from the Iron Mountain and informs its narrative method. To solve the massive unemployment induced by the ineluctable growth of economic productivity, the Report proposed the return to a new domesticity and a new modern slavery. Masses – Nietzscheans call them « rubbles » – would not need higher education. (5) But they had to be kept busy – remember The Bridge on the River Kwai ? – with low wages; they also had to be kept in admiration and awe towards the self-chosen dominant classes, their new masters – you know, « meritocracy » Yale’s style, Sculls & Bones and all, and with similar tuition fees .. . When this interiorised or « voluntary servitude » (La Boëtie) fails, the so-called Nietzschean Hammer is always ready to strike. Witness the oversized budget of the Defence Department and that of the Homeland security. Social insurance and assistance conceived as citizen rights to Welfare (6) had to be replaced by what Reaganites later called Workfare. Nonetheless fundamental social rights are still a crucial part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
To keep them busy mass distraction was prescribed but it further had to assume a decisive Malthusian character to help control the population growth and reduce the size of the un-needed « rubbles ». Killing games were also advocated (7) and, of course, repression and wars. In this panoply of sadistic manipulations of the masses of citizen you will find the narrative, which is currently consciously or unconsciously fostered by the anthropogenic climate warming crew. The reasoning is simple: Temperature – easily traded for climate – affect everyday’s life so that dramatic climatic changes could be manipulated to inspire fear and to force a change in consuming behavior. If the « rubbles » can be made to feel guilt, so much the better as the biblical « original sin » narrative teaches. Paraphrasing E.P. Thompson you could call this process « the making of the Western classes of modern domestics and slaves ». However, these changes are ineluctable given the precession of equinoxes. As for the influence of the Sun cycles they were already emphasized by the economist Jevons when he dealt with the trading of wheat futures. Al Gore added his own peculiar and dramatic, if venal, scientific « brilliance » to this debate notwithstanding his own ludicrous « ecological footprint ». (8) So here you have that peculiar « genesis ».
Lately 15 000 scientists have issued a dramatic call for action updating their original 1992 appeal. (see the text in: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229 ) This was greatly manipulated by the organisers of the One Planet Summit, among whom the French President himself, a former trader employed by Rothschild and Nestlé. However, these scientists did not focus on CO2 alone, they also emphasised the need to ensure drinkable water to the billion Humans who still have not access in the XXI Century, as well as a minimal socio-economic and cultural development. True, they are poorly scientific when they deal with climate change. In particular, they write: « Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.». And from this rather unspecific diagnostic they concluded that the present change is anthropogenic! In Thus spoke Zarathustra the reactionary Grand Master – flanked and taught by right-wing exclusively chosen rabbis – Nietzsche had warned that the creators and propagandists of such narratives should avoid believing themselves in the crap cooked-up for the « rubbles » « Hi-han! », he warned …
Be it as it may, the truth is that the goals fixed at Kyoto were not respected. The path imagined to stop climate warming and to reverse it slowly over a few hundred years is already off by far. But we are promised years and years dedicated to the muzzling the « rising expectations of citizens » in a World that has never been so prosperous and scientifically informed. A proverbial empire lasting a thousand year perhaps? This walk away from the Kyoto objectives was slightly masked by the current economic crisis. For instance, Italy would have had to ruin itself buying green certificates just to offset its CO2 emissions, but it gained time because of the dramatic plunge – almost minus 30 % – of its industry starting in 2007. This made the Belpaese look virtuous again … Italy’s GDP is still below its pre-crisis level by almost 10 %.
