Climate Change: Gaslighting Americans Into Socialism, Part 1

Wind turbines are silhouetted against the sun at Black Law wind farm in Scotland, on Jan. 29, 2010. (Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

Commentary 

Is the push by America’s elite to “save the planet from climate change” actually just gaslighting Americans into socialism? I recently discussed the clear connection between central bank policies and rising wealth inequality.

However, an article by Ken Rogoff suggests the real need is more “fiscal policy”:

“But interest-rate adjustments are far too blunt a tool for conventional monetary policy to play any kind of leading role in mitigating inequality. Fiscal policy—including taxes, transfers, and targeted government spending—is far more effective and robust.”

The problem with redistributive policies is the poor track record of success in solving the “wealth gap.” In general, the bottom 90 percent sees their wealth equalize at the lower bound, while the top 10 percent get wealthier.

The problem is the capitalistic system of the United States, which has the only economic system in history that was founded on the principles of freedom. Those basic freedoms fostered an unmatched stretch of innovation and wealth creation never before witnessed.

The problem for progressives is trying to put the “genie back into the bottle.” In order to solve the “climate change” problem, the basic freedoms that created the wealth-generation engine in the United States must be reversed.

But how do you get everyone to agree to give up those freedoms and accept a lower economic standard of living?

The Math Toward Zero

Bill Gates provided a TED Talk in 2010, which is very interesting when you start thinking about the consequences of actions. He gives a simple formula to understand how to solve the CO2 problem.

CO2 = P x S x E x C

If you want to reduce CO2 in the environment, simple math tells you the factors behind CO2 have to fall toward zero. So, what are those four factors?:

• P = Population
• S = Services people use on average
• E = Energy per service provided
• C = CO2 per unit of energy.

As Bill Gates states at the 23-minute mark:

“One of these numbers is going to have to get very near to zero.”

The biggest problem is population growth. The more the population grows, demand increases for every other unit. As Gates points out:

“If we do a really great job with new vaccines, health care, and reproductive health services [aka contraception and abortions], we can lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent.”

In that equation, limiting population growth is an essential requirement to reducing the demand on the environment, the services we consume, and the energy required to produce those services.

Since the population can’t go to zero, the next step is to reduce the services provided. Such is where the shift from capitalism to socialism becomes a necessary requirement.

Save the Planet by Shrinking the Economy

A recent article by Kelsey Piper suggests this may indeed be the solution.

“But because wealthy societies are so focused on growing the economy, those gains have been immediately plowed back into the economy, producing more stuff for the same ecological footprint, yes, but not actually shrinking the ecological footprint.

“Jason Hickel, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, argues that this problem is unsolvable within our current framework. ‘In a growth-oriented economy ... efficiency improvements that could help us reduce our impact are harnessed instead to advance the objectives of growth. Pulling forward ever-larger swaths of nature into circuits of extraction and production. It’s not our technology that’s the problem. It’s growth.’

“So, what is his solution? To abandon the lodestar of economic policy in nearly every country, which is to aim for economic growth over time, increasing wealth per person and expanding the ability of their citizens to purchase the things they want and need. Instead, Hickel argues, rich countries should focus on getting emissions to zero, even if the result is a much-contracted economy.

“He argues that current levels of well-being could be maintained at a tenth of Finland’s current GDP assuming that society also adopted wide-scale redistribution and socialist labor policies.”

Of course, to convince Americans they must accept a lower standard of living requires convincing them of several things:

1. The world is on the brink of disaster so changes must be made now.
2. Individuals must be willing to accept less in order to save the world; and,
3. They must feel “guilty” about their current position in life and be willing to sacrifice it.

As noted above, while the population can indeed be reduced, there are limits to that reduction. The rest must come through energy efficiencies and reduction of consumption.

Climate change is the message to facilitate that shift to slower economic growth.