Elizabeth Nickson

This is the last in a series explaining our current unstable financial environment. Our economies have turned to conservation and de-development, which has been unrealistically financialized. The fix is easy. Walk this back. Because the moral stink will follow us for 100 years.

Ever asked yourself why 20 million have poured through the Southern border in the last three and a half years? Oh, I know, in search of economic freedom, oppression by their home governments, or oligarchs, drugs, death squads, crime etc. Same with Africa. But again, why do they risk so much to leave homelands that almost certainly, most of them love. The idea of ‘place’ is not an idea, it is a deep attachment, physical, emotional and sensate that trumps reason. You have to kill a lot of your natural self to leave, to risk your life and that of your children to escape to the cold grey north and never return. The fear alone would overwhelm all but the strongest.

They are leaving because they must.

But why now? It’s been bad forever. In South and Central America, between the descendants of the Conquistadors and the Commies, everyone has been ground beneath the heel of the oppressor for 20 generations. Because activist charities pay for these long trains of migrants? Because the left in Europe and Democrats have declared the border open?

No. Well yes, and no, those latter are just the mechanisms. And they have been deliberately constructed.

Mostly they are coming because Black Rock, the UN, the WEF are grabbing their lands, the more fertile the better, driving them from those lands and sticking them into tenement cities where they have to scratch like chickens for a living.  Agenda 2030 is ravening under the radar in the US and Canada, where “civil society” in the pay of the government and environmental NGOs funded by oligarchs, is taking as much land and as many resources as possible out of the productive economy and shoving it into the land banks of BlackRock.

In the south, it’s not surreptitious. It is state policy to destroy their lives, to take their ancestral lands, whether it’s 40 acres or a half acre and leave them begging by the side of the road.

 

Climate Change is a complex financial mechanism which under the guise of “saving the planet”, is meant to save the predator class.

Which is not only morally bankrupt, but is dealing with a level of government and corporate debt that they know they cannot sustain. In the healthiest economy in the world, the US, all profits now are coming from either some mechanism of government subsidy – the $6 Trillion of the Covid catastrophe – or Collateralized Default Obligations. For instance right now Penguin is in court attempting to buy Random House. Why? Because they can borrow money to do that, buy back some of their stock and pay their shareholders. It will mean middle managers will lose their jobs, and marginal books will not be published, but the ravening maw of Jamie Diamond and Larry Fink will be satiated. For the moment. There is no other reason. Growth, real growth has stalled in every single enterprise.

This is how it works at the top of the class pyramid:

Last week on my island we were treated to the spectacle of well-heeled, highly educated, well-spoken older men and women arguing that the impoverished elderly, the young, and families starting out should not have housing because of climate change. Our island is 74 square miles with 10,000 residents. That means we have one resident per five acres.

Our government, the trust, had proposed the use of accessory buildings, brought up to code, for long-term rentals.

The extreme form of land conservation we practice has meant that housing prices have skyrocketed, so only the rich and the well-pensioned can afford to live here. A thousand or so working age people manage to make a living, generally via remote work. We have no staff for the schools, hospitals, businesses, restaurants. They cannot afford to live here.

About 200 people on our islands, mostly in their 70s and 80s, tightly aligned with the hysterical wing of the environmental movement work the process to stop any growth. Every new resident who pulls a permit is visited and threatened by a by-law officer. The woman who instigated this specific weapon, a former enviro bureaucrat from LA, demanded full time by-law officers for years until she won, after which she fought for aggressive enforcement.

With this one act, she set islanders against each other, creating conflict where there was none. This too is deliberate. A community divided is easily controlled.

Ring any bells?

At the same time, in our vast swaths of upland forests, the UN organization Transitions is slowly accreting that land. For who? We don’t really know. Transitions is everywhere, in the US, in Canada, in every country in Europe.  It is where you live. It is one of the many prongs of Agenda 2030. Everywhere, it invades local governments and acts to suppress economic activity.

