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

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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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The $50 Billion Question: EVs Never Delivered What Ottawa Promised

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Marco Navarro-Génie's avatar Marco Navarro-Génie

Beware of government promises that arrive gift-wrapped in moral certainty.

The pattern repeats across the sector: subsidies extracted, production scaled back, workers laid off, taxpayers absorbing losses while executives collect bonuses and move on, and politicians pretend that it never happened. CBC isn’t asking Justin Trudeau, Katherine McKenna or Steven Guilbeault any questions about it. They are not asking Mark Carney.

Buy an electric vehicle, they said, and you will save the planet, no questions asked. Justin Trudeau and several of his ministers proclaimed it from podiums. Environmental activists, often cabinet members, chanted it at rallies. Automotive executives leveraged it to extract giant subsidies. For over a decade, the message never wavered: until $50 billion in public money disappeared into corporate failures, and the economic wreckage became impossible to ignore.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, himself a spokesperson for the doomsday culture, inherited the policy disaster from Trudeau and still clings to the wreckage. The 2026 EV sales target sits suspended, a grudging acknowledgment that reality refused to cooperate with radical predictions and Ottawa’s mandates. Yet the 2030 and 2035 targets remain federal law, monuments to a central-planning exercise that delivered the opposite of what it promised.

Their claims were never quite true. Electric vehicles were pure good. They were marketed as unconditionally cleaner than conventional cars, a transformation so obviously beneficial that questioning it invited accusations of climate denial. Government messaging suggested switching to an EV meant immediate environmental virtue. The nuance, the conditions, and the caveats were conveniently omitted from the government sales pitch that justified tens of billions of your money into subsidies for foreign EV manufacturing and corporate advancement.

The Reality Ottawa Is Hiding

Research documented the conditional nature of EV benefits for over a decade, yet Ottawa proceeded as if the complexity didn’t exist. Studies from China, where coal dominates electricity generation, showed as early as 2010 that EVs in coal-dependent regions had “very limited benefits” in reducing emissions compared to gasoline vehicles. In Northern China, where electricity generation is over 80% coal-based, EVs could produce lifecycle emissions comparable to or even higher than those of conventional cars. A 2015 Chinese study found that EVs generated lifecycle emissions that were only 18% lower than those of gasoline vehicles, compared to 40-70% reductions in regions with cleaner grids.

Volvo began publishing transparent lifecycle assessments for its first EV in 2019, making it the first major automaker to document the significant upfront emissions from battery production publicly. Their 2021 C40 Recharge report, released during the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, revealed that manufacturing an EV produces 70% more emissions than building a comparable conventional vehicle. But there are no CBC reports about that. The Volvo report showed that an EV charged on a coal-heavy global grid required 68,000 to 110,000 miles of driving to break even with a conventional car, potentially more than half the vehicle’s usable lifetime. For drivers with low annual mileage in regions with dirty electricity grids, that breakeven point could take six to nine years to reach, if ever.

Battery manufacturing location proved enormously consequential. Production in China, powered by coal, generates 60-85% higher emissions than manufacturing in Europe or the United States. Yet Canadian subsidies flowed to companies regardless of where batteries were made or where vehicles would be charged. The federal government committed over $50 billion without requiring the environmental due diligence that should precede such massive public investment.

The Canadian government never acknowledged Volvo’s findings. Not once. A search of federal policy documents, ministerial statements, and environmental assessments from 2019 forward reveals no mention of the lifecycle complexities Volvo documented. Ottawa’s silence on inconvenient research speaks loudly about how ideology trumped evidence in shaping EV policy.

You want to build a pipeline in Canada. There will be 8 to 10 years of red tape and environmental impact assessments. But if you say you want to make EVs, Laurentian provincial premiers and the feds will bend over backwards. They handed over billions while the economy and social conditions in their cities decayed.

The environmental promise was conditional: clean electricity grids, high annual mileage, manufacturing in regions with low-carbon energy, and vehicles driven long enough to offset the massive carbon debt from battery production. Remove those conditions, and the environmental case collapses. The subsidies, however, remained unconditional.

The Subsidies Flow, The Companies Fail

Corporate casualties now litter the landscape. Northvolt received $240 million in federal subsidies to build a Quebec battery plant before filing for bankruptcy protection in November. Lion Electric, Quebec’s homegrown EV manufacturer, burned through $100 million in government support before announcing massive layoffs and production cuts. Arrival, which secured subsidies for its electric van facility, collapsed entirely, leaving taxpayers with nothing but broken promises.

