This morning I am really angry.
And deeply sorrowful.
Why?
Because I watched this inspiring, brilliant, contrarian-thinking, must-watch TED talk, by someone I had never heard of before:
Did you weep a little watching that?
I did.
Seriously. I did.
But why the mixed emotions, you may well ask. Whence cometh your humble blogger’s anger, and sorrow? Surely this is good news, hopeful news, inspiring and joyful news?
Well…
I am angry because so many otherwise intelligent, educated, thoughtful, well-meaning people have been fooled into supporting the idea that population control – fewer human beings (notable exception: themselves) – is critical to the future of life on the planet. Hence, all manner of genocidal ideas wearing the mask of “environmentalism” gain support – such as reducing the world’s numbers of cattle, a major protein source in human food consumption in developed nations, and an aspirational one in developing nations.
I am angry because so many otherwise intelligent, educated, thoughtful, well-meaning people have been fooled into supporting the idea that allowing central bankers to create literally trillions of dollars out of thin air to bail out the private bankstering system from 2007-08 onwards, was and is “necessary” … but creating just $175 billion a year to end “extreme” poverty in the world, is not.
I am angry because so many otherwise intelligent, educated, thoughtful, well-meaning people have been fooled into supporting the idea that global CO2 trading schemes – “putting a price on carbon” – will save the planet from global warming; that the politically-legalised financialisation (by bankers) of carbon dioxide “units” – created as electronic digits in a computer, just like money – in order to make carbon dioxide a tradeable “commodity”, is mankind’s best hope for avoiding “catastrophic”, “runaway” climate change, because – so they claim – globalised trading in electronic carbon dioxide “units” (not to mention, their derivatives) will reduce global emissions.
It isn’t –
The world emits 48% more carbon dioxide from the consumption of energy now than it did in 1992 when the first Rio summit took place.
And it won’t –
…the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits … The new carbon credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that’s been kind to Goldman [Sachs], except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won’t even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.
… Well, you might say, who cares? If cap-and-trade succeeds, won’t we all be saved from the catastrophe of global warming? Maybe — but cap-and-trade, as envisioned by Goldman, is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and-trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private tax collection scheme.
I am angry because so many otherwise intelligent, educated, thoughtful, well-meaning people think it is a good thing that powerful lobby groups are now pressuring the government to bring forward the date when our own carbon dioxide “tax” scheme transitions to a full cap-and-trade scheme…
“The Australian Industry Group today called on all sides of politics to support the immediate removal of the fixed price carbon tax and move directly to an internationally linked emissions trading scheme,” Ai Group Chief Executive, Innes Willox, said today.
…which is exactly what the bankers have wanted from the very beginning:
Australian banks are eyeing opportunities to cash in on the proposed carbon tax by developing new financial products and services that capitalise on a market seen to be worth billions of dollars annually, according to a report by the Australian Financial Review.
Australian financial firms that have experience in European carbon markets, such as Macquarie Group Ltd, Westpac Banking Corp Ltd and ANZ Banking Group Ltd are particularly keen to establish their presence in the Australian market.
The initial three-year fixed carbon tax period from 2012 will serve as time to prepare for the release of ETS permits by 2015, when opportunities will really open up for banks to capitalise on the carbon market.
ANZ’s head of energy trading said the value of the derivatives carbon market would dwarf the $10 billion initially raised by the government, according to the AFR.
I am angry because so many otherwise intelligent, educated, thoughtful, well-meaning people have fooled themselves into believing that the recent history of unlimited, unregulated, unmonitored, off-balance sheet, “shadow” market derivatives creation and trading by the world’s bankers that led directly to the GFC will not repeat itself – think Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS), Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDO), and Credit Default Swaps (CDS); that allowing the bankers freedom to set up a new unlimited, unregulated, unmonitored, off-balance sheet “shadow” market in CO2 derivatives creation and trading is not a recipe for an even greater global financial Armageddon; that the massive “moral hazard” caused by declaring the world’s biggest banks to be “Too Big To Fail” – and now, “Too Big To Prosecute” – is a chance worth taking, in order to “save the planet” from rising CO2 emissions.
