by Peter Koenig for the Saker Blog and first published by the New Eastern Outlook – NEO
“The Saker”
“Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War” – Plato.
This wisdom is as valid today as it was 2,500 years ago. Wars go on and on. They are exactly the anti-dote of sustainability. Though, they may be the only “sustainability” modern mankind knows – endless destruction, killing, shameless exploitation of Mother Earth and its sentient beings, including humans.
Yes, we are hellbent towards “sustainably”, destroying our planet and all its living beings, with wars and conflicts and shameless exploitation of Mother Earth – and the people who have peacefully inhabited her lands for thousands of years.
All for greed, and more greed. Greed and destruction are certainly “unsustainable” features of our western “civilization”. Not to worry, in the grand scheme of things, Mother Earth will survive. She will cleanse herself by shaking and shedding off the destroyers, the annihilators – mankind. Only the brave will survive. Indigenous people, who have abstained from abject consumerism and instead worshipped Mother Earth and expressed their gratitude to her daily gifts. There are not many such societies left on our planet.
In the meantime, we lie about the sustainability we live in. We lie to ourselves and to the public at large around us. We make believe sustainability is our cause – and we use the term freely and constantly. Most of us don’t even know what it is supposed to mean. “Sustainability” and “sustainable” anything and everything have become slogans; or household words.
Such buzz-words, repeated over and over again, are made for promoting ideas, and for bending people’s minds to believe in something that isn’t.
We pretend and say that we work sustainably, we develop – just about anything we touch – sustainably, and we project the future in a most sustainable way. That’s what we are made to believe by those who coined this most fabulously clever, but untrue term. It is the 101 of a psycho-factory.
As Voltaire so pointedly said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities; can make you commit atrocities.”
Sustainability. What does it mean? It has about as many interpretations as there are people who use the term – namely none specific. It sounds good. Because it has become – well, a household word, ever since the World Bank invented, or rather diverted the term for “sustainable development” in the 1990s, in connection, first, with Global Warming, then with Climate Change – and now back to both.
Imagine! – There was a time at the World Bank – and possibly other institutions, when every page of almost every report had to contain at least once the word “sustainable”, or “sustainability”. Yes, that’s the extent of insanity propagated then – and today, it follows on a global scale, more sophisticated – the corporate world, the mega-polluters make it their buzz-word – our business is sustainable, and we with our products promote sustainability – worldwide.
In fact, sustainable, sustainable growth, sustainable development, sustainable this and sustainable that – was originally coined by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, the Rio Summit, the Rio Conference, and the Earth Summit – held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June in 1992.
The summit is intimately linked to the subsequent drive on Global Warming and Climate Change. It exuded projections of sea level risings, of disappearing cities and land strips, like Florida and New York City, as well as parts of California and many coastal areas and towns in Africa and Asia. It painted endless disasters, droughts, floods and famine as their consequence, if we – mankind – didn’t act. This first of a series of UN environment / climate summits is also closely connected with the UN Agendas 2021 and 2030. The UN Agenda 2030 incorporates or uses as main vehicle – the 17 “Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)”.
In a special UN Conference in 2016, Bill Gates was able to introduce into the 16th SDG “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”, the 9th of the 12 sub-targets – “By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.” This is precisely what Bill Gates needs to introduce digital IDs – most likely injected via vaccines, beginning with children from developing countries – i.e. the poor and defenseless are time and again used as guinea pigs.
They won’t know what happens to them. First trials are underway in one or several rural schools in Bangladesh – see this https://www.globalresearch.ca/coronavirus-causes-effects-real-danger-agenda-id2020/5706153 and this https://www.globalresearch.ca/agenda-id2020-continued-diabolical-agenda-within-agenda/5721717 .
These 17 sustainable development goals, are all driving towards a Green Agenda, or as some prominent “left” US Democrat-political figures call it, the New Green Deal. It is nothing else but capitalism painted Green, at a horrendous cost for mankind and for the resources of the world. But it is sold under the label of creating a more sustainable world.
Never mind, the enormous amounts of hydrocarbons – the key polluter itself – that will be needed to convert our “black” economy into a Green economy. Simply because we have not developed effective and efficient alternative sources of energy. The main reasons for this are the strong and politically powerful hydrocarbon lobbies.
The energy cost (hydrocarbon-energy from oil and coal) of producing solar panels and windmills is astounding. So, today’s electric cars – Tesla and Co. – are still driven by hydrocarbon produced electricity – plus their batteries made from lithium destroy pristine landscapes, like huge natural salt flats in Bolivia, Argentina, China and elsewhere. The use of these sources of energy is everything but “sustainable”.
According to a study by the European Association for Battery Electric Vehicles commissioned by the European Commission (EC), “The ‘Well-to-Tank’ energy efficiency (from the primary energy source to the electrical plug), taking into account the energy consumed by the production and distribution of the electricity, is estimated at around 37%.“https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites/transport/files/themes/strategies/consultations/doc/2009_03_27_future_of_transport/20090408_eabev_%28scientific_study%29.pdf.