Stellantis and LG Energy Solution extracted $15 billion, the most extensive corporate handout in Canadian history, for their Windsor battery plant. Volkswagen secured $13 billion for St. Thomas. Provincial governments layered on additional incentives. The public investment dwarfed any plausible return, yet the money kept flowing based on environmental claims the government either never bothered to verify or suppressed from its own documents and reports.

Despite this flood of subsidies and regulatory coercion, Canadian consumers rejected the offering. Even with massive incentives, EVs accounted for only 15% of new vehicle sales in 2024, far short of the mandated 20% target for 2026, let alone the 60% demanded by 2030. When federal subsidies ended in early 2025, sales collapsed to 9%, revealing the limited consumer demand. Dealer lots overflow with unsold inventory. Manufacturers scaled back production plans. The market spoke; Ottawa is only half listening.

The GM plant in Oshawa serves as a cautionary tale. Thousands of jobs lost. Promises of green manufacturing jobs evaporated. Workers who believed government assurances that EV mandates would secure their livelihoods found themselves unemployed as companies redirected production or collapsed entirely. The pattern repeats across the sector: subsidies extracted, production scaled back, workers laid off, taxpayers absorbing losses while executives collect bonuses and move on, and politicians pretend that it never happened. CBC isn’t asking Justin Trudeau, Katherine McKenna or Steven Guilbeault any questions about it. They are not asking Mark Carney.

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The Central Planning Failure

The EV disaster illustrates why economies run by political offices never succeed. Friedrich Hayek observed that “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” Politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa do not possibly possess the dispersed knowledge embedded in millions of individual economic decisions. But they think that they do.

Markets aggregate information that no central planner can access. Consumer preferences for vehicle range, charging convenience, and total cost of ownership. Regional variations in electricity generation and the pace of grid decarbonization. Battery technology improvements and supply chain vulnerabilities. Resource constraints and mining capacity. These factors interact in ways too complex for any cabinet planning committee to comprehend, yet Ottawa presumed to mandate outcomes a generation in advance.

Federal ministers with no experience in automotive manufacturing or battery chemistry presumed to direct the transformation of a trillion-dollar industry. Career bureaucrats drafted regulations determining which vehicles Canadians could purchase years hence, as if they possessed prophetic knowledge of technological development, grid decarbonization rates, consumer preferences, and global supply chains.

The EV mandate attempted to force a technological transition. It was an economic coup. Environmental claims proved conditional at best. Billions in subsidies flowed to failing companies. Taxpayers absorbed losses while corporations extracted rents and walked away. It worked well for the corporations, but the coup failed Canadians and Canadian workers. They are not building back better.

Green ideology provided perfect cover for this overreach. Invoke climate emergency, and fiscal responsibility vanishes. Question subsidies and you’re labelled a denier. Point out that environmental benefits depend on specific conditions, and you’re accused of spreading misinformation. The rhetorical shield, aided and abetted by a complicit media unable to see past its own financial interests, allowed government to bypass scrutiny that should attend any massive industrial policy intervention.

The Trust Deficit

As Canadians learn that EV environmental benefits depend heavily on electricity sources and driving patterns, as they watch subsidized companies collapse, as they discover how thoroughly the promise was oversold and how completely Ottawa ignored contrary evidence, trust in government erodes. This badly needed skepticism will spread beyond EVs and undermine legitimate government functions.

It would be good if future government claims about environmental policy face rising skepticism. Corporations wrapping themselves in green rhetoric may be viewed as con artists. Environmental activists who championed these policies may see their credibility destroyed. When citizens conclude their government systematically misled them about costs, benefits, and basic facts while suppressing inconvenient research, liberal democracy itself suffers. But that may not happen at all in Laurentian LaLa-land or in the Pacific Lotusland.

Over fifty billion dollars are distributed among local and foreign industrialists, while tens of thousands live in tents in Laurentian cities.

The EV debacle demonstrates that overselling policy benefits, suppressing complexity, and using ideology to short-circuit debate produce a backlash far worse than honest acknowledgment of nuance would have. The damage compounds when governments commit billions based on conditional environmental claims they never verified, then remain silent when industry-leading manufacturers publish data revealing those conditions.

The Path Forward

Canada needs a full repeal of the EV mandate and a complete retreat from Ottawa directing market decisions. The EV law must be struck, not merely paused. The 2030 and 2035 targets must be abandoned entirely. No new subsidies for EV production (or any other production). No bailouts for failed battery plants. No additional funds for charging infrastructure. And absolutely no subsidies for conventional or hybrid vehicle production justified by the same environmental complexity that should have prevented EV mandates in the first place.

