On Human Consumption - And The Environment

What is the ideal rate of growth of an economy - any economy? The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is supposed to grow and grow and grow - and if it does not, we are all supposed to assume that it is a very bad thing for us all and polemics are unleashed in the media about recession, deflation, inflation, even stagflation!

I am not an economist and do not pretend to know complex econometric measurements that modern economists use to determine past, present and future rates of growth of the GDP.  But in my defence, nor do I get most impressions and predictions of the economy wrong (I don’t make many!), as most economists seem to do!

It does not really take an economist (or the legions of bureaucrats who work in our mysterious “central banks”) to tell us that chopping down millions of acres of old growth forest trees is not good for the future of the economy or our planet. (After all, some of these trees are more than 300 years old and everybody knows that you cannot grow in 3 years what took 100 times as long to grow!)

And yet, again and again, politicians, global corporations, central banks and economists are telling us that these common sense ideas of economic well being and environmental stewardship do not really matter - compared to the all-consuming importance of “climate change.”

In concert with this dystopian dance of global warming that we are being asked (forced) to partake in, actual pollution of our air, waterways and cities has decidedly taken a back seat. So has our disappearing old growth forests!

In my essay last week on human consumption, I pointed out that the Christmas season unleashes an orgy of consumption that should make our fragile planet shudder and the Angels weep.

Meanwhile, the captured media is ignoring all the essential, environmental threats to our economy including massive, unsustainable consumption of commodities (wood, lithium, rare earths, GMO grain etc) and instead is telling us to dutifully pay more for the use and release of “carbon” (whatever that means) and buy more electric cars! Carbon tax has now become a worldwide phenomenon - and most citizens do not ask the question how it is that we allowed governments to tax an element in the periodic table!

No climate change economist or politician has told us to curb our wasteful consumption of cruise ship holidays for example - and we have to wonder whether that is because the multiple billion dollar yachts of the elite are difficult to conceal, in contrast to their private lives of luxury in their exclusive islands.

The “global elite” have with good reason been called the “global predators,” since they apparently relish the idea of being called “elite.” Surely this cannot be true - unless they have not read the fate of Herod “the great” who had the people hail him as a god and was shortly thereafter consumed by worms!

A certain level of consumption, driving the economic cycle and leading to a certain percentage growth in GDP, is another common sense deduction that the common man can arrive at, without the help of economists. But what is a healthy level of GDP growth that contributes to the sum total of human well being? Should the economy grow at all? What if our present level of consumption coupled with truly free, free trade achieved a 0-1% growth rate?

An Oxford trained economist in my own family assures me that many of these ideas, that match growth in GDP to human well being and then extrapolate to what an ideal growth rate ought to be, have never been studied, much less tested in the real world.

The propaganda machines that work themselves into a frenzy when GDP growth falls below a certain preconceived and artificial minimum, are themselves almost all controlled by the elite. Developed economies are still supposed to grow - and growth cannot be achieved without still more, massive consumption. 

Historically colonized and economically exploited countries such as India and China have achieved astonishing growth rates in recent decades and now are respectively the fifth and second largest economies in the world. Nobody grudges them this growth and it has undoubtedly lifted millions of their citizens out of poverty. But at some stage, we must ask ourselves how much of growth and consumption in even these newly massive economies is enough and whether under this assault of unprecedented consumption, our planet can be preserved for future generations.

All this brings us back to the latest anthem of the elite, which is “climate change.” The reason they do not promote tangible methods by which all of us can be involved in environmentalism (such as picking up the garbage, eating organic food, cleaning up the rivers and oceans and reducing pollution) is because of the transfer of wealth that becomes possible by the climate change agenda from the striving middle classes to themselves. 

It is really quite a brilliant, wicked plan - for, by transferring responsibility and guilt to the rich nations, they can facilitate the rapid transfer of these nations’ wealth to themselves. Promoting the same agenda in India and China for example, is not as easy, since they are slapped down quite easily by these powerful nations - and because it suits their agenda to make them captive to their scheme of offshoring of industry, jobs and wealth transfer.

The real reason that India and China are never pressed too hard to join the ridiculous climate change treaties that Western nations dutifully sign up to, is because the elite wish to continue to offshore jobs, industry and the generation of wealth from these nations, back to themselves.

It is entirely true to character and design for these elite types to fly into Davos in their own private jets. It is completely in keeping with their wealth transfer agenda for the yachts of these super rich predators to get even bigger and for them to continue to buy up whole islands in desirable locations. 

Having perfected the art of propaganda through the media that they themselves own, they have also reduced our elected politicians to being mere salesmen for their corporations and banks. It is then possible for them to use other engineered “shocks” to the system such as the recent covid pandemic or the war in Ukraine to act as short term, massive cash injection schemes that accomplish the same purpose in a much shorter span of time, than the “long game” of climate change.

Once we understand this rather simple but sinister game that the elite are playing, it becomes possible to resist and disrupt their designs. The tyranny they wield may appear to be all-encompassing and overwhelming - but the ice upon which their climate change agendas are being built is thin and becoming thinner every year. When it cracks and breaks up, they will drown in the same, peerless sea that they claim is rising every year! That which is supposed to destroy us, would have become their own downfall.