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Mariana Mazzucato sees no alternative to a radical overhaul of corporate governance, finance, policy and energy systems

Mariana Mazzucato sees no alternative to a radical overhaul of corporate governance, finance, policy and energy systems

As COVID-19 spread earlier this year, governments introduced lockdowns in order to prevent a public-health emergency from spinning out of control. In the near future, the world may need to resort to lockdowns again – this time to tackle a climate emergency.

Shifting Arctic ice, raging wildfires in western US states and elsewhere, and methane leaks in the North Sea are all warning signs that we are approaching a tipping point on climate change, when protecting the future of civilisation will require dramatic interventions.

Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling. To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently.

Many think of the climate crisis as distinct from the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic. But the three crises – and their solutions – are interconnected.

COVID-19 is itself a consequence of environmental degradation: one recent study dubbed it “the disease of the Anthropocene.” Moreover, climate change will exacerbate the social and economic problems highlighted by the pandemic. These include governments’ diminishing capacity to address public-health crises, the private sector’s limited ability to withstand sustained economic disruption, and pervasive social inequality.

These shortcomings reflect the distorted values underlying our priorities. For example, we demand the most from “essential workers” (including nurses, supermarket workers, and delivery drivers) while paying them the least. Without fundamental change, climate change will worsen such problems.

The climate crisis is also a public-health crisis. Global warming will cause drinking water to degrade and enable pollution-linked respiratory diseases to thrive. According to some projections, 3.5 billion people globally will live in unbearable heat by 2070.

Addressing this triple crisis requires reorienting corporate governance, finance, policy, and energy systems toward a green economic transformation. To achieve this, three obstacles must be removed: business that is shareholder-driven instead of stakeholder-driven, finance that is used in inadequate and inappropriate ways, and government that is based on outdated economic thinking and faulty assumptions.

Corporate governance must now reflect stakeholders’ needs instead of shareholders’ whims. Building an inclusive, sustainable economy depends on productive cooperation among the public and private sectors and civil society. This means firms need to listen to trade unions and workers’ collectives, community groups, consumer advocates, and others.

Likewise, government assistance to business must be less about subsidies, guarantees, and bailouts, and more about building partnerships. This means attaching strict conditions to any corporate bailouts to ensure that taxpayer money is put to productive use and generates long-term public value, not short-term private profits.

In the current crisis, for example, the French government conditioned its bailouts for Renault and Air France-KLM on emission-reduction commitments. France, Belgium, Denmark, and Poland denied state aid to any company domiciled in a European Union-designated tax haven, and barred large recipients from paying dividends or buying back their own shares until 2021. Likewise, US corporations receiving government loans through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act were prohibited from using the funds for share buybacks.

These conditions are a start, but are not ambitious enough, either from a climate perspective or in economic terms. The magnitude of government assistance packages does not match firms’ requirements, and the conditions are not always legally binding: for example, the Air France emissions policy applies only to short domestic flights.

Far more is needed to achieve a green and sustainable recovery. For example, governments might use the tax code to discourage firms from using certain materials. They might also introduce job guarantees at company or national level so that human capital is not wasted or eroded. This would help the youngest and oldest workers, who have disproportionately suffered job losses owing to the pandemic, and reduce the likely economic shocks in disadvantaged regions already suffering industrial decline.

Finance needs fixing, too. During the 2008 global financial crisis, governments flooded markets with liquidity. But, because they did not direct it toward good investment opportunities, much of that funding ended up back in a financial sector unfit for purpose.

The current crisis presents an opportunity to harness finance in productive ways to drive long-term growth. Patient long-term finance is key, because a 3-5-year investment cycle doesn’t match the long lifespan of a wind turbine (more than 25 years), or encourage the innovation needed in e-mobility, natural capital development (such as rewilding programs), and green infrastructure.

Some governments have already launched sustainable growth initiatives. New Zealand has developed a budget based on “wellbeing” metrics, rather than GDP, to align public spending with broader objectives, while Scotland has established the mission-oriented Scottish National Investment Bank.

Along with steering finance toward a green transition, we need to hold the financial sector accountable for its often-destructive environmental impact. The Dutch central bank estimates that Dutch financial institutions’ biodiversity footprint represents a loss of over 58,000 square kilometers (22,394 square miles) of pristine nature – an area 1.7 times larger than the Netherlands.