Transitions also trades carbon credits. For who? Who do you think?

Therefore Transitions, which has a rainbow-colored smiley PR face, is in that business. Buying land to transfer it to international organizations and mega-rich families so they can make money on our forests. But not us. We can’t.  We can’t even thin them to prevent catastrophic forest fire.

Those contracts must be interesting, not that anyone can see them. The first thing they do is act as whacking big first-time tax deductions. The second thing they do is act as an annual tax deduction because those trees are eating CO2. Very clever. International interests buy our land (and yours) and use it to not pay taxes. While banking some of the most valuable assets on the planet.

Multiply this 100,000 times, and you will see just a very tiny piece of the vast tapestry, the puzzle, of the Climate Change/Agenda 2030 plan that will shut down economic activity everywhere.

imagine these people embedded in every single industry. Because they are. Canada has enough oil and gas to supply the world for the next five hundred years. We have all the rare earth minerals required by electric cars and every green invention. We, the most highly educated work-force in the world, have developed hundreds of mitigations that prevent knock-on effects for the mining we do.  Mining is the most productive engine of the economy. Its job multiplier is 7, and all seven jobs are high-paying jobs. Mining means rural counties and townships can thrive, pay for their schools, their healthcare.

Every farm, every ranch, every rural business, every logging operation, every developer, every contractor and builder, every grocery chain, every surprisingly successful business has an activist cadre assigned to it. All that activist does is strategize on how to destroy that business. And they are paid, through environmental organizations funded by BlackRock.

Tucker Carlson ran a piece two years ago about an Amish cattle farmer, the most successful in his region, super-green, who doesn’t use fertilizer or even gas, who was visited and shut down by an armed gang of government thugs.

This is how they operate. Find the most successful in any sector or sub-sector, attack and destroy. No one must accrete enough financial or community-based power to fight back.

[…]

Via https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/climate-change-is-a-100-trillion-c47

By Jessica Weinkle

From his perch overlooking the global community, UN Secretary General António Guterres has warned that the world is on the “highway to climate hell.” The president of the United States has likewise threatened that denying the impacts of climate change means condemning Americans to “a dangerous future.” Former Secretary of State John Kerry has scorned unnamed demagogues slowing the process of decarbonization.

Overblown rhetoric from the political class is nothing new. But now, the politicians have a fresh cheering section: a cohort of scientists who have set aside rational deliberation about methodology and findings in favor of empathic allyship with advocate researchers. A leading climate psychologist, for example, has argued that those not afflicted with climate anxiety must be in denial, leaning on faulty “rationalisations against existential terror of annihilation.”

Such arguments suggest that a fair amount of propaganda has made its way into the scientific method—and perhaps in no venue more clearly than the Planetary Boundaries framework.

Advocates have positioned the framework as a functional approach to organizing society within the (perceived) limits of Earth’s ecology and human ingenuity. Although wrapped in a façade of technical exercise, the framework is scaffolded by the values and assumptions of the model creators. More than an impartial application of science, it serves as a vehicle for political messaging while maintaining an air of objectivity.  By understanding where it came from, we can see the path back to scientific integrity and rational deliberation.

The Planetary Boundaries enterprise

On the surface, Planetary Boundaries and its various derivatives seem scientific. They appear in notable scientifically-oriented journal outlets like Nature and Science, and they tend to involve lots of complicated calculations and formulas.

The framework posits nine thresholds under which “humanity can operate safely.” These range from climate change to ocean acidification to rates of biodiversity loss. If any of the boundaries (or perhaps some of the boundaries) are transgressed (for some unknown amount of time) the earth will no longer be safe (at some unknown point in the future).

There is some logic here, but the framework is inherently arbitrary. It conflates regional and global scales, which artificially constrains policy options and presents in technocratic form a moral philosophy for social and economic development. Planetary boundaries embed the ideas of tipping points, tipping elements, and tipping cascades, which also suffer from muddle; indeed, there is “no rapidly approaching planetary cliff.”

