A Fixed Mentality

December 1, 2015

by Jay Taber

US President Barack Obama, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and heads of state attend the ‘Mission Innovation: Accelerating the Clean Energy Revolution’ meeting at COP21. The Breakthrough Energy Coalition includes Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and Virgin Group head Richard Branson [Photograph: Ian Langsdon/AFP/Getty Images][Source]

In 2014 the Energy Foundation/Fund in San Francisco (assets $100 Million) granted four million to Sierra Club Foundation, a couple million to Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as $665,000 to Earth Justice (Sierra Club), $565,000 to Environmental Defense Fund, and $335,000 to CERES. Smaller grants went to Seattle area groups: $30,000 to Washington Environmental Council, $15,000 to Sightline Institute (a climate think tank that promotes Bill Gates) and $7,500 to Re-Sources.

The Energy Foundation 990

Laying the groundwork for a fixed mentality behind the ‘clean energy’ Ponzi scheme led by Gates, these beneficiaries become its cheerleaders. Spreading money around to media, environmental groups and think tanks that supply them with ideas ensures compliance with the Ponzi agenda.

Compromising celebrities with strong environmental creds ensures they will maintain silence about elite fraud. The hush money Ford, Rockefeller, Gates and Buffett invested in this is augmented by oil companies and financial institutions that benefit from the fraud.

Following the money is challenging, since they routinely launder it through private and public foundations, as well as brokerages that make small grants. This way, no one examines the source of the money or the agenda that controls its use, let alone the overall actual purpose, as opposed to the stated purpose.

The payoff for this financial elite investment is potentially well above the bank bailouts of 2008-2009, that devastated the US economy. The climate bail out funds from public treasuries worldwide could easily eclipse that.

[Jay Thomas Taber (O’Neal) derives from the most prominent tribe in Irish history, nEoghan Ua Niall, the chief family in Northern Ireland between the 4th and the 17th centuries. Jay’s ancestors were some of the last great leaders of Gaelic Ireland. His grandmother’s grandfather’s grandfather emigrated from Belfast to South Carolina in 1768. Jay is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a correspondent to Forum for Global Exchange, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and activists engaged in defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations. Email: tbarj [at] yahoo.com Website: www.jaytaber.com]

Dec 01

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Ceres, David Suzuki Foundation, Foundations, Natural Resources Defense Council, Nature Conservancy, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, TckTckTck

350.org Avaaz COP21 Earth to Paris GCCA/TckTckTck Global Climate March Havas Worldwide United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) World Bank

From TckTckTck, to Air France, to “Earth To Paris”, Havas Worldwide Continues to Hypnotize

Wrong Kind of Green

December 1, 2015

By Cory Morningstar

Above: A “Brandalism” poster at COP21 placed within the advertising space of JCDecaux, the number one outdoor advertising company worldwide and official partner of COP21. Jean-Charles Decaux, Co-CEO of JCDecaux: “By contributing innovative solutions to the challenges of the 21st century, JCDecaux can put its expertise and its teams’ collective intelligence to work for long-term growth”. [Press release: JCDecaux_official-partner-of-COP21]

Havas Worldwide, formerly known as Euro RSCG, is one of the largest integrated marketing communications agencies in the world. Clients include Air France, the 2009 Havas creation TckTckTck, and hundreds of the world’s most powerful corporations. More recently, Havas Worldwide is recognized as a convening partner of the COP21 Earth to Paris campaign with international NGOs 350.org, Avaaz, Ceres, the World Bank (via Connect4Climate), media, etc. During a live-streamed summit on December 7th and 8th for the COP21 climate conference, these instruments of empire will deliver ‘a new universal climate change agreement.'”

United Nations Development Programme Press Release, October 29, 2015:

“Earth To Paris, a coalition of partners helping to drive awareness about the connection between people and planet as well as the need for strong climate action, announced it will host “Earth To Paris—Le Hub” a two-day, high-impact, live-streamed summit on 7 and 8 December in Paris during COP21 — the United Nations climate conference to deliver a new universal climate change agreement.

Experts, advocates, CEOs, and other leaders in Paris will discuss creative and impactful solutions to climate change, while participants around the world take part through multi-language livestreamed video and real-time interactions across multiple social media platforms using the unifying hashtag #EarthToParis.

The convening partners of the Earth To Paris Coalition are United Nations Foundation, GOOD Magazine, City of Paris (Mairie de Paris), Mashable, UNFCCC, National Geographic Jynwel Foundation, UNESCO, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UNICEF and HAVAS Worldwide.

Collaborating partners include Action/2015, AFP Foundation, Avaaz, Better World Campaign, Broadcasting Board of Governors, Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Ceres, Climasphere, The Climate Reality Project, Collectively, Connect4Climate– the global partnership program of the World Bank Group, DailyMail.com, Earth Day Network, The East African, El Pais, Enactus, Energy Future Coalition, European Foundation Centre, Fair Observer, Girl Up, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Global Citizen, Global Moms Challenge, GREEN Africa Directory, Helloasso, Impaqto, Love Song to the Earth, Make Sense, The Nature Conservatory, Nothing but Nets, Natural Resources Defense Council, Planeta Futuro, Rainforest Partnership, Rovio Entertainment, Scope Group, Sevenly, Shft.com, Shot@Life, Sister Cities International , +SocialGood, +SocialGood Ghana, Social Good Week, Sustainable Energy for All, SXSW, SXSW Eco, Test Tube, Travel +Social Good, UNA-USA, Universal Access Project, Vice News, Voice of America, We Mean Business and the X Prize Foundation.”

350.org, a co-founder of TckTckTck, is not listed in the above press release yet is a collaborating partner, identified on the Earth to Paris Website partner page.

[Website: http://www.EarthToParis.org | Twitter: https://twitter.com/EarthToParis]

Marching In a Hypnotic State

Havas Worldwide clients include both Air France and Havas creation TckTckTck.

“Havas Worldwide agency BETC transformed Air France into a provider of true well-being with inspired cuisine, rich culture, exquisite fashion, and a certain style…. Air France has created an entire “well-being” experience and embraced digital and social technology as it expands the campaign with Air France Music on iTunes and develops a hypnotizing music-based app for Facebook. Since the campaign began, advertising tracking scores have been outstanding, business class occupancy has hit a record 83 percent, and quarterly revenues saw 16 percent and 12 percent spikes thanks to the advertising.” – Havas Worldwide Website

“The subject of climate change was slipping off global agendas, with news coverage waning after having peaked in 2006. People felt confused and helpless… Havas Worldwide’s Social Business Idea® was the simple mnemonic “TckTckTck” – evoking the ticking of a clock counting down and time running out. Tapping the power of open sourcing, we recruited influencers to endorse the campaign, and encouraged advertisers and social media users to adapt and spread the logo. More than 17 million climate allies signed the petition, over 50,000 “TckTckTck” dog tags were sold, and media coverage valued at over $30 million was generated. A custom-recorded song was downloaded more than 450,000 times. – Havas Worldwide Website

In 2009, global civil society was cleverly seduced into sleeping with the enemy via the TckTckTck campaign. [Further reading: EYES WIDE SHUT | TckTckTck exposé]. In 2014, not one to learn from the past, civil society, would yet again sleep with the enemy. Global Call for Climate Action (GCCA/TckTckTck), an initiative that began in Bali (2007) with a $300,000 funding commitment from the Quebec government, is a “coalition of twenty key international organizations” including Avaaz, 350.org, Greenpeace , Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum, OXFAM, WWF, World Council of Churches, Union of Concerned Scientists, Equiterre, Global Call to Action against Poverty (also co-chaired by Kumi Naidoo), and the Pew Environment Group. [Source]

Today, almost 6 years later, living amidst a heavy mental lull bearing much resemblance to Stockholm syndrome, we have chained ourselves to the bed – willing participants in turning ourselves into the enemy’s personal bitch marching across the globe to our own annihilation. [Further reading: TckTckTck: The Bitch is Back]

“GCCA [Global Call for Climate Action] worked behind the scenes for over a year to prepare for the biggest date in 2014, leveraging every possible asset and contact to rally around the historic Peoples’ Climate March in the run-up to the UN Climate Leaders Summit…. In the preceding months, GCCA convened weekly calls with key partners 350.org, Avaaz, USCAN and Climate Nexus to catalyse activities and identify gaps…. Everything came together on the day as we bore witness to the world’s biggest ever climate march, and inspiring events across the globe, with world leaders, business people, activists, parents and artists walking shoulder-to-shoulder.” — GCCA Annual Report 2014

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1910)

As the establishment rave in Paris winds down, the chimera of clean energy propels industrial societies toward nuking the future. The new age ghost dance, as an expression of social despair, has led to progressive self-delusion that promises us the world, if only we believe. Stepping through the looking glass, one can examine the metrics of messaging by establishment social media and philanthropy, that, combined, is the driving force of the non-profit industrial complex. [Jay Taber, Rave New World]

Yet, very few are willing to step through the looking glass.

The Architects of the Final Solution will be pleased at the resounding success of their investments in Controlling Consciousness; the whole world is becoming A Culture of Imbeciles. [Jay Taber, Marching for Monsanto]

[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation and Counterpunch. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can support her independent journalism via Patreon.]

Edited with Forrest Palmer, Wrong Kind of Green Collective.

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Further reading:The Bitch is Back: https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2015/11/28/tcktcktck-the-bitch-is-back/

This Changes Nothing. Why the People’s Climate March Guarantees Climate Catastrophe: September 17, 2014

Under One Bad Sky | TckTckTck’s 2014 People’s Climate March: This Changed Nothing: September 30, 2015

Metrics as a Proxy for Social Change: The Climate Cartel, Impact Funding, and the Abandonment of Struggle: https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2015/11/30/metrics-as-a-proxy-for-social-change-the-climate-cartel-impact-funding-and-the-abandonment-of-struggle/

Sep 24

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Carbon Markets | REDD, Ceres, Foundations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Rockefeller Foundation

Business for the Environment (B4E) Capital Institute Ceres Ecosystem Services Media Natural Capital New Economy Payments for Ecosystems Services The Biosphere Economy The Guardian The Next System Project United Nations Environment Programme

McKibben’s Divestment Tour – Brought to You by Wall Street [Part XII of an Investigative Report] [Building Acquiescence for the Commodification of the Commons Under the Banner of a “New Economy”]

The Art of Annihilation

September 24, 2015

Part twelve of an investigative series by Cory Morningstar

Divestment Investigative Report Series [Further Reading]: Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part V • Part VI • Part VII • Part VIII • Part IX • Part X • Part XI • Part XII • Part XIII

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.” — Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

Prologue: A Coup d’état of Nature – Led by the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

It is somewhat ironic that anti-REDD climate activists, faux green organizations (in contrast to legitimate grassroots organizations that do exist, although few and far between) and self-proclaimed environmentalists, who consider themselves progressive will speak out against the commodification of nature’s natural resources while simultaneously promoting the toothless divestment campaign promoted by the useless mainstream groups allegedly on the left. It’s ironic because the divestment campaign will result (succeed) in a colossal injection of money shifting over to the very portfolios heavily invested in, thus dependent upon, the intense commodification and privatization of Earth’s last remaining forests, (via REDD, environmental “markets” and the like). This tour de force will be executed with cunning precision under the guise of environmental stewardship and “internalizing negative externalities through appropriate pricing.” Thus, ironically (if in appearances only), the greatest surge in the ultimate corporate capture of Earth’s final remaining resources is being led, and will be accomplished, by the very environmentalists and environmental groups that claim to oppose such corporate domination and capture.

Beyond shelling out billions of tax-exempt dollars (i.e., investments) to those institutions most accommodating in the non-profit industrial complex (otherwise known as foundations), the corporations need not lift a finger to sell this pseudo green agenda to the people in the environmental movement; the feat is being carried out by a tag team comprised of the legitimate and the faux environmentalists. As the public is wholly ignorant and gullible, it almost has no comprehension of the following:

the magnitude of our ecological crisis
the root causes of the planetary crisis, or
the non-profit industrial complex as an instrument of hegemony.

The commodification of the commons will represent the greatest, and most cunning, coup d’état in the history of corporate dominance – an extraordinary fait accompli of unparalleled scale, with unimaginable repercussions for humanity and all life.

Further, it matters little whether or not the money is moved from direct investments in fossil fuel corporations to so-called “socially responsible investments.” The fact of the matter is that all corporations on the planet (and therefore by extension, all investments on the planet) are dependent upon and will continue to require massive amounts of fossil fuels to continue to grow and expand ad infinitum – as required by the industrialized capitalist economic system.

The windmills and solar panels serve as beautiful (marketing) imagery as a panacea for our energy issues, yet they are illusory – the fake veneer for the commodification of the commons, which is the fundamental objective of Wall Street, the very advisers of the divestment campaign.

Thus we find ourselves unwilling to acknowledge the necessity to dismantle the industrialized capitalist economic system, choosing instead to embrace an illusion designed by corporate power.

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Enraptured by the Spectacle

“We can’t destroy a system when we don’t understand its structure and our place in it. It’s impossible to defeat a dominating class if we don’t even perceive them as such.”— Stephanie McMillan

The Guardian must be considered another key media empire that is subservient to corporate power under the guise of progressive liberalism. “Founded by textile traders and merchants the Guardian had a reputation as ‘an organ of the middle class’ (Engels, 1973), or in the words of C.P. Scott’s son Ted ‘a paper that will remain bourgeois to the last (Ayerst, 1971)'”. [Source ] The fact that the Guardian’s advocating of western Imperialism/military interventions is virtually impossible to differentiate from the right is lost amongst its ardent liberal supporters. The Guardian’s contempt for anti-imperialist movements was made clear in its 1961 coverage of the assassination of Congolese independence leader and revolutionary, Patrice Lumumba; a recurring theme through the Guardian’s history. [Even in death, the Guardian continues to whitewash imperialism and colonialism, and re-invent historical facts and European crimes: “Lumumba… was deposed in September 1960, and executed by firing squad on 17 January 1961. The Guardian, August 17, 2013] Thus, it is fascinating to observe their colossal effort in the unveiling and framing of its major series on the climate crisis (“Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre”).

“With increasing frequency, we are party to a white liberal and “multicultural”/”people of color” liberal imagination that venerates and even fetishizes the iconography and rhetoric of Black and Third World liberation movements, and then proceeds to incorporate these images and vernaculars into the public presentation of foundation-funded liberal or progressive organizations. I have also observed and experienced how these organizations, in order to protect their non-profit status and marketability to liberal foundations, actively self-police against members’ deviations from their essentially reformist agendas, while continuing to appropriate the language and imagery of historical revolutionaries. Suffice it to say that these non-profit groups often exhibit(ed) a political practice that is, to appropriate and corrupt a phrase from Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “radical in form, liberal in content”. —Dylan Rodriguez

Witness the campaigns developed in consultation with Wall Street that are being pushed into the public realm by a corporate/liberal media (consider that six corporations control 90% of the media in America in the US alone) and also an alleged “progressive” media which, are all critically dependent on foundation financing with much of it owned by corporate media (example Huffington Post, an entity that was at one time considered laughably “independent” by liberals and not restricted to mainstream norms due to its private ownership, was eventually acquired by AOL Time-Warmer) in tandem with the non-profit industrial complex. Witness the language hammered into society’s psyche (carbon bubble, carbon budget, stranded assets, new economy, clean energy, natural capital). Witness author and 350.org board member Naomi Klein’s book (touting a supposed system change made palatable to the privileged since it is no change at all) being utilized as a key instrument to advance the “new economy”. Witness the desire “to change everything” being embraced by the same aforementioned institutions, including corporate greens like WWF (pushing forward the agenda of Monsanto) et al. Thus, it is critical to acknowledge what should be obvious, yet is not due to decades of indoctrination. The intended result of this global saturation has already been designed and decided upon by the oligarchs. There is no legitimate desire to advance an already devolving society that continues to devolve—faith in oligarchs to provide a solution to our multiple and overarching crises is proof of this. Rather, the only legitimate desire is to further expand capital markets, thereby expanding corporate dominance. The fact that the end-game strategy is presented under a guise of ethics, and delivered by false prophets, is part and parcel of the spectacle.