Because markets will not lead a green revolution on their own, government policy must steer them in that direction. This will require an entrepreneurial state that innovates, takes risks, and invests alongside the private sector. Policymakers should therefore redesign procurement contracts in order to move away from low-cost investments by incumbent suppliers, and create mechanisms that “crowd in” innovation from multiple actors to achieve public green goals.

Governments should also take a portfolio approach to innovation and investment. In the United Kingdom and the United States, wider industrial policy continues to support the information-technology revolution. Similarly, the EU’s recently launched European Green Deal, Industrial Strategy, and Just Transition Mechanism are acting as the motor and compass for the €750 billion ($888 billion) “Next Generation EU” recovery fund.

Finally, we need to reorient our energy system around renewable energy – the antidote to climate change and the key to making our economies energy-secure. We must therefore evict fossil-fuel interests and short-termism from business, finance, and politics. Financially powerful institutions such as banks and universities must divest from fossil-fuel companies. Until they do, a carbon-based economy will prevail.

The window for launching a climate revolution – and achieving an inclusive recovery from COVID-19 in the process – is rapidly closing. We need to move quickly if we want to transform the future of work, transit, and energy use, and make the concept of a “green good life” a reality for generations to come. One way or the other, radical change is inevitable; our task is to ensure that we achieve the change we want – while we still have the choice.


Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of Economics of Innovation and Public Value and Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, is the author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2020, and published here with permission.

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153 Comments

What absolute garbage interest.co.nz.
Lock downs for Climate change, only an academic without a clue would advocate that.

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Shows your level of ignorance. The virus is but a ripple compared to what is coming. Comment like yours make the outlook even more depressing.
So what's your answer...denial?
Guess so.

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I'm reasonably well educated, considered and analytic and I think climate change is a control mechanism. I am sick to death of the extreme scenario's being used to scare people. You never see the same people talk about cleaning the oceans, rivers, ripping out weeds like pine tree's, creating marine reserves - all things I am heavily in favour of.

I have 4 cars, 2 boats and a motorbike and that's not changing.

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Your last sentence sums you up more than anything else you've said. Me myself and I.

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You do realise I can't use use them all at the same time right? I also own more than enough trees to offset

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You didn't finish the sentence.

Offset what? And for how long?

I own trees too, and claim carbon positivity individually through that and other impact-reductions - but it's a bollocks societally. We haul carbon out of the ground, which has been there longer than humankind has been around, and chuck it into the atmosphere. 100 million barrels of oil burnt daily, let alone the coal and the gas. Of course it alters the habitat. Of course, do it enough you move habitat parameters beyond human - and other - life-supporting limits. That's what we're seeing - but its a Systems problem; as the writer properly touches on; the virus is as much part of the problem as refugee-streams are.

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How much land do you have PDK ?
Did you use that Oil based revenue of yours to buy it ?
How much to you run off your 300W solar ?
I image you built your house out of mud and would love to see how you produce all you have without oil.

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The first time I heard that kind of stupidity would be nearly 50 years ago.

We have a society which was built using a finite energy source. Nobody though about that at first, but eventually they did. Obviously it ends, so the future has to be addressed. Of course you are using the present energy and resource system to create the next - WTF else would you use?

What I do, is show how to have a good life with low impact, I show how to use the existing to create the new. Don't attack the messenger, eh? And for heaven's sake not with that old chestnut.

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No just give us the facts PDK, how much land are you using to offset your life times usage ?
Its something you never talk about in your protestations that everyone else is not doing there part.
We'll ignore all the de-population agenda you have for the present.

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Tell me PDK, why should NZ lose any sleep over something we cannot influence? 0.2% (supposedly) of the world's carbon emissions is probably within the margin of error. Nothing NZ does will have one iota of effect on global emissions. Add to that the way carbon sinks are counted - I have several kilometres of shelter belts on my property but can't count them as a carbon offset. If they were all planted in a block then I could - total BS!! NZ can't count indigenous forest as a carbon sink either. If we could NZ may very well be carbon negative now

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Why would anyone bother? Each city in China is probably no more than 0.2% of the problem either, so why would anyone there do anything? This is a terrible argument that completely lacks morals and leads to worldwide inaction.

