Marching for Monsanto

Public Good Project

November 29, 2015

by Jay Taber

 

The Climateers are back. Seeking to recapture the euphoria of the 2014 Rockefeller-funded People’s Climate March, the Wall Street-backed, World Bank-approved Paris Climate 2015 charade is meant to build momentum for removing all barriers to privatization of the planet.

Championed by the UN and transnational corporations like Monsanto, this globalized ‘new economy‘ — hyped by Social Capitalists like World Wildlife Fund and 350 — is integral to Sustaining Privatization. The usurping of civil society by these Wall Street-funded NGOs means the annihilation of civil liberties is just A Click Away.

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 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.]

 

Further reading: TckTckTck: The Bitch is Back

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:

1. the magnitude of our ecological crisis
2. the root causes of the planetary crisis, or
3. 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.]

+++

“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.

 

 

McKibben’s Divestment Tour – Brought to You by Wall Street [Part X of an Investigative Report] [Targeting Millennials: The 30 Trillion Dollar Jackpot]

The Art of Annihilation

August 6, 2015

Part ten 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, in 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, water, etc. (via REDD, environmental “markets” and the like ). This tour de force will be executed with cunning precision under the guise of environmental stewardship and “internalising 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:

1. the magnitude of our ecological crisis
2. the root causes of the planetary crisis, or
3. 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.

+++

 

Millennials: The 30 Trillion Dollar Jackpot

“[T]here is one particularly desirable audience that’s watching closely: Millennials. This trend-setting, if not free-spending, group of 95 million Americans, born between 1982 and 2004, live and breathe social media and are broadly convinced that doing the right thing isn’t just vogue, but mandatory. With nearly a third of the population driving this trend, kindness is becoming the nation’s newest currency.” — Millennials Spur Capitalism With a Conscience, March 27, 2013

Naomi Klein, renowned author and board member of 350.org (one of, if not the most prominent environmental organizations of the problematic mainstream) devotes a large section of her book, This Changes Everything, to the divestment campaign as a legitimate tool in the fight against climate change. This divestment campaign may very well “change everything,” but not in the way Klein states. Rather, it is an extraordinary feat comprised of an army of well-endowed NGOs that has done a masterful job of manipulating the present young students (referred to as “millennials” in the media) and other well-meaning activists into essentially becoming shareholder activists for finance capital – all while believing that they are fighting some sort of radical “good fight.” Of further benefit to Wall Street is that the campaign also ensures these same students/youth will become shareholders of finance capital in the future. It’s a well-played public relations endeavour as well as a pivotal learning exercise in exploitation, social engineering and behaviour modification.

Yet “millennials” are not recognized and sought after by the establishment merely for their rampant consumerism (as 21^st century “prosumers”) and narcissism (something inflicted by a devolving society stripped of culture and void of meaning). Nor are they sought after simply for the expansion of human capital. This fact is illustrated in the following Bloomberg article, March 3, 2015: Wall Street Has Its Eyes on Millennials’ $30 Trillion Inheritance:

“It seems the millennials are going to inherit a lot more from their Baby Boomer parents than just some tie-dyes, Steely Dan LPs and Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comic books. To the tune of $30 trillion, according to Federated. That is some serious dough! … So it’s no surprise firms seem to have their Flash animators working non-stop to chase this big payday once the Boomers start croaking in earnest.”

Images: Federated Investors Inc.: Millennials: The Next Big Thing

Divestment as Symbolism

“Similarly to that movement, fossil fuel divestment has rallied 400 campus campaigns across the country around a symbolic demand. As 350.org’s Jamie Henn explained in his response to the article, the goal ‘isn’t to make a direct economic impact by selling stock, it’s to stigmatize the industry to the point they start losing political power.'” — Why a Movement is Never a Farce, July 10, 2014

The author of the afore-mentioned article (Why a Movement is Never a Farce) cites the divestment campaign as symbolic in the following excerpt: “fossil fuel divestment has rallied 400 campus campaigns across the country around a symbolic demand.” (Emphasis in original) The author then references 350.org’s Jamie Henn’s response that the goal “isn’t to make a direct economic impact by selling stock, it’s to stigmatize the industry to the point they start losing political power.” These statements mirror the general consensus of those within the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC), that the divestment campaign has been designed and intended to be merely symbolic since its inception. As many have written, the Keystone XL campaign, was considered to be merely symbolic at its inception. Many journalists, activists, citizens, etc. still retain/accept this notion. However, considering the outcome, one must acknowledge the KXL campaign was not merely symbolic. Rather, in hindsight, the KXL campaign served to be both a strategic diversion and an infallible vehicle for a rail dynasty built by Warren Buffett, who benefited by the economic transition from pipeline to rail in transporting one of the most filthy fuels imaginable. Unbeknownst to most activists was that Buffett, the primary beneficiary of the campaign against the tar sands pipeline, funneled up to $26 million into the movement (2003-2011), and effectively brushed critical thinking under the rug. The question that must be asked is this: why are foundations, elite firms, plutocrats and oligarchs funneling millions of dollars for resources and media coverage into a global divestment campaign – is it more than mere symbolism?

It is tempting to attribute the growing divestment campaign to brilliant public relations, sharp marketing, feel-good greenwashing and nothing more.

For one who understands, even vaguely, the inner workings and functions of the NPIC, a first instinct may be to view the symbolic element of the divestment campaign as no more than another simple discourse along the following lines:

1) We don’t need to change the system or address the underlying values and worldview driving this physical and psychic destruction

2) The global divestment campaign confirms that the “market” can be and is the solution. Thus, it’s actually a strategic discourse, one that allows economic growth to continue unabated while those driving it appear to be looking seriously at climate change.