“Capitalists, the stewards or servants of capital, are compelled to maximize surplus value by whatever means necessary.”— Stephanie McMillan

The spectacle enables, coddles and most importantly, nurtures willful blindness. We turn away from the inevitable fact that long before the fantasy of a new economy comprised of a third industrial “clean energy” revolution begins to re-shape the planet, we will have completely exhausted the carrying capacity of our shared planet and will have at last exhausted the Earth’s final remaining natural resources.

On May 5, 2015, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund website posted the following:

“The Carbon Tracker Initiative won the award for Innovation in Communicating Sustainability at the Guardian Sustainable Business Awards on May 14, 2014. According to The Guardian, Carbon Tracker’s April 2013 report, Unburnable Carbon: Wasted Capital and Stranded Assets, reframed the climate debate by translating climate risk into energy demand and prices.”

One thing is true; the climate debate has been masterfully re-framed. When instruments of hegemony such as The Guardian give ample space and ample resources for the task of brilliantly executing memes such as the carbon budget, carbon bubble, and stranded (carbon) assets, we must ask ourselves not only why, but more to the point, who will benefit. The question then becomes why The Guardian and many of the world’s most powerful institutions, NGOs, media, think tanks and foundations (inclusive of the United Nations) have, in united fashion, so heavily invested all their resources to ensure this outcome. Akin to Emma Goldman’s incisive observation “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”, if divestment changed anything, you would be hearing nothing about it in the vast network and channels controlled by global hegemony. So again, the question must be asked as to the underlying reason and true purpose regarding the actions envisioned, sought and financed by the world’s most powerful and pathological oligarchs.

“[The non-profit industrial complex] “represents a kind of “Third Way” on the part of capital that privatizes state functions and occupies key strategic points within civil society (co-opting social movements) while seemingly outside the realm of private capital—thereby enabling an acceleration of privatization and reinforcing the hegemony of monopoly-finance capital globally.” [Source]

Embedded within the success of this discourse, we have major corporations which comprise even more powerful conglomerates. The same corporations and conglomerates launder their massive wealth through foundations, legally evading taxes while buying influence and securing power, all under the guise of philanthropy. The institutions, think tanks, the non-profit industrial complex, the media-industrial complex, etc. are all vitally dependent upon the “philanthropy” (i.e. strategic investment) of their benefactors, to whom they are both absolutely dependent upon and accountable to. The creation of such dependence is not lost to foundations and the oligarchs they represent: editorial control is guaranteed without even asking, which is as politically correct, preferred and most effective form of self-censorship that has ever been devised in this world.

The Guardian serves an elite, privileged and affluent readership. It’s razor-sharp focus on advertising strategy for increased market share and revenues reflect as much. It follows that the more affluent the readers, the more advertising, and the more revenue. It also follows that the more affluent the readership, the higher the rates of advertising. Logic dictates that to increase affluent readership, the content within must convey a world view, that both reflects and gratifies the interests, needs, and perceptions of the corporation (that profits from selling a product), the affluent consumer, and the product itself.

Thus, it is par for the course that while liberals fawned over The Guardian’s unveiling and framing of its major series on the climate crisis on March 6, 2015, (“Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre”), the following item went relatively unnoticed:

“The Guardian, CNN, Reuters, and more enter into a global ad alliance. Five of the biggest online news publishers in the world are joining up to form a supercontinent. For advertising.” — Pangae Alliance, March 18, 2015

The goal and methodology behind the alliance of the Pangaea Alliance, The Guardian, CNN International, Reuters, the Financial Times, and the Economist to form a supercontinent for advertising is to capture premium rates from brands. Pangaea’s partners claim that “the value of the alliance is that it brings together an influential and trusted global audience for advertisers.” Specifically, the alliance will allow advertisers to access 110 million unique readers (‘global influencers’). Pangaea will also disclose all data of it’s readers to corporations. Although they claim this information will be remain anonymous, the newspapers understand this data is of crucial value to those corporation they seeks as clients. The Wall Street Journal agrees:

“The data is crucial. One thing we can do together is share first-party data with each other and create unique, compelling audience segments,” [Tim Gentry, global revenue director at Guardian News & Media and leader of the Pangaea project] explained. For example, subscription information from one publisher might be combined with behavioral information from other to create a detailed profile of a user that an advertiser is willing to pay a premium to reach.”

Above screenshot: Highlighting the obvious hypocrisy. The Guardian feigns concern for the climate – while simultaneously feeding desires to further expand high carbon western lifestyles via consumption and material wealth. Such constructive criticisms are conveniently dismissed by most.

This aspect is also most pertinent: “Pangaea is being led by The Guardian, with plans to launch in April with display ads and later expand into other formats like native advertising and publisher trading desks.” [Source] One can be forgiven if they do not know what “native advertising” is, as it’s a fairly recent advertising ploy:

“Sometimes you have to look pretty hard to see it, because it’s intentionally camouflaged to fit right into the flow of news on the page. It goes by different names, sponsored content, content marketing, branded content or promoted news, but these days most people in the trade are calling it “native advertising.”— Ads, Disguised As News (VIDEO) John Oliver Goes After “Native Advertising” , Feb 14, 2015

Of course the Guardian is not the only media outlet adored by the left that willfully exploits the trust and naiveté of their readers. “Alternet, Salon.com and Truthout have published material written by “Global Possibilities,” a special interest group funded in part by the oil company BP and a group of automotive and energy industrialists represented through The Energy Foundation (Global Possibilities, 2013)”[Source: Conjuring Clean Energy: Exposing Green Assumptions in Media and Academia“]

Image: Rebranding productivism in mainstream media via philanthropy and funded groups

The scope of Empire’s boundaries is colossal. The toxic role of the industrial-media complex in promoting the voracious aims of private power is a given. With this simple truth in mind, consider the global media in their making of 350’s Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein (and also, recent hero on the left Russell Brand) into global superstars with icon status. In the March 2015 issue of Prospect Magazine, the article World thinkers 2015: the results describes number 3 recipient, Naomi Klein as follows:

“The New Yorker described her as ‘the most visible and influential figure on the American left,’ though her books are read around the world.”

Yet what is critical, and what both the industrial-media complex and global marketing executives understand as the most important aspect, is to what specific audience Klein appeals to. Notwithstanding its title, The New Yorker is read nationwide, with 53 percent of its circulation in the top ten U.S. metropolitan areas. According to Mediamark Research Inc., the average age of The New Yorker reader in 2009 is 47 (compared to 43 in 1980 and 46 in 1990). The average household income of The New Yorker readers in 2009 is $109,877 (the average income in 1980 was $62,788 and the average income in 1990 was $70,233). [Source: United States Census Bureau.]

Without question, media is the key instrument strategically utilized by the oligarchs/elites who own and control the media-corporate complex (it’s value, challenged only by that of the non-profit industrial complex), as the key apparatus toward global hegemonic power. It is exploited, with precision, to both instil and enforce illusions and discourses which are paramount to ensuring the global populace remains isolated from political processes such as the global expansion and implementation of environmental markets and payment for ecosystem services respectively. The Guardian’s March 6, 2015 article, “Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre” signals the agenda has been set: the building of/creation of public acquiescence via social engineering. The policy documents that serve as the foundation for global implementation have been written and are now in place; the agenda is now in its final stages. This discourse effectively eradicates potential threats in the form of alternatives, criticisms, direct actions, hacktvism, and most importantly, a united demand and effort to completely dismantle the capitalist system. Citizens, including those on the left who consider themselves radical in nature, are manipulated to actively engage in and further their own domination. The hegemonic system, inclusive of media (and in this case led by the Guardian) and advertising firms, which equate social media with the second coming of Christ, now retain more insight and clarity into people’s wants, dreams and needs, than the people do themselves. This 21^st century windfall has prompted corporations and advertising firms to re-name the enthusiastic brand-advocate consumer, the degrading term “prosumer”, with its representative youths, referred to as “millennials”, representing a 30 trillion dollar jackpot.

Earth day 2015 signalled the unleashing of the new psywar on behalf of market-oriented politics: “the sharing economy, the caring economy, the solidarity economy, the restorative economy, the regenerative economy, the sustaining economy, the resilient economy, and, of course, the new economy” (The Next System Project). Other terminology includes regenerative capitalism, transformation of finance, inclusive economy, transparent economy, natural systems, natural capital, third millennium economy, social capital, the next system, and many neologisms being tested for public acceptance. The media-industrial complex, in tandem with the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC), has rolled out the final phase in the global corporate capture of the commons: public acceptance. Here we will bear witness to the art of manipulation, coercion and social engineering.

Examples include: A Bee’s Invoice: The Hidden Value in Nature; Rapping For REDD: Will Ecosystem Services Go Mainstream This Earth Day?; Is Nature Ready to Transform Big Business? The Banking Nature-Trailer (December 2014) asks the question “Can markets succeed where politics has failed?” implying that markets are separate and distinct from politics. Whether intentional or not, framing such as this is a fine example of psywar at its best.

Note that the Capital Institute project (regenerative capitalism) (April 20, 2015 video: Reimagining Capitalism, full version) “was honored to be shortlisted in the Communications Category of the 2014 Guardian Sustainable Business Awards.”

Payment for Ecosystem Services

“He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.” — Chief Seattle, 1780-1866

The goal to commodify the commons under what has come to be known as “(payment for) ecosystem services” (as well as Natural Capital, Biosphere Economy, etc.) will look to the private sector for investment. The scheme promises corporations, private investors and the world’s most powerful financial institutions both ownership and control (i.e. expansion of power) of Earth’s natural resources, as the return on capital investment. We bear witness to an explosion of new environmental markets and ecosystem services products which are already being developed in order to capture the trillions of dollars to be made from the capture and exploitation of “natural capital”. The implementation of payment for ecosystem services will create the most spectacular opportunities that the financial sector has ever witnessed. New markets offer speculation that promises unimaginable profits.

This is a new mechanism for generating profits for the wealthy (those with financial capital on the top tier) via the global commodification of nature’s functions and services. In essence, the implementation of payment for ecosystems services represents an unprecedented coup: a privatization of the commons. A free-for-all for further corporate capture like nothing the world has yet witnessed. Corporations and the financial institutions are frothing at the mouth. Never before has neoliberalism witnessed such opportunity and scope as in the expansion of markets and capital. The commodification of most everything sacred, the privatization and objectification of all biodiversity and living things that are immeasurable, above and beyond monetary measure, will be unparalleled, irreversible and inescapable.

Of critical importance is the manufacturing of consent. Capitalism constructs and nurtures ideologies designed to appeal to and reabsorb its opponents; a circular and systematic means of maintaining existing power structures.

Lining the brick walls of the NPIC, environmental analysts and their peers demonstrate their resolute loyalty and complete subordination toward the oligarchs they serve and protect, and the neoliberal paradigm as a whole. Bear witness as they implore via the echo-chambers of the media-corporate complex, that the policies being drafted on global ecosystem services must be democratic, fair and just. In tandem with marketing executives, the liberal progressives will create the required obfuscations and deliver on what they are funded to do, represented by the following: create irrelevant discourse in the media (examples: debating the importance of stopping the Keystone XL pipeline in the past and the global divestment campaign to stop market financialization of fossil fuel corporations in the present); frame what is a political issue as a non-political issue; normalize/naturalize the monetization of ecosystem services ideology by highlighting the said “benefits” (which are scripted by the World Bank, the UN, think tanks, foundations and those who comprise the helm of the NPIC); build acquiescence by strategically utilizing environmental language to normalize a project that furthers privatization, market expansion/expansion of natural capital (as an adjunct to the divestment campaign in moving markets from the unsustainable fossil fuels to the commons in a new form of exploitation) and the intensification of neoliberalism; obscure the interests of those pushing forward the entire agenda; create necessary illusions to prolong belief in a failed and suicidal system; and finally, employ heavy rhetoric of Indigenous rights to counteract opposition that correctly foresees the future dispossession and eviction of Indigenous land throughout the world, in addition to the violence and brutality that this will invoke. The implementation of “ecosystem services” accounting effectively creates a new mechanism for “legal” land grabs (which are already proliferating due to recent “opportunities” for pensions, etc. via land agricultural investments.) As the only intelligent response to the amalgamation of this information, we should all consider the words of the Mohawk Warriors Society regarding what is sadly becoming the only retort to the ongoing omnicide: “They aren’t scared of us because we’re willing to take up arms. They’re scared of us because we’re willing to die.”

“This we know; the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know.” — Chief Seattle, 1780-1866

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Capitalism Has Reached Its Limits

United Nation’s Financialization of Earth

UN Photo: March 25, 1947: “Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the United Nations, accepts from John D. Rockefeller III, acting for his father, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., a check for $8,500,000 for the purchase of the 6-block Manhattan East River site where the United Nations will build its permanent headquarters. Mayor of the City of New York, William O’Dwyer, is seen at right. Ceremony took place on the first anniversary of the Security Council in New York. Empire State Building, New York.” (UN archives)

This particular segment of the divestment series, inclusive of quotes and references, is perhaps the most critical if one is to understand the financial-indicators and collective pathology behind the global goal to commidify (i.e., financialize, privatize, monetize), all of Earth’s natural resources. Let’s begin with the observation by the world’s most powerful institutions that the industrialized capitalist system has reached the limits of what is possible:

“Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, argues that the benefits of combating climate change include ‘new green jobs in clean tech and clean energy businesses up to ones in sustainable agriculture and conservation-based enterprises.’ Interestingly, too, he backs up his business case with an in-house financier. Recognizing that ‘the economic models of the 20th century are now hitting the limits of what is possible,’ Pavan Sukdhev, a senior banker from Deutsche Bank currently seconded to UNEP to lead the research, comments that, ‘Investments will soon be pouring back into the global economy – the question is whether they go into a new green economy.'”—Volans website, November 4, 2008

The three pillars of the green economy (a false dictation of an alleged full restructuring and reconstruction of the global economy) are the following: 1) valuing and mainstreaming nature’s services into national and international accounts; 2) employment generation via “green jobs” and policies; 3) instruments and market signals able to accelerate the transition from a carbon based economy to a supposedly green economy. In relation to the apparatus used by mainstream society to attain these objectives, think tanks, the media-corporate complex and the non-profit industrial complex, must be considered to be the key instruments of achieving these three pillars.

According to UNEP, “The Green Economy initiative has three pillars – valuing and mainstreaming nature’s services into national and international accounts; employment generation through green jobs and the laying out the policies; instruments and market signals able to accelerate a transition to a Green Economy.” — Volans website, November 4, 2008

One year later, Paris 2009:

“Investments will soon be pouring back into the global economy – the question is whether they go into the old, extractive, short-term economy or a new and more sustainable green economy that deals with multiple challenges while generating economic and social opportunities for the poor and the well-off alike. Mobilizing and re-focusing the global economy towards investments in clean technologies and ‘natural’ infrastructure such as forests and soils is the best bet for achieving real growth, combating climate change and triggering an employment boom in the 21st century” — Achim Steiner, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme, Business for the Environment (B4E) Global Summit 2009, Summary Report

At the helm of the corporate strategy to push forward and implement environmental markets (if in appearances only) is the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). The UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director is the charismatic and articulate Achim Steiner, former Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). As a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), the IUCN partners with corporations such as Shell and boasts “corporate green” members such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The IUCN acquired funding of approximately $100 million in 2010 with funding from the private sector having increased considerably.