The idea of Planetary Boundaries first appeared in 2009 in the journal Ecology & Society as a “proof of concept paper.” The paper’s lead author, Johan Rockström, had joint association with the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) supported by the Swedish government.

The framework follows an “overshoot and collapse” trajectory. This means that a variable of interest—say pollution—increases beyond some limit in a system’s capacity, at which point the whole system collapses. In this way, Planetary Boundaries is a restatement of neo-Malthusian ideas of physical limits to the growth of humanity. In fact, the author team explicitly situated its framework as a follow-on to the Limits to Growth modeling exercise developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s for the Club of Rome, a group of elite entrepreneurs and scientists concerned that population growth would necessarily lead to ecological problems.

Yet framing population as a problem has never gone well for society. The publication of the Limits to Growth report in 1972 and broader efforts by the neo-Malthusian community on both sides of the Atlantic helped fuel fears that population growth would lead to catastrophe and set the stage for various population control measures around the world, including forced sterilization.

More recently, the Club of Rome (with the Stockholm Resilience Center and a few others) took up the Planetary Boundaries cause in an explicit campaign, called Earth4All, to transform the global economic system to provide an “equitable future on a finite planet” through wealth redistribution, “stabilizing the world’s population,” and degrowth. Meanwhile, another body, the Earth Commission, which Rockström co-directs, has busied itself with developing ever more boundaries humans should not cross.

And it is this morally vexed storyline at the heart of the rallying cry for a safe and just planet that has inspired crowds to march.

Cascades of Capture

Despite the chilling relationship between planetary boundaries, neo-Malthusianism, and population control, the concept has been happily taken up by a range of groups working to transform institutions like health, banking, and finance towards the Earth’s Commission’s ideals.

These institutions tend to zero in on one of the two forces neo-Malthusians have seen as sources of impending doom: population and economy.

I’ll start with concerns about population growth which underpins the concept of “planetary health.”

The original use of the term “planetary health” is attributed to Friends of the Earth in 1980, who amended the World Health Organization’s 1946 definition of health so that that “health is a state of complete physical, mental, social and ecological well-being and not merely the absence of disease—that personal health involves planetary health.”

The term then became popularized in 2015 by a joint project between The Lancet, an elite health science publication, and the Rockefeller Foundation. The project asserts that “we have been mortgaging the health of future generations to realize economic and development gains”—an idea also explicitly included in the Planetary Boundaries framework.

Richard Horton, Editor in Chief of The Lancet, has since made it his mission to “develop the idea of planetary health—the health of human civilizations and the ecosystems on which they depend.” His ideas are embodied in The Lancet Planetary Health journal, which aims to support “radical civilisational transformation” and create a “safe and just space for humanity, respecting planetary boundaries.”

Horton celebrates the work of Extinction Rebellion (XR) in calling on medical professionals to join the cause and “inject moral force into the political debate on climate action.”  In writing about an influential journal article on ocean circulation, XR’s Roger Hallam said “repressed scientist” who say that the planetary situation “‘kind of scary’” are “like saying Auschwitz was ‘kind of unpleasant’.”

The problem in the simile should be apparent. The Holocaust produced millions of deaths of documented deaths at the hands of a formal genocide government policy. The research Hallam was critiquing used a computer model to estimate ocean cycling 2,800 “model years” into the future to say something about tipping in the present. But Hallam’s extreme view is supported by a science-like narrative of an earth on the brink of collapse that is legitimized by The Lancet’s advocacy-oriented editor.

If you think the problem is just academic journals and advocates, think again. In an IPCC report from 2022, the authors used the term to describe the result of resilient development.

The IPCC’s footnotes demonstrate, however, the term’s ambiguity.

• Planetary health is defined as “a concept based on the understanding that human health and human civilization depend on ecosystem health and the wise stewardship of ecosystems.”
• Ecosystem health is defined as “a metaphor used to describe the condition of an ecosystem, by analogy with human health.”