At least in part, this would seem to be an apt assessment to even a fairly seasoned environmentalist. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, openly admits that the intent of the divestment campaign is merely symbolic in both nature and purpose – stating that its key purpose is only to stigmatize the fossil fuel industry (demonstrating a talking point that has been reverberated down the divestment chain of command). But to conclude that this campaign is purely symbolic is, undoubtedly a grave (and dangerous) lapse in assessment.

In comparison, we must again consider the Keystone XL campaign that preceded the divestment campaign as far as level of importance since it was also often referred to as nothing more than symbolic. Quite the contrary, the KXL campaign was absolutely strategic in allowing Warren Buffett’s rail empire to set up and then flourish – completely unhindered. Further, campaigns such as KXL and fossil fuel divestment serve as captivating smoke and mirrors. Utilizing behavioural change tactics and behavioural economics, such critical discourse effectively stigmatizes any focus on confronting root causes – which is vital for maintaining current power structures. Thus divestment, much more than simply symbolic, must be considered an important part, if not the key element, of a pivotal meme that the establishment (via the NPIC and media) is embedding in the third revolution zeitgeist. This concept/language is part and parcel of the “new economy” marketing dictionary, in tandem with other key words AND memes such as B Corps, Natural Capital, the Biosphere Economy (the Financialization of Nature), etc., etc. Or to paraphrase a popular quote, frame it properly and it will come, with ‘it’ being defined as investment capital. Billions of dollars are being funneled into the NPIC to finance the implantation of such memes into your psyche. The ultimate goal is the further normalization of, and servitude to, corporate dominance while developing, building and nurturing acquiescence for the commodification of the commons.

“If some claimed that Stanford’s move was more symbol than substance, however, that hardly bothered the students. The symbol was part of the point. Divestment, says Peter Kinder, one of the pioneers of socially responsible investment (SRI) and coauthor of the groundbreaking 1984 book Ethical Investing, ‘is about marking the boundaries of acceptable behavior.'” — Dumping Coal Is Easy. But Who Will Divest the Rest?, September 9, 2014

In the September 9, 2014 Audubon article, Dumping Coal Is Easy. But Who Will Divest the Rest?, the author suggests that those embracing divestment invest “in ways ‘consistent with the Buddhist precept of ‘not causing harm.'” Yet the truth is that dumping all investments that contradict living in a way consistent with the Buddhist precept of “not causing harm” requires that we kill the western lifestyle. Not causing harm necessitates dismantling and transitioning from the industrialized capitalist system – completely. But how to tell middle class millennials and prosumers (the divestment campaigns’ target audience) that iPods and Starfucks does not jive with anything that resembles the Buddhist precept of “not causing harm”? Who wants to sell that unpopular (and unprofitable) campaign?

“Fossil Free” Stanford students are now pushing divestment from all carbon-polluting energy sources, but it is doubtful that these same students (the majority white and of privilege) understand that sustainability cannot and will not be achieved within the confines of capitalism … that the system itself is built upon and dependent upon the exploitation of the Earth’s most vulnerable people and the continued obliteration of the planet, its non-negotiable demand of perpetual and exponential growth, interwoven and built upon an industrial machine that cannot be separated from its origins of slavery and fossil fuels.

“And the activists are spreading the word using every social media tool they can find – including the British website pushyourparents.org, which reminds the geezers: ‘Mum and Dad, did you know your pension is f@!#ing up my future?’ Now there is a ‘massive, growing global movement’ that’s looking to ‘divest – and invest,’ to raise $1 trillion a year for new energy efforts: renewables like solar, biofuels, wind, energy-efficiency projects, materials science leaps, restoration projects, new investment portfolios. Huge investment management firms like BlackRock, which is partnering with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the London Stock Exchange’s FTSE Group, and smaller ones like Trillium, Calvert, Aperio, and Green Century are providing alternative, carbon-free ways to invest.” — Dumping Coal Is Easy. But Who Will Divest the Rest?, September 9, 2014

Yet mom and dad’s pensions are not fucking up their future due to fossil fuels alone. The pensions are fucking up their future due to the required growth of the investment – if the stock is to turn out monetary gain. For stocks and other investments to grow, nature’s resources must be converted to capital. It matters little whether they are conventional fossil fuels (the singular asset that makes Exxon-Mobil one of the most profitable corporation in the world), or solar and wind energy investments (products that are also carbon-based/dependent from cradle to grave). Nature’s resources must be voraciously consumed in order for investments to both earn interest and continually (and infinitely) increase in monetary value. Further, biofuels/biomass are perhaps the most egregious forms of energy of all when it comes to this false narrative, while “materials science leaps” will undoubtedly encompass genetically engineered food crops as a solution to our food scarcity issues. Restoration projects, as referred to by forestry, capitalists and the NPIC, are nothing more than ecological degradation carried out under the guise of sustainability: deforestation, loss of wetlands, loss of vital minerals/raw materials, soaring food prices, land grabs and loss of farmland, changing of Earth’s wind patterns and animal migrations, starvation and conflict. All are being implemented under the guise of environmental solutions. Consider BlackRock Investment Management, the biggest funds manager in the world, referred to in the afore-mentioned quote. In 2011, BlackRock founder and CEO Larry Fink stated that both agriculture and water investments would be the best performers over the next 10 years: “Go long agriculture and water and go to the beach…. Put those investments in the bottom drawer for 10 years. It’s unlike anything else we have in the world. Agriculture and water would even beat energy investments.” [Source]

Further indication of the mere “symbolism” of divestment as outlined by Paul Hamill, director of strategy and communications for the center-left American Security Project in Washington, D.C. in the following quote: “What they [divestment activists] want to do is to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere to tackle climate change, and that is spot-on — that’s what we really need to do. But divesting is not the way to do it. It’s almost like a glib PR stunt. It feels nice to go out and campaign, and it feels nice to try and divest from these companies, but it’s not serious.” The article in which Hamill is quoted notes that both Swarthmore College and Wellesley College decided against divestment “after internal audits found the colleges could each lose $15 million per year over the next 10 years under fossil fuel divestment policies:

“Daniel R. Fischel, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, released an industry-financed study last week that found portfolios with energy stocks did better than those without them over a 50-year period by 0.7 percent per year. Total university holdings are estimated at $456 billion, meaning that the projected cost of divestment would top $3.2 billion per year. ‘This strikes us as an excessively high price to pay for something even divestment proponents acknowledge is largely a symbolic act….'”