Steiner is often credited with the ‘Green Economy’ scheme. From inception, this concept appeared to be perceived by environmentalists, largely as a euphemism for business as usual, with the appearance of collective resistance peaking at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012. Since that time however, aside from the commendable efforts of a tiny group of smaller NGOs (Nature Not for Sale), one observes that, opposition to the monetization of nature, appears to have all but vanished as evidenced by schemes like REDD and its acceptance by the mainstream environmental movement. Regarding the response of the environmental movement or lack thereof, the silence is deafening. The increase in Steiner’s power-base is made evident via the recent unleashing of a full-scale psywar where the environmental NGOs and luminaries within or aligned with the NPIC, serve as signatories or advocates of the payment for ecosystem services that lie just below the surface of these newly launched, saccharine campaigns. The fact that “the green economy” has been killed, in order to save it (Purpose Inc.) is apparent in the waves of holistic language that brilliantly markets pathology as sustainability, as represented by the goals of organizations such as Purpose Inc.

A close associate of Steiner is Braulio F. de Souza Dias, Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) ^[1] secretariat. Regarding Steiner and his compatriot Dias, these two individuals (and the organizations they serve) comprise just two of the key architects behind the steadfast goal to transform every living thing on our planet—into a tradable service or commodity.

“As recently as this past June, at the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development, the Rockefeller Foundation and the United Nations Global Compact launched a new framework for action to help meet social and environmental needs.” — United Nations Press Release, September 10, 2012

[Video: Achim Steiner courting world’s elites. Published September 4, 2014 by The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) WBCSD is a CEO-led, global association of some 200 companies dealing exclusively with business and “sustainable development”. (Further reading on WBCSD: McKibben’s Divestment Tour – Brought to You by Wall Street | Part VIII: The “Social Capitalists”)

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The Key to Growth in the 21^st Century

“If I had to put a label on the emerging paradigm, which I believe started to evolve from the early 1960s, I would call it the ‘Gaian’ or ‘Lovelockian’ Paradigm. It speaks of a world in which humankind is forced to evolve profoundly different mindsets, behaviours and cultures. A world in which BP’s original ‘Beyond Petroleum’ branding would make perfect market sense, indeed would be second nature. And a world in which the services delivered by our biosphere are no longer taken for granted, but instead are accurately valued by market exchange mechanisms.”

“In this context, May also saw the launch of another Volans report, The Biosphere Economy, sub-titled ‘Natural limits can spur creativity, innovation and growth’. In the report we quote UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner to the effect that “The economic growth of the last two centuries has relied on the mismanagement of natural assets. Governments are starting to understand that making these assets visible in national accounts and economic strategies is the key to growth in the twenty-first century.”

In the June 14, 2010 Volans article, entitled ‘Getting into Deep Water‘, the author John Elkington highlights the challenges that lie ahead for the aforementioned “emerging paradigms”:

“Instead, the challenge is to shift our behaviours, our cultures and, ultimately, the prevailing paradigm. One of our current generation of interns is helping us explore the behavioural change agenda. In parallel, we are having stimulating discussions with a number of companies and agencies on the topic—with a potential longer-term action research project in the pipeline. But the scale of the culture change and paradigm shift challenges is mind-boggling.” [Volans is discussed later in this series]

Rebranding the Green Economy: The New Economy

“In December 2015, the world will get a new climate deal at the COP21 meeting in Paris.” —The official Road To Paris website

Avaaz co-founder Jeremy Heimans of Purpose Inc. (Avaaz’s for-profit public relations arm) explained how his firm would systematically organize people around a movement that encapsulated the green economy. This was crucial because as Heimans pointed out, the “green economy” was in a rut. In order to achieve the stated goal of re-emergence by rebranding yet in essence remaining the same, Heimans was clear on the critical strategy: Kill “green” marketing (including the key term “green economy”), in order to push forward the green economy of the mainstream environmental movement – without saying as much. The establishment would kill the green economy, in order to save it.

Heimans states:

“…Well, the results of our research really have two main conclusions I want to share with you today, and the first is a little startling and it may create a little bit of a disequilibrium… and that is that I think we need to kill the language and imagery and green in order to have any real shot at scaling sustainable consumption. Sustainable consumption just isn’t working right now as we’ll talk about in a moment. We’re going to have to kill green as a frame for consumers in order to try to rework that problem.”

Heimans summarizes the methodology:

“… the answer we think is to get behind the businesses that are at this intersection of mass participation where you can get lots of people in a network, you can grow market share very quickly of the new forms of businesses that are green, but don’t knock on the door and announce themselves as green. If we can do this, if we can create a new economy that takes these models that can very quickly acquire market share and we can give people a sense they’re part of something much bigger, we’ll build the green economy, we just won’t talk about it and we won’t say that we’re doing it.”

Jump forward to the present socially acceptable “new economy”– a necessary re-branding to achieve the stated goal to “systematically organize people around a movement that encapsulated the green economy mainstream.”

The oligarchs are most grateful to the army that comprises the NPIC. Without this army, who would cloud the dynamics at a juncture where clarity is essential? In terms of our society’s collective willingness, there resides an almost disturbing eagerness to be led astray, creating a ripe atmosphere for the accepted domination of the very oligarchs, false prophets and corporate entities that are the cause of the aforementioned omnicide. Those who have brought us to the ecological precipice are to be repackaged as environmentally conscious saviours.

To build acquiescence, and even demand, for “sustainable capitalism” and the initial gradual implementation of ecosystem services valuation/accounting by 2020 to facilitate this, a pathological mindset is simply embedded into the “new economy” (i.e. “green capitalism”) ideology, without saying as much. Regarding this implementation, the powers that be will expand capital markets and commence the implementation of (payment for) ecosystem services, they just won’t talk about it and they won’t say that they’re doing it.” What is marketed to the public as “the new economy” (sold to the public under the guise of a multitude of campaigns saturated in holistic language) is fully understood by the non-profit industrial complex and the world’s most powerful intuitions and elitists, as capitalism not only rebranded and protected, but propelled for its continuance. Consider that while the term ecosystem services saturates the public sphere (via the NPIC and media), the most critical aspect of the scheme, that of “payment for” services rendered, is rarely, if ever, mentioned in this regard. Welcome to the greatest psywar of the 21^st century: a hegemonic, global concerted effort, unparalleled in scale and magnitude.

“Once you put a price on nature in order to protect it, you may find someone willing to pay slightly more in order to destroy it”— Neil Brown, Fund Manager, 2013, Counterbalance

If First You Don’t Succeed – Try, Try, Try Again

“Growth based on real, concrete value can fundamentally only be achieved by constantly increasing the rate of exploitation.” (the extraction of surplus value from the working class).”—Stephanie McMillan, Capitalism Must Die!

“We know that something is happening when Klaus Schwab the founder of the world economic forum said in his opening speech a few months ago that we were witnessing the end of capitalism…” —Bob Massie, 2012 Strategies for a New Economy Conference (video)

From left to right: Bill McKibben (350.org), Mark Fullerton (Capital Institute) and Bob Massie (New Economy Coalition)

The President of Capital Institute in 2010, “a collaborative working to explore and effect the economic transition to a more just, regenerative, and thus sustainable way of living on this earth through the transformation of finance” is John Fullerton. Fullerton is director of the New Economy Coalition and advisor to Richard Branson’s Business Leader’s initiative (“B Team”). Fullerton is referred to as a “thought leader” in the “New Economy” and “financial system transformation”.” Prior to founding Capital Institute, Fullerton was a Managing Director of JPMorgan for two decades. At JPMorgan, Fullerton managed various capital markets and derivatives businesses around the globe, before shifting focus to private investments and subsequently residing as the Chief Investment Officer of LabMorgan through the merger with Chase Manhattan before ultimately retiring from the bank in 2001. Fullerton writes the “Future of Finance” blog, which is widely syndicated on platforms such as The Guardian and the Huffington Post. [Full bio]

“The Capital Institute’s mission is predicated on the belief that capital markets can be transformed with the aid of enlightened public policy supported by a shift in societal awareness. We also hold the view that enlightened capitalists, through their collective actions, can lead the way to a more just, resilient, and sustainable economic system, even ahead of enabling public policy.”— Capital Institute, Can Nature Be Monetized?

The Capital Institute’s Board of Directors and advisors is mainly comprised of investment finance executives. Of special interest is the overlapping connections to Ceres, the Wallace Fund, George Soros, Richard Branson, the New Economics Foundation (sister organization (in America) of the New Economics Foundation, the New Economy Coalition which are all a general representation of environmental markets, natural Capitalism, ecosystem services valuation/accounting, and whiteness (an adjective most expressive of Western privilege and the physical phenotype representative of said privilege).

Robert A. Johnson, PhD, is the current Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking which is financed by the “liberal” George Soros. Johnson was previously a managing director at Soros Fund Management, where he managed a global currency, bond, and equity portfolio specializing in emerging markets. In addition, Johnson served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee and Senior Economist of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee. [Full bio]

Another member of the board is Peter Kinder, who also serves on the finance advisory committee of the Wallace Global Fund, as well as on the President’s Council of CERES – two key partners/backers of the divestment campaign. [Full bio]

In addition to the aforementioned individuals, the Board of advisors of The Capital Institute also include Lawrence Lunt , a member of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Global Leadership Council; Richard Zimmerman a Senior Vice President, Private Banker, for HSBC Private Bank in New York; Graciela Chichilnisky, is the author of the carbon market of the UN Kyoto Protocol that became international law in 2005; Hazel Henderson (“turn your deepest purpose into a revenue stream”); Hunter Lovins, President of Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS), author of “The Way Out: Kickstarting Capitalism to Save Our Economic Ass (2012), sequel to “Natural Capitalism”, founder of Rocky Mountain Institute which partnered with Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room in December, 2014; Peter Victor (Capital Institute) Stewart Wallis, Executive Director of New Economics Foundation (NEF). Prior to NEF, Wallis was International Director of Oxfam [Full list of Board of Advisors]

Under Capital Institute’s “Brain Trust” section“, self-described as “Thought leaders of the regenerative economy”, a single project is highlighted: The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), an NGO “promoting a more transparent and efficient global impact investing market.” GIIN was created in 2009 under the fiscal sponsorship of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisor (more aptly described a capitalist incubator project for the “green economy”). The GIIN Investors’ Council is a comprised of institutions, private foundations, and institutional investors that collaborate to determine, refine and promote “best practices” for a faux green industry. Members include but aren’t limited to, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan. GIIN asset owners include entities such as Oxfam GB and Shell Foundation. GIIN Asset managers include Generation Investment Management, Leapfrog Investments, New Forests and many others while GIIN service providers include, but are not limited to, The Nature Conservancy, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), United Nations Capital Development Fund, and Environmental Defense Fund.

“In this paradoxical, nightmare-like scenario, where ruling class criminals throw back pennies and moral judgements to those whose lives they have destroyed in the name of capitalism, we begin to see the true meaning of capitalist charity.” — Michael Barker

In Capital Institute’s first GIIN profile, it is reported that GIIN’s first working group, Project Terragua, is “exploring ways to increase impact investment in sustainable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa.” “A recent project of the Terragua Working Group has been the formation of Mtanga Farms (Tanzania, Africa) by GIIN Investor Council members, The Tony Elumelu Foundation and the Calvert Foundation in partnership with Heirs Holdings and Lion’s Head Global Partners” (a London investment bank, conceived by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation). Mtanga produces maize, soya and barley while pursuing an ambitious strategy in cattle and meat processing. It is working with Seed Co and Last Mile Alliance whose committed partners include, but are not limited to, Syngenta AG and Bayer CropScience. Via funding from sources such as NORAD, which are funneled through the Voxtra Foundation, there is a disserted effort on farmer training and recruitment to act as wholesalers and storage hubs for seed. The training and recruitment is implemented by those within the NPIC.

Another organization that is part of the GIIN network is TransFarm Africa (TFA), included in a group offering new inroads into capital markets in the Global South called the New Markets Lab, which was established in 2010. Originally incubated at the aforementioned William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the initiative was designed in large part, to persuade Africa’s small-scale farmers and entrepreneurs to rapidly transition away from subsistence farming toward market-oriented production systems. TransFarm Africa’s proof of concept, Mtanga Farms Limited, illustrates the innovative approach TFA pioneered combining investment and policy to unlock market potential.

“Basically, millions of small holder farmers have to go through a transformation from being subsistence to commercial producers”—It is the decade of agriculture in Africa. Food security will become the next tradable commodity [Source]

Figure 1 – GIIN Investors’ Council Members

By themselves, the GIIN’s inclusion of The Rockefeller Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Ford foundation, as key architects of so-called Green Revolution, institutions which are leading proponents and financiers of transgenics (a new breed of genetically modified organisms which are a primary example of 21^st century imperialism with impunity) speaks volumes about the nature of this new “regenerative” economy. [Further reading: The “Green Revolution”, Bill Gates, Philanthropy and Social Engineering]

By any honest estimation, this “new” (and in this case being falsely categorized as “regenerative”) economy is the continued and furthering of colonization and land grabs for foreign interests under the guise of ethics.

Up Next: The Next System Project

Another related and recently launched effort in the emerging pyswar on behalf of market-oriented politics is The Next System Project. The Next System Project Website is registered to John Duda of Community-Wealth.org. The next system co-chairs are Gar Alperovitz and Gus Speth.

Alperovitz is a board member of the New Economy Coalition, a “thought leader” at the aforementioned Capital Institute, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, and Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute (discussed further in this report).

Speth’s full bio of elite positions held within the non-profit industrial complex and to a more important extent, presidential administrations (as it portends Western global governance) is extensive. Under the Jimmy Carter administration, Speth was a member (and chair) of the U.S. President’s Council on Environmental Quality from 1977-1981. Also, Speth served as a senior advisor to President Clinton (1992) and is identified as a member on the Council on Foreign Relations (1987-1992, June 30, 1993-2000, 2001-2006). In addition, Speth is a founding board member of the New Economy Coalition and serves on the advisory board of the Capital Institute. Presently, Speth serves on the boards of 350.org (U.S. advisory council), 1Sky (which morphed into 350.org in 2011), the Natural Resources Defense Council (of which he was a co-founder), World Resources Institute (WRI) (founder), Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Institute for Sustainable Communities.

During Speth’s tenure at WRI (1982-1993), the organization focused on and pioneered the use of “natural resources accounting” (valuing ecosystem services) while simultaneously making tentative overtures to the corporate world —one of the first environmental NGOs to do so. Following the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, which called upon governments to develop national strategies for sustainable development, Speth left WRI to run the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). From 1993 to 1999 Speth served as Administrator of the UNDP where he was considered the highest-ranking American in the UN system, “in effect the No. 2 job at the U.N. next to the secretary general.” [Source] The concept of WRI’s efforts on valuing ecosystem services accounting culminated in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the first-ever global audit of ecosystem services, which was completed in 2005 in partnership with various U.N. agencies and most prominently the World Bank. More recently, in November of 2013, WRI and the Rockefeller Foundation—in collaboration with Forum for the Future and the Economist Intelligence Unit—convened a meeting in Bellagio, Italy on “The Future of Revaluing Ecosystems”, an illustration of the combination of the capitalist economy and environmentalism, the foundation of the “green economy.” [Source]

Comparable to Speth, another example of the merging of Western economic theory and conservationism is David W. Orr, a prominent member of the environmental movement. Orr (signatory of the previously mentioned The Next System Project) serves as an advisor to Capital Institute. Orr’s extensive bio includes serving as a former board member at the board Rocky Mountain Institute and trustee at the Worldwatch Institute. He has also served as board member of The New Economy Coalition.