Let markets determine which technologies Canadians choose. If EVs deliver genuine value for specific consumers in specific circumstances—those with clean electricity grids, high annual mileage, and long vehicle ownership timelines—those consumers will buy them without mandates or subsidies. If hybrids or improved conventional vehicles better serve other consumers’ needs, manufacturers will produce them without government direction.

The aggregated wisdom of millions of economic actors making decisions based on their actual circumstances will produce better outcomes than any planning committee in Ottawa. Some Canadians will find EVs deliver environmental and financial benefits. Others will not. Both conclusions can be correct simultaneously, a nuance Ottawa spent $50 billion refusing to acknowledge.

Markets work because no one has to know everything. Central planning fails because someone must. I wish I could say that Ottawa has learned this lesson the expensive way. Or whether Laurentians will remember it at the next election. Or whether the same politicians and bureaucrats who delivered this disaster will identify the next technology to mandate and subsidize, armed with new promises that reality will eventually expose as conditional at best.

But let’s keep our dreams in check. It seems more likely, given their ideological make-up and propensities for certainty, that low-information Laurentian and Pacific Coast voters will go right for the next green-washed fantasy that the feds and provincial governments will put in front of them, provided it is coiled into a catchy slogan.


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Canada Can Finally Profit From LNG If Ottawa Stops Dragging Its Feet

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Ian Madsen 

Canada’s growing LNG exports are opening global markets and reducing dependence on U.S. prices, if Ottawa allows the pipelines and export facilities needed to reach those markets

Canada’s LNG advantage is clear, but federal bottlenecks still risk turning a rare opening into another missed opportunity

Canada is finally in a position to profit from global LNG demand. But that opportunity will slip away unless Ottawa supports the pipelines and export capacity needed to reach those markets.

Most major LNG and pipeline projects still need federal impact assessments and approvals, which means Ottawa can delay or block them even when provincial and Indigenous governments are onside. Several major projects are already moving ahead, which makes Ottawa’s role even more important.

The Ksi Lisims floating liquefaction and export facility near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, along with the LNG Canada terminal at Kitimat, B.C., Cedar LNG and a likely expansion of LNG Canada, are all increasing Canada’s export capacity. For the first time, Canada will be able to sell natural gas to overseas buyers instead of relying solely on the U.S. market and its lower prices.

These projects give the northeast B.C. and northwest Alberta Montney region a long-needed outlet for its natural gas. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing made it possible to tap these reserves at scale. Until 2025, producers had no choice but to sell into the saturated U.S. market at whatever price American buyers offered. Gaining access to world markets marks one of the most significant changes for an industry long tied to U.S. pricing.

According to an International Gas Union report, “Global liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade grew by 2.4 per cent in 2024 to 411.24 million tonnes, connecting 22 exporting markets with 48 importing markets.” LNG still represents a small share of global natural gas production, but it opens the door to buyers willing to pay more than U.S. markets.

LNG Canada is expected to export a meaningful share of Canada’s natural gas when fully operational. Statistics Canada reports that Canada already contributes to global LNG exports, and that contribution is poised to rise as new facilities come online.

Higher returns have encouraged more development in the Montney region, which produces more than half of Canada’s natural gas. A growing share now goes directly to LNG Canada.

Canadian LNG projects have lower estimated break-even costs than several U.S. or Mexican facilities. That gives Canada a cost advantage in Asia, where LNG demand continues to grow.

Asian LNG prices are higher because major buyers such as Japan and South Korea lack domestic natural gas and rely heavily on imports tied to global price benchmarks. In June 2025, LNG in East Asia sold well above Canadian break-even levels. This price difference, combined with Canada’s competitive costs, gives exporters strong margins compared with sales into North American markets.

The International Energy Agency expects global LNG exports to rise significantly by 2030 as Europe replaces Russian pipeline gas and Asian economies increase their LNG use. Canada is entering the global market at the right time, which strengthens the case for expanding LNG capacity.

As Canadian and U.S. LNG exports grow, North American supply will tighten and local prices will rise. Higher domestic prices will raise revenues and shrink the discount that drains billions from Canada’s economy.

Canada loses more than $20 billion a year because of an estimated $20-per-barrel discount on oil and about $2 per gigajoule on natural gas, according to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy’s energy discount tracker. Those losses appear directly in public budgets. Higher natural gas revenues help fund provincial services, health care, infrastructure and Indigenous revenue-sharing agreements that rely on resource income.

Canada is already seeing early gains from selling more natural gas into global markets. Government support for more pipelines and LNG export capacity would build on those gains and lift GDP and incomes. Ottawa’s job is straightforward. Let the industry reach the markets willing to pay.

Ian Madsen is a senior policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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