Based on the statistics above, $3.2 billion in losses per year (even if this figure is inflated due to the report being industry-financed), one may wonder who would assume such divested stocks, and by extension, would also assume a portion of this the $3.2 billion dollars. Whether capitalist or socialist, one must admit that if this report is at all accurate, the mere 0.7 percent that translates into 3.2 billion dollars per year seems far beyond simple symbolism. Regardless, few could argue with Hamill’s accurate observation that “[T]heir success that they’re measuring is whether institutions are divesting, not whether we’re reducing carbon emissions.”

It would be difficult to not notice the aforementioned “Fossil Fuel Free Funds” that are being promoted by universities across the globe. The notion that any investment fund can actually be referred to as “fossil fuel free” is asinine at best. The simple fact that there is not one single industry that does not rely on fossil fuel energy, in one way or another, is lost. This demonstrates a collective failure in the most basic of critical thinking exercises. Students are not only encouraged to dismiss a necessary critique of investment capital outright; they are celebrated for their ignorance and encouraged to promote it. Also lost, due to the encouragement to disregard a critical thinking analysis, is the simple fact that all successful investment is absolutely dependent upon consumption/consumerism and perpetual growth, the very main drivers of the biosphere’s destruction. The obvious end result – that “this changes nothing” – is lost amongst the self-congratulatory accolades.

Of course the corporate takeover of universities in order to further serve the establishment and intensify neoliberalism is well-documented.

Divest & Acquiesce

While the NPIC chimes in on divest-invest in euphoric harmony, nowhere are there calls to divest from “Black Friday,” international travel/flying, luxury vacations, private and company jets, personal automobiles, techo-gadgets, factory farming, the military industrial complex, the eradication/burning of trees for industrial scale biomass, etc., etc., etc. So it’s nothing more than pure spectacle when we claim we are “fighting” fossil fuels without fighting for radical reduction, restriction and rationing of all non-vital consumption in all developed countries.

In the January 14, 2015 Rolling Stone article, The Logic of Divestment: Why We Have to Kiss Off Big Carbon, the author writes that “Exxon Mobil, of course, scoffs at the notion that its ability to profit from its 25 billion barrels of proven reserves is in any way threatened. World governments, it wrote last March, lack the political will to impose the emissions reductions required to stabilize global temperature rise at 2 degrees Celsius: ‘The policy changes such a scenario would produce are beyond those that societies.?.?.?would be willing to bear, in our estimation.’ Exxon calls this low-carbon scenario ‘highly unlikely’ and neatly deems it unworthy of financial analysis.”

One hates to side with a corporation such as Exxon, yet who could argue with this logic? On this issue, their insights are dead on.

350 and other organizational partners in crime know that Exxon is correct. They are well aware that Western society (specifically, the privileged class being their target audience and core supporter base) would not be willing to accept the necessary policies required to stabilize global temperature rise at 2ºC (even though this is no longer possible without intense geo-engineering since we are already locked in at minimum to 2.4ºC as of 2008). Those in decision-making capacity at the 350.org leadership level and the NPIC as a whole (and Exxon) understand that Western society and its composite countries are not about to give up ANYTHING – let alone live a bare-bones minimalist existence stripped clean of privilege. This is one reason why the mainstream environmental movement sells the divestment campaign (as part of the “new economy”) as a “win” against “the enemy” rather than speak to the necessity of dismantling the industrialized capitalist machine and the power structure that exists and thrives within it – this and its unacknowledged absolute dependence upon said machine, for its very existence, is the primary reason why its goals are “suspiciously” aligned with those who oppress us. Further, a dismantling of the system requires that the populace comprehend how the machine is put together and more importantly, understand the mechanisms in place that protect the current power structures, ensuring they remain intact. Tragically, this required change regarding the system, comprising institutional change at a macro level all the way to personal choices at the micro level, is something of which the Western world and its citizens are wholly unaccepting.

The non-profit industrial complex inculcates its followers into acceptance without invoking the required and necessary critical thinking process. A recent example of such can be found on a 350.org Facebook post (2,153 shares) dated February 13, 2015: “The New York Times just published an editorial explaining why President Obama’s final call on Keystone XL should be so straightforward. If you need any more proof that the climate movement is winning as we take to the streets today on Global Divestment Day, look no further than the pages of the world’s biggest newspaper.” Yet consider the reality. Obama’s statement from 2012: “Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some. So we are drilling all over the place – right now.” Today, in 2015, U.S. crude oil production has neared all-time highs and is poised to set a record. The U.S. produced 3.2 billion barrels of crude oil last year, according to EIA figures, a 30-year high. In 2013, the U.S. produced 2.7 billion barrels, up from 2 billion a decade ago. [Source]

“The climate movement is winning”?

In Rockefeller (and, in this case, both Warren Buffett and the New York Times) we trust.

The truth is that attempts to curb the desire (international vacations/flying), want (bottled water, unlimited meat consumption) or ill-described need (iPhones, etc.) in America would be one of the few (and probably only) things to incite the American populace to take to the streets, burning buildings and the stringing up of beaten politicians to the myriad of street lights.