Celebrity-driven

“Celebrity-driven campaigns can also be seen to work to responsibilize consumers and audiences as agents of change, through their targeting of audiences, publics, and private individuals; this often elides or willfully ignores, the offending structures, corporations, and/or other actors involved …” —Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times, 2013

To emphasize how entrenched the adherence of capitalist precepts are a necessary adjunct of mainstream Western acceptability, Initial signatories of The Next System Project include the aforementioned Orr Bill McKibben (350.org), John Fullerton (President of Capital Institute), Bob Massie (former President and CEO of the New Economy Coalition, former president of Ceres), Van Jones-The Dream Corps & Rebuild The Dream (350.org U.S. advisory council), May Boeve-350.org, Danny Glover, Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone, Hunter Lovins (Natural Capitalism Solutions), Anna Galland (MoveOn.org Civic Action – a front-group for the Democratic Party), Lindsey Allen (Rainforest Action Network), (Timothy E. Wirth) United Nations Foundation and Better World Fund), Rev. Lennox Yearwood (350.org U.S. advisory council), Jill Stein (2012 Green Party Presidential Nominee) and many more names, the majority affiliated with leading NGOs within the NPIC.

Akin to the aforementioned ” regenerative system” which repackages white power seizing control of African lands and peoples as a successful example of ” regenerative capitalism”, The “Next System Project” is the 2008 “A Green New Deal – simply refurbished:

A Green New Deal is a report released on July 21, 2008 by the Green New Deal Group and published by the New Economics Foundation. The New Economy Coalition – is the sister organization (in America) of the New Economics Foundation. Authors of this paper include (but are not limited to) Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of the Guardian, Jeremy Leggett (Carbon Tracker), and two staff of Friends of the Earth (Friends of the Earth has held membership on the Ceres Board of Directors since inception).

The Green New Deal is a package of policy proposals to address climate change. Proposals of the Green New Deal generally reinforce the recommendations of Institutions ICLEI and TEEB, the NPIC, and the Basel II and similar monetary accords. Financial institutions, such as the Economist have consistently supported its general principles, those being: consistent support/demand for global carbon and emissions charges and a monetary value on nature’s services. Notable proponents included Jill Stein, the New Economics Foundation, and Van Jones. Consistent with this continuing recycling of the same policies with different nomenclature, The United Nations Environment Programme launched a Green Economy Initiative known as the ‘Global Green New Deal’.

Some countries cautioned that The Green New Deal would threaten national sovereignty over the control of their natural resources, such as Bolivia. Bolivia’s response to these machinations was clear: that the Green New Deal signaled a “privatization and commodification of nature.” In a subtle rebranding that is all too familiar in the press, both the media-industrial complex and NPIC, came to refer the “Green New Deal” as the “green economy”, the former being a term that had to be killed, in order for the latter as a construct to be saved. (“The NIBR-report provides an overview and critical assessment of the “Global Green New Deal” as an agenda for transition to a green economy.”)

New Economy Coalition

Consider that in June of 2012 Bill McKibben and Peter Buffet headlined the weekend conference, Strategies for a New Economy Conference. The entire press release reads like a list of “who’s who” in the world of elitist, classist, green bourgeoisie. The relationship between McKibben, the Ceres affiliates and the oligarchs they serve is laid bare for all to see. These are extremely interconnected, well-established relationships with strong alliances and loyalties bound together by privilege, philanthropy, and whiteness — the” Whole Foods” of the New Economy.

In March of 2012 Bob Massie was appointed as the President and CEO of the New Economics Institute, now known as The New Economics Coalition. The New Economics Institute (NEI) was established in 2012 as the U.S. counterpart of the UK based New Economics Foundation, established in 1986. This formation was led by the E. F. Schumacher Society and the UK NEF. In 2013, the New Economics Institute in turn merged with the New Economy Network (which included key Ceres associates such as Green America and Friends of the Earth) to create the New Economy Coalition “which would focus on connecting and amplifying new economy organizing across the U.S. and Canada”.

At the June 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, the Global Transition to a New Economy was launched. A collaboration between the UN Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Economy ^[2], New Economics Foundation, and the Green Economy Coalition, the project consisted of a user-generated global online map where anyone could self-identify with examples of the “new economy” ventures happening around the world. The Stakeholder Forum receives funding from governments, UN agencies, foundations and international financial institutions. In addition, the Green Economy Coalition (GEC) is collaboration of NGOs, research institutes, UN organisations, business to trade unions. Members include NEF, Natural Capital Coalition, WWF, UNEP, Philips, WBCSD [Full list]

Just Transitions Tour with Bob Massie, March 2015

In further detailing the intertwined aspects of mainstream environmentalism and its capitulation to the continuance of the capitalist economy, Massie’s relationship with Ceres, the UN and the Divestment Campaign is extensive:

Former executive director/President of Ceres from 1996 to 2003
Ceres senior fellow; Ceres Board of Directors from 2001-2009
In 1998, in partnership with the United Nations and major U.S. foundations, he co-founded the Global Reporting Initiative with Dr. Allen White of the Tellus Institute, and served as its Chair until 2002. [Source] [White is also founder of Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR) – a joint project of Ceres and Tellus Institut^[3]
Proposed and led the creation of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, a network of 110 institutional investors representing more than $13tn in assets
Received the Joan Bavaria [founder of Ceres] Innovation and Impact Awards for Building Sustainability in Capital Markets in 2009

In 1994, Bob Massie won the statewide primary election and became the Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. During his tenure as executive director of Ceres, Massie increased the Ceres organization’s size and revenue ten-fold. Massie’s inspiration comes from reading a paper about incompletely theorised agreements written by Cass Sunstein, husband of Samantha Power, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. [July 8, 2014]

In January 2011, Massie declared his candidacy for the United States Senate and began actively campaigning for the Democratic nomination for that office. McKibben actively supported Massie’s campaign utilizing his brand 350.org. [The following quote is in regards to a fundraiser with Bill McKibben, Founder of 350.org: “Mark your calendars: Thursday, June 2nd, Bill McKibben, a founder of the grassroots organization 350.org, is coming to Massachusetts to speak at a fundraiser for Bob’s campaign for US Senate.”]

In October, 2014 Massie stepped down from being the coalition’s president (Announced July 25, 2014). Shortly afterwards in December, 2014, McKibben stepped down as chair of the board at 350.org to become a ‘senior advisor. Massie’s departure from the New Economy Coalition and subsequent promotion of the “new economy” under the 350.org banner (as well as his 350.org tour) signals two things: 1) 350.org remains the more (and perhaps most) powerful force to successfully instil behavioural change, and 2) the global campaign to build both demand and acquiescence for the “new economy” is now the primary task assigned to the NPIC.

350.org Video: February 24, 2015. Bob Massie on A New Economy (Running time, 2:58)

https://vimeo.com/120644747

New Economics Foundation (NEF) UK

NEF UK is one of the largest think-tanks in the UK today. NEF UK’s total income for 2013-14 was £3,556,076, the largest contributor being Oak Foundation. The Oak Foundation grants massive amounts of cash to some of the world’s most recognized NGOs. Examples include WWF International (USD 444,449/36 months and USD 3,000,000/34 months, 2014), 350.org (USD 1,500,000/36 months, 2014), Carbon Tracker Initiative (USD 940,800/36 months, 2014), Purpose, (USD 505,939/12 months, 2014), Climate Works (USD 2,400,000/4 years, 2012), NRDC (USD 1,500,000/3 yrs, 2012) Environmental Defence (USD 1,500,000,/3 yrs, 2012) TckTckTck (USD 600,000 2012 and 1,000,000 2yrs/2013), and a multitude of others. [Oak Foundation Annual Reports: 2012, 2013, 2014]

Oak’s funding to NEF UK is significant: USD 95,982 (2012), 93,380 (2013), USD 1,600,000 (2014) (36 months-to achieve systemic economic change in Europe), USD 360,654 (2014) (36 months “To provide economic arguments on the importance of the implementation of the European Common Fisheries Policy and the benefits for society as a whole if fisheries are sustainably managed.”)(hyperlink added)

To detect what current goals and policies are being sought to further serve corporate interests, one only has to observe the ebbs and flows of grants directed toward specific NGOs that will carry out specific campaigns. There is no better example of this than Oak Foundation funding of the TckTckTck (GCCA) campaign created by the global advertising firm Havas, and the UN in the lead up to COP15. The 2009 Annual report shows USD 5,000,000 (including a Special Interest grant of USD 2,500,000).

“The New Economy Coalition (NEC)(U.S) is a collaborative network of more than 120 organizations and businesses working to build the movement for just and sustainable future. Faced with interconnected ecological and economic crises, we believe it’s time for deep changes to both our economic and political systems. We believe it’s time for something new—a new economy.” [Source: CommonBound.org] New Economy Coalition Members include 350.org, Capital Institute, Natural Capitalism Solutions, New Economic Foundation, Patagonia, Trillium Asset Management. [Members]Sponsors include but are not limited to: Pax World Investments, Green Century Funds. [Source]

Major gifts and grants for NEC amounted to $1,390,000.00. Of special interest are the donations from Neva Rockefeller Goodwin (Ceres Board of Directors, 2001-2012) and NoVo Foundation (Buffett family) who gifted 100,000 or higher. Venture capitalist Farhad Ebrahimi and Rockefeller Brothers Fund gifted between 50,000-100,000.00. (2012-2014 support as of January 31, 2014)

Note that Gar Alperovitz, co-chair of The Next System, serves on The New Economy Coalition’s board of directors, as does John Fullerton, founder and CEO of Capital Institute. [The New Economy Coalition Board of Directors: David M. Abromowitz, Gar Alperovitz, Jessica Brackman, Farhad Ebrahimi, John Fullerton, Neva Goodwin, Hildegarde Hannum, Leah Hunt Hendrix and Will Raap. Note that Bill McKibben formerly served on the advisory board.]

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“Much like NGOs and other movements, celebrities have stepped into the gap of the growing democratic deficit both nationally and globally and attempted to fill this up in very interesting, private-led, ‘collectivized’ ways.” — Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times, 2013

Gone is the green economy. Welcome to the Next System, the Regenerative System, the New Economy, the Biosphere Economy, etc. A fusion of rhapsodic and mellifluous language that creates a sublime chrysalis to further expand capital markets. The second verse is the same as the first.

It’s almost as the world’s most powerful institutions and oligarchs, in a united effort of unparalleled dimension, want to sell us something.

And they do. All they needed were some charismatic spokespeople at the helm, sustained by the fifth column on the front line, to sell their product.

“When she [Ella Baker] left to help found SNCC in 1960, she warned the students about the phenomenon of the “charismatic leader…It usually means the media made him, and the media may undo him…such a person gets to the point of believing that he is the movement.”—Beyond MLK

Next: Part XIII

[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation, Counterpunch, Political Context, Canadians for Action on Climate Change and Countercurrents. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can follow her on twitter @elleprovocateur]

EndNotes:

[1] The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) convened the Ad Hoc Working Group of Experts on Biological Diversity in November 1988 to explore the need for an international convention on biological diversity. In May 1989, it established the Ad Hoc Working Group of Technical and Legal Experts to prepare an international legal instrument for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. By February 1991, the Ad Hoc Working Group had become known as the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee. Its work culminated on 22 May 1992 with the Nairobi Conference for the Adoption of the Agreed Text of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The convention was opened for signatures on June 5, 1992 at the UN Conference on Environment and Development more widely known as the Rio Earth Summit. It remained open for signature until 4 June 1993, by which time it had received 168 signatures. The Convention entered into force on 29 December 1993. [Source] [2] “Stakeholder Forum was founded in 1987 as UNED UK – United Nations Environment and Development UK (UNED UK), operating as the National Committee for UNEP in the UK. The organization continues to fulfil this function, but was renamed Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future in 2000 to reflect the broad range of activities that the organization undertakes. Stakeholder Forum played a key role in the preparations for and follow-up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 and the 2012 Earth Summit (www.earthsummit2012.org). It is also the leading organisation in developing and facilitating global multi-stakeholder processes on sustainable development.”

[3]The directors included, but were not limited to, representatives from Deutsche Bank Group, Royal Dutch/Shell, Bob Massie for Ceres, and American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations.

May 01

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Carbon Markets | REDD, Ceres, Environmental Defence Fund, Foundations, Natural Resources Defense Council, Nature Conservancy, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Purpose Inc., Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, Sierra Club, Social Engineering, United Nations, Whiteness & Aversive Racism, World Resources Institute, World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

"Sustainable Capitalism" 350.org/1Sky Bloomberg Breakthrough Capitalism Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Carbon Tracker Ceres Divest-Invest Divestment Ecosystem Services Environmental Markets Generation Investment New Economy Coalition Soros Steyer WWF

McKibben’s Divestment Tour – Brought to You by Wall Street [Part IX of an Investigative Report] [Mainstreaming Sustainable Capitalism]

The Art of Annihilation

April 30, 2015

Part nine of an investigative series by Cory Morningstar

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.” — Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

Prologue: A Coup d’état of Nature – Led by the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

the magnitude of our ecological crisis
the root causes of the planetary crisis, or
the non-profit industrial complex as an instrument of hegemony.

Thus we find ourselves unwilling to acknowledge the necessity to dismantle the industrialized capitalist economic system, choosing instead to embrace an illusion designed by corporate power.

+++

Blood & Gore Generation: of Commodification, Privatization, and Indoctrination

“Between 2008 and 2011 the company had raised profits of nearly $218 million from institutions and wealthy investors. By 2008 Gore was able to put $35 million into hedge funds and private partnerships through the Capricorn Investment Group, a Palo Alto company founded by his Canadian billionaire buddy Jeffrey Skoll, the first president of eBay Inc.” — Forbes, November 3, 2013

“Civil society has a central role in accelerating the transition towards Sustainable Capitalism. NGOs must take a 360-degree approach to the process of mainstreaming Sustainable Capitalism, realising their ability to influence stakeholders in every part of the business ecosystem. NGOs must engage with investors, companies, regulators and policy makers to encourage the rapid and effective adoption of Sustainable Capitalism through campaigns, lobbying efforts and partnerships with the private sector.” — Sustainable Investment Paper, Generation, February 15, 2012

For an accurate grasp of the true objective behind a national/international marketing campaign (the Keystone Pipeline campaign is another fine example), one is wise to bypass the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC) in its entirety and go directly to researching the investment firms and corporations who are set to increase market share and reap billions in profits via such campaigns. Campaigns funded by foundations (set up by the oligarchs) serve and protect the system with well-oiled precision. Billions of dollars funnelled into the NPIC laundering machine, on which corporations would be taxed otherwise, have never been such a sound and secure investment.

Perhaps the most telling and revealing of the world the NPIC wishes us to embrace is the investment firm recommended by 350.org et al: Generation. [PDF: A Complete Guide to Reinvestment] Under the section “What types of reinvestment exist?, Mutual Funds,” the top two examples listed (four in total) are 1) Generation Investment Management Climate Solutions Fund II and 2) Generation Investment Management Credit Fund.

“We are advocates for Sustainable Capitalism…. The first, which is our principal platform for activity, is a partnership model whereby we collaborate with individuals, organizations, and institutions in our effort to accelerate the transition to a more sustainable form of capitalism. In addition, the Foundation also supports select grant-giving related to the field of Sustainable Capitalism, engagement with the local communities where we operate, and an employee gift-matching program.” — Generation Foundation

Generation is an independent, private, owner-managed partnership with offices in London and New York. The firm was co-founded in 2004 by Al Gore and David Blood. From 1985 to 1999, Blood served in various positions at Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. From 1999 to 2003, Blood served as a Co-Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Blood served as a director of Goldman Sachs International. Blood sits on many boards including his director position held at NewForests (“establishes US presence in May 2007 to capitalise on growing investment interest in environmental markets in the US”). Its investment strategies focus on forests, timberland, and environmental markets; “NewForests have a limited number of private accounts clients to develop particular project and policy expertise in reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in other countries.” (REDD and Biomass). Blood also holds a position as director of The Nature Conservancy, the revolving door for Goldman Sachs executives. [Blood’s full bio].

Mark Ferguson, Peter Harris, Peter Knight and Colin Mark Le Duc are also co-founders of Generation Investment. Both Ferguson and Harris held prestigious positions at Sachs. Al Gore is Co-Founder, Chairman, and Partner of The Climate Solutions Fund of which Marc Le Duk is also a co-founder.