You might have noticed that the French President seems to know about the fate of this path – which looks as ridiculous and far off as the fiscal consolidation path dictated to Eurozone members by a very inept neoliberal Fiscal Compact and the ensuing austerity programs. Blaming Trump for his repeal of the COP21 accords, he said: « International pledges put us now in a 3,5 degrees Centigrade path for the global warming of the planet. We are very far from the objective agreed with the Paris Accord to contain warming under a threshold of 2 degrees Centigrade and if possible 1,5 degree. Without a much stronger mobilisation, without a choc in our own modes of production and development, we will not be able to meet it. » (9) (translation mine) Meanwhile, soon after the Summit, the trader president went to the Château of Chambord – see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_de_Chambord – to celebrate his 40th birthday: He apparently shares Al Gore’s view on the « ecological footprint ». This is the same president which unleashed an unprecedented attack against the Social State – including social housing aid – and the labor code. Meanwhile, the social housing problem becomes worse and we now read of French mothers unable to heat their daughter’s room in wintertime! (10) Is this what they call « chutzpah »? This is only one illustration of the consequences for ordinary citizens and workers of this Climate change narrative dished out for the benefit of so-called green (speculative) finance.
What the French president does not tell you is that the singular focus on CO2 was mainly conceived to artificially create a carbon stock exchange and to impose a carbon tax. This would be quite efficient to force consumers’ behavioral changes (11), but it is also clearly planned to introduce new invisible trade barriers within the logic of the – already failed – asymmetrical interdependent world order. (12) This is threatening since the neoliberal France that followed the government of the « gauche plurielle » has intended to rehabilitate « colonialism » and is currently waging dirty wars, for instance in Africa, in this instance greatly increasing the already massive migration problem. Climate talk is fine but then Africa is still indecently rich in almost all raw materials, including uranium ore.
Yet, if such carbon tax would affect production cost and consumers’ buying power, it is not at all clear how effective it would be as a trade barrier, especially for high quality goods. How would one use the concept of energetic content, for instance? The French president is currently faced with a country sold by its transversal elites to hegemonic speculative finance. But at the same time it is affected by dwindling industrial base within a Eurozone whose rate of change is more favorable to German productivity. As a former trader working for Rothschild – general de Gaulle was famous for his phrase « La politique de la France ne se fait pas à la corbeille » – he also clearly underestimate the destructive impact of speculative finance on the real economy, consequently on the chronic trade deficit. In tune with mediatic climatologists he seems to underestimate the urgency of public climate change prevention, as we argue below.
Changes in national accounting were introduced in October 2014. In this, European nations were sheepishly following in the steps of the US. Accordingly, this change alone should have singlehandedly raised GDP by a minimum of 3 % . However, GDP is still far from it and signals instead a real, albeit masked, negative growth. (13) As for the fiscal contribution of speculative finance to GDP, it seems to be rather reversed when you take into account fiscal paradises – some $ 3 trillion offshore for the USA, at least € 30 billion only for the exonerations for the French Dom-Tom – and shadow-banking but also the flat tax propensity of neoliberal Sates and the gigantic so-called « tax expenditures » . These are real neoliberal marvels; they reached more than € 350 billion a year for France – a bit less for Italy – but are well-behaved since once granted they nicely fall below the budget radars. In this way the budget always looks in a precarious shape, in any case it appears enough in the red to help legitimize more austerity and sacrifices … for the « rubbles ». As we know the rich are an endangered species which requires the vigilant protection of the bourgeois State.
We should however emphasise the deleterious effect of harnessing speculative (green ) finance to fight climate change. What is achieved instead is the artificial creation of speculative green endeavors, knowing that the green certificates market has already collapsed 3 times since its recent creation. Indeed, they are better termed « certificates to pollute» because they are intended to protect the worse polluting industries in terms of CO2, for instance concrete producing enterprises and multinationals.
More importantly we know since the failure of Enron that the so-called Californian Model, which consists in the privatisation of public utilities and infrastructures, does not work and cannot ever work, simply because the short-term speculative Roe is not compatible with long-term investment. Years ago, I was literally blown out of my socks when – perhaps in reaction to my modest criticisms levied in my Tous ensemble (14) – the ineffable Frazer Institute proposed what I quickly termed the British Columbian model, namely let the State take care of the building of the infrastructures and when they are completed just transfer them to the private sector for a symbolic sum so that you can then enjoy the right market price! That is if, after you have been turned into a « client » rather than a « user », you can still manage to remain cash worthy. Failing that, in tune with the global warming disincentives and at time negative growth mantras, you will have to learn to « do without »!!! As a young kid I remember having read that Dr Pangloss ended up hanged in Voltaire’s satire of the Rosicrucian Leibnitz’s philosophy; in a nutshell, in a war devastated Europe, it defended the status quo with the motto that « Everything goes for the best in the best possible work ».
