by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng.
A highly credible gentleman wrote me as follows, concerning his recent conversation with an Ottawa insider.
The insider, he said, had been working on an advisory group to the Trudeau government. The group was not formed to discuss policy for the 5-year horizon that governments are usually interested in but to develop policies for the further future, 20 to 40 years out. The implication was that the group had concluded that the present economic model was flawed and had to be replaced. “Unregulated consumerism was unsustainable and people would have to learn to make do with less. The government would have to have more control over people to enforce their austerity and the wealth of developed nations would have to be redistributed to help undeveloped nations.”
These are not new ideas. For decades, intellectuals and politicians have argued that our consumer society, based on individual market demand, is a flawed system that generates waste, excess and environmental degradation.
The insider’s assessment also reflects the current underlying motivation behind the rise of climate change as the defining issue of our time. The words reflect the motives of environmentalists and climate activists who are using the climate “emergency” as a front for larger political and ideological ambitions. What they are pursuing as an economic revolution ushered in through the back door. They are yelling fire and then using the resultant fear to impose a new economic and political order.
In a recent Washington Post report, one of the leading players in the rise of New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal let the cat out of the bag. Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff for Ocasio-Cortez, said: “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all… Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
Naomi Klein, in her new flamethrower, “On Fire, The Burning Case for a Green New Deal”, also makes it clear that the climate is a “powerful motivator” to overthrow capitalism. “The idea is a simple one: In the process of transforming the infrastructure of our societies at the speed and scale that scientists have called for, humanity has a once-in-a-century chance to fix an economic model that is failing the majority of people on multiple fronts. … Challenging these underlying forces is an opportunity to solve several interlocking crises at once.”
The clear intent is to use the global warming smokescreen to restrict economic and political freedoms by transforming Western countries into tightly controlled totalitarian states.
The idea that climate alarmism can be the foundation for radical economic change has a long history.
Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace provided an early warning of this covert socialist campaign in “Hard Choices for the Environmental Movement – The Rise of Eco-Extremism”, in 1994: “Surprisingly enough, the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.”
Justin Trudeau has stated that he admires the Chinese “basic dictatorship”. He said: “There is a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green, we need to start, you know, investing in solar.”
Trudeau’s deeply flawed climate and energy policies have already done enormous harm to Canada. Governments have adopted costly, ineffective policies based on false global warming/climate change alarmism, the greatest scientific fraud in history. The foreign-funded green anti-oil-pipeline fraud has cost Canada over $120 billion in lost revenues, an enormous, needless loss. Living costs are increasing rapidly and living standards are falling.
On September 23, 2019, Justin Trudeau committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 if re-elected.
Zero-carbon means huge changes in society. Prof Sir Ian Boyd, the government’s chief environment scientist, said the public had little idea of the scale of the challenge from Britain’s “Net Zero CO2” emissions target. Roger Harrabin of the BBC wrote: “People must use less transport, eat less red meat and buy fewer clothes if the UK is to virtually halt greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the government’s chief environment scientist has warned. … We will all have to accept big lifestyle changes – travel less, eat less, consume less. But eventually, some form of compulsion or rationing will be necessary, if climate targets are to be met. The Science and Technology Select Committee … officially announced, “In the long-term, widespread personal vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonisation”. When they ultimately find themselves being told what they can and cannot consume, where they can travel and what foods they are allowed to eat, they will be furious about the way they have been misled.”
But these radical changes to society have even more catastrophic consequences. The socialists want total control and have a history of extreme incompetence, environmental destruction and violent repression of dissent.
Costly, ineffective green energy schemes have destabilized the electric grid, damaged the environment and squandered trillions of dollars of scarce global resources. Properly allocated, these wasted trillions might have ended malaria and world hunger.
The number of shattered lives caused by radical-green activism rivals the death tolls of the great killers of the 20th Century- Stalin, Hitler and Mao. Radical greens advocate similar tightly-controlled totalitarian states and are indifferent to the resulting environmental destruction and human suffering… …and if unchecked, radical environmentalism will cost us our freedom.
Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., is a retired former Professional Engineer and energy expert, who has conducted business on six continents, including several current and former Communist countries.
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