See also Michael Moore’s film “Planet of the Humans” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE&feature=emb_title .
Hydrogen power is promoted as the panacea of future energy resources. But is it really? Hydrocarbons or fossil fuels today amount to 80% of all energy used worldwide. This is non-renewable and highly polluting energy. Today to produce hydrogen is still mostly dependent on fossil fuels, similar to electricity.
As long as we have purely profit-fueled hydrocarbon lobbies that prevent governments collectively to invest in alternative energy research, like solar energy of the 2nd Generation, i.e. derived from photosynthesis (what plants do), hydrogen production uses more fossil fuels than using straight gas or petrol-derived fuels. Therefore hydrogen, say a hydrogen-driven car, maybe as much as 40% – 50% less efficient than would be a straight electric car. The burden on the environment can be considerably higher. Thus, not sustainable with today’s technology.
To enhance your belief in their slogans of “sustainability”, they put up some windmills or solar cells in the “backyard” of their land- and landscape devastating coal mines. They will be filmed for propaganda purposes along with their “sustainable” buzz-words.
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The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the IMF are fully committed to the idea of the New Green Deal. For them it is not unfettered neoliberal capitalism – and extreme consumerism emanating from it, that is the cause for the world’s environmental and societal breakdown, but the use of polluting energies, like hydrocarbons. They seem to ignore the enormous fossil fuel use to convert to a green energy-driven economy. Or, are they really not aware? Capitalism is OK, we just have to paint it green (see this https://www.globalresearch.ca/great-reset-revisited/5723573, and this https://www.globalresearch.ca/iwf-und-wef-vom-grosen-lockdown-zur-grosen-transformation-covid-19-und-die-folgen/5724357 .
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Let’s look at what else is “sustainable”- or not.
Water use and privatization – Coca Cola tells us their addictive and potentially diabetes-causing soft drinks are produced “sustainably”. They tout sustainability as their sales promotion all over the world. “Our business is sustainable from A to Z. Coco Cola follows a business culture of sustainability.”
They use enormous amounts of pristine clean drinking water – and so does Nestlé to further promote its number One business branch, bottled water. Nestlé has overtaken Coca Cola as the world number One in bottled water. They both use primarily subterranean sources of drinking water – least costly and often rich in minerals. Both of them have made or are about to sign agreements with Brazil’s President to exploit the world’s largest freshwater aquifer, the Guarani, underlaying Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. They both proclaim sustainability.
Both Coca Cola and Nestlé have horror stories in the Global South (i.e. India, Brazil, Mexico and others), as well as in the Global North. Nestlé is in a battle with the municipality of the tiny Osceola Township, in Michigan, where residents complain the Swiss company’s water extraction techniques are ruining the environment. Nestlé pays the State of Michigan US$ 200 to extract 130 million gallons of water per year (2018).
Through over-exploitation both in the Global South and the Global North, especially in the summer, the water table sinks to unattainable levels for the local populations – which are deprived of their water source. Protesting with their government or city officials is often in vain. Corruption is all overarching. – Nothing sustainable here.
These are just two examples of privatizing water for bottling purposes. Privatization of public water supply on a much larger scale is at the core of the issue, carried out mostly in developing countries (the Global South), mainly by French, British, Spanish and US water corporations.
Privatization of water is a socially most unsustainable feat, as it deprives the public, especially the poor, from access to their legitimate water resources. Water is a public good – and water is also a basic human right. On 28 July 2010, through Resolution 64/292, the United Nations General Assembly explicitly recognized the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledged that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights.
The public water use of Nestlé and Coca Cola – and many others, mind you, doesn’t even take account of the trillions of used plastic bottles ending up as uncollected and non-recycled waste, in the sea, fields, forests and on the road sides. Worldwide less than 8% of plastic bottles are recycled. Therefore, nothing of what Nestlé and Coca Cola practice and profess is sustainable. It’s an outright lie.
Petrol industry – BP with its green business emblem, makes believe – visually, every time you pass a BP station – that they are green. PB proclaims that their oil exploration and exploitation is green and environmentally sustainable.
Let’s look at reality. The so far considered largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was a giant industrial disaster that started on April 20, 2010 and lasted to 19 September 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, spilling about 780,000 cubic meter of raw petroleum over an area of up to 180,000 square kilometers. BP promised a full cleanup. By February 2015 they declared task completed. In reality, two thirds of the spilled oil still remains in the sea and as toxic tar junks along the sea shore and beaches; they have not been cleaned up – and may never be removed. – Where is the sustainability of their promise? Another outright lie.
BP and other oil corporations also have horrendous human rights records – just about everywhere they operate, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, but also in Asia. The abrogation of human rights is also an abrogation of sustainability.
In this essay BP is used as an example for the petrol industry. None of the petrol giants operate sustainably anywhere in the world, and least where water table-destructive fracking is practiced.