As outlined by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the foremost organization regarding the global influence of fossil fuels, in its publication Resources to Reserves 2013, which forecasts the availability of oil and gas for future generations, the author of the aforementioned Rolling Stone article writes the following: “In June, the IEA released an independent analysis projecting that carbon curbs strong enough to meet the 2 degrees Celsius threshold could leave nearly $300 billion in stranded fossil-fuel investments by 2035.” Yet, at the same time, the International Energy Agency projects that fossil fuels will provide 75-80% of the world’s energy for several decades to come. [Fossil fuels currently meet 80% of global energy demand. Even if current policy commitments and pledges made by countries to tackle climate change and other energy-related challenges were to be put in place, global energy demand in 2035 is projected to rise by 40% – with fossil fuels still contributing 75%.”[Source] [Further note that we have already exceeded a 2ºC threshold in committed global warming.]

In the same Rolling Stone article, Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the Wallace Global Fund, which is helping to promote and assist other foundations in the facile divestment plan, is quoted as saying: “‘If you own fossil fuels, you own climate change… and it’s not just owning their environmental impacts. You own their political impacts too’ – from the PR campaigns challenging climate science to the direct lobbying by oil companies of federal, state and municipal governments to block emissions limits. ‘You’re helping to build their war chest.'”

But the truth is that the 1% creating the global GHG emissions, which is the same 1% that hold shares in any investment, are the very ones that own climate change, whose high-consumption lifestyles continue to exacerbate the problem, regardless of whether they directly divest from fossil fuel stocks or not. What Dorsey deliberately omits is that environmental and political impacts from fossil fuel investments remain the same regardless of who owns them and that without dismantling an economic system to which most all people are enslaved, our efforts are futile. Dorsey speaks of owning political impacts, yet no one holds the NPIC accountable for their strategic campaign that neutralized and blocked radical emissions cuts and targets at COP15 in Copenhagen, which by all accounts should be considered a crime against humanity.

The truth is that the divestment campaign itself is the very thing “helping to build their war chest.” In the war chest we find “sustainable capitalism” by 2020, commodifying the Earth’s commons, privatization, and expansion of corporate power. Under the chest we find the requiem “The song remains the same,” with the affluent “Left” negatively impacting the environment with just as much fervour as the “Right” they criticize. Consider that the US, which represents a mere 4.45% of the world’s population, is responsible for a minimum of 27% of all global emissions, while simultaneously consuming approximately 24% of the world’s energy. Further take into account that each American consumer, the very target audience of the NPIC, requires “132,000 pounds of oil, sand, grain, iron ore, coal and wood” to maintain their current lifestyle each year. That adds up to “an eye-popping 362 pounds a day.” [Source: Juliet Schor, Plentitude, p. 44.]

It’s clear that the Wallace Global Fund is at the helm of Divest-Invest when one observes that it was the Wallace Global Fund that appointed the CEO of Phoenix Global Impact to project manage the Divest-Invest Philanthropy initiative as of March 2014. Simultaneously, Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the Wallace Global Fund, sits on all committees and working groups: 1) The steering committee, 2) Energy and Equity Working Group, 3) Organizing Working Group, and 4) the Investment Working Group. The Wallace Global Fund 990 filing reveals that their largest investment portfolio is that of Blood and Gore’s Generation Investment ($18,431,931.00), including Generation IM Credit Feeder Fund II L.P. (Private Fund, Cayman Islands) promoted by Generation Investment, see the following graphics:

All Eyes on Fossil Fuel Investments | All Eyes Off Militarism

Within the interlocking directorate of the non-profit industrial complex, it is of interest to note that Dorsey (Greenpeace Fund Board Member) is founder of the Human Rights and Environment Program of Amnesty International, having served as chair of the Board of Amnesty International USA. Amnesty, a vapid weapon in the destabilization of sovereign states (Venezuela, Libya, Eritrea, etc.) on behalf of NATO states, is silent on the devastating climate impacts and environmental devastation of militarism, which can in part be attributed to Amnesty International (and other NGOs) as they stoke the provocation of wars and conflicts. (Indeed, NGOs PLAY a critical ROLE in building public acquiescence for wars). [Further reading: A Tear for Africa: Humanitarian Abduction and Reduction] Remix: “If you entice and provoke destabilization campaigns, you own climate change… and it’s not just owning their environmental impacts. You own their political impacts (and the subsequent death toll) too – from the PR campaigns created to build acquiescence for the most egregious acts of violence, to the demonization campaigns, you’re helping to build their war chest, militarism being the most oil-exhaustive assault on the planet. Not fossil fuel investments, but militarism.”

+++

McKibben and 350.org would have you believe that it’s the fossil fuel corporations alone that are to blame: “The fossil-fuel industry is systematically undermining the planet’s physical systems…. We have met the enemy and they [sic] is Shell.” [Source] McKibben continues that “they [fossil fuel corporations] relentlessly search for more hydrocarbons” without mention of the capitalist consumption and growth fetish that drives the fossil fuel corporations to satisfy its economic demand for the most abundant and easily accessible resources available – a vicious circle if there ever was one. Of course, one cannot place blame on consumers (who are both willing participants and also victims) without highlighting the industrialized capitalist system that ensures all citizens are enslaved. Yet, even though this is the case, there is no mention of the necessity to dismantle the industrialized capitalist system by any members of the establishment, green environmental or otherwise. McKibben et al want to believe that if you change the “bad” products in the vicious circle – to “eco” products – via “sustainable investments” (which are just as dependent on infinite growth), the capitalist system will become, by default, compassionate and caring. Authors such as Stephanie MacMillan refer to this consumer trend as “lifestyleism”. Lifestyleism correlates with one’s own social class. It could be defined as the focus on changing one’s own behaviours within the present system, with the belief that if everyone followed suit, not only would society as a whole improve, but perhaps “immoral” capitalism could be reformed from within. Such illusions are lucrative for advertising firms and NGOs that prey upon hyper-individualism, identity politics, and behavioral change tactics (which target middle to upper income classes*) to not only create new financial markets, but also to protect the current power structures. Yet failure to confront the power of capital actually strengthens it. This is where firms such as Purpose Inc. come in; masquerading further corporate capture and market share as radical change. (*This is clearly apparent in the divestment campaign in which the vast majority of its participants are predominantly white and of privilege.)