Generation is largely an institutional investment management firm, operating at the wholesale level (major pension funds, foundations, etc). The corporatocracy and covertness behind such investing is apparent when one considers the fact that law restricts the amount of information that firms (that focus on institutional clients) can provide, to “ensure that the general public is not enticed into investing in unsuitable and overly complex products”. [1]

“Mainstreaming Sustainable Capitalism by *2020 will require independent, collaborative and voluntary action by companies, investors, government and civil society, which we hope to accelerate by advancing the discourse on the economic benefits of sustainability.” — Sustainable Investment Paper, Generation, February 15, 2012

[*David Blood: “…we say in our paper 2020, the truth is we have a view that it really needs to happen by 2015 – otherwise we are increasingly in trouble.” Breakthrough Capitalism Forum lecture, May 29, 2012]

A key area of focus is to ensure the capitalist system is kept intact; to establish the acceptable parameters of the “market revolution.” In particular, in concise language, Blood and Gore make it exceptionally clear that alternatives to the suicidal capitalist system need not, should not and will not be considered:

“Capitalism has great strengths and is fundamentally superior to any other system for organising economic activity. It is more efficient in allocating resources and in matching supply and demand. It is demonstrably effective in wealth creation. It is more congruent with higher levels of freedom and self-governance than any other system. It unlocks a higher fraction of the human potential with ubiquitous, organic incentives that reward hard work, ingenuity, and innovation. These strengths are why it is at the foundation of every successful economy.

“Critically, capitalism has proven itself to be adaptable and flexible enough to fit the specific needs of particular countries. Capitalism comes in many forms, from that practised in the US to the very different model that has been adopted within communist China. The causes and consequences of these variations are, of course, significant – but the more important fact remains: the mainstream debate is about how to practise capitalism not whether we should choose between capitalism and some other system.” [Emphasis added] [Source]

Generation Investment is acknowledged for its contribution in the May 2013 41-page document Institutional Pathways to Fossil-Free Investing in collaboration with Phil Aroneanu and Jamie Henn of 350.org, Bob Massie of the New Economics Institute and others interconnected within this campaign. The sponsors listed are 350.org, Responsible Endowments Coalition (REC), Sustainable Endowments Institute and Tellus Institute. [2]

“By Year Five of the simulation, the portfolio has become fossil free and its five-percent targeted reinvestment has been allocated, across a variety of asset classes, as shown in Figure 4. Half of the target (2.5 percent of the entire portfolio) can be re-allocated to sustainable, fossil-free domestic and international public equities, through existing strategies with investment managers such as Generation Investment Management, Impax Asset Management, Portfolio 21, and Trillium Asset Management, among others.” — Institutional Pathways to Fossil-Free Investing

Video: Ceres lecture featuring Bill McKibben with David Blood:

https://vimeo.com/66321774

Generation’s key action is “to accelerate mainstreaming Sustainable Capitalism.” Insight into the coming corporate capture / commodification of the commons via the global implementation of “payments for ecosystem services” (PES) is made clear under the Current Initiatives section where it is stated: “Until there are policies that establish a fair price for widely understood externalities, academics and financial professionals should strive to quantify the impact of stranded assets and analyze the subsequent implications for assessing investment opportunities.” [Emphasis added.]

The top three sectors of focus for Generation are key to how the 21^st century is being shaped: 1) Agricultural and Forestry Solutions (think genetic engineering, biomass burning, land grabs, and commodification of forests/REDD 2); Behaviour Change (think Avaaz/Purpose); 3) Bio-based Fuels, Plastics and Chemicals. (See all key sectors of focus that have been publicly disclosed.) (Note that 350.org et al are now publicly campaigning on/promoting the false solution of biofuels.)

Three such partnerships (publicly disclosed) include World Resources Institute, Natural Resource Defense Council (both represented on the Ceres board of directors), and The Climate Reality Project (formerly identified as Alliance for Climate Protection). Under Memberships and Initiatives, we find Ceres, the Ceres Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, and many others.

“We provide business-building expertise, access to Generation’s investment, corporate, NGO and sustainability networks and a long term strategic perspective and commitment to our portfolio companies.” [Source]

And the icing on the cake:

“Five percent of the profitability of the firm is allocated to The Generation Foundation, which will support global non-profit sustainability initiatives.”

Gore and Blood identify five key imperatives that “have the potential to accelerate the transition to Sustainable Capitalism”. The first imperative identified is the need to identify and incorporate risks from stranded assets.

Enter Carbon Tracker.

Carbon Tracker

Ruse: noun 1. an action intended to mislead, deceive, or trick; stratagem

Utilizing research from the Potsdam Institute [3], Carbon Tracker made the case for “unburnable carbon” in the July 2011 seminal report “Unburnable Carbon: are the world’s financial markets carrying a carbon bubble?” The report suggested that the top 100 coal and 100 oil-and-gas companies had a combined value in 2011 of $7.42 trillion, much of it based on reserves that can never be used. Such reserves are one example considered by Tracker that have the potential to become stranded assets – thereby exposing investors to risk. The tracker employs (and supplies) the so-called “carbon budget” as a measure (and apparatus) as to how much more carbon the world can continue to “safely” burn.

“The concept of ‘stranded assets‘ gained prominence last year when another report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative calculated that 60-80% of the world’s coal, oil, and gas reserves would be ‘unburnable’ if the world leaders agreed to emissions reductions to limit warming to 2°C…. In essence, any price on carbon or emissions reduction policy could cut oil demand enough to strand any number of a company’s proven reserves.” — Desmog Blog, September 13, 2014

Carbon Tracker’s second “unburnable carbon” report (Unburnable Carbon 2013: Wasted Capital and Stranded Assets (PDF) is co-authored with LSE’s (London School of Economics) Grantham Research Institute. The Institute has been financed/supported in part by the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) through a grant for US$2.16 million (£1.35 million) to fund several research project areas from 2012 to 2014. LSE’s Grantham Research Institute membership includes (but is not limited to) Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund; Vikram Singh Mehta, chairman of Shell Companies (India); Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF (US); and Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, chairman of EL Rothschild Ltd.

The aim of the Grantham Research Institute is to strengthen the analytical and empirical underpinnings of the ‘green growth’ concept in relation to both developing and developed countries.” [Source] [GGGI Partners] Yvo de Boer is the Director-General of GGGI [People]. Prior to joining the global accountancy firm KPMG in 2010, Mr. de Boer led the international process to respond to climate change in the role of Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2006 to 2010.

Carbon Tracker could very much be considered the key stratagem, foundation, glue and more importantly, a veil or even a shield for both the divestment campaign (global in scale), and the so-called carbon “budget.” Reports, data and papers released by this foundation-financed think tank are pumped through the channels of power, the result being the legitimization of concepts that have no basis in reality if it were not for the non-profit industrial complex, in tandem with media, ensuring no one states – or even notices – the obvious, that the emperor has no clothes.

“A vain Emperor who cares about nothing except wearing and displaying clothes hires two swindlers who promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or ‘hopelessly stupid.’ The Emperor’s ministers cannot see the clothing themselves, but pretend that they can for fear of appearing unfit for their positions and the Emperor does the same. Finally the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor marches in procession before his subjects. The townsfolk play along with the pretense, not wanting to appear unfit for their positions or stupid. Then a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretense, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is taken up by others. The Emperor cringes, suspects the assertion is true, but continues the procession.” [Source]

In this instance, the emperor is the oligarchy as a collective, the ministers are the sycophants that comprise the NPIC, and the townsfolk – not wanting to appear stupid or undeserving.

Reports such as Carbon Tracker’s serve to legitimate, normalize and thus sanction the already capitalist-sanctioned “activism” that deliberately assists in pushing forward particular policies and agendas already conceptualized (years and even decades in advance) by the funders and the elite.

Consider who finances the work of the Carbon Tracker. “The work of Carbon Tracker has been made possible by the vision and openness to innovation shown by organisations such as the following”: The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Tellus Mater Foundation, Generation Foundation, Wallace Global Fund, The European Climate Foundation, The Growald Family Fund, The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust ,The Polden Puckham Charitable Foundation, The Ashden Trust, Zennstrom Philanthropies, MAVA Foundation, The Velux Foundation, and The Grantham Foundation. After you consider the “who” behind the financing, consider “why” the financing.

Wallace Global Fund refers to its interest in funding Carbon Tracker as “Support for a collaboration between climate activists and financial analysts seeking to align the action of world capital markets with the reality of global warming.”

“The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.” — John D. Rockefeller

Millions of dollars funnelled through foundations into institutions, who in turn churn out reports, serve a pivotal purpose. Slick reports, marketing and PR build security (and acceptance/acquiescence amongst the populace) for the investment strategies belonging to the endowments (as well as the trustees) of the very foundations such institutions/NGOs are funded by. This is nothing more than polished PR at arm’s length intended/financed to promote said investments – as well as divestments. The appearance of an independent think tank evokes trust in the public realm. The oligarchs know how to manage, shape and modify behavioural change amongst the public. We are a public of rampant consumption and continued devolution, by design. There is little doubt that the billions of dollars the elite have pumped into the NPIC must quantify as one of the best long-term investments they have ever made.

The concepts of carbon budget, stranded assets and carbon asset bubbles have indeed gained traction with many people. This is in part due to the repetitive messaging of familiar language and unthreatening implications (via a massive injection of funding; Rockefeller et al must be pleased), the précis being that a person of privilege and monetary wealth can simply move his/her money from coal or Exxon and re-invest it into “clean” investments such as massive solar projects in deliberately impoverished Africa that will export the energy to those who already have it in Europe, geothermal, biomass projects that burn the remaining Earth’s forests and whole cultures into ashes, or REDD, which commodifies Earth’s forests for the even further expansion of capital. Pick your poison wisely. In less than 30 minutes we have “saved the world” and we still retain our wealth and privilege. Yet in reality, nothing has changed, the system demands continued growth, clean energy demands fossil fuels and vast resources from an already depleted planet, and the world continues to warm. To divest and feel no consequences is far preferred (by the 1% creating 50% of all global GHG emissions) than actual/tangible divesting from vacations (flying), personal automobiles, clothes dryers, steaks, lawn-mowers, leaf-blowers, Starbucks, etc. etc. etc. – including iPhones, iPods, iEverthing, with emphasis on the word “I.”

“The investor effort, called the Carbon Asset Risk (CAR) initiative, is being coordinated by Ceres and the Carbon Tracker initiative, with support from the Global Investor Coalition on Climate Change.” — Ceres Press Release, October 24, 2013

The organizations behind the quickly-emerging “new” economy are all very much interwoven, as are the players and key people. James Leaton, Research Director for the Carbon Tracker Initiative (2010 onward), was recently featured at the May 1-2, 2013 Ceres conference with 350.org’s McKibben and Bob Massie (former president and CEO of the New Economy Coalition). Leaton was also featured at the INCR Annual Meeting at the Ceres conference titled The 21st Century Investor: Ceres Blueprint for Sustainable Investing conference which took place April 30, 2013.

Carbon Tracker is identified as one of the key NGOs engaged with the US Divest-Invest Coordinating Committee (USCC). The combination of a need to be both an environmentalist and a capitalist (definitely not in that order) in the organization is represented in the following job posting:

As You Sow job description, February 13, 2015: “Organizations in the Coalition: 350.org, Responsible Endowments Coalition, Intentional Endowments Network, Hip-Hop Caucus, Energy Action Coalition, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Black Mesa Water Coalition, Carbon Tracker, California Student Sustainability Coalition, Divest-Invest Philanthropy, Divest-Invest Individual, Fenton Communications, Mayors Innovation Project, Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES), New Economy Coalition, GreenFaith, Healthcare without Harm, Sustainable Initiatives at Partners HealthCare, As You Sow, or other organizations engaged with Divest-Invest.”

Key staff at Carbon Tracker demonstrate that a vital prerequisite to being hired/chosen by the Tracker is vast experience in carbon markets.

Prior to his role at Carbon Tracker, Leaton was a sustainability and climate change consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, focusing on the financial sector, advising blue chip clients on risks and “opportunities.” Prior to PricewaterhouseCoopers, Leaton spent five years at WWF as a senior policy advisor, focusing on the links between energy and finance.

“‘Assets are already being written down due to increasing competition between energy sources, air quality standards being introduced to reduce health impacts, and measures to reduce carbon pollution combining to change the energy landscape,’ said James Leaton, Research Director at Carbon Tracker. ‘Avoiding high cost, high carbon projects which are failing to deliver a return on capital will improve shareholder returns.'” — Ceres Press Release, October 24, 2013

Mark Fulton is currently an adviser to the Carbon Tracker Initiative and Senior Fellow at Ceres. He is a recognized economist (of 35 years) and market strategist at leading financial institutions including Citigroup, Salomon Bros and County Natwest. Prior to this role, Fulton was head of research at Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors at Deutsche Bank (from 2007 to 2012). He is currently a member of the Capital Markets Climate Initiative, UK Department of Energy and Climate Change. From 2010 to 2012 he was co-chair of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative Climate Change Working Group. In 2011 and 2012, Fulton served on the technical committee of the UN Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy for All.

“‘Many of the responses investors have received from the companies thus far acknowledge that there is a legitimate risk issue around carbon reserves, and companies are open to continued engagement from the investor community to determine the scope,’ said Mark Fulton, a member of the Carbon Tracker’s Advisory Board and a Ceres adviser.” — Ceres Press Release, October 24, 2013

Anthony Hobley has been Chief Executive Officer of the Carbon Tracker Initiative since February 2014. Hobley played a key role in helping design the UK’s pilot emissions trading scheme and also in developing key aspects of the EU ETS (Emissions Trading System). Hobley was seconded to Norton Rose Fulbright’s Sydney office between 2010 and 2012 where he was heavily involved in the development of the emerging carbon and clean energy markets in Australia and Asia. He was a key figure behind the creation of the business advocacy group Businesses for a Clean Economy, a coalition of businesses arguing for a price on carbon. Anthony was also behind the creation of the business group Climate Markets & Investment Association where he is the current president. He also sits on the boards of the Verified Carbon Standards Association and on the Advisory Board to the Climate Bonds Initiative. [Source | Full Bio]

The Carbon Tracker advisory board is made up of representatives of carbon market institutions.

The board includes: Nick Robins (co-director of the UNEP Green Finance Enquiry), Lois Guthrie (CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Standards Board), Tessa Tennant (founder and board member, Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia – ASrIA), Ben Caldecott (programme director, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford) Catherine Howarth (CEO at ShareAction), James Stacey (head of sustainable finance strategy at Earth Capital Partners), Jemma Green (previously VP of sustainable finance at JP Morgan), Meg Brown (previously director of climate and sustainability research at Citi Investment Research), Stanislas Dupré (founder & director at 2° Investing Initiative), Bevis Longstreth (previously commissioner of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Laura Sandys (member of parliament for South Thanet), Mark Lewis (senior sustainability analyst and co-ordinator of energy transition & climate change research at Kepler Cheuvreux), and Neil Morisetti (director of strategy at UCL Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy Department, previously special representative for climate change at the UK Foreign Secretary.)

Ben Caldecott’s elite standing in the interlocking directorate is extensive. Identified as a British environmentalist, economist, and commentator, he serves on the advisory board of Carbon Tracker, and as a trustee of the Green Alliance think tank. He serves as head of government advisory for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, director of the Stranded Assets Programme at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, adviser to The Prince of Wales’ International Sustainability Unit, academic visitor at the Bank of England, and visiting fellow at the University of Sydney. He is head of European Policy at Climate Change Capital, directing the CCC think tank and advising CCC funds and clients on the development of policy-driven markets. Caldecott has previously worked as research director for environment and energy at the think tank Policy Exchange. Caldecott serves on the advisory network of the Natural Capital Declaration, which is key (discussed at length further in this report). Caldecott has worked in parliament and for a number of different UK government departments and international organisations, including UNEP and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO).