I am deeply saddened because simple, commonsense, natural, human-life enabling and enhancing ideas – practical, cheap, non-predatory solutions to the popularly-alleged imminent planetary threat of runaway global warming – from virtually unknown people such as Allan Savory – and one of my favourites, Austrian forester/forest warden, naturalist, philosopher, inventor and Biomimicry experimenter Viktor Schauberger* – continue to be ignored or belittled. And most often by … yes, those very same otherwise intelligent, educated, thoughtful, well-meaning people who, despite their intelligence and learning (and often, because of it, and the pride that follows), on this subject, are simply too dumb to see that they are really just stooges for the bankers:
1. Stooge
Someone who is used by others to get what they want, a clown, a follower.
Whether you are labelled a “denialist” or an “alarmist”, matters little.
Ideas such as those of Savory and Schauberger are worth placing at the top of our priority tree.
Because, unlike the legalisation of carbon dioxide “units” for bankers to trade – or even worse, their off-balance sheet creation and “shadow market” trading of unlimited, unmonitored, unregulated derivatives on top of those carbon dioxide “units” – Savory’s and Schauberger’s ideas can make life better.
For every one of us.
And for more of us. Not less.
So if you really, truly believe that we need to “save the planet” .. and even if you don’t … THIS is how to do it.
Electronic carbon dioxide “unit” trading, as the basis for a secondary, “shadow” banking pyramid scheme of unlimited, unmonitored, unregulated derivatives trading, is not.
The bankers are the problem.
Not the solution.
It is their monstrous, worldwide, daily creation and lending-for-interest/profit of electronic digits that we call “money”, that drives all economic “activity” (ie, “growth”).
When there is less “money”, the economy slows, right?
And with less “growth”, less “activity”, there are less carbon dioxide emissions:
US emissions are up for the first time since recession hit in 2008, in a sign of how closely pollution is linked to economic success.
Instead of blaming a morally nebulous, comfortable, dehumanising label titled “population growth” – that’s real live struggling and loving and caring fellow human beings you’re talking about! – for carbon dioxide emissions driving “catastrophic” “man-made” climate change, take a closer look at the real culprits.
Or as some wisely advise, Follow The Money.
Because “money makes the world go ’round”.
It is the bankers who financed the Industrial Revolution.
It is the bankers who have driven national and social (economic) inequality.
It is the bankers who finance all wars – the most unnecessary, wasteful, inefficient, selfish, and costly “activity” of all (can you believe that economic experts unblinkingly “credit” World War 2 for ending the Great Depression? All that lovely new economic “activity”, you see).
It is the bankers who finance – for profit – all the wasteful, inefficient, selfish, unnecessary consumption of ever more and more and more material “goods” (of ever declining quality/longevity) and “services”.
It is the bankers who have, over many generations, grown immensely powerful and unimaginably wealthy by taking advantage of our foolishly granting them the exclusive power to finance – at interest – all “economic activity”, period.
Activity – so much of which is of dubious real necessity, or value – that needs fossil fuel energy to operate.
Oh yes… it is the bankers who financed – for profit – the growth and power of the fossil fuel energy corporations too.
If you actually believe that a solution to the “climate emergency” that bankers unanimously support, lobby for, and stand ready to massively profit from, is a good idea that will achieve the stated purpose – saving the planet – then you really are, beyond any possibility of dispute, a willfully ignorant fool.
A bankers’ stooge.
* P.S. I found Allan Savory’s brief mention of temperature differentials for desertified soils vs non-desertified soils (at 8:10) very interesting, in light of my reading the works of the little known genius, Viktor Schauberger. Central to his observations, insights, theories, and experiments, was the critical importance of temperature differentials within every body of water.
P.P.S. If (like me) you are interested to know more about Allan Savory’s work, then visit the Savory Institute website.
Barnaby Is Right 
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