That is, “planetary health” is what results from the kind of development that writers of the IPCC report like and what they like is the Planetary Boundaries worldview.

Now, to banking and finance- important institutions in economic growth.

The Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) is a coalition of central banks that pressures the banking sector and its regulators into meeting Paris Agreement goals. NGFS  directly invokes the idea of Planetary Boundaries in its development of scenarios for use in bank stress-testing.

The NGFS scenario narratives (below left) get their names from an article by the Planetary Boundaries authors that appeared in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) in 2018. The article has one of the highest attention scores—that is, it was mentioned a lot in the news, blogs, and policy documents—in all of science. In the article, the authors set out two trajectories for humanity: a stabilized Earth and the Hothouse Earth which is “likely to be uncontrollable and dangerous to many.” It poses severe risks, the authors continue, “for health, economies, political stability (especially for the most climate vulnerable), and ultimately, the habitability of the planet for humans.” An image from the PNAS article (below right) was used in the NGFS scenarios technical documentation illustrating the fingerprints of Planetary Boundaries in the development of the scenarios (I added the pink circles in the images below).  NGFS also uses the planetary boundary framework in the development of scenarios central banks can run to assess nature-related economic and financial risk.

Planetary boundaries is also the guiding framework for the Science Based Targets Network—an initiative combining the Earth Commission with the founders of the Science Based Target Initiative. The latter (SBTi) is itself wrapped up in a complicated network of coalitions that has been the source of much ire for U.S. legislators concerned with potential antitrust violations occurring in ESG and sustainable investing activities.

And so, it is from here that we find leading advocacy organizations promulgating ideas of systemic financial risk caused by climate change and policy entrepreneurs under the auspices the Financial Stability Board building a case for corporate disclosure on the foundation of Planetary Boundaries.

[…]

Via https://jessicaweinkle.substack.com/cp/145667952

Daily Mail

A 12-year-old schoolboy has been investigated by counter-extremism officers after he declared there ‘are only two genders’.

The child made a video, posted online, in which he also stated: ‘There’s no such thing as non-binary’.

And in response to school bullies who mistakenly believed he supported transgender ideology, he said: ‘[I’m] gay not queer.’

Originally a homophobic slur, trans activists claim the word ‘queer’ now describes people who don’t adhere to ideas of sex or gender.

But the school told the boy’s mother they would refer him to Prevent, the Home Office programme that attempts to stop people becoming terrorists, amid fears he could be at risk of being radicalised by the far-right.

The Mail is aware of the boy’s identity but has agreed not to disclose it, and has also viewed the social media posts.

The boy’s mother was visited by Prevent and Northumbria Police officers this week, in a meeting she described as ‘an interrogation’.

Officers listed a string of allegations to illustrate the boy was at risk of radicalisation.

The boy’s mother said: ‘We think that he was targeted as the children believe gay people agree with trans ideology.

‘He made a video which I uploaded to YouTube where he said there ‘are only two genders’ and ‘I’m gay not queer’.

‘The school phoned up and were incensed by it. They said that they would refer him to Prevent for that video.

‘They said that he was at risk of radicalisation – not that he had been, but was a risk when he gets to 13 and is entitled to his own social media accounts.

[…]

Via https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13581155/Boy-12-referred-counter-extremist-Prevent-officers-school-declaring-two-genders-Im-gay-not-queer.html

Episode 47 Cleopatra: The Last Ptolemy

The History of Ancient Egypt

Professor Robert Brier

Film Review

As conquerors of Egypt, Roman historian totally misconstrued Cleopatra. She was neither a seductress nor even particularly beautiful.  She took the throne at 17 with her half brother (and husband) Prolemy XIII, who was 10. .