Caldecott has been instrumental in building government support for “clean coal.” Thus, UK leaders are all calling for an end to unabated coal – code for carbon capture and sequestration/storage.

Above: Business Summit on Climate Leadership 2011 Speakers. Ben Caldecott – Head of European Policy, Climate Change Capital, second in from far right (Flickr, Climate Group)

Carbon capture and sequestration (CSS) and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) (which uses the sequestered CO2 to recover more oil out of depleted oil fields) is a critical component of the “new economy.” CCS is to gain acceptance as a vital component of the new “low carbon” economy where societies can continue production/burning of both coal and oil under the guise of “emissions reduction measures.” In tandem with the quiet proliferation of biomass (supported by the NPIC) and other false solutions, this economy has already begun:

“In the Weyburn oil field in Saskatchewan, Canada – where CO2 from the Dakota Gasification Company’s coal gasification plant in Beulah, ND is piped north to pump into the oil field, buying 25 more years of oil production – 2.8 times more CO2 would be released from all of the extra oil they expect to produce than the amount they ‘sequester’ (ignoring reports of leakage). In the Permian Basin (TX/NM), 47% of the amount of CO2 pumped into the ground is re-released by burning the extra oil produced (that would otherwise stay in the ground).” [Source]

Stephen Tindale, former executive director of Greenpeace UK, is another “environmentalist” in support of carbon capture and storage. In a series on his website Climate Answers , the commentary CCS: What the EU Needs to Do – Part 1, with Nick Horler, chief executive of ScottishPower, is supported by Caldecott. Both Tindale and Caldecott have contributed significant language and concepts to the discourse on climate since this 2010 piece. Here we witness just one aspect of the many realms of genius behind the marketing/branding of the instrumental stranded/bubble/budget language that has “changed everything.” Coal in particular, has been identified and condemned by both the media and NPIC as a coming stranded asset. Thus coal is “saved” from stranded status when CCS is deployed; the “carbon bubble” refrains from bursting; and the amount of “unburnable carbon” in the “carbon budget” reduced.

As with all the shaping of our shared futures by the elite, the pathway to CCS is clear in the 2008 Green Alliance paper, A Last Chance for Coal, with contributions from Ben Caldecott while at the Policy Exchange think tank. The paper notes that it is critical Europe’s commitment to CCS be realized before 2020; 12 short years away from the paper’s publication date. The year 2020 is a critical date of vast significance – a recurring deadline for all environmental market solutions to be in place.

While the front figures in the “movement” such as 350’s Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein repeat and inflate the language of stranded assets, carbon bubbles, budgets, divestment and renewable energy, the issue of CCS is rarely mentioned or touched upon, while the most critical issue that has ever faced humanity, the financialization of nature, via the global implementation of “payments for ecosystem services,” receives no attention whatsoever. It’s not that these appointed “leaders” don’t understand the “this changes everything” world that the oligarchs have been working toward for decades. They do. Consider that Caldecott, as a key figure in the delivering/marketing of mainstream finance to “clean energy” partnered with 350.org for the 2014 “Stranded Down Under Tour” in Australia.

“It appears to us that divestment is the bait and engagement is the fishing rod – divestment is vital in hooking people’s attention, and the engagement tools and analysis is [sic] essential to reel the capex [capital expenditures] in. Investors and NGOs now need to have the patience to catch enough fish.” — Carbon Tracker Website

Most, if not all organizations and investment firms promoting or affiliated with the divestment campaign have vested interests in the expansion of false solutions such as CCS, biomass, carbon credits/trading and environmental markets – all clamouring to cash in on the promise of the most unparalleled wealth opportunity of the 21^st century.

The Investor Expectations: Oil and Gas Companies was developed by the IIGCC with support from Ceres’ INCR, IGCC and AIGCC. It builds on the Carbon Asset Risk (CAR) Initiative, through which 75 investors managing more than $3 trillion in assets engaged with 45 of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies. The CAR initiative is coordinated by Ceres and Carbon Tracker, with support from IIGCC and IGCC, which lead engagement with fossil fuel companies in Europe and Australia/New Zealand respectively.

The Carbon Asset Risk (CAR) Initiative: “In the long term, investors want to see fossil fuel companies adapt, remaining successful by: Focusing on fewer projects at the low end of the cost curve; Returning capital to investors; and Diversifying business toward cleaner, lower-carbon energy sources, including renewables, energy efficiency and carbon capture and storage (CCS).”

Divest-Invest

“The transition to a low-carbon economy will be the most significant economic change in history. It will be deeper, more fundamental than the industrial revolution, and faster than the technology revolution. And it’s going to happen in the next five to 10 years…. The leadership of Divest-Invest is important, the leadership at 350.org.” — David Blood, Generation Investment, Divest-Invest Transcript, Fenton Communications, Wallace Global Fund, and Inst. for Policy Studies, September 22, 2014

The common definition of a Divest-Invest commitment is a pledge to divest from the top fossil fuel companies within five years and to move those assets into clean energy investments. As the movement has spread, participants have tailored the timing and sequence of commitments to their particular circumstances. The working group has recognized the variety of these circumstances and has designed this process to allow institutions to meet both their fiduciary and moral responsibilities. — Arabella Advisors, Measuring the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement, September 19, 2014

The global divestment campaign targets 200 of the world’s largest publicly traded fossil-fuel corporations: 100 from oil and gas and 100 from coal. These are ranked according to the size of their proven reserves. The Measuring the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement report (September 19, 2014) discloses the following:

“The working group relied upon self-reported data from individual commitments to determine the number and scope of divest-invest pledges. Individuals agreed to a standard pledge, and most completed a brief survey. The standard pledge (available at http://divestinvest.org/individual) states:

I will make no new investments in the top 200 oil, gas, and coal companies [as defined by the Carbon Tracker 200].
I will sell my existing assets tied to these oil, gas, and coal investments within three to five years.
I will invest in the new energy economy.

It is critical to note the language and the framing of the divest-invest campaign (which isn’t necessarily the same as divestment at large). To begin, the term “new” (in #3) refers to both the “new economy” and, in this instance, the “new energy economy,” which is strategic. As discussed in 2014 by Avaaz/Purpose Inc. co-founder Jeremy Heimans, the former term “green” (as in “green economy”) is, for all marketing intents and purposes, dead. For clarity, individuals agree to not invest in the top 100 public coal, oil and gas companies listed by the “Carbon Tracker 200.” All other investments appear to be fair game: biofuel/biomass, nuclear, the military-industrial complex/weapons industry, the chemical industry, factory farming, aviation, BNSF, pornography… it’s all up for grabs. One can move their investments from Exxon over to Lockheed Martin & make a killing – both literally and figuratively. Not only is there a plethora of fuel-intensive stock options/investments, those divesting are given a full five years to follow through on their commitment “to meet both their fiduciary and moral responsibilities,” meaning that a corporation/entity can announce their “commitment,” have 350.org greenwash their persona, and then five years later, when staff positions, economic opportunities, etc. have changed, toss it out with the bath water if they wish to do so. Further, it is not enough to simply divest – one must agree, most importantly, to “invest in the new energy economy.” Thus, the idea of starving the corporate stranglehold, even if only in a limited way, is effectively out the window.

Oil services companies, pipeline companies, refiners, holding facility companies, etc. are all fair game for those wishing to divest. Yet the reality is that none of these industries/companies make their big money from shareholders or stock markets. These companies make the bulk of their profits by booking reserves and selling their product directly to market. Further, most of the capital for the shale gas and oil revolution comes from private equity. “Big oil” has not been at the centre of it. Rather, the centre is comprised of smaller independent and private companies. The more one understands the industries and the business, the more one comes to the realization of what a hoax the “divest-invest” campaign actually is.

Divest-Invest Philanthropy

The Divest-Invest NGO is comprised of three pillars: 1) Divest-Invest Philanthropy [4], 2) Divest-Invest Individual and 3) the Divest-Invest Advisors and Allies.

In her role as CEO of Phoenix Global Impact, Jenna Nicholas is consulting with the World Bank on social impact bonds; she is coordinating the Divest-Invest: Philanthropy Initiative, appointed by the Wallace Global Fund as of March 2014. Nicholas is an associate to Calvert Special Equities and sits on the advisory groups of the Impact Hub DC, Nexus Global Youth Summit and High Water Women. [Full Bio]

Allies and advisors of the Divest-Invest campaign are to ensure success: “Advisors and allies keep core campaign staff informed on various financial, business, community and legal trends relevant to the pledge and/or steps for follow-through…. In collaboration with Divest-Invest Philanthropy and many other movement partners and allies, we are accelerating the transition to a sustainable and equitable economy. [Source]

Such groups are popping up everywhere. Whether there are dozens, hundreds or even thousands has yet to be ascertained. But one thing is certain. They have been tactically preparing for the “new economy” windfall.

Consider the 2° Investing Initiative [2°ii], a multi-stakeholder think tank working to align the financial sector with 2°C climate goals: “Our association consists of more than 30 member organizations and 60 individual members, most of whom are serving in financial institutions (banks, asset management, private equity, brokerage, etc.). Some other members are experts from different fields (consulting, accounting, extra-financial analysis, etc.), either researchers (economy, climate economics), or public servants. Two of our members are Members of the European Parliament (former Ministers of Environment in their respective countries).”

Members:

Peers and links within this particular interlocking directorate include the Carbon Tracker Initiative (which coined the term “carbon bubble”), Long Finance, Finance Watch, OECD, Climate Change Capital, UNEP-FI (a partnership between the United Nations Environment Programme and financial institutions), Asset Owners Disclosure Project, Climate Policy Initiative, E3G (Third Generation Environmentalism), CDC Climat, McKinsey Global Institute, Climate Bonds Initiative, BNEF (Bloomberg), GABV (Global Alliance for Banking on Values), BankTrack and The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC is a Ceres initiative).

Over and over again we witness (yet ignore) the interlocking directorate: NGOs, executive board members, advisors, fellows, CEOs, politicians, bankers and media – all working together for the expansion of capital markets. And although the divestment campaign appears fresh out of nowhere, the NGOs assigned to capture the public’s trust, waiting in the wings, did not simply fall from the summer sky. The organizing and deployment is precise, strategic, seductive and global in scale.

As one investigates the history and financing of the divestment campaign, one begins to recognize specific organizations that appear/overlap more frequently than others, for example, Ceres, Ceres entities, United Nations organizations, 350.org and Carbon Tracker. These groups lead in shaping the public opinion and providing the discourse required to implement already conceived/awaiting policies that serve hegemonic interests (expansion of capital markets), while simultaneously securing, strengthening and insulating capitalism itself.

Investment Terminology

In the July 7, 2014 article, Why the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement is a Farce, the author sheds much needed light on investment terminologies and information that are little understood by the average citizen:

“Notice the words ‘publicly traded.’ In other words, fossil fuel divestment would target only major corporations that are listed on the stock market. But pension funds and endowments, the entities largely targeted by the 350.org campaign, invest hundreds of billions of dollars in privately traded securities, such as hedge funds and private equity – vehicles that are invested at all levels of the fossil fuel economy. (In particular, hedge funds and private equity have been found to be the key financial backers of the fracking boom.) Were the Massachusetts divestment bill to pass, state pension funds would invariably still be invested in the fossil fuel economy.”

Graphic: Public companies represent a small piece of the pie; $7 trillion in fossil fuel reserves as opposed to private and national companies that represent three times this market size. Source

The cautionary reference to hedge funds is significant. Note that Blood & Gore’s Generation Investment is a hedge fund. Also note the tight relationship between 350.org founder Bill McKibben, hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, the US Democratic Party and the crème de la crème of the establishment Left (to be discussed later in this report). On May 6, 2014 CNN reported that the top 25 hedge fund managers took home $21 billion among them.

The author [Why the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement is a Farce] continues:

“The divestment campaign argues that 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies dominate the fossil fuel exploration market. But they ignore that such companies frequently depend on private equity and hedge funds for financing new investments when large banks are uninterested in taking on further risk. The public can rarely (if ever) verify that these types of arrangements take place, even if it is a teacher attempting to verify what her pension fund is doing with her money.

“The divestment campaign argues that 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies dominate the fossil fuel exploration market. But they ignore that such companies frequently depend on private equity and hedge funds for financing new investments when large banks are uninterested in taking on further risk. The public can rarely (if ever) verify that these types of arrangements take place, even if it is a teacher attempting to verify what her pension fund is doing with her money.

“Pension funds and endowments have not always invested in the private market. In the 1980s and before, in fact, they were almost exclusively invested in publicly traded securities. Laws such as the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Investment Company Act of 1940 allowed the public to verify how the companies in which pension funds and endowments were investing used their funds and provided transparency to investors in order to prevent fraudulent activity.

“By focusing only on publicly traded securities, the fossil fuel divestment campaign ignores the corporate misdeeds of a sector that holds billions of dollars of investments in a dirty energy economy.

“The same is not possible with privately traded alternative investments, which have been on the rise since the early 1990s. (It is difficult to ascertain why exactly pension funds and endowments have funneled assets into private markets, as there is little evidence that they perform any better than stocks and bonds and a great deal of evidence that they are far riskier. Private market money managers are notorious as great salesmen, and a series of pay-to-play scandals have implicated some of the largest hedge funds and private equity firms.) Regardless, today pension funds and endowments are by far the largest investors in hedge funds and private equity.” [Emphasis added]

Above: Private and institutional investors represent Carbon Tracker’s largest/key target audience.

The author continues, citing conflict of interest:

“Further compromising the campaign is its questionable line of funding. It has received at least $350,000 from Jeremy Grantham, a hedge fund manager who oversees more than $500 million in assets for public pension funds in Massachusetts. According to a report from Inside Philanthropy, 350.org also receives funding from billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer. (The organization declined to state exactly how much money it has received from Steyer and Grantham.)

“Farallon Capital Management, which Steyer founded, has major investments at all levels of the fossil fuel economy. While he is no longer at the helm, during his leadership it pursued major deals in fossil fuels, as a recent report from Reuters showed. In fact, the firm had been a target of student activists before he began funding them.

“Grantham, for his part, argued in an interview with The Guardian that he felt that student activists should ‘stamp their feet’ to get their university endowments to divest from fossil fuels ‘because they can do that.’ With his firm’s significant investments in the fossil fuel economy – according to first quarter 2014 filings, $1.2 billion in Chevron, $570 million in ExxonMobil and $240 million in Monsanto – he, apparently, cannot.” [Emphasis added]

Jeremy Grantham apparently encourages others to stamp their feet and divest while his firm, decidedly, does not. He is not alone. Following the media saturation of September 22, 2014 that hailed the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) divestment as a historic world event, few reported that RBF had decided to hang on to their Exxon stocks. [This is discussed at length later in this report.]

Here it is important to recall that Carbon Tracker is affiliated with London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute. Jeremy Grantham co-founded the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment in 1997. Funding was given to both Imperial College London and London School of Economics to establish the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. In 2011, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment donated $1 million to both the Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy, and $2 million to the Environmental Defense Fund. The Foundation has also provided support to Greenpeace, the WWF and the Smithsonian. [Source] As noted earlier in this report, London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute membership includes (but is not limited to) Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund; Vikram Singh Mehta, chairman of Shell Companies (India); Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF (US); and Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, chairman of EL Rothschild Ltd.

In the July 10, 2014 rebuttal, Why a Movement is Never a Farce, the author frames the divestment campaign as a Gandhi-esque movement. Yet there are items that an astute citizen must consider distinct red flags: “Endorsements have come from such unexpected places as the World Bank, and even former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs’ COO Henry Paulson this past week.” Given the references to Gandhi and endorsements that “have come from such unexpected places as the World Bank,” it is of interest to note that Martin Luther King’s first trip to India to study Gandhi was paid for by the RJ Reynolds (tobacco empire) family (funneled through Quaker group American Friends Service Committee.) In a letter, an AFSC official writes that the trip seems to have been designed as a photo-op to “build up King as a world figure, and to have this buildup recorded in the US.”