Sustainable mining – is another flagrant lie. But it sells well to the blinded people. And most of the civilized world is blinded. Unfortunately. They want to continue in their comfort zone which includes the use of copper, gold and other precious metals and stones, rare earths for ever more sophisticated electronic gear, gadgets and especially military electronically guided precision weaponry – as well as hydrocarbons in one way or another.
Sustainable mining of anything unrenewable is a Big Oxymoron. Anything you take from the earth that is non-renewable is by its nature not sustainable. It’s simply gone. Forever. In addition to the raw material not being renewable, the environmental damage caused by mining – especially gold and copper – is horrendous. Once a mine is exploited in a short 30- or 40-years’ concession, the mining company leaves mountains of contaminated waste, soil and water behind – that takes a thousand years or more to regenerate.
Yet, the industry’s palaver is “sustainability”, and the public buys it.
In fact, our civilization’s sustainability is zero. Aside from the pollution, poisoning and intoxication that we leave around us, our mostly western civilization has used natural resources at the rate of 3 to 4 times in excess of what Mother Earth so generally provides us with. We, the west, had passed the threshold of One in the mid-sixties. In Africa and most of Asia, the rate of depletion is still way below the factor of One, on average somewhere between 0.4 and 0.6.
“Sustainability” is a flash-word, has no meaning in our western civilization. It is pure deception – self-deception, so we may continue with our unsustainable ways of life. That’s what profit-bound capitalism does. It lives today with ever more consumerism, more luxury for the ever-fewer oligarchs – on the resources of tomorrow.
The sustainability of everything is not only a cheap slogan, it’s a ruinous self-deception. A Global Great Reset is indeed needed – but not according to the methods of the IMF and WEF. They would just shovel more resources and assets from the bottom 99.99% to the top few, painting the “new” capitalism a shiny bright green – and fooling the masses. We, The People, must take The Reset in our own hands, with consciousness and responsibility.
So, We the People, forget sustainable but act responsibly.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Well, I am trying my best to be sustainable. Whilst I am not quite as old as Peter Koenig, but not far off, so wrote this in response to another man John Ward of The Slog who is also older than me. I don’t agree with everything he writes, what he does write he writes very well…like some others on here..In Fact The Saker’s blog is a great resource. I was gutted about the death of Andre Vltchek – and wanted to but could not be bothered arguing with Katrerna. A lot of the stuff she wrote was true, but the stuff about Scottish ,Welsh end English people hating each other or even The Irish for that matter is not. I note a lot of her content she read in a book, and a lot of it was complete and utter dross which she just portrayed in her own words of her hatred for us English.
I won’t argue with any of your main points here, except one. First of all, very early on in January, I actually thought I had COVID, before any of the main propaganda had kicked in. It was like a mild flu, which weakened me and stopped me going out much for 2 or 3 weeks, but was nothing like as serious as a real flu I have had 2 or 3 times in my life. With real flu, it is extremely difficult to get out of bed to make the loo. You have no energy whatsoever. By February, I was literally telling people in the pub, that I think I was one of the first to have it, but that it was nothing serious, and i was joking about it. By this time the propaganda was building up, but almost everyone was carrying on their lives as normal.
By the end of March, when the lockdown was really kicking in, I realised the situation was very much more serious, than what all the evidence I could find and analyse (I used to be a professional analyst). Whether COVID was any different from any normal flu (which changes / mutates almost every season) didn’t really matter. The propaganda, was becoming extremely intense, yet all the available statistics demonstrated quite clearly that the death rate from all causes, had not increased at all. In fact less people were dying in February and March. than was normal compared to almost every single recent year.
This meant to me that something else was going on. It then became obvious that almost every possible death in almost every case was being classed as COVID – even in people who were very old and had multiple serious other diseases. Someone at an extremely High Level above Government, had decided to ramp up the numbers of deaths by COVID far beyond any Reality. At the same time as this, The Propaganda reached by Far the most extreme levels of anything ever seen anywhere ever.
So something else was going on. I saw what was going on in India, with the panic there resulting with vast amounts of food rotting away in the fields uncollected and not distributed, and similar things were happening in the USA, with people running away from meat processing plants.
So I thought, bloody hell, that ridiculous theory of a New World Government, controlling everything and aiming for a Massive reduction in The World’s Population is coming true. The are going to try and starve us to death, cos the virus itself is pretty harmless. So I thought the supermarkets are soon going to run out of food, so I bought myself a Rotavator, and started digging up my Garden to grow much more food. My wife thought I was mad, but she’s long known that any way, and was pleased to see me get a bit more exercise than normal.
I was amazed the supermarkets have not yet run out of food. However its early days yet, and I still think they will, particularly if we get a very severe winter.
So the point I disagree with you about, is this thing is not about the virus, and that those in control (whoever they are – and I suspect it is not at the Boris Johnson Level) are NOT making mistakes with regards to poor analysis of Statistics. They are doing it Deliberately, and they want to do far more than control us at the George Orwell 1984 Level, they really do want to first send most of us mad, and then kill most of us off.
All the indications are that they will succeed.