A Greek politician named Pothinus, serving as advisor to Ptolemy, and her half brother turned the Egyptian Greeks against Cleopatra for being allegedly pro-Rome.* This forced her to flee to Syria to try to raise an army. Meanwhile Pompei, one of the three Roman proconsuls Pompei fled to Egypt owing to a dispute with with the other two, Julius Caesar and Crassus. After Pothinus decapitated Pompeii, Caesar was also dispatched to Egypt to sanction Prothinus for killing a Roman citizen in cold blood.

When Caesar declares that Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII will rule jointly, he triggers an insurrection (which comes to be known as the Alexandrian wars) against Caesar’s army. After Ptolemy accidentally drowns in the Nile. Cleopatra marries a second brother, Ptolemy XIV. After the latter also disappears, she becomes Caesars mistress and bears him a son she names Caesarion.

Caesar (who already has a wife) establishes Cleopatra and his son in a villa outside Rome. He also outrages much of the Roman population by building a statue of Cleopatra as Isis in a Roman temple. A short time later, he was assassinated, and Cleopatra fled to Egypt.

After a succession feud developed between Octavian (who became Augustus Caesar) and Mark Anthony over who would succeed Caesar, Mark Anthony and Cleopatra become lovers and she gives birth to twins named Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene. Mark Anthony then returns to Rome, where he marries Octavia (Octavian’s sister).

Five years later, when Mark Anthony is trying to raise money for his war against Octavian, he also marries Cleopatra and she agrees to supply him with money and troops provided he declares her queen of Sinai, Judea, Cypress and Arabia and makes Caesarion her regent in Egypt.

After Cleopatra has a third child, Ptolemy, by Anthony, he declares her queen of these four territories, as well as Libya; his son Alexander Helios king of Armenia, Media and Parthia; his daughter Cleopatra Selene queen of Libya; and his son Ptolemy king of Phoenicia.

Defeated by Octavius at the naval battle of Actium, Mark Anthony and Cleopatra retreat to her palace in Alexandria. As Octavius marches on the city, she rejects his demands that she turn over Mark Anthony and kills herself (either by drinking poison or self-induced snake bite.

*The Ptolemies had no army and could only stay in power with Roman military support.

Film can be viewed with with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/1492791/1492897

Episode 45 Cleopatra’s Family

The History of Ancient Egypt

Professor Robert Brier

Film Review

Because Ptolemy XI left no legitimate heirs, Ptolemy XII (88-58 BC and 55-51 BC) assumed the throne after the former was driven out of the country. His subjects called him the bastard and the flute player (because he played the fute rather than governing the country.

At a time when Romans were still living in mud huts, Rome had supplanted Greece as the major military power in the Mediterranean. The Ptolemies now paid Rome (mainly in grain) to provide military protection to keep their family on the Egyptian throne.

Alexandria was now about 1/3 Jews (mainly merchants), 1/3 Egyptians and 1/3 Greeks (who despised the Ptolemies but no longer had a standing army).

Rome was ruled by a triumvirate consisting of Crassus, Pompei and Ceasar. After Ptolemy XII raised taxes to pay the Roman army, the Greeks of Alexandria rebelled and forced him to flee to Rome. In his absence, his oldest sister Berenice took the throne, married her brother Buria and strangled him a week later. Meanwhile her younger sister Cleopatra VII was interacting with scholars at the Alexandrian library and was the first Ptolemy to learn Egyptian (and other languages).

Rome sent troops, led by Mark Anthony, to restore Ptolemy XII to the throne. Berenice’s second husband husband led the Egyptian forces against Anthony and was killed. With Alexandria under continuing Roman occupation, Ptolemy XII resumed the throne.

He built a new temple in the temple complex on Philae Island (near Aswan) begun by prior Ptolemies. It’s a temple to Isis, the wife of the manufactured Greek god Serapis (blend of Osiris and Apis bull).

UNESCO moved the temple to higher ground when the Aswan dam was built in the 1960s. In his will, Ptolemy designate 17 year old Cleopatra VII and her 13-year-old brother Ptollemy XIII (who she was expected to married) as his successors.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/1492791/1492892