“Taking a moral stand might be a starting point, but if morality doesn’t rise to an understanding of the system, it not only fails to change capitalist society – it helps reinforce it.” — The Dead End of Moral Individualism, April 14, 2015

In 2011 and 2012, the Wallace Global Fund invested a substantial initial sum of grant money in groups that would effectively lead the divestment campaign by targeting college students and campuses. Recipients included the Sierra Club Student Coalition ($180,000), the Hip Hop Caucus ($40,000), As You Sow ($160,000) and 350.org ($205,000). For decades, foundations (and the elites and corporate entities that funnel money into the foundations) have recouped their investments in (more accurately, exploitation of) enthusiastic, gullible and compliant students (albeit absolutely well-intentioned) who are effectively trained to focus on what is considered politically realistic (and “appropriate”, as defined by the state and NPIC) within the confines of the existing system. Students who challenge NGO doctrine with critical and radical analysis are ignored, marginalized, and treated as negative and/or divisive, while those who fall in line are recognized as positive “leaders.” These behavioural change tactics subtly and effectively crush most critical thinking.

“Mass organizations under this system (such as collaborationist unions and NGOs) are usually dominated by institutionalized bureaucracies whose very functions are, first: to make money, and second: to pacify the masses by diverting their discontent into compromises with capital.” — Stephanie McMillan, Capitalism Must Die!

Consider the article Fossil Fuel Divestment’s True Aim? To Remake Capitalism (February 20, 2015) and how it was highlighted/shared via social media by a 350.org staff (Canadian tar sands organizer and “divestment activist”). From the article:

“For young climate activists like Soron and Hemingway, such analyses overlook the divestment movement’s broader aim: which is to remake the value structure of capitalism. No less than the Swiss financial giant UBS thinks such efforts should not be ignored. ‘Many of those engaged in [divestment] are the consumers, voters and leaders of the next several decades….'”

The same article was “re-tweeted” by 350.org’s main twitter account, 350.org Toronto and Divest SFU (Simon Fraser University), see below:

 

The Fossil Free Indexes

The Fossil Free Indexes represent another important component of the “socially responsible investments” movement.

The Fossil Free Indexes “community” is comprised of 350.org – The Fossil Free Campaign ^[1], As You Sow, Ceres ^[2], Green America ^[3], Divest Invest ^[4] and Carbon Tracker Initiative. [“Carbon Tracker aligns the capital markets with the climate change policy agenda to make carbon investment risk relevant available today. They apply their thinking on carbon budgets and stranded assets across geographies and assets classes to inform investor thinking and the regulation of capital markets. Their research ranking public fossil fuel companies by the carbon content of their reserves includes: Unburnable Carbon: Are the world’s financial markets carrying a carbon bubble?, Unburnable Carbon 2013: Wasted capital and stranded assets, and Carbon Avoidance? Accounting for the Emissions Hidden in Reserves.”][Source]

“‘If world governments put a cap on carbon, you would see that bubble burst and that would throw the world economy into disarray,’ she [Danielle Fugere, As You Sow’s president] said. Instead, the plan of As You Sow and other investors is to ensure ‘the bubble is going to be let out slowly in a way that nobody loses all their money.'” — Huge: Exxon Will Advise Investors on Carbon Bubble Exposure, March 23, 2014

The Board of Directors of As You Sow, an investment group dedicated to funding carbon-free and clean energy sources, is comprised of people with vast experience in business, investing and raising capital, like most boards of directors in the organizations behind the divestment campaign. Although most boast members with decades of vast experience in socially responsible investing, which is always quantified as incredibly successful (From the As You Sow Board of Directors profile page regarding Thomas Van Dyck, Chairman and Secratary: “Joining Piper Jaffray in 1997, he developed an investment management consulting team, now called the SRI Wealth Management Group, which moved to RBC Wealth Management in 2006, and is now one of the largest sustainable wealth management practices in North America”), Earth’s accelerating ecologic degradation conveys a different story. To further illustrate the murky relationship between these clean energy investment firms and the entities that underwrite them, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, BP, and Southern Company are listed among As You Sow’s “shareholder engagements.”

The Divest Invest resources on Fossil Free Indexes website include links to Cere’s Investor Network on Climate Risk [“the INCR is a network of 100 institutional investors representing more than $11 trillion in assets seizing the opportunities resulting from climate change and other sustainability challenges”] and the Global Investor Coalition on Climate Change – the more recent, international in scope, Ceres coalition that is formed by the four regional climate change investor groups (also created by Ceres): the IIGCC (Europe), INCR (North America), IGCC (Australia & New Zealand) and AIGCC (Asia).

Also listed as a resource is the Responsible Endowments Coalition, which focuses on building the campaign within colleges and universities and which co-sponsored the Tellus Institute report with the Sustainable Endowments Institute and 350.org.

And while there is no actual definition of what constitutes “the new energy economy,” on the Fossil Free Indexes website, there are many leaders/executives with Wall Street backgrounds to be found.

Carbon Bubble Discourse

“This week has seen a new green meme emerge: the idea that investment in high-carbon companies is creating a ‘carbon bubble’ that could leave the world exposed to another financial crash.” – Why a high-carbon investment bubble could be the lesser of evils, July 15, 2011

Liberal “Guardian-esque” journalism touches lightly upon the fact that the market (i.e., fossil fuel corporations) easily dismiss the risk of “unburnable carbon” simply because “the world shows no sign of taking the two-degrees target seriously.” Where the journalism does not tread is on the very real fact that it is not “the world” that shows no sign of taking the two-degrees “target” seriously; it is the 1-3% of the world’s population that are creating 50% of the global GHG emissions who clearly show no signs of taking any limits seriously. This is the true hard math that remains excluded from discussion. Just a glimpse at the disturbing and vile “Black Friday“^[5] phenomenon, which is expanding around the globe, provides much clarity on the message: “We want more.”