This photo, straight out of the Film 1984 tells you everything you need to know. At first I couldn’t believe it was real. I thought it must be a photo shop, but it is very real indeed.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2020/04/29/TELEMMGLPICT000229681936_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqmvDsehfjg0AN6-v5Cj0_VhUv7IYXbpwCFTGTXOallgs.jpeg?imwidth=1280
Tony
Tony, I would put the rotavator back in the shed if I were you. Try reading http://www.charlesdowding.co.uk and several of his published books about brilliant veg growing without digging. Ideal for the elderly and I can tell you after doing it for 6 years that it works for mere mortals too.
Emotional and cultural inertia keep our society moving along a path that is not entirely predetermined or foreseen, but a path that is obscured by short term thought and action patterns. For many people there is both an emotional and intellectual inertia expressed in conversations tending towards these problems with the comments “we don’t want to go there,” or “I don’t want to think about it.”
It is one manifestation of the fear factor – fear of uncertainty, fear of the unknown, fear of death. Many people do not want to address those fears, to contemplate the insignificant finiteness of their lives. Corporate media plays with these emotions, providing infotainment – the presentation of wars, disasters, accidents, and violence interspersed with feel good stories, sports, social media, entertainment guides and other items designed to calm the frightened mind from actually thinking about the context of all the bad stuff, unless as presented by an acceptable indispensable pundit. This emotional inertia becomes a cultural inertia and becomes a readily manipulated factor in political life.
Politicians are adept at manipulating the emotional basis of fear in order to grab the power they desire and to maintain the power through a fearful submissiveness. This submissiveness can be unspoken, simply the overall patriarchy of society. It can also be verbally expressed in the oft spoken statement about certain subjects being “complex” and thus beyond the ken of most individuals. Often times subject matter is “secret” or “classified”, simply because it is necessary to keep things secret and privileged that the public would probably be appalled by if they discovered what was really happening, what was really being said.
On a larger scale, though, fear relies on the creation of an ‘other’ – someone outside the law not in the criminal sense, but basically as a non-person with no rights at all, deemed to have malicious intentions towards the ‘homeland’. This creation depends on lies about the other and the leader of the other – their desire for conquest and power by a malevolent anti-hero. Common to this but also used separately, fear is used to malign the religion of the other as evil, oppressive, hateful, and demanding death to the infidel, takfir, raghead, gook, or satanist.
Inertia is not all encompassing. Certain forms of progress, change, and sunny ways are happily accepted. Many technological functions are quickly adapted in the fields of medicine and science. The ever expanding world of electronics is a prime consumer example with new advanced/improved features presented on an annual basis. Entertainment media have become more sophisticated, more attractive, more able to capture and divert both emotions and intellect away from any existential fears.
Medication, drugs – legal and illegal – are beneficial to society until they are oversubscribed and overused leading to many problems from side effects of the drugs to overt addiction problems. The growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria from this over prescription and from their large overuse in factory scale farming is a growing major problem for hospitals. Drugs play a major role in our society ranging from the financial and political influence of the major corporations to the personal costs of misuse.
The ever increasing wonders of material goods and consumer products create a demand from the seven and a half billion of us, imposing costs and problems from the harvesting of resources, through the processing of the resources into a product, and finally the carefree manner in which all this stuff is simply thrown away. Advertising inculcates in us the irrational need and want for many consumer goods with short staying power. Harvesting and manufacturing processes demand large amounts of power, the vast majority derived from carbon sources. Energy refinement from crude resources creates many harmful chemical byproducts, producing a few useful chemicals with short term benefits, but then adding long term environmental and physiological dangers.
And we do not care.
Sure, superficially we care. We apply the reduce, recycle, and reuse mantra to our daily lives in a limited response to our consumer culture. We buy millions more automobiles with increased mileage and reduced emissions. For larger humanitarian purposes rallies and concerts are held to raise awareness and money for whatever the most recent mainstream drama is unfolding in some distant region. Politicians of all stripes generally acknowledge climate change, pollution, foreign human disasters, natural or man made, then continue on their double standard routine of chasing down the money path and blaming others for their inability to act in a manner conducive to saving the environment or preventing more war. More growth, more jobs, more stuff, more money for the banksters and corporations. In general the inertia of our daily lives, the routines of working, eating, recreating, shopping, entertaining restrains us at a level of complacency and wilful ignorance towards the end results of it all. It keeps us in short term comfort, for the most part not able and willing to conceive the big changes necessary or inevitable.
Reality is more demanding once realized and confronted. Change is already underway as indicated in the previous chapters, financially and environmentally. For the moment nuclear warfare is not “in process”, but many background changes are occurring increasing the probable risk. The environmental changes are inexorable, the pace of change increasing. Financial change tends towards inexorable dowturns or outright collapse, but has such a large human component that it could be readily softened as to consequences for most of the world. There are solutions but they demand a large change to our inertia, in direction, energy, and time. Otherwise, human society as it stands will cease to exist. Either a new paradigm will be created by ourselves for ourselves and the natural world, or a new paradigm will emerge with the possible and probable exclusion of humanity.