The author then writes: “It is a sign of divestment’s power that it has gained endorsements from the likes of Wall Street, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves into trusting either Wall Street or the White House to show us the way to a new economy. Accepting endorsement, however, is not the same as taking direction; fossil fuel divestment is a grassroots movement led by students, not billionaires, and is firmly committed to justice and solidarity. I know because myself and countless other students and recent alumni – with the vital support of nonprofits – have poured the last few years of our lives into building it. Call that misdirected, sure, but don’t call it Astroturf.”

Yet it’s not “a sign of divestment’s power that it has gained endorsements from the likes of Wall Street” – the divestment campaign is Wall Street. 350.org (with McKibben at the helm) developed the divestment campaign in consultation with Wall Street. The author is, however, correct that the purpose of the divestment campaign is very much “to show us the way to a new economy.” As 21^st century lambs of the oligarch, well-intentioned students are utilized, used and misdirected via tactical manipulation.

Steyer, Bloomberg, Soros & the Democrats

Photo: People’s Climate March, 2014. Bill McKibben (350.org founder) with Tom Steyer, hedge fund billionaire and founder of Generation Next

“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” — George Carlin

An example of so-called progressive media amplifying Carbon Tracker’s disapproval of coal use in China (Carbon Tracker report: “Energy Access: why coal is not the way out of energy poverty”) appears straightforward. As does the slide presentation published October 29, 2014 by Carbon Tracker: Is Coal a Sinking Ship? Yet perhaps it isn’t.

Consider that the demand for coal in both China and India is going to do nothing but grow. Then consider this: In an effort to support its own mines and workers and economy, China is in the process of cutting all purchases of imported coal as rapidly as possible (April 14, 2015: “China’s coal imports decline by 42 percent during first quarter…. The international coal market is saddled with excessive supplies for the moment….”). India, still trying to provide basic power to citizens, is also rejecting further dependence on international coal. On November 12, 2014 the Power and Coal Minister of India, Piyush Goyal, stated “in the next two or three years we should be able to stop imports of thermal coal.” This position has been endorsed by India’s Prime Minister. This certainly puts a damper on U.S. plans to ship an additional 100 million tons of coal per year to Asia via three proposed coal ports – an aggravating deterrent that must also extend to Australia which plans to open mega coal mines in Queensland’s Galilee Basin, as well as the world’s largest port (at Abbot Point right in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef) for export to China. Not only does India have more coal than Australia, India has 57 times more labourers.

A “no coal for China” anthem as sung by the non-profit industrial complex can also be interpreted as de facto promotion of natural gas/fracking, nuclear, etc. Consider the Bloomberg media coverage (referencing Carbon Tracker) in the article covering China moving from coal to gas. As Bloomberg (Bloomberg Philanthropies being a financial backer of Carbon Tracker) has been financing the fracking boom, one might question if there is a coordinated effort between Michael Bloomberg and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson who, along with billionaire Tom Steyer’s Next Generation, have launched the Risky Business Project.

From the Risky Business website:

“Launched in October, 2013, the Risky Business Project focuses on quantifying and publicizing the economic risks from the impacts of a changing climate.

“Risky Business Project co-chairs Michael R. Bloomberg, Henry Paulson, and Tom Steyer tasked the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm that specializes in analyzing disruptive global trends, with an independent assessment of the economic risks posed by a changing climate in the U.S. Rhodium convened a research team co-led by climate scientist Dr. Robert Kopp of Rutgers University and economist Dr. Solomon Hsiang of the University of California, Berkeley. Rhodium also partnered with Risk Management Solutions (RMS), the world’s largest catastrophe-modeling company for insurance, reinsurance, and investment-management companies around the world. The team’s complete assessment, along with technical appendices, is available at Rhodium’s website, climateprospectus.rhg.com.”

The Risky Business Project is a joint partnership of Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Paulson Institute, and TomKat Charitable Trust (established in 2009 with funding from Tom Steyer and Kat Taylor), one of many financiers of 350.org (see image below). Additional support for the project has been provided by the Skoll Global Threats Fund, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the McKnight Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Heising-Simons Foundation. Staff support for the Risky Business Project is provided by Next Generation, also co-founded by Steyer.

Bloomberg Philanthropies also invests in oil and gas via Willet Advisors. Logic dictates that due to its holdings/investments in the gas/fracking industry, Bloomberg will therefore highlight any victories against dirty coal – including faux ones. Thus although the divestment campaign is successful in the stigmatization of coal corporations, the label of corporate pariah does not extend to carbon sequestration schemes, industrial biomass and a score of other false solutions that will comprise the bulk share of the “clean” economy. Rather, such false solutions are grossly labeled as victorious and sought after by the appointed “leaders” of the environmental “movement.” Consider the re-tweet of the article Shell’s Global Warming Strategy Is Psychopathic & Paranoid, Says Former UK Climate Envoy by Bill McKibben in which the gist of the argument is why Shell is dragging their feet on carbon capture and sequestration. Further consider that the Bureau of Land Management’s plan to convert Nevada’s Pinyon Forests to biomass that threatens ancient rituals is backed by partner organizations such as Sierra Club, in partnership with Barrick Gold and Barrick Corp. This is just one instance of biomass facilities planned or already in operation under the guise of “clean” energy and/or carbon neutrality.

Steyer must be considered king hedge fund bourgeois extraordinaire with close ties to those in power. Time magazine, May 22, 2014: “So when Barack Obama appeared at Tom Steyer’s San Francisco home for a fundraiser last year, the President had to know there would be an ask. The 56-year-old Steyer is a hedge-fund billionaire and a major-league Democratic donor.”

August 6, 2014, Politico:

“Billionaire Tom Steyer joined fellow liberal billionaire George Soros for a lunchtime meeting with Obama adviser John Podesta at the White House on Feb. 20, according to White House visitor logs. That was just days after Steyer pledged to spend $100 million on the midterm elections. Steyer also met with Podesta on March 31, along with NextGen Climate Action COO Josh Fryday and Denver attorney Ted White, managing partner of Fahr LLC, an ‘umbrella entity’ for Steyer’s various organizations.

“According to records, Steyer has visited the White House on at least 12 occasions since 2009 for meetings with top-level administration officials including Rahm Emanuel, Bill Daley, Pete Rouse, Heather Zichal, Jon Carson and David Lane. Those records only cover through April, and Steyer is known to have attended a June 25 meeting with Podesta, John Holdren, Valerie Jarrett and others to discuss his ‘Risky Business’ report on climate change.”

Exploiting climate change destruction to garner votes for the Democrats is par for the course within the NPIC; exploiting climate change destruction to further unprecedented “climate wealth opportunities” is not only the best game in town – it’s the best game on the industrialized planet.

Next: Part X

[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation, Counterpunch, Political Context, Canadians for Action on Climate Change and Countercurrents. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can follow her on twitter @elleprovocateur]

EndNotes:

[1] Source: “M. Mills, personal communication, 2010.” In Howell, Robert. “The Challenge of Sustainability for the Financial Sector.” International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability.

[2] The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment (US) also serves to promote the divestment campaign in the “Education Center” where one finds “Fossil Fuels, Divestment & Reinvestment.” Within this section, under other resources, the link titled Institutional Pathways to Fossil Free Investing brings us back to the May 2013 41-page document Institutional Pathways to Fossil-Free Investing [emphasis added].

[3] “Thanks to the Carbon Bubble report, we now have some better numbers to help us grapple with that question. Based on research by the Potsdam Institute, the report suggests that if the world wants an 80% chance of staying within the 2ºC limit, we should avoid emitting more than 565 gigatonnes (GT) of CO₂ by 2050. That equates to just one-fifth of the world’s total proven fossil fuel reserves, which contain enough carbon to produce a massive 2,795GT of CO₂, the report estimates.”

[4] The DivestInvest Philanthropy steering committee and working group members include: Ellen Dorsey, Ellen Friedman, Richard Woo, Tom VanDyck, Melissa Beck, Jenna Nicholas, Farhad Ebrahimi, Vic de Luca, David Gordon, Florence Miller, Peter Martin, Anne Stetson, Jon Jensen, John Goldstein, Shally Shanker and Ginny Quick.

Apr 30

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Ceres, Foundations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, United Nations, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

350 Avaaz Bolivia Ceres Ecosystem Services Indigenous peoples struggle New Economy privatization UN Wall Street World Bank

Just Say No to 350

A Culture of Imbeciles

April 30, 2015

By Jay Taber

When 350 targeted Bolivia and The Peoples Agreement on Climate Change for subversion in 2010, it was an act of aggression with roots in the 2009 attempted coup — funded by the U.S. State Department — in reaction to the 2008 constitutional revolution of Bolivia’s indigenous peoples. The inspiration for the indigenous uprising, that saw the world’s first indigenous head of state elected, was the 2005 attempt at privatization of Bolivia’s water by the US-based Bechtel Corporation that foreshadowed the “new economy” promoted by 350 in 2014.

That “new economy” builds on other privatization schemes on a global scale; REDD and other carbon-market shell games, like fossil fuel divestment, are the ultimate institutionalization of the theft of public resources by the finance sector. The finance sector – that in 2008-2009 devastated the US and EU economies through loan fraud and bank bailouts – has now set its sights on privatizing all aspects of life on earth.

Cheerleading global privatization — enabled by UN agencies like the IMF and World Bank — are financier-sponsored NGOs like 350, Avaaz and Ceres–all of which have fundamental ties to Wall Street moguls and finance sector criminals. Having hijacked the environmental movement on behalf of Wall Street, these false fronts are currently pressing for changes in international law that would give the finance sector carte blanche in privatizing all of nature.

With the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – a threat to globalization – the finance sector immediately began co-opting the indigenous peoples movement through foundation grants to compromised NGOs approved by the UN. These compromised NGOs and individuals are paid to legitimize the annihilation of indigenous nations via UN agencies in partnership with Wall Street.

Indigenous peoples from five countries told the UN Rio+20 summit that the green economy is a “crime against humanity” that ‘dollarises’ Mother Nature and strips communities of their rights.

Photo: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA / Rex Features

As indigenous nations challenge Wall Street and the UN over globalization, compromised NGOs like 350 distort reality through social and mainstream media. The “new economy” they promote is essentially what used to be called fascism. While finance sector puppets like Naomi Klein charm gullible liberals with bromides and syllogisms about sustainability, what they are in reality sustaining is totalitarian corporate control of world governance and human survival.

[Jay Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a correspondent to Forum for Global Exchange, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and activists engaged in defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations. Email: tbarj [at] yahoo.com Website: www.jaytaber.com]

Apr 25

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Ceres, Ford Foundation, Foundations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, NoVo Foundation, Purpose [Public Relations Arm of Avaaz], Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

350 Avaaz Buffett Ceres Ecosystem Services Ford Klein MacArthur Foundation Media New Economy Purpose Rockefeller The Real News Network Wall Street

Distorting Reality

Public Good Project

April 25, 2015

By Jay Taber

For those who had high hopes for The Real News Network, the TRNN love fest with social capitalists like Naomi Klein and other con artists on Wall Street’s payroll — laundered by foundations like Ford, Rockefeller and NoVo — comes as a disappointment. So it should come as no surprise that TRNN start-up money ($350,000) came from Ford and MacArthur foundations. Two thirds of TRNN ongoing operating revenue comes from the rich.

After doting on Ms. Klein’s magical social revolution (funded by the Rockefeller Brothers and Warren Buffett), TRNN is now promoting Klein, et al’s “new economy,” that aims to place all control of social change in the hands of Wall Street front groups like 350, Avaaz, Ceres and Purpose. The solution to looting of state treasuries by financial institutions, according to social capitalists featured on TRNN, is to create non-profit co-ops that are dependent on philanthropy.

TRNN strategy is limited by dependency on capitalism, which funds them as gatekeepers. They offer liberals a place for venting rage, then point them toward false solutions, promoted by other capitalist-dependent liberals. TRNN has never exposed the brainwashing of liberal capitalism, because they are part of it.

Ironically, the only funding for research on violent white supremacy in the US has come from MacArthur and Ford. All my liberal colleagues take Ford or MacArthur money, and consequently have kept silent about Ford’s role in global privatization, as well as continental ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples.

Their research is valuable, but they are reluctant to acknowledge the significant contribution Public Good Project has made to their work, because we also expose Ford Foundation fraud. Until they and TRNN divorce themselves from this dependency, their message will continue distorting reality by omission.

Mar 19

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Ceres, Foundations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex

350 Avaaz Ceres Clinton Foundation NoVo Purpose Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Avaaz: Mercenaries as Missionaries

Public Good

Mar 4, 2015

by Jay Taber

Peace Bomb by Brian Stauffer

Wall Street NGOs, like the oil tycoon front group 350, pose a formidable challenge to indigenous peoples survival. By co-opting climate activists and deceiving them into supporting Wall Street’s agenda, NGOs like 350 and Avaaz undermine indigenous sovereignty and human rights.

As reported by Cory Morningstar in 350: Agent Saboteur, this Trojan horse — created by the Clinton Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and fueled by Warren Buffett’s NoVo — hijacked the climate change movement from the outset. As noted in Social Capitalists: Wall Street’s Progressive Partners, the fraud is exposed by following the money.

In Avaaz: the World’s Most Powerful NGO, social engineering by the Democratic Party (MoveOn, 1Sky, Avaaz, Ceres, Purpose, 350) is shown to include both short and long cons, that consolidate Wall Street control of institutions, markets and NGOs. These mercenaries as missionaries, in turn, shape global society, using foundations as intermediaries.

[As an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal, Jay Taber has assisted indigenous peoples seeking justice at the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations. Since 1994, he has served as creative director at Public Good Project.]

Feb 26

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Avaaz, Ceres, Foundations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Purpose [Public Relations Arm of Avaaz]

350.org Alternative Energy Fetishes Avaaz Bill McKibben Biomass Capitalism Ceres Divestment Free Market Environmentalism Naomi Klein Purpose RBF Rockefellers Social Engineering The New Economy Tides Wall Street

Social Capitalists: Wall Street’s Progressive Partners

Intercontinental Cry

February 24, 2015

by Jay Taber

One Hoax after Another

After successfully bewitching the greens into falling for college campus fossil fuel divestment in the US — which helped Wall Street consolidate its fossil fuel control — Wall Street is now cooking up an international carbon copy of this hoax to capitalize on the euphoria of climate campaigns.

The Divest-Invest Shell Game — like the REDD carbon market fiasco — requires suspension of disbelief, and determined engagement in wishful thinking.

BDS against Israel, and formerly against South Africa, used the three-part formula of Boycott Divestment Sanction. Divestment, as used by 350, omits boycott and sanction, and limits divestment to meaningless, symbolic acts.

All this divestment does is make once publicly-held shares available on Wall Street, which allows trading houses like Goldman Sachs to further consolidate their control of the industry.When it comes to the 350 agenda, they leave out the boycott of fossil fuels, and the sanction of fossil fuel corporations, and instead press for divestment by institutions like colleges and universities. All this divestment does is make once publicly-held shares available on Wall Street, which allows trading houses like Goldman Sachs to further consolidate their control of the industry.

BDS, when applied against apartheid states by other states and international institutions, includes cutting off access to finance, as well as penalties for crimes against humanity. What makes 350 so devious, is that they hijack public emotions using phony “divestment” as a disorganizing tool to redirect activism away from effective work.

The mystique of mass hypnosis, embodied in the Charms of Naomi, examines the social engineering of climate activism organized by 350, as well as the seductive energy tales that lead gullible progressives into supporting one hoax after another.