The ferocious production of fossil fuels is only made possible by the consumption that drives it. The consumption does not take place within a vacuum. Thus, the “real enemy” (as constructed by Bill McKibben in this excerpt from his Rolling Stone article: “Given this hard math, we need to view the fossil-fuel industry in a new light. It has become a rogue industry, reckless like no other force on Earth. It is Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization.”) ^[6] is not the fossil fuel corporations per se. Rather, the real enemy is fervent mass consumption by a tiny minority of the world’s population. And although the industrialized capitalist system demands nothing less than this, the united call to dismantle the suicidal global capitalist economic system is nowhere to be heard. Instead, solutions are framed under reformist language and ideology such as B Corporations, Natural Capital, New Economy, Divestment, Compassionate Capitalism, Social Capitalism, Natural Capitalism, The Biosphere Economy, etc. It is worth repeating the assertion put forward in Blood and Gore’s Generation Investment report: “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.”

Similarly, 350.org board member and author Naomi Klein (referenced by McKibben on July 19, 2012) tells us that “lots of companies do rotten things in the course of their business – pay terrible wages, make people work in sweatshops – and we pressure them to change those practices. But these numbers make clear that with the fossil-fuel industry, wrecking the planet is their business model. It’s what they do.” Like the eco-amnesia that strikes Klein each time she criticizes “Big Green” without mention of Rockefeller’s incubator project 1Sky, which morphed into 350.org in 2011, Klein cites the very real terrible wages and sweatshops, without ever asking her ardent supporters (predominantly white, privileged, middle-class who identify with Klein and her lifestyle) to give up their iPhones, cars, flights … or anything else for that matter. Rather the answer is “comprehensive policies and programs that make low-carbon choices easy and convenient for everyone” and “growing the caring economy, shrinking the careless one.” Not surprisingly, this very blueprint and ideology is the foundation for the 21^st century corporate “Who Cares Wins” pathology, whereby “kindness is becoming the nation’s newest currency.” The intent behind this pathology (made famous by TckTckTck founder/creator David Jones, former CEO of Havas), is the corporate capture of “millennials” by way of manipulation via branding, advertising and social media.

In 2009, Havas (one of the world’s largest global communications groups) and the United Nations partnered with 350.org, Avaaz, Greenpeace and Oxfam (in partnership with many of the world’s most powerful and destructive corporations) in order to establish credibility for the TckTckTck campaign that dominated COP15. The “demand” was a “fair and ambitious agreement” and a 2ºC target. The “agreement” we were given was the long pre-determined deadly “target” of 2ºC, with the NGOs having succeeded in undermining and making invisible the world’s most vulnerable states who demanded that the global temperature increase not exceed 1ºC. Leading up to the Paris climate change talks, the same NGOs will attempt to create legitimacy for policies that “change everything.” Our oligarchs can hardly wait to deliver on our demands: the financialization of nature, environmental markets, carbon capture and storage, biomass, and a score of other false solutions already well under way.

 

Next: Part XI 

 

[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] “Based on the analysis in Unburnable Carbon, the Fossil Free Campaign is seeking to persuade the world’s college endowments, city and state pension funds, church investment managers and non-profits to divest from the 200 largest public coal, oil and gas companies in the world, ranked by the size of their proven carbon reserves, starting in the United States but already active on three continents.”

[2] “Ceres advocates for sustainability leadership, mobilizing a powerful network of investors, companies and public interest groups to accelerate and expand the adoption of sustainable business practices and solutions to build a healthy global economy.”

[3] “Green America’s mission is to harness economic power – the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace-to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society. Green America has a long-standing program on clean energy and climate change that uses diverse strategies to promote the development of renewable energy and to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Green America provides resources for individuals and institutions to divest from fossil fuel companies.”

[4] “Divest/Invest is foundations and individuals divesting from fossil fuels and switching to clean energy investments, joining college, health, pension funds and religious endowments doing the same. Ethically our investments shouldn’t contribute to dangerous climate change. Financially, fossil fuel stocks are over-valued as most of their reserves cannot be burned. We can get good, safe returns while helping to build a new energy system.”

[5] “What is Black Friday? Black Friday was a day where slaves traders in America held open market for slaves sales. Whenever a shipment of slaves came in, and there were hardly any disease or deaths amongst them (men, women and children), they call it a ‘Black Friday’ to celebrate the fortune they will make. However, if a shipment came in and there were mostly sick people, the traders call it a ‘Red Friday’, because of the bad outcome and ‘red’ because they would have to kill all the sick and weak slaves (because no one wanted to spend money feeding or treating those men, women and children).” [Source] [6] Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is…. But what all these climate numbers make painfully, usefully clear is that the planet does indeed have an enemy – one far more committed to action than governments or individuals. Given this hard math, we need to view the fossil-fuel industry in a new light. It has become a rogue industry, reckless like no other force on Earth. It is Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization. “‘Lots of companies do rotten things in the course of their business – pay terrible wages, make people work in sweatshops – and we pressure them to change those practices,’ says veteran anti-corporate leader Naomi Klein, who is at work on a book about the climate crisis. ‘But these numbers make clear that with the fossil-fuel industry, wrecking the planet is their business model. It’s what they do.'” [July 19, 2012: Source]

Human Rights vs. Right Based Fishing: The Ideological Battleground in Siem Reap

Just Say No to 350

 

[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]

Terrible Economics, Ecosystems and Banking [TEEB]

Social Ecological Economics

2011

by Clive Spash

Why do conservation biologists, ecologists and other natural scientists working on environmental problems feel the need to copy, or rather parody, a narrow economic discourse? At opposite ends of Europe (Austria and Norway) I have this year listened to prominent spokespersons from such disciplines making use of supposed economic values calculated for everything from wetlands to bees. Despite the problems (see Spash and Vatn 2006), values are being transferred as needed across time and space. The recommendation is for more monetary valuation and improving the techniques of environmental cost-benefit analysis amongst which stated preference methods (e.g. contingent valuation) have become predominant. When challenged the typical response is: ‘I don’t pretend to understand the details. Yes there may be problems and everyone knows contingent valuation is nonsense, but these numbers get attention.’ Well do they and if so from whom and to what end?