“Simply because we have not developed effective and efficient alternative sources of energy. ”
Poppycock.
Eminent US nuclear scientist Alvin Weinberg created a working thorium reactor in the 1950’s; but the US energy authorities told him to go fly a kite.
Such an energy solution is safe, effectively unlimited and CO2 free.
The main reason for suppressing this for 70 years are not “the strong and politically powerful hydrocarbon lobbies” but rather the chaos exploiting political class who rule the Earth.
Reference: Thorium Remix 2011 documentary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4
Agreed!
Like John Perkin’s heartfelt sentimentality for indigenism (which one SHOULD share for nearly every form of life, from the American Bison to the butterfly or bee….without self loathing for being a westerner………OR a Japanese!!!.) I find Peter’s ideas………… a mixture of opposites:
On the one hand:
Useful Exposés of the vacuous neurolinguistic programming of the globalists intent on culling the human herd………..and holding back ALL forms of progress that do not serve to increase their relative power to pull off their “utopia” through mass murder, technocratic megalomania (Gates of Hell) and mind control (MSM….”popular” culture, etc). And their “sustainability” and “green” frauds make me want to puke.
What they are sincerely interesting in “sustaining” is their collective EGO run amuck …..which, at the very top is Luciferianism. All the rest, short of the pinnacle of “globalism” is hangers on and slaves kissing Satan’s Ass, eager to be cogs in that machinery……..for their slice of material comfort ….and power.
On the other hand:
A self-flagellating Weak Mental Flank in the battle against the Top of the “Elites of a Moral Garbage Can” in the form of “Gaia” Earth Goddess PAGAN Worship and “Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa” for being HUMAN: The “Exceptional SPECIES” that unlike any other on this planet: Uses FIRE!
And hence can smelt metals from their ores…..in the Bronze Age …..and the Iron Age and the Coming Fusion Age…..indeed “sustaining” increasing consciousness (a double edged sword like everything else at play in all this!) amongst 1+ billion Chinese…..1+ billion Indians and other NON_self-loathing, self doubting “Westerners” freaked out by the increasing pace….and “double-edgedness” of scientific and technological progress……eager to hand the baton off to ANYONE else……and retire to Walden Pond with Henry David Thoreau…..
Which is only “sustainable” for 0.001 % of humans now living……OR LESS.
Oh, and the non westerners WILL take that baton, mind you!
They’d be crazy not to.
But this challenge doesn’t freak me out like it apparently freaks out Peter K and John Perkins.
I think of the Inuit (Eskimos) in the Arctic. The dog sleds and the harpoons might be more “sustainable”……..for a shorter life. Are they guilty for preferring snow mobiles and rifles………and a longer lifespan???
A more balanced, and optimistic view of the Human Fireworker Conundrum I find in the writing of the Russian Geo-Bio-Chemist Vladimir Vernadsky….inventor of the concept of the Noosphere, made more accessible to English speakers, here:
https://larouchepub.com/other/2005/site_packages/vernadsky/3207bios_and_noos.html
The NOOSPSHERE: Where conscious, HUMAN thought becomes the new, natural evolution of that which increasingly changes the geology of this and other (potentially!) planets.
Some Destruction, pollution is ONE edge only!
Improvement, increasing Life of all sorts, not merely of humans is THE OTHER Edge of the sword……increasing the capacity for conscious creativity (in the image of The Creator) in the Universe…albeit, extremely “locally”…..in a tiny region of our galaxy, presently.
Which ALL might be a seemingly “too dangerous” double edged sword…..but can be a lot more beautiful than trying to climb back into the Womb………of Gaia.
Nuclear waste is the most immediate and pressing issue affecting the earth, ignoring the issue is as fatal as it could get, not merely for westerners, or all people, but for all of life on earth as well as the earth itself.
Why didn’t the psychopathic goons that demanded money for the covid hysteria demand money to solve the problem of nuclear waste storage at least for the next century? The containers that nuclear waste are stored in have a limited life span due to heat decay. Is it possible for robots to solve the issue? Individuls that are working in the nuclear waste industries lives are not only in extreme danger, but they have th most horremdous life imaginable working 84 hours a week while suffering the barbaric effects or radiation sickness.
Some have wrongly proposed disposing all of the earths nuclear waste in an underground cavern in Austraila in Aboriginal lands. This is just a terrible idea with deadly consequences. Austrailia has underground fires that have been burning for thousands of years in some regions. We do not know if volcanoes or earth quakes could develop there in the future either. The earth and Austrailia as it is today is unlikely to be the earth and Austrailia of the future, because the earth is a live dynamic planet constantly undergoing change. Also, the nuclear waste is going to rise to the surface, because it releases heat and heat rises, even underground, and volcanoes are an expression of heat rising from beneath the surface of the earth.