But the socio-economic barbarous – philo-Semite Nietzschean, in truth – consequences fostered by these sorry climatologic circles do not end here. Injury is now added to insult as their narratives have gained a – short-lived – political hegemony. Short-lived because the Paris Accords are just objectives with no real constraints attached. Moreover, deep-down, politicians know better and will shortly be faced with the inescapable conclusion that the targets are totally off track so that the narrative does not make any rational sense any longer. Because politicians do not like to fight lost battles, their focus will quickly change.
At that stage, one hopes that they will become rational ecologists and consider the needs to wisely apply the precaution principle and to publicly finance the badly neglected but urgently needed public infrastructure to prevent foreseeable catastrophic events. Perhaps they will also understand the logic of Ecomarxism, a logic too simplified by its rendering as « circular economy ». (15) Obviously, these events are much less linked to the climate and much more to the now decade-long neglect of public infrastructures or common goods due to the hegemony of speculative finance. Any engineer from the Civil Engineer Corps of the United States could confirm this sad evidence. Add the emblematic fact that people well versed in technology and mathematics are now following in the path of a Louis Bachelier, a forerunner of Dermon, Black and Scholes et al., and a student that was quickly turned away by Henri Poincaré. This is quite a pity but it tells a lot about the degeneration of what Gramsci’s called the ethico-political level of a given group or of an entire society. Similarly a Mandelbrot who was capable to treat Dow Jones data as hard empirical data, was told to look outside of France … at the time!!! Things have now change for the worst even in the Hexagon …
It gets even worse when you look at the fate reserved to the domestic « rubbles » alias sovereign citizens and to the « rubbles » in the emerging countries.
The domestic « rubbles » are daily fed the exclusivist narrative of anthropogenic global climate warming to change their behavioral consumption patterns and to force induce them to nurture lower socio-economic and cultural expectations. It has become virtuous to develop so-called alternative green sources of energy. The truth is that without enormous public subventions these alternatives would remain too costly and inefficient. We had already touched on this subject years ago when nuclear energy was valued around 4 to 6 cents the kWh compared to around 15 to 20 cents for solar and wind energy. True, the technology improved a lot and data must be updated; however, real and trustful comparisons are not provided, at least not honest and comprehensive calculations that would take everything into account from the extraction and production to decommissioning.
For instance, the construction of wind towers implies the use of huge quantities of rare metals. Like solar energy it is an intermittent source of energy, aside from its aesthetic disfiguration of the landscape. Moreover, it is known to cause problems to wildlife – birds, in particular – and health problems to humans and animals who happened to live within a 1700 or 1500 meter range. According to well-informed scientists like Butré or d’Arguin (16) these alternatives explain the rising of almost a third of the electricity and energy cost for households. These go hand in hand with so-called « free market for energy », meaning the wall-to-wall privatisation and liberalisation of the sector against the oft expressed will of citizens deeply attached to public or common goods. The raised taxes are then used to finance parasitic and often Poujadist green so-called « entrepreneurs », in order to make them « competitive ». Their intermittent energy in send to the public transportation and distribution networks which are obliged to buy it whenever it is sent to them. They cannot refuse nor even ask for non-intermittent delivery. None of these problems appear in the comparative cost currently provided. It is just propaganda, demagogy and false representation. The public – and thus the taxpayers – is legally captive.