For those who may have failed to notice, 2010 was declared biodiversity year by the United Nations. One attempt to gain relevance for the loss of biodiversity and ecosystems degradation as an international public policy problem followed the above approach. I refer to the project supported, by the United Nation’s Environment Programme, entitled The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), which produced its final synthesis report at the end of last year subtitled: Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature. Indeed the aim was to follow the global cost-benefit method of the, claimed to be successful, Stern Review on climate change (despite no noticeable impact of that report on greenhouse gas control). TEEB differs from Stern in conducting no new work but, rather, actually is a review (which Stern was not). While the project has covered much ground through a variety of reports the synthesis report is the key summary in which those driving the project show their true colours. The synthesis report is packed with monetary numbers transferred out of context and stated as if objective facts. The document is, of course, almost purely a rhetorical exercise (as was the Stern Review, see Spash 2007). The stance of those natural scientists employing the same approach, and supporting this and similar initiatives, is both rhetorical and pragmatic. Getting international reports produced and government officials to listen then seems worthwhile regardless of the means. This is New Environmental Pragmatism in action (Spash 2009).

The great success, of switching away from an ecologically driven discourse involving plural values to a monistic pseudo-economic one, is then that big business and financially squeezed governments appear to be listening. For example, the UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Caroline Spelman, has made the following endorsement of TEEB, being used in the publishers publicity blurb: ‘We need to understand the true cost of losing what nature gives us for free, and integrate this into our decision making across government, business and society. At the national and international level TEEB for Policy Makers helps us think about how this can be done.’ In October 2010, the United Nations Finance Initiative (UNFI) published a briefing entitled Demystifying Materiality: Hardwiring Biodiversity and Ecosystems into Finance. This is an initiative supported by organisations such as Rio Tinto, Industrial Development Corporation, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Uni Credit Group, Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Barclays, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and many others.

That the numbers are crude and lack theoretical foundation is actually almost irrelevant. Once in print they can be used and cited, for whatever ends seem suitable, as has been done with numbers on the value of the world’s ecosystems and all remaining wild nature. In any case the real aim is not to demonstrate that Nature has value. Indeed, the big message here is that demonstrating value in money terms is not enough. No. Values need to be ‘captured’. How, you might ask? Easy, through new institutional arrangements or, in other words, market-like institutions.

Traditionally the main financial and banking concerns around the topics of ecosystems and biodiversity have been damage to a corporation’s reputation when it gets caught polluting or destroying the environment, although only if this is reflected in the share price. Potential impacts on a development project’s finances (e.g. due to delays trying to meet regulations) have also been something to note. However, reports like TEEB, and the associated UNFI briefing, point in a different direction. They indicate that there is much for the finance and banking sectors to consider besides taking care of the risks and potential liabilities.

Financial institutions can seize opportunities related to biodiversity and ecosystems services in different ways: early movers can bolster their organisation’s reputation and create value for marketing practices; building capacity in-house can be beneficial in terms of advisory services for corporate clients; advising clients how to integrate biodiversity and ecosystems services in supply-chain management can lead to cost reductions for clients; and last but not least, financial
institutions that understand the new and expanding environmental markets can profit through offering brokerage services, registries, or specialised funds. Nothing like a financial crisis to get the high flyers of the banking world into innovation mode.

If you thought great ideas like tradable permits might be limited to carbon markets then think again. Innovative marketing devices like wetland banking, biodiversity banking and endangered species credits are now ready, available and being implemented. The USA endangered species credit system is a biodiversity cap-and-trade system producing ‘endangered species credits’, which can be used to offset a company’s negative impacts on threatened species and habitats. Bio-banking has been pioneered in Australia, where in 2006 a pilot project in New South Wales allowed developers to buy ‘biodiversity credits’ to offset negative impacts on biodiversity. These credits can be created by ‘enhancing’ other land (e.g. areas previously degraded by development). Then back to the USA for wetland banking, where companies or individuals undertaking development or agricultural expansion are allowed to degrade or destroy wetland ecosystems by making payments called environmental credits. As the TEEB synthesis report notes, there is big money in these schemes with the market for wetland credits in the USA estimated at $1.1 to $1.8 billion. No more worrying about absolute protection or annoying regulations – just opportunities to trade and create new financial instruments to capture those wild values roaming too freely for their own good.

Developers with enough ready cash will be unfettered (as if they were not already: see Veuthey and Gerber, 2011). Is this the success ecologists and conservation biologist pushing monetary values having been trying to achieve? This is not about protection or conservation this is about banking, finance and investment returns. This is about removing regulation and restrictions. Increasing possibilities for trading financial instruments has little apparent relevance for the drivers of ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss (e.g. human population increase, war, corruption and greed, colonialism). Changing the international banking and financial institutions to redirect development away from environmental destruction would seem to require a little more than making wild claims for the monetary value of bees. Dropping the discourse of plural values, and those discourses which empowered ecologists and conservationists in the first place, is at best misguided. Not just species are threatened but social and environmental responsibility itself.