Andrea Iravani
The problem is real, but instead of getting suckered into some Green-wash New Deals, or some “I wanna believe they work” technologies (that really don’t work), I suggest it is time to dismember capitalism. Afterall, when it comes down to it, the western economic system that drives us into constantly chasing after money, is the cause for much industrial/economic activity that is really not necessary. Many material goods are being produced, and producing material goods in a large part means burning hydro-carbon fuels (or other fuels like nuclear that do no environmental good either), simply for the purposes of making money, and not so much because somebody needs them.
‘Really good assessment here by Peter Koenig. thanks.
“Fossil fuels today amount to 80% of all energy used worldwide. Non-renewable and highly polluting energy”.
Its not. Its a global financial profit scheme.
“Fossil oil” was invented by Rockefeller, Wall Street’s Godfather as a used car theme “rare and limited”.
The empty oil fields are slowly being renewed and filled up again.
Since year 2000 Big Oil have made crisis meetings on how to keep the oil price on level, as the world is floating over with too much oil and gas reserves everywhere.
CO2 story was invented by Goldmann Sachs, Investment banker to control global energy supply and supported by all other than real scientists.
31000 American real scientists have signed a letter to UN that there is no physical relation between CO2 and the weather. 500 International recognized real scientists have done the same.
Simple math equation can prove in 5 minutes CO2 is an non-issue, a fantasy.
Its incredible so many people can walk around in this complete idiotic illusion that CO2, which gives life and make our world green, can do any harm.
“CO2 story was invented by Goldmann Sachs”…
Omg! Where have you been the last 125 years? The Nobel Prize winner Svante Arrhenius demonstrated the predictable effect of CO2 emissions on climate before the end of the XIXth century. It’s been a core result of climatology ever since, with thousands of further development by scientists and zero invalidation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect
The reality of power politics is that those seeking power without responsibility always have to dupe the masses using slogans that mean nothing but are superficially powerful.
‘Sustainability’ is the latest mantra.
There is nothing wrong with a green existence but warm houses in winter need heating and heating needs energy inputs.
Unless we northern folk become like migratory birds and travel in our millions to turn North African deserts into sustainable green areas during winter….thus obviating the need for winter fuel in the UK.
Not Matt Hancock’s idea of slavery is it?
He doesn’t care what that is, as long as he gives the orders and the slaves do his bidding.
For all he cared, 5 million blokes could become trans-sexuals.
As long as he gave the order….
Here a satellite image of Los Angeles. Notice all the concrete?
https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/los-angeles-3d-render-satellite-view-topographic-map-frank-ramspott.jpg
It is this though that really blows the mind Bill Gates home which has how many toilets and uses how many gallons of water every year? https://www.superyachtfan.com/bill-gates-house.html
Or Hollywood actors who sit on so much money they can own their own private 747 and build a runway to accommodate it at the entrance of their own homes?
And why is it that anyone who has the money wants to build their own Disneyland in America – Michael Jackson and crack pot evangelists? LOL
America was and is a nation with too much money on its hands, way too much money?
As for climate change do you really think that the Creator of the Planet is going to just stand by and watch as this insanity unfolds? Climate Change has got nothing whatsoever to do with industrial pollution. Nothing!!!!! But with that other pollution called sin and America is full to the brim with it reaching perhaps to another day of God forbid Sodom and Gomorrah!
The Lord will cause people to hear his majestic voice and will make them see his arm coming down with raging anger and consuming fire, with cloudburst, thunderstorm and hail. (Isaiah 30:30)
Rain will come in torrents, and I will send hailstones hurtling down, and violent winds will burst forth. Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: In my wrath I will unleash a violent wind, and in my anger hailstones and torrents of rain will fall with destructive fury. {Ezekiel 13:11-13}
I always enjoy reading this writers articles. His experiences in life have given him a wide perspective of world events.
Most people wouldn’t believe that ‘sustainable development’ has it’s source and main architects in the super rich. The money manipulators and their multinational corporations. What good is it to have products if people cannot afford to buy them? Now we get to the heart of the matter. It is no longer about and has never been just about money. Control! Way back in the late 60s the Club of Rome came up with a plan to blame mankind for weather catastrophe. Mankind is the enemy. Their new world order is to have a central control of all. A giant feudal system. And as Larry Ellison wrote years ago, ‘Why the future does not need us’, they intend to cull the population down to a more manageable size. They are currently in the process of deliberately destroying the western economy and that of much of the world. They already have something else in mind as a replacement. It would not surprise me if they throw money at everyone at first. Free money in some living wage for all. How happy everyone will be. No doubt, strings will be attached. For one, you must take your vaccines (and tracker). You will live where you are told. You will work and shop where you are told etc. What if these vaccines are designed to kill a person after so many months? It would be a less messy way to get rid of people than constant war, though that will also continue until every country is brought to submission.
I don’t know what they will do with people like me living in this very humble cabin in the woods, off a dirt side road. I don’t have much and don’t need much. So far I’ve been able to order groceries online and pick up at the curb and pay for gas at the pump. I won’t deal with this mask issue and no, I’m not taking their vaccines. I also make a conscious effort not to buy products from those nasty mega corporations, though that is getting more difficult to do as they gobble up other smaller companies. They want us totally dependent on them.