Such a policy adversely affects industrial and economic strategies. For instance, Italy has high public incentives to push solar and wind energy. At the citizens’ level, it gets even nastier and unequal given that installation costs can be deducted from income taxes, that is for the fewer households who still pay income taxes – mainly some so-called dependent workers but above all wealthier employees and cadres. When an important aluminium multinational asked for a 10 year stable delivery of electricity in Sardinia, Italy could not satisfy this basic demand. It now imports close to € 80 billion a year in energy including electricity – France exports 15 % of its electricity production because of its exemplar nuclear plants …
The pace and volume of the transition to the alternatives are not viable and always necessitate other sources to maintain the viability of the grid, despite the so-called smart grids. The bouquet of classic and alternative energy is skewed in an a-economical fashion in favor of the latter, over and above what would be necessary or advisable to respect the precaution principle – We do not mention here the well-known fact that a dollar spent in prevention goes further than a dollar spent in exploration. For instance, almost half the CO2 emissions is caused by urban transportation. It is clearly harmful in an urban context although perhaps much less than the associated small particles. In the country-side – as well as in the Prairies, Alaska and Siberia etc – the CO2 increase would have a beneficial effect in that, as is documented in the Earth History, it helps the vegetation and cereals to grow … As a matter of fact, History and other social sciences have come to include climatic considerations in their studies. They all concord in noting the very high correlation between warming periods and qualitative civilisational leaps …
In reality, France has a good image for CO2 emission, because it has an important and very secure nuclear park. (17)
It is hard to understand the obsession with fossil sources of energy that has mesmerized the organisers of this One Planet Summit. Are we dealing with zealots again? This comes at a time when science has learned to cheaply reproduce oil and gas from algae mixed up with selected bacteria. During the WWII Germany had already liquefied coal. Furthermore, in retrospect, the Oil Pick did not materialise. Huge oil deposits exist not only in the deep see but also in the Arctic. Some studies published by Science et Vie years ago, noted that France had potentially more oil than Saudi Arabia but at a depth of 2 to 3 km. We are not talking here about the oft nefarious shale oil and gas productions, which have huge potential for causing earthquakes and poisoning the underground water. Molten-salt plants should we revisited etc.
In other words, we are dealing here with the worst kind of societal engineering devised by the present – pace Popper! – philo-Semite Nietzschean capitalists. Their master plan is the return to a society of modern domesticity and slavery. Piketty has already told them that if the richer 10 % of the population were to sacrifice a very modest portion of their revenues, they could employ the 50 % less well-off as domestics. (see : http://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/Book%20ReviewsFrame1Source1.htm ). They are thus consciously engineering the scarcity of needed energy sources in the same fashion as they are artificially creating so-called « green markets ». Their main zealots’ obsession now is to curtail investments in the oil and gas industries and to turn down the civilian nuclear power plants. This is dramatic because the modern economy is basically a transformation economy. Capitalism unleashed to power of energy-propelled machines. Nor, should we underestimate the fact that data farms are more energivor than old traditional industries. Some of you might be up to date with the increasingly forbidding cost of mining bitcoins: That cost is essentially the energy cost needed to churn out numbers and data.
Be it as it may, it seems to me that the person or group that will come up with new and efficient filters for coal, gas and oil energy producing plants will quickly make a bundle and render quite a service to Humanity, a species which, contrary to philo-Semite Nietzschean narratives, is inherently composed of equal members: this is mathematically ascertained by the fact that , despite all exclusivist bibles, gospels and other narratives, Humanity is a species that has to rely on sexual reproduction and therefore on biological equality despite – fortunate ? – outside differences … Human reproduction implies a revenue that is large enough to sustain it and to sustain the worker when « through no fault of his/her own » s/he is unable to work. Confusing production cost with labor cost understood as the individual capitalist salary, is economically and socially irrational, yet, together with the exclusion of any environmental criteria, it is embedded in the current and devastating definition of anti-dumping at the WTO. As far as coal is concerned, it is the most readily available source of energy on Earth as it is found almost in every region and country on our Blue Planet. The filters should include a narguilé reservoir to filter the dangerous small particles. The CO2 should be captured and chemically changed into other carbon, solid or non solid, forms. The technologies already exist. It is a matter of wise and foreseeing and socially sensible investments. These should aim at massifying these new technologies, something that could be done more advantageously than the over-used and socially costly solar or wind energy sources.
