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Economy

Globalist Club of Rome urges massive ‘behavioral changes’ to address ‘climate change,’ poverty

Published

1 month ago

18 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

The globalist Club of Rome, under its Earth4All agenda, has urged nations worldwide to reduce meat consumption, redistribute wealth, and adopt a circular economy in the name of tackling climate change and poverty.

As part of its Earth4All agenda, the Club of Rome is calling on nations to eat less meat, redistribute wealth, adopt a circular economy, raise taxes, restructure education, and charge high prices for fossil fuels. 

For over 50 years the Club of Rome has been operating under the belief that there are “limits to growth” on a finite planet. 

In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill […] All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself. — The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of the Club Of Rome, 1991

Without a traditional, militaristic enemy to enact their great reset-like agendas in 1991 the Club of Rome chose humanity itself as the greatest threat to planetary health, and that’s when the whole global warming and climate change narratives really began taking off – their solutions had finally found a problem. 

All of the Club of Rome’s proposals are aimed at controlling humanity, such as telling people what they should eat, how their land should be used, what types of energy they should be allowed to consume, what they should do with their money, what type of economic system they should have, how schools should be run, and so on and so on. 

They call this the Wellbeing Economy. 

Now, the Club of Rome is focusing its efforts on influencing individual nation states with its Earth4All National Program. 

Austria is the latest pilot country for this program. 

In the Austrian modelling context, the lever ‘reduction of meat consumption’ was implemented as ‘behavioral change of consumers.’ — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

“People also consume almost twice as much meat per year as the global average. Reducing the consumption of animal proteins is essential in order to achieve a turnaround in nutrition,” the report reads. 

And because animals in Austria are fed with grains that imported from tropical forests, the report says that raising livestock in Europe is killing the rain forests in places like South America. 

According to the report, “Food consumption in Austria can also have an impact on land use in tropical forests. This applies in particular to meat, for which animal feed such as soya is imported, and all food products that use palm oil as an ingredient. Tropical forests are often cleared for this purpose, destroying important carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots.” 

State regulations that contradict familiar consumer behavior are often met with resistance. For example, many people resist ‘dietary regulations’ as soon as the importance of reducing meat consumption is emphasized. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

Telling people what to do rarely goes over well, and the Club of Rome acknowledges this in the report while simultaneously telling governments what to do about changing their citizens’ behavior, so that they eat less meat. 

In order “to change consumer behavior, reduce meat consumption or optimize and expand protein plant breeding,” the Club of Rome suggest that governments use coercive taxation measures and implement a “supply chain law for agricultural products” to make life difficult for those who do not comply. 

Some of the tax measures include: 

  • Reduction of the reduced VAT rate for meat and sausage products and dairy products with socially acceptable compensation payments. 
  • Higher taxation of processed (fatty, sugary and animal-based) foods. 
  • Taxation of foods and food ingredients that are harmful to health, the environment and the climate. 

While the proposals to limit meat consumption are geared toward Austria, they also reflect the overall strategy to incentivize, coerce, or otherwise manipulate human behavior into serving an unelected globalist agenda. 

The same goes for the Club of Rome’s socialist vision for the redistribution of wealth. 

Permanent wealth monitoring by the state and the public database on wealth and income based on this are an essential prerequisite for redistribution measures. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

For the Club of Rome, the problem of wealth is that it “often goes hand in hand with influence,” so their solution is to abolish excess wealth and to redistribute it – the promise of every communist dictator. 

According to the Austria report, “Increases in wealth therefore also lead to more influence – visible in politics, in institutions, even at universities.” 

“It is therefore less about general redistribution than about reducing the extreme concentration of wealth among the top 0.1 percent of the population: it is about abolishing excess wealth.” 

Redistribution will undoubtedly provoke resistance. But inequality and affluence also generate resistance among excluded and marginalized groups. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

The unelected globalists at the Club of Rome are fully aware that their agendas are extremely unpopular. 

For example, the Earth4All: Austria report says: 

A particularly important point is the acceptance and perception of measures by citizens, farmers and entrepreneurs.

For example, price increases for products, the discontinuation of subsidies for fossil fuels or potentially higher energy prices – which could continue to rise due to higher infrastructure costs such as the expansion of the grid, storage facilities, etc. – may not be perceived well by people in the lower income bracket in particular based on their particular viewpoint.

In order to dupe the public into giving up their rights, their properties, their way of living, and their freedoms, the Club of Rome says that “communication of the cushioning measures will be needed,” especially with their whole Marxist approach to everything. 