As the great apostle, St. Paul wrote: Having sustenance and covering, be content with these things.
“The energy cost (hydrocarbon-energy from oil and coal) of producing solar panels and windmills is astounding.”
Does not seem astounding to me. Capital cost of plant per running watt of output, Wikipedia: Gas/Oil power plant: $ 1 Solar Panel: $1
Climate change is a naturally occurring phenomenon that has been happening since life began on earth around 4 billion years ago, and there is nothing that humans can do about it. I wish these climate alarmists would stop with their ridiculous austerity agenda using only computer models to predict runaway warming as if CO2 was the culprit, while ignoring the empirical evidence of feed back loops involving the oceans and cloud formation, that have kept the earth within a fairly narrow temperature range conducive to life for aeons. Without CO2 in the atmosphere all life would die off, since photosynthesis would not then be possible.
There is a cycle on earth involving mainly Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen. The amount of these elements in the cycle is relatively stable over long periods.
When we burn one molecule of natural gas, CH4, we release CO2+2H2O, that is one molecule of carbon dioxide and two molecules of water, which were out of circulation, hidden away under ground.
When we burn coal and petroleum products, same thing. If you calculate how much natural gas, gasoline, diesel and coal is being burned on earth per day today, you will discover that an enormous amount of Oxygen is being bound to Carbon and Hydrogen.
The amount of Oxygen in the atmosphere is limited. And new Carbon and Hydrogen that was out of circulation is being brought into action.
If we weren’t cutting down the forests of the earth at such a monumental rate, the trees would absorb the new CO2 and we would witness something like the early Carboniferous period, with giant trees appearing and sucking out enormous amounts of CO2 out of the air.
Oxygen levels in the atmosphere during that period were at 35%, compared to 21% now.
But we are cutting down the forests, and there is nowhere for all this CO2 to go. Simple math will show that the amount of gas, coal and petroleum we have burned, and continue to burn, can indeed alter the composition of the atmosphere.
To put it simply, oxygen levels are going down, while carbon dioxide and water are going up.
To say that things are changing and will continue to change is a fact. To predict what that change will entail is for the most part speculation.
If I may offer my two cents, Iran has historically been a very cold place. During the blizzard of 1972, up to 8 meters of snow fell over parts of Iran, making it the deadliest blizzard in history.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Iran_blizzard
Blizzards like that were the norm in Iran. My grandfather recalls that snow would pile onto snow all winter long. Every winter many meters would accumulate on the ground. This snow would melt and feed Iran’s tens of thousands of Qanats, which would water the orchards during the summer. This was Iran for the last 3000 years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat
I am only 30 years old, but I remember summer highs of 28 and winter lows of -20 on the plateau. Snow capped peaks all year round, year after year.
Nowadays summer highs are in the low 40s. Winters have become quite mild, with maybe one or two snowstorms a season, where the snow usually melts the next day.
Thousands of qanats have dried out in the past couple of decades. Unprecedented in Iran’s very long history.
Natural changes to the climate happen, it’s true. But not over 30 year periods, coinciding with peak industrial activity and burning of carbon reserves.
I am not contesting the fact that the earth has been in a general warming trend since the ending of the last ice age approximately 20,000 years ago, but that had nothing to do with CO2 levels. Ice core drilling and gas bubble analysis of the ice in the Antarctic demonstrates that warming precedes CO2 increases.
There are many factors affecting climate starting with the Milankovich cycles.
The earth’s elliptical orbit undergoes precession approximately each 100,000 years. Its axis tilt relative to the plane of orbit varies from 22 to 24 degrees in a 41,000 year cycle. Output from the sun is also affected by the number of sunspots on its surface.
Without the oceans and gas atmosphere the earth would have the same climate as the moon, whose surface temperature varies from minus 250 deg F on its night side to plus 250 deg F on its day side. The earth’s oceans act as a giant heat sink, since water has a very high specific heat ( it takes a lot of heat to raise its temperature compared with a land surface) This mitigates the differential between day and night temperatures. What also comes into play is that water can exist in three phases: solid, liquid and gas. When it makes a transition from one phase to another, latent heat is either absorbed or released. Thus as the earth warms, there is more evaporation from the surface to produce water vapor that constitutes on average 3% of the gas atmosphere, that is also a so called greenhouse gas, but compared with 0.04% CO2 it is far more significant. As warm air rises it cools, known as the lapse rate, so that at 35,000 feet where jetliners travel it is around minus 60 deg F, but before reaching that height most of the water vapor will have condensed to water droplets that we see as clouds. These clouds, that cover approximately 61% of the earth’s surface reflect some the sun’s electromagnetic energy back into space. This is one of the major feedback loops that have kept the earth’s atmosphere within a temperature range conducive to life for the past 4 billion years. Climate and life have co-evolved in a symbiotic relationship.