At this Summit, emerging countries are offered a promise, namely a compensation of $ 100 billion a year if they chose to follow these exclusivist climatologist bibles, gospels and narratives. But, in exchange, they must muzzle their own socio-economic development. They know what to expect. If not, they should meditate these two examples.
First, the CFC narrative. In a mature economy – as François Perroux aptly described it in the 70s – once a product has saturated the domestic demand, production growth rests only in the replacement of obsolete and used items and in exporting. Export markets are quickly saturated too and the development of quickly obsolescent products provides little relief. The ozone depletion was therefore attributed to CFCs, although we still know precious little about the chemistry in high altitude and the real impact of these components. But DuPont de Nemours had an alternative patent and could therefore gain considerably if the parks of existing fridges, air-coolers etc., were banned and replaced by the brand-new products based on its new technology. We then had the Montréal Protocol. To help adopt it vague promises of technology transfers were offered to the Third World countries and green certificates to pollute were devised. Soon after scientific reports noted that the new technology seemed to be more harmful than the one it had replaced. But then the ozone layer and hole disappeared from the media radars. Soon things seemed to have improved a little, although no one really knows to what it might be due; it could well be the influence of the Earth magnetic field despite the massification of the allegedly more harmful technology… This could be an interesting case study, if done rigorously.
Second, the excellent president of Ecuador R. Correa proposed his creative Yasuni-ITT Initiative (18) by which he would forego drilling in exchange for a modest annual compensation from the international community. In 2013, he was forced to abandon this generous proposal because the financial compensation never came. It remained symbolic at best. In these circumstances going alone with this proposal would have strongly penalised the development of his country. Still Ecuador has adopted a very sensible and ecologically informed policy for the management of the Yasuni park and other environmental issues. Bolivia is equally sensible and rigorous, keeping wisely away from exclusivist demagoguery. Both countries have also understood the fundamental distinction between a food and agricultural sovereignty policy and the food security policy that goes hand in hand with speculative derivatives.
Anthropogenic global climate change is nothing but an obscurantist narrative, now openly working in tandem with the philo-Semite Nietzschean economic narrative fostered by global stateless speculative finance. More ominously, it makes matter worse for the society and for citizens because it blocks all avenues likely to lead to real preventive and badly needed actions. This is because it is uniquely devised to lower the « rising expectations » of the masses of sovereign citizens, which are now seen as new « rubbles ». If you doubt this just take a look at my essay entitled « Nietzsche as an awakened nightmare » freely accessible in the Livres-Books section of www.la-commune-paralcet.com as well as at the essays in English listed there. Particularly the Synopsis and the Methodological introduction. All are mentioned in the Category « Another America is possible » in this same site
Paul De Marco, Former professor of International Relations- International Political Economy.
NOTES:
1 ) See « ACIDIFICATION DES OCÉANS ET CHANGEMENT CLIMATIQUE, 9 nov. 2017 » in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/acidification-des-oceans-et-changement-climatique-9-nov-2017/
2 ) See « Défi aux écologistes, au Giec et à tous les apôtres du réchauffement climatique » 14 juin 2007, in the Section Commentaires d’actualité of www.la-commune-paraclet.com
3 ) This Report has been said to be an hoax by a putative author. However, the original edition contained a preface by the great economist and diplomat – and President J. Kennedy’s friend – John Galbraith in which he testified on his honor about the authenticity of the frightening document. Moreover, the Report was based on numerous studies most of which are or should be in the public domain; are they all an hoax and by the same putative author?