Redistributions are not yet considered appropriate. In future, much better, comprehensible communication of the cushioning measures will be needed here. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

To give you an idea of the Club of Rome’s communication strategy, the Earth4All: Austria authors paint their communist views in such a way as to make them sound almost too good to be true: 

By reducing structural inequality, income and wealth are distributed so fairly that there is hardly any monetary poverty anymore.

All people have a secure existence. They have access to work and a basic income so that they can afford to live well within planetary and social boundaries, which also has a positive impact on the regional economy, climate and nature.

Did you see that? 

The benevolent regime will redistribute wealth so fairly that monetary poverty will be a thing of the past! 

As your taxes skyrocket and your ability to drive a car or eat what you want to eat is stolen from you, they say that you’ll at least have a “basic income,” but not for buying goods of lasting value, no; not at all! 

They don’t want that. They want you to rent everything from your corporate overlords, thanks to the circular economy. 

More and more people are looking at new concepts for organizing the economy and measuring social wellbeing. Examples include the circular economy, the sharing economy, the ecological economy, the feminist economy, green growth, the steady state, degrowth and post-growth. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

The Club of Rome sees the circular economy, with its Product as a Service business model, as being one of its most important agendas. 

But the circular economy agenda is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. 

Young people are not so crazy about owning things any longer; they want to share things; they want to benefit from services. — Dr. Anders Wijkman, Club of Rome Co-President, 2015 

In the name of saving the planet for all humanity, proponents of the circular economy claim it will lead to more durable and sustainable materials, increased recycling, and lowered carbon emissions. 

Sounds great, right? 

However, the circular economy is the inspiration behind the infamous phrase: “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy,” from the World Economic Forum. 

As Royal Philips Electronics CEO Frans Van Houten explained to the WEF in 2016: 

In circular economy business models, I would like products to come back to me as the original designer and manufacturer, and once you get your head around that notion, why would I actually sell you the product if you are primarily interested in the benefit of the product? Maybe I can stay the owner of the product and just sell you the benefit as a service.

The most urgent step for sustainable growth in low-income countries is to increase funding for transformative research in the area of the circular economy in low-income countries. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

The Club of Rome Earth4All: Austria report mentions circularity over 20 times, mostly in the context driving economic growth, reducing carbon emissions, and recycling. 

The Austria report also cites the “Circularity Gap” report, which we’ve quoted here on The Sociable, which says the circular economy is about “moving away from ownership and accumulation” towards more service-based models. 

And going back to 2015, Club of Rome co-president Dr. Anders Wijkman said of the circular economy: 

I think this is probably the most important agenda that we have. New business models are going to happen, and we’re not going to buy a lot of stuff.

We are going to benefit from high quality services. That’s an aspect that I think will interest many, many people – not least young people who are not so crazy about owning things any longer; they want to share things; they want to benefit from services.

On a personal note, shortly after I wrote that the circular economy was “a top-down agenda coming from unelected globalists looking to reshape the world in their image” in March 2022, the WEF’s former managing director Adrian Monck referred to me as a “bad faith actor” for my criticism of “the Forum’s coverage of the circular economy.” 

Then, last year the WEF published a joint report with Accenture that outright admitted that the circular economy was indeed a top-down agenda! 

In fact they emphasized this top-down approach several times, for example: 

  • “Circular economy leadership needs to come from the top and extend company-wide.” 
  • “Since the circular economy demands significant strategic transformation, the call to action must be sponsored at the top of the organization.” 
  • “This systemic transition requires companies to embed circularity at all levels and functions throughout the organization. Starting from the top, there should be clear governance, leadership and accountability.” 

Hypocrites, the lot! 

In the end, circular economy business models risk creating a neofeudalistic, technocratic serfdom out of the ashes of the middle class, who like peasants and serfs, wouldn’t be able to buy things like houses, cars, and appliances, but rather rent them from their futuristic lords and vassals who would digitally track and trace every product they provided as a service. 

The Club of Rome and the WEF are the main drivers of this agenda to eliminate ownership. 

Socially acceptable climate protection measures can also include free access to nature, which may require the communitisation of private property. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

The Club of Rome has been pushing degrowth agendas since its inception over 50 years ago, and many of its policy recommendations are based on Marxist ideologies. 

They advocate for the redistribution of wealth, communitizing private property, reducing ownership, revamping education systems, embracing critical “feminist economics,” artificially inflating fossil fuel prices, and controlling what people eat. 