Increased CO2 levels and general warming have in fact been beneficial to all life on the planet. Crop yields have never been higher due to enhanced photosynthesis by plants that convert CO2 to carbohydrates, to feed the animal population also in a symbiotic relationship.
Life is far more abundant and diverse in the earth’s equatorial regions than the higher latitudes where is it colder. Without CO2 dissolved in the oceans and in the gas atmosphere, photosynthesis could not occur and all plant life would die off.
Thank you for your intelligent comment: “Increased Co2 levels and general warming have in fact been beneficial to all life on the planet”. An additional benefit is moving the “crop line” north to create millions of acres of new crop lands.
Isn’t it curious that persons who stand in awe of “mother earth” and consider themselves mere specs of dust in the cosmo,s have the hubris to claim they can change Earth’s climate?
Kapricorn4,
“I am not contesting the fact that the earth has been in a general warming trend since the ending of the last ice age approximately 20,000 years ago, but that had nothing to do with CO2 levels. Ice core drilling and gas bubble analysis of the ice in the Antarctic demonstrates that warming precedes CO2 increases.”
The last glacial period ended 11,000 years ago. The antarctic has been frozen for 15 million years.
“There are many factors affecting climate starting with the Milankovich cycles.
The earth’s elliptical orbit undergoes precession approximately each 100,000 years. Its axis tilt relative to the plane of orbit varies from 22 to 24 degrees in a 41,000 year cycle. Output from the sun is also affected by the number of sunspots on its surface.”
Apsidal precession is a cycle of approximately 112,000 years, and axial precession is a cycle of approximately 25,772 years. The Milankovitch cycles are a hypothesis that define the earth’s movement patterns in regards to climate. It is not an all-encompassing law of climate change. And the solar cycle relating to the number of sunspots follows an 11 year period.
You must project the cycles on to known climate eras and prove their relevance.
Also, generally citing some factors that affect the earth’s climate does not refute other factors.
“Without the oceans and gas atmosphere the earth would have the same climate as the moon, whose surface temperature varies from minus 250 deg F on its night side to plus 250 deg F on its day side. The earth’s oceans act as a giant heat sink, since water has a very high specific heat ( it takes a lot of heat to raise its temperature compared with a land surface) This mitigates the differential between day and night temperatures. What also comes into play is that water can exist in three phases: solid, liquid and gas. When it makes a transition from one phase to another, latent heat is either absorbed or released. Thus as the earth warms, there is more evaporation from the surface to produce water vapor that constitutes on average 3% of the gas atmosphere, that is also a so called greenhouse gas, but compared with 0.04% CO2 it is far more significant. As warm air rises it cools, known as the lapse rate, so that at 35,000 feet where jetliners travel it is around minus 60 deg F, but before reaching that height most of the water vapor will have condensed to water droplets that we see as clouds. These clouds, that cover approximately 61% of the earth’s surface reflect some the sun’s electromagnetic energy back into space. This is one of the major feedback loops that have kept the earth’s atmosphere within a temperature range conducive to life for the past 4 billion years. Climate and life have co-evolved in a symbiotic relationship.
Every power plant on earth today is creating heat ex nihilo. As you have demonstrated here, the earth is a giant heat trap. Logically, there is no argument here at all; our activities generate thermal energy that would not be generated otherwise, and the earth traps that energy, which is why we are witnessing a warming trend in the last few decades that has nothing to do with the end of the last glacial period.
Look, let’s say that the effect of CO2 and water vapor on the climate is negligible as you claim. It isn’t, because we have greenhouses in cold regions that stay warm simply with carbon dioxide and water vapor, but let’s say it is. The heat from every gas stove, car engine, factory, and power plant on earth is a massive amount of energy. Try to quantify it and you will be shocked.
“Increased CO2 levels and general warming have in fact been beneficial to all life on the planet. Crop yields have never been higher due to enhanced photosynthesis by plants that convert CO2 to carbohydrates, to feed the animal population also in a symbiotic relationship.”
It has not been beneficial to all life. Deserts are expanding everywhere, wildfires are threatening the continued existence of forest ecosystems, and the great barrier reef is almost dead, because we have upset the balance of the carbon cycle. Do you know how many animals perished in the Australian wildfires last year? One billion.
“Life is far more abundant and diverse in the earth’s equatorial regions than the higher latitudes where is it colder. Without CO2 dissolved in the oceans and in the gas atmosphere, photosynthesis could not occur and all plant life would die off.”
No one is attacking CO2, mate. I have nothing against CO2. You are missing the big picture. There is a delicate balance, and we have upset it with our industrial activities.
I have a feeling that your entire argument is faith-based. So, unfortunately if that is the case we can never have a real debate.
And in any case, none of what you put forward refuted any of the points I made.
The insanity of this so called “civilization” is beyond comprehension. The masses have been conditioned to not even see past the illusion of purpose and their daily needs, all the while being trapped in this oil reliant construct. Who is responsible ? Some intelligence must be and it could not be one limited to the confining limitations of being human, lest they be included in the negative ramifications. It is so insane.