One thing these issues raise is the over reliance on collective action and the need for alternatives. Individual action, for example, is often undermined by the argument that any one person can contribute so little that doing anything is pointless. Last year in this journal Hourdequin (2010) made an eloquent attack on the logic of such a position within the context of climate change. This issue sees her defending that stance in reply to a commentary. As climate change has shown, misguided strategies are unfortunately not limited to ecosystems and biodiversity. In this issue Gardiner (2011) discusses geoengineering the climate. Such options arise due to the failure of governments and international organisations to take serious mitigation measures to prevent human induced climate change. How does the Royal Society suggest addressing this institutional and political failure? By using science and technology as if there were no issues of power politics. The many-faceted ethical aspects of the approach are carefully surveyed by Gardiner.

We then return to conservation biologists, who come in for criticism from Joye and De Block (2011). While noting the influence of Wilson’s writing on the concepts of biodiversity and biophilia they critically analyse the latter. This brings into question the faith shown in the evolutionary explanation for human relationships to life-forms and the assumptions surrounding biophilia and biophobia. Further food for thought in terms of how conservation biologists perceive human motivation.

The theme of human motivation continues with Ojala and Lidskog (2011) presenting a study raising a range of interesting issues about human intervention in natural systems and the value conflicts which people feel. The life-form here (mosquitoes) is perceived as largely negative and this supports an eradication programme in central Sweden using aerial chemical applications. Reading the mixed motives and justifications seems to rather strongly contrast with an evolutionary biophobic explanation, and so lends credence to part of the argument by Joye and De Block. Short-termism, anthropocentrism, systems control and narrow species preferences seem to dominate in the Swedish case study.

A different type of value conflict concerns the endangered Moabi tree. Here we observe the spread of markets, power of developers and international trade. The conservation of Moabi is certainly not served by the extension of the commodity frontier outlined in this study. Nor would the further extension of property titles, wood trade, and monetary exchange values via TEEB or UNFI mechanisms help. Indeed the intervention of the World Bank appears as an extension of the trade problems driving exploitation. Solutions require addressing the fundamental power relationships embedded in a colonial past. Veuthey and Gerber (2011) use a feminist ecological economics perspective to explore the value pluralism and conflicts. This reveals the commoditisation of Moabi as a tool of power through which environmental valuation is imposed, claims made on the resources of the politically weak, and socio-environmental impacts on the poor are traded-off against financial returns for the rich.

The issue closes with an appeal to the concept of mercy for Nature and its inclusion as an environmental virtue to be added to virtues like love, care, respect, humility, and wonder for Nature. Being merciful then demands a different behaviour than might be legally permissible or institutionally sanctioned. Mercy does not seem to be compatible with treating another less harshly for primarily egoistic reasons, e.g. as a means of avoiding trouble or lining one’s pockets. So
don’t expect to find mercy amongst orthodox economists’ or financiers’ reasons for avoiding ecosystems destruction and biodiversity loss. As Ferkany (2011) notes, environmental ethicists have seemingly tried every avenue of appeal to inspire their fellow human beings to forbear in the wanton destruction of Nature. To these he adds the prospect of a charge of mercilessness.

A new report then seems to be required. Something to explain the current merciless economics of scientists and society (MESS). Although, exploring the MESS is unlikely to be of much interest to empowered neoliberal politicians or the banking sector.

Part IIa Mainstream Economists Shutout Reality:

[Clive Spash is an economist who writes, researches and teaches on public policy with an emphasis on economic and environmental interactions. My main interests are interdisciplinary research on human behaviour, environmental values and the transformation of the world political economy to a more socially and environmentally just system.]
References
Ferkany, M. 2011. ‘Mercy as an environmental virtue’. Environmental Values 20(2): 265–283.
Gardiner, S. M. 2011. ‘Some early ethics of geoengineering the climate: a commentary on the values of the Royal Society Report’. Environmental Values 20(2): 163–188.
Hourdequin, M. (2010). ‘Climate, collective action and indivudal ethical obligations.’ Environmental Values 19: 443-464.
Joye, Y. and A. de Block. 2011. ‘“Nature and I are Two”: a critical examination of the biophilia hypothesis’. Environmental Values 20(2): 189–215.
Ojala, M. and R. Lidskog. 2011. ‘What lies beneath the surface? A case study of citizens’ moral reasoning with regard to biodiversity’. Environmental Values 20(2): 217–237.
Spash, C. L. (2007). ‘The economics of climate change impacts à la Stern: Novel and nuanced or rhetorically restricted?’ Ecological Economics 63(4): 706-713.
Spash, C. L. (2009). ‘The new environmental pragmatists, pluralism and sustainability.’ Environmental Values 18(3): 253-256.
Spash, C. L. and A. Vatn (2006). ‘Transferring environmental value estimates: Issues and alternatives.’ Ecological Economics 60(2): 379-388.
Veuthey, S. and J-F. Gerber. 2011. ‘Valuation contests over the commoditisation of the moabi tree in South-Eastern Cameroon’. Environmental Values 20(2): 239–264.

Distorting Reality

Public Good Project

April 25, 2015

By Jay Taber

 

[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.]

And about those green jobs… Prison Inmates Paid 93 Cents Per Hour to Assemble Solar Panels

WKOG Admin: “The Prison-Industrial Complex is financially lucrative in more ways than one. For example – exploiting prison inmates to build solar panels for 93 cents per hour. Perhaps this is built into “a just transition from fossil fuels and nuclear power” that the Big Greens use to sell their “new economy” dogma.”

Oregon’s Signature Solar Energy Project Built on Foundation of False Hopes and Falsehoods

The Oregonian/OregonLive

February 27, 2015

 

 

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

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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.”

Communication: the Invisible Environment

A Culture of Imbeciles

January 22, 2015

 

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.”

Illustration by Stuart McMillen

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.

Illustration by Stuart McMillen

Illustration by Stuart McMillen

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.

Illustration by Mark Gould

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.