Some Earth4All: Austria policy levers include: 

  • Redistribution of wealth and progressive taxation. 
  • Improving participation and equal opportunities in terms of workers’ rights and citizen’s assemblies. 
  • Changing diets, reducing overconsumption and waste and transitioning to sustainable food. 
  • Restructuring the education system. 
  • Significantly higher prices for fossil fuels. 

The WEF’s great reset agenda is almost identical to the Club of Rome’s Earth4All agenda, but they differ in approach. 

Whereas the Club of Rome is overtly Marxist in its march towards neo-feudalism, the WEF prefers a more techno-totalitarian approach to enact its version of neo-feudalism – with a heavy emphasis on leveraging emerging technologies of the so-called fourth industrial revolution to drive its great reset. 

The WEF and the Club of Rome have a shared history going back over 50 years (as described in the video below by HelioWave). 

The Club of Rome’s Earth4All: Austria report is a guide for all developed nations. 

However, it is not the only pilot country in the Club of Rome’s nation program. 

To see what the Club of Rome has in store for developing nations, check out the “Earth4All: Kenya” report and see what different means they want to use to achieve the same ends. 

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Brownstone Institute

Grocery Rationing within Four Years

Published on September 14, 2024

By

From the Brownstone Institute

By Jeffrey A. Tucker Jeffrey A. Tucker  

There is a lack of public comment and debate about Kamala Harris’s call for price controls on groceries and rents, the most stunning and frightening policy proposal made in my lifetime.

Immediately, of course, people will reply that she is not for price controls as such. It is only a limit on “gouging” (which she variously calls “gauging”) on grocery prices. As for rents, it’s only for larger-scale corporations with many units.

This is nonsense. If there really are national price-gouging police running around, every single seller of groceries, from small convenience stores to farmers’ markets to chain stores, will be vulnerable. No one wants the investigation so they will comply with de facto controls. No one knows for sure what gouging is.

Don Boudreaux is correct: “A government that threatens to punish merchants for selling at nominal prices higher than deemed appropriate by government clearly intends to control prices. It’s no surprise, therefore, that economists routinely  analyze prohibitions against so-called ‘price gouging’ using exactly the same tools they use to analyze other forms of price controls.”

As for rental units, the only result will be fewer amenities, new charges, new fees for what used to be free, less service, and a dramatically reduced incentive to build new units. That will only lead to a pretext for more subsidies, more public housing, and more government provision generally. We have experience with that and it is not good.

The next step is nationalizing housing and rationing of groceries because there will be ever fewer available.

The more the betting odds favor Kamala, the stronger the incentive to raise prices as high as possible now in anticipation of price controls come next year. That will provide even more seeming evidence for the need for more controls and a genuine crackdown.

Price controls lead to shortages of anything they touch, especially in inflationary times. With the Federal Reserve seemingly on the verge of cutting rates for no good reason – rates are very low in real terms by any historical standard – we might see wave two of inflation later next year.

Stay Informed with Brownstone Institute

Here are real interest rates historically considered as they stand. Do you see a case here for lowering them?

Next time, however, merchants will not be in a position to respond rationally. Instead, they will confront federal price investigators and prosecutors.

Kamala is wrong that this will be the “first-ever” ban on price gouging. We had that in World War II, along with rationing tickets on meat, animal fats, foil, sugar, flour, foil, coffee, and more. It was a time of extreme austerity, and people put up with it because they believed it was saving resources for the war effort. It was enforced the same as we saw with covid lockdowns: a huge network enlisting state and local institutions, media, and private zealots ready to rat out the rebels.

Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8875 on August 28, 1941. It claimed broad powers to manage all production and consumption in the US. On January 30, 1942, the Emergency Price Control Act granted the Office of Price Administration (OPA) the authority to set price limits and ration food and other commodities. Products were added as shortages intensified.

And yes, all of this was heavily enforced.

In case you are doing the math, that’s a $200,000 fine today for noncompliance. In other words, this was very serious and highly coercive.

Technology limited enforcement, however, and black markets sprung up everywhere. The so-called Meatleggers were the most famous and most demonized by government propaganda.

In a nation with more agriculture in demographic proximity, people relied on local farmers and various methods of bartering goods and services.

Years went by and somehow people got through it but production for civilian purposes came to a near standstill. The GDP for the period looked like growth but the reality was a continuation and intensification of the Great Depression that began more than a decade earlier.