4 ) On Heidegger see the essay in the section Livres-Books of www.la-commune-paraclet.com
5 ) The great American Marxist economist Harry Braverman studied the evolution of industry and of work. He was the first Marxist I know who analysed the lasting impact of the Babbage universal machine. He predicted that the development of modern capitalism would imply the overspecialisation of the few and the massive disqualification of the many. Christian Palloix confirmed this later as he was involved with the work of the French Commission du Plan. Braverman pointed out that Grade 9 would suffice to carry out most of the repetitive and tedious tasks linked to increasingly automated capitalist work. See: Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_and_Monopoly_Capital:_The_Degradation_of_Work_in_the_Twentieth_Century
6 ) This was already advocated by the Fathers of the Constitution, most prominently by Thomas Paine in his most important Rights of Man.
7 ) Marcello Mastroianni played in a movie based on this idea of killing games whereby preys and hunters would be lured into such games with important sums of money going to the winners. See https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_decima_vittima . At one point there was also a TV series called Hunters, if I remember correctly. (I do not have a TV set …)
8 ) On Al Gore see Note 2 of the following article: « Le Pacte Hulot: Nouvelle écologie du charbonnier ou pacte socio-économique communiste? » in http://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/Commentaires%20d’actuConstructionFrame1Source1.htm#hulot Of course, the main scientific reference he used denounced his manipulation before he died.
9 ) Emmanuel Macron : « Il faut un choc dans nos modes de production ». Le chef de l’Etat prône une série de changements majeurs, comme la fin de l’exploitation des ressources fossiles mondiales et la réorientation de la finance publique et privée vers la transition énergétique. LE MONDE | 12.12.2017 à 11h30 • Mis à jour le 12.12.2017 à 12h46 | Propos recueillis par Bastien Bonnefous, Luc Bronner, Sophie Landrin et Simon Roger http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2017/12/12/emmanuel-macron-il-faut-un-choc-dans-nos-modes-de-production_5228401_3244.html
10 ) « Précarité énergétique : « Il fait 12 degrés dans la chambre de ma fille, quand elle a de la chance », Alors que les premières vagues de froid touchent la France, la nécessité d’un logement chaud se fait plus pressante pour 12,2 millions de personnes. LE MONDE | 11.12.2017 à 10h40 • Mis à jour le 11.12.2017 à 11h44 | Par Eléa Pommiers http://www.lemonde.fr/logement/article/2017/12/11/precarite-energetique-il-fait-12-degres-dans-la-chambre-de-ma-fille-quand-elle-a-de-la-chance_5227864_1653445.html
Lately a newspaper reported about a French mother complaining that her young daughter was obliged to sleep in a room at 12 degrees centigrade during the winter because of the higher energy prices and because of the austerity programs imposed by the current trader president which openly favor the very rich and crushes all others, particularly the most vulnerable « citoyennes et citoyens » of the République. As noted in this article, the subventions afforded to solar and wind energy had one immediate consequence, the almost doubling of the energy and electricity prices for the households. Enterprises – as in Italy – get an energy subvention probably in violation of fair competition, whereas paradoxically such aid to households would not be!!!
11 ) The name of the game is disincentive, aggressive and intrusive as far as households and individual citizens are concerned. Their consuming patterns must change. They are even told to stop wasting food and to carefully sort out their garbage while agribusiness is free to add large amount of sugar – which is more addictive that cocaine – of salt and other additives … Some characters in tune with the indoctrination strategy churned out by Samuel Huntington’s Trilateral Commission and by the Club of Rome – which as Cambridge university pointed out at the time even managed to get its geometrical progression metaphor wrong – even push for negative growth in a world where precariousness and « shitty jobs » are generalised and where the 1 % and even the 0,01 accumulate ever growing portions of the socially produced wealth, etc. These are down-to-earth characters, they back up their daily mass-media and pseudo-academic preachings with real fiscal and monetary desincentives. The electricity and gasoline bills tell only part of this story …
12 ) In truth, this ineptitude was proposed by the Chair of Intelligence – sic! – Joseph Nye with the help of Keohane while the Gatt was being dismantled and replaced by the neoliberal WTO. It had to go hand-in-hand with a renewed American imperialism fostered in the guise of « soft power ». At the time, I had loyally pointed out the major flaws of this rather condescending argument. It presumed a scientific and technological dominance of the USA backed up by financial power and foreign investments – all sustained by the US rather useless, costly and numerous foreign military bases. A one point, the British Empire recognised the cost of this « Imperial burden » and started granting independence to its Dominions! Well, today, while the US is forced to import many scientists in the hard disciplines – the warning of Lester Thurow at the MIT in his book Head to Head had little real impact – , China graduates more engineers and deposits more patents and develops more brands. Furthermore, it wisely stayed away from speculative stateless controlled finance and developed its own « socialist » credit management. The US is now ruining itself with irrational defence and security budgets amounting close to $ 600 billion, when it could more wisely spend this money on social safety nets, education, transport and public infrastructures etc., all known to be great countercyclical economic tools and also known to prevent the recurrent disasters induced by climate change, anthropogenic or not. To access needed raw material and markets the only thing needed is a peaceful world organised around « the most favored nation » principle.