In McKibben’s Divestment Tour — Brought to You by Wall Street, acclaimed investigative reporter Cory Morningstar continues her series of reports on the non-profit industrial complex, with a focus on social capitalists like The Clinton Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund that created 1Sky–the forerunner of 350. With support from CERES, they help the fossil fuel industry avoid boycott and sanction by owning NGOs and directing their climate agenda.

CERES, Tides and 350*

Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) is a partner of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). CERES funders are associated with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America.

WBCSD is part of a Wall Street strategy to dislodge the United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations, and prevent enforceable rules governing the operations of multinational corporations.

One third of the CERES network companies are in the Fortune 500. Since 2001, CERES has received millions from Wall Street corporations and foundations.

CERES president Mindy Lubber promotes “sustainable capitalism” at Forbes. Bill McKibben (founder of 350) was an esteemed guest of CERES conferences in 2007 and 2013.

1Sky, which merged with 350 in 2011, was created by the Clinton Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Betsy Taylor of 1Sky/350 is on the CERES board of directors.

In 2012, Bill McKibben and Peter Buffett (oil train tycoon Warren Buffet’s son) headlined the Strategies for a New Economy conference. Between 2003 and 2011, NoVo (Buffet’s foundation) donated $26 million to Tides Foundation, which in turn funds CERES and 350.

Suzanne Nossel, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Hillary Clinton, is on the Tides Center board of directors.

The New Economy

Presaging the new economy of progressives like 350’s Naomi Klein, CERES’ Mindy Lubber and Avaaz’ Ricken Patel, was the 2004 Progressive Democrats of America campaign and the appointment of self-described Reaganite U.S. Senator Barack Obama, as keynote speaker at the 2006 Democratic National Convention.

As America’s nervous breakdown intensified, progressives produced such horrors as the 2006 bill, introduced by U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D) San Francisco, to make activism against corporations illegal. With the 2010 U.S. Department of Homeland Security arrests of anti-war and environmental activists, for the crime of showing documentary films criticizing the arms and energy industries, Feinstein was in seventh heaven.

In 2012, as federal prosecutors and law enforcement escalated harassment of #Occupy activists attempting to influence U.S. policy, the defense of civil and human rights moved from the courts to the streets. Neoliberals like Hillary Clinton, Diane Feinstein, and Barack Obama — committed to state-sponsored violence for the benefit of Wall Street — exercised fascism through aggression, surveillance, and repression of dissent.

Illogic of the Climateers

Cults — religious or secular — involve dissemination of core beliefs by their agents. Whether priests or public relations provocateurs, these agents are the vectors by which recruiting and indoctrination are accomplished.Cults — religious or secular — involve dissemination of core beliefs by their agents. Whether priests or public relations provocateurs, these agents are the vectors by which recruiting and indoctrination are accomplished. In order to maintain the cult, ideological doctrine — when founded on nonsense — become mantras that prevent critical thought.

The illogic of the climateers cult — of which Naomi Klein is the primary prophet — finds fertile ground in the political illiteracy of privileged first world progressives–fallen prey to institutional propaganda and market advertising. The hoax is made possible by a combination of hopelessness, magical thinking, and media consolidation.

In a world where warmongers are given the Nobel Peace Prize, and revolutions are won by throngs in blue taking selfies while eating pizza provided by Wall Street, anything is possible. Anything, that is, except social change.

In a culture of imbeciles, secular cults flourish according to the amount of Wall Street derivatives flowing through foundations into the non-profit industrial complex. After that, it’s a simple matter of echoing mantras on YouTube and TV talk shows.

The art of social engineering, while dependent on high finance, also requires a politically illiterate audience. In a society like the United States, the charms of Naomi are amplified by progressive ignorance, and sustained by imperial civil society.

Simulating an Orwellian ministry of truth, the magic of Naomi — funded by Wall Street — becomes revolutionary in ways envisioned in the novel 1984. As a maverick in her own mind, Klein has become the progressives’ Sarah Palin.

Progressive self-delusion, from hope and change to this changes everything, is grounded in hysteria. The climateers Kool-Aid keeps reality at bay.

The Invisible Environment

Image Courtesy of Mark Gould

In his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman — American media theorist, humanist and cultural critic — noted that “new technology can never substitute for human values.”

Even our most heartfelt emotions and concerns have been hijacked by the amusement industry, penetrating so deeply into our collective psyche, that we have become social robots.In American society today, our social amusements have come to occupy not only our pastimes, but everything about our lives, politics, values and beliefs. Even our most heartfelt emotions and concerns have been hijacked by the amusement industry, penetrating so deeply into our collective psyche, that we have become social robots.

Capitalizing on this corrosion of civil society, Wall Street marketing agencies like Purpose and Avaaz — sponsors of campaigns to support “humanitarian war” and the “new economy” — have designed and exploited an advertising niche to make money from this social pathology.

While American faith about the truth in advertising might suffer as a result of these amusements, the deaths that result take place mostly in the Third and Fourth World. As Americans are herded into waving signs and marching around Manhattan wearing the color blue, millions around the world are dying from starvation, disease and murder resulting from American consumerism.

As a professor of Culture and Communication, Postman taught a course called Communication: the Invisible Environment. While he was concerned primarily with the decline in the ability of mass communications to share serious ideas, Postman was aware that the turning of complex ideas into superficial images — that become a form of entertainment — leads to a society where information is a commodity, bought and sold for entertainment, or to enhance one’s status. In contemporary society, mediated by technology, individuals will literally believe anything.

Seductive Energy Tales

“The seductive tales of wind turbines, solar cells, and biofuels foster the impression that with a few technical upgrades, we might just sustain our current energy trajectories without consequence…Like most fairy tales, this productivist parable contains a tiny bit of truth. And a whole lot of fantasy.”Demanding an end to fossil fuels has its allure, but when we examine the alternatives, things don’t look quite so cheery. As Ozzie Zehner reports from the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society at University of California, Berkeley, “The seductive tales of wind turbines, solar cells, and biofuels foster the impression that with a few technical upgrades, we might just sustain our current energy trajectories without consequence…Like most fairy tales, this productivist parable contains a tiny bit of truth. And a whole lot of fantasy.”

As Zehner notes in Green Illusions, “Emerging research on the side effects and limitations of solar cells, wind turbines, biofuels, electric cars and other alternative energy strategies will likely transform conventional wisdom about what’s green, and what’s not.” Since renewable energy doesn’t scale to meet our current (let alone future) demands, that leaves fossil fuels and nuclear energy–or reduced demand.

Perhaps our only hope is that the coming plague from the collapse of global public health will reduce the human population sufficiently to give us a fresh start at screwing up. Of course, last time that happened, things didn’t work out so well. Still, 14th Century thought leaders had to contend with economic panic and religious hysteria, unlike our progressive 21st Century leaders.

New Age Ghost Dance

The inheritors of the Standard Oil fortune (Rockefeller Brothers) would not be funding 350 were they not thus disempowering their naive followers. As Agent Saboteur, 350 has already proven its value to Wall Street.

Enchanting as the chimera of clean energy might be, it doesn’t scale to meet energy demand, and its use by marketing agencies like Avaaz, Purpose and 350 is to perpetuate the misbelief that Wall Street — which caused all our social and environmental problems — is our only hope for salvation. Sort of a New Age Ghost Dance.

Divest-Invest Shell Game

One of the recurring scenes in the iconic comic strip Charlie Brown is the one where his sister Lucy holds the ball for Charlie to kick, promising not to move the ball at the last second, thereby causing Charlie to tumble backward when she always does. Humiliated time after time by Lucy’s sadistic antics, Charlie — trusting soul that he is — never fails to fall for Lucy’s promise, that this time she won’t pull the same trick as before.

I thought of Charlie Brown and Lucy reading the announcement of “major commitments” on the eve of the UN Summit on Climate Change. Having moved the ball at Poznan, Copenhagen, Cancun and Durban — thus causing progressive greens to take a tumble — the UN, Wall Street, and big international NGOs (BINGOs) are now asking recently enraptured climateers to give them another chance to prove themselves trustworthy.

When they begin swooning over oil tycoon heirs as their new heroes, the greens demonstrate their boundless capacity for self-delusion. When they begin swooning over oil tycoon heirs as their new heroes, the greens demonstrate their boundless capacity for self-delusion. As we saw with the enchanting Charms of Naomi, the mystique of mass hypnosis is a simple matter of the prescribed art of social engineering. Having captivated a gullible audience, in a state of ecstasy after their euphoric march in blue, makes beguiling the credulous child’s play.

Till the End of Time

Social engineering by Avaaz, Purpose and 350 over the years has been exclusively focused on increasing market share for themselves. This, in turn, keeps Wall Street foundation funds flowing into their coffers. Market share, acquired through advertising (i.e. branding), has been demonstrated by these cults and PR firms to be designed to deceive consumers into believing they are making a difference when they are not.Market share, acquired through advertising (i.e. branding), has been demonstrated by these cults and PR firms to be designed to deceive consumers into believing they are making a difference when they are not.

As with other Wall Street-backed political campaigns, Avaaz, Purpose and 350 engage in false advertising, more commonly known as fraud. Like earlier campaigns, promoting supposedly green products or projects that turned out to be bogus (i.e. Keystone XL, clean energy, and fossil fuel divestment), the new economy form of Free-Market environmentalism only benefits Wall Street and its stable of NGOs–not the environment.

This marketing sophistry is particularly appealing to over-consumers in countries like the US, who do not want to make any sacrifices, preferring to be sold fantasies about magical capitalist-friendly solutions, in which all lethal downsides and toxic side effects are strategically concealed from them. Indeed, part of the magical thinking — sold by Avaaz, Purpose and 350 — is that progressives have inside knowledge about this clever stratagem, while the ignorant masses are tricked into being green without knowing it.

The same idiots who bought into biofuel — whose plantations cause mass starvation and displacement of indigenous peoples — now reflexively participate in promoting Wall Street’s agenda as something new.The arrogance of progressives, along with unlimited funds from Wall Street, is what makes this advertising effective. The same people who were conned into buying electric cars that use environmentally-destructive methods to obtain rare earth minerals in their fabrication, are now oblivious to the new economy shell game. The same idiots who bought into biofuel — whose plantations cause mass starvation and displacement of indigenous peoples — now reflexively participate in promoting Wall Street’s agenda as something new.

The fact there is no substance to the empty promotions by new economy celebrities like Naomi Klein is perhaps what progressives find most enticing. Without any actual plan — other than advertising — there is nothing to debate. In that way, their imbecility is secure from attack, free to follow pipe dreams and pied pipers till the end of time.

*Excerpts from the McKibben’s Divestment Tour: Brought to You by Wall Street series by Cory Morningstar

Feb 11

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Amnesty International, Ceres, Foundations, Imperialist Wars/Occupations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Purpose [Public Relations Arm of Avaaz]

350.org American hegemony Amnesty International Avaaz Behavioural Change Gates Human Rights Watch New Economy Purpose ResPublica Rockefeller Social Engineering Soft Power Soros Tom Perriello

Avaaz: the World’s Most Powerful NGO

A Culture of Imbeciles

February 11, 2015

The economist features Avaaz co-founder and executive director Ricken Patel on the cover, May/June 2013

Patel (to the left of Al Gore) delivers a petition to UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon at the People’s Climate March in New York City, Sept. 21, 2014

In his classic orientation to American politics, Indispensable Enemies, Walter Karp described conflict between the two national political parties as largely a game of charades–choreographed by Wall Street. While party loyalists are quick to point out differences over religion and civil rights, the point Karp makes is that they both serve Wall Street, which means America is now a bi-partisan fascist oligarchy.

Since the Reagan administration, both parties have worked overtime to privatize public wealth, and to manipulate social movements to their advantage. While it is well-known that the Wise Use Movement, Christian Coalition and the Tea Party used bigotry to advance Republican interests, little attention has been paid to social engineering by the Democrats.

As affiliated entities, MoveOn, 1Sky, Avaaz, Ceres, Purpose and 350 enable the Democratic Party to market itself as a friend of the environment and supporter of democracy, while simultaneously serving Wall Street’s agenda. What those familiar with serious fraud might call “the long con”.

Jeremy Heimans (co-founder of Avaaz and Purpose) at The Economist’s Ideas Economy: Human Potential conference. | Photo: Taylor Davidson

Short cons include “humanitarian war” and carbon market schemes like fossil fuel divestment, that support American imperialism by consolidating Wall Street control of institutions, markets and NGOs. Using foundations as intermediaries, the fascist oligarchy on the Democrat side has a legal money laundry for promoting such fraud as the “new economy”.

As Cory Morningstar described The Art of Social Engineering by Avaaz, “Funded by the ruling class oligarchy, the role they serve for their funders is not unlike that of corporate media. Yet, it appears that global society is paralyzed in a collective hypnosis – rejecting universal social interests, thus rejecting reason, to instead fall in line with the position of the powerful minority that has seized control, a minority that systematically favours corporate interests.”

Meanwhile, sister organizations of Avaaz work with elites like Rockefeller, Gates and Soros in “shaping global society by utilizing and building upon strategic psychological marketing, soft power, technology and social media.” “More importantly,” notes Morningstar, “The non-profit industrial complex must be understood as a mainspring and the instrument of power, the very support and foundation of imperial domination.”

As Morningstar continues, ‘Global society has been, and continues to be, manipulated to believe that NGOs are representative of “civil society” which has allowed the “humanitarian industrial complex” to become missionaries of empire.’ In this brave new world, NGOs like Avaaz, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch lead civil society in supporting American hegemony through military intervention.

In Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Morningstar reports that Avaaz is the operational name of the Global Engagement and Organizing Fund, a non-profit organization incorporated in 2006. Founded by ResPublica and the Democratic Party front group MoveOn, the core purpose of Avaaz was to build US influence in the Middle East and Asia. ResPublica is led by Tom Perriello, Ricken Patel, and Tom Pravda.

Open Society Institute – created by convicted hedge fund inside trader George Soros – is a major funder of Avaaz, MoveOn and Human Rights Watch. Avaaz destabilization campaigns in Libya, Syria and Bolivia demonstrate the value of NGOs in exercising “soft power” to overthrow foreign regimes hostile to American dominance. As a close friend of President Obama, Perriello was one of the most pro-war Democrats in Congress.

In Welcome to the Brave New World, Morningstar examines Perriello’s career and relationship with war criminals like Obama and his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Both Avaaz and 350 board members supported the attack on Syria.) Avaaz, says Morningstar, is arguably “the world’s most powerful NGO.”

Feb 10

2015

newWKOGadnim

350.org / 1Sky, Ceres, Foundations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex

350.org Bank of America Ceres Citigroup Clinton Foundation Goldman Sachs. JPMorgan Chase Morgan Stanley Rockefeller Brothers Fund Tides WBCSD

Greenwashing Wall Street: CERES, Tides and 350

A Culture of Imbeciles

February 7, 2015

Excerpts from the McKibben’s Divestment Tour: Brought to You by Wall Street series by Cory Morningstar:

+++ Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) is a partner of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). CERES funders are associated with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America.

+++ WBCSD is part of a Wall Street strategy to dislodge the United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations, and prevent enforceable rules governing the operations of multinational corporations.

+++ One third of the CERES network companies are in the Fortune 500. Since 2001, CERES has received millions from Wall Street corporations and foundations.

+++ CERES president Mindy Lubber promotes “sustainable capitalism” at Forbes. Bill McKibben (founder of 350) was an esteemed guest of CERES conferences in 2007 and 2013.

+++ 1Sky, which merged with 350 in 2011, was created by the Clinton Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Betsy Taylor of 1Sky/350 is on the CERES board of directors.

+++ In 2012, Bill McKibben and Peter Buffett (oil train tycoon Warren Buffet’s son) headlined the Strategies for a New Economy conference. Between 2003 and 2011, NoVo (Buffet’s foundation) donated $26 million to Tides Foundation, which in turn funds CERES and 350.

+++ Suzanne Nossel, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Hillary Clinton, is on the Tides board of directors.

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