There are fewer people alive now that recall these days but I’ve known some. They adopted habits of extreme conservation. I once had a neighbor who simply could not bear to throw away tin-foil pie pans because she had lived through rationing. After she died, her kids discovered her vast collection and it shocked them. She was not crazy, just traumatized.

How would such a thing transpire today? Look at the program SNAP, the new name for food stamps. For those who qualify, the money goes into a special account managed by the federal government. The recipient is sent an EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) card, which is used like a credit card in stores. It costs taxpayers some $114 billion a year, and works out as a huge subsidy to Big Agriculture, which is why the program is administered by the Department of Agriculture.

Transitioning that program to the general population would not be difficult. It would be a simple matter of expansion of eligibility. As shortages grow, so too could the program until the entire population would be on it and it would be mandatory. It could also be converted into a mobile app instead of a piece of plastic as a fraud-prevention measure. With everyone carrying cell phones, this would be an easy step.

And where could people spend the money? Only at participating institutions. Would non-participation institutions be entitled to sell food, for example, at local farmers’ co-ops? Maybe at first but that’s before the media demonization campaigns come along to decry the rich who are eating more than their fair share and the sellers who are exploiting the national emergency.

You can sell how this all unfolds, and none of it is implausible. Only a few years ago, governments around the country canceled gatherings for religious holidays, limited the numbers of people who could gather in homes, and banned public weddings and funerals. If they can do that, they can do anything, including the rationing of all food.

The program that Harris has proposed is not like other matters that she has flip-flopped on. She is serious and repeats it. She spoke about it even during the debate with Trump but there was no followup or critique of the scheme offered. Nor does such a crazy plan require some legislation and a vote by Congress. It could come in the form of an executive order. Yes, it would be tested by the Supreme Court but, if recent history holds, the program would be long in effect before the Court weighed in. Nor is it clear how it would rule.

The Supreme Court in 1942 heard the case of Albert Yakus, a Boston-based meat seller who was criminally prosecuted for violating the wholesale beef price ceiling. In Yakus vs. United States, the Supreme Court ruled for the government and against the meat-selling criminal. That’s the existing precedent.

Nor does all this have to unfold immediately following the inauguration. It can happen as matters become ever worse following anti-gouging edicts and when inflation worsens. After all, a presidency that believes in central planning and forced economic austerity would last a full four years, and the coercion could grow month after month until we have comprehensively enforced deprivation by the end, and no one remembers what it was like to buy groceries at market prices with their own money.

I wish I could say that this is an outlandish and fear-mongering warning. It is not. It is a very realistic scenario based on repeated statements and promises plus the recent history of government management of the population. There is likely another wave of inflation coming. This time it will meet with a promise to use every coercive power of government to prevent increases in prices on groceries and rents.

What if voters actually understood this? What then?

Keep in mind the main legacy of the Covid years: governments learned the fullness of what they could do under the right circumstances. That’s the worst possible lesson but that is what has stuck. The implications for the future are grim.

Author

  • Jeffrey A. Tucker

    Jeffrey Tucker is Founder, Author, and President at Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Life After Lockdown, and many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

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Business

Singh must push Trudeau to scrap the carbon tax

Published on September 13, 2024

By

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Franco Terrazzano

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is urging NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to formally call on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to scrap the carbon tax.

“It’s good to hear Singh start to talk about opposing the carbon tax, but that’s not enough,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Singh must prove to taxpayers he’s serious and forcefully push Trudeau to completely scrap the carbon tax.”

Today, the Globe and Mail reported that “Singh signalled his party is planning to oppose the current carbon tax on Canadian consumers.”

“We want to see an approach to fighting the climate crisis where it doesn’t put the burden on the backs of working people,” Singh said.

The carbon tax currently costs 17 cents per litre of gasoline, 21 cents per litre of diesel and 15 cents per cubic metre of natural gas. Trudeau plans to increase the carbon tax to 37 cents per litre of gasoline by 2030.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer says the carbon tax is a net overall cost for average families when all costs are included. The federal government also charges the GST on top of the carbon tax. This carbon tax-on-tax will cost taxpayers $595 million this year. That money is not rebated back to Canadians.

Opposition to the carbon tax is not new for the NDP.

“Canada is a cold place and heating your home really isn’t a choice,” said former NDP leader Jack Layton. “We shouldn’t punish people, and that’s what a carbon tax does.”

Layton did not support the Liberal carbon tax proposal in the 2008 election.

“Layton opposed the carbon tax and he was proven right at the ballot box,” said Terrazzano. “Singh needs to follow that example and fight the carbon tax to prove he cares about taxpayers.”

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