13 ) The new national accounting notoriously adds drugs, prostitution, and even some armaments to GDP … It seems that last year prostitution or what is accounted for in this striving industry contributed some 9 billion to GB national wealth (sic), the other countries being slower in providing these kind of data. As for drugs, we know the potential they could have, even though a better policy would be to legalise the use of drugs under strict State control in order to rapidly ruin the mafias, industry and the ensuing societal and political corruption while helping people to manage their own healthy and emancipated life style with the due social and public support.
14 ) My Tous ensemble is available in Download Now in the livres-books section of www.la-commune-paraclet.com
15 ) On Ecomarxism see my book III entitled Marxism, Keynesianism, Economic Stability and Growth (2005) This book was the first to point to the real causes of the current structural and financial crisis. Its « Appendix » solves the illogic reasoning of Ricardo’s imperialist « comparative advantages » theory. On that basis, we arrived at ecomarxism. In brief, the economic calculus should include the cost of replacement of the raw materials used. This would go hand-in-hand with the natural or artificial replenishment of the available resources and deposits while massifiable substitutes would be looked for, especially when the natural resources are rather scarce. The product-life cycle would include an optimum recycling and so on and so forth.
16 ) Jean Louis Butré : “La COP21 est basée sur un mensonge général” (05-11-2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVj3l5q7ROQ ; Jean-Louis Butré, président de la Fédération environnement durable, est venu évoquer avec nous l’imposture du sommet sur le climat, la COP21. Il est également revenu sur le danger des éoliennes et sur les incohérence du gouvernement en matière d’énergies. Zoom – Jean-Louis Butré : Eolien, une catastrophe silencieuse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Hx_qfyt7g; Zoom – Alban d’Arguin : éoliennes un scandale d’État https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvnTVoJxDUk
17 ) This explains why just before the catastrophe at Fukushima most countries were operating a return to the nuclear sources of energy. However, the Fukushima catastrophe was in no way attributable to the nuclear industry itself, but rather to hegemonic short-term speculative finance and its needs to pay dividends. It is a tribute to Japanese engineers that the plant actually survived an unprecedented earthquake – 10 on the Richter scale – followed by a devastating tsunami. However, although it should have been closed 5 years earlier, it remained open because its depreciation was completed and dividends were generous. Furthermore, for economic reasons the reactor core used zirconium, a metal which creates highly explosive hydrogen when exposed to water at high temperatures. Without this zirconium – or at least if azotes would have been used from the start to saturate the hydrogen, no explosions would have happened and the catastrophe would have remained a serious but intra-plant accident. It is sad to see that supposed ecologists, at least media-savvy ecologists now taken with their new preaching star-system, do not face these issues rationally. One of the historical leaders of Greenpeace had notoriously made the same point. We should add that current civilian nuclear industry was derived from a military technology chosen because it had the potential to produce the plutonium needed for the nukes and to be contained enough to power a military submarine. But other purely civilian nuclear technology existed even at that time, for instance molten-salt plants – which are said to be able to safely burn most of the accumulated nuclear wastes.
18 ) See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Correa#Yasuní-ITT_Initiative