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I didn't say "why would anyone " bother. I asked the question "why should NZ with a miniscule contribution bother" To put it a different way - why should a town like say Tokoroa be locked into a carbon negative strategy whilst the rest of the country continues on their merry way? Won't make a jot of difference to the emissions profile of NZ but it would severely hamper Tokoroa

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Because at some point we (humans) won't have a choice but to adapt.

Yes the situation re China is one of the problems we need solutions too.

Places like nz may be able to adopt carbon neutral life in the near term (say 20 years), but only because we have pushed all our main energy intensive factories to places like China.

This is a global issue.

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"This is a terrible argument that completely lacks morals and leads to worldwide inaction." Do you seriously think for one moment the industrialised world gives a brass razoo about what NZ does or doesn't do??

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See tragedy of the commons. It's a weak argument that doesn't take into account international politics or an understanding of how international agreements work.

Why should anyone have stopped producing CFCs? The Montreal Protocol was a waste of time right?

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Everybody in the world can think of themselves as part of an 'insignificantly small' society. Why should a suburb of Shanghai bother doing anything? Why should a coal powered plant owner in the US do anything when there are thousands of others around the world? It's an argument that has no basis in any moral theory I'm aware of - it's a simple excuse for someone who has no actual moral justification and is happy to sit to the side while the world degrades and blame everyone else. We all need to step up and put our shoulders to the wheel.

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I don't 'own' any trees. Well I don't think I do. I do have to mow around a few in 'our' garden though. And that's getting into the pain in the but time of year where the number of catchers I take of is 3 to 4 times as much as late in summer.
Any tree or plant is welcome to any CO2 I exhale or coming out the exhaust on the car I drive without prejudice :)

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That carbon comes out of the ground, where it's been longer than humankind has been around. What gave you the right?

It isn't prejudice is the problem, it's prescience.

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What gave me the right to what?
Be alive?

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No, the right to disagree with PDK

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To burn that litre of fossilised sunlight, Hamish. The one no member of any species - ours included, has burned thus far. And the one NO member of any future generation, ever, can burn again. Not just Greta's generation, but all the ones we have an obligation to give a chance.

But you - and I and our generation - chose to burn it for ourselves. Worse, we chose to burn it without mitigation.

Intergenerationally, it is arguably fraud.

Now you know.

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Well I'm offsetting my carbon footprint. I fly return from Europe to NZ once a year, and this year I planted a Carolina Reaper chilli on the balcony.

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Haha, thanks. That's the point I'm trying to make here.

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my2c what sort of attitude is that? PDK is not the problem, he is someone who has studied and understands this issue deeply and is trying to make a difference, both in his own life and by educating others. Yet you respond with trump like ridicule.

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Once again, to protect the current status quo there are concerted attacks on the the messenger, and the actual science. If you're feeling threatened by the adjustments necessary to deal with climate change and prevent a world far worse than this pandemic then a conversation along those lines would surely be more productive

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We have trashed our rivers, stripped our marine stocks, turned much of NZ into grass paddocks (with significant erosion as a consequence) and you want to accuse me of being a climate denier when your plan is to lock my country up in pine trees forever?

We can make a real difference to NZ today, but that wouldn't give you control.

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my reply was to my2c

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:)

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Hah - believe

In my business of international finance, clients occasionally made a comment that either didn't make sense, or something I wasn't aware of. I never rubbished them. Instead, I would ask them to explain. Often it was something never considered. So I learn't something helpful. And so the value to the client-base grew.

When we first came across PDK's writings it was a new world. So madam went to see for herslf. She came back convinced. So I had to go look for myself. We were convinced. We have since reduced our footprint considerably. I had a prior interest in solar energy and micro-hydro power generation which he has mastered. I'm probably not as green as madam who now manages a 100 sqm organic no-dig garden from which we get all our vegetables. I'm an occasional meat-eater, a carry-over from child-hood

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we should go scuba diving sometime together.

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For sure Xing, scallop season soon!! You can show me how to sichaun them!

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https://home.meishichina.com/recipe-50163.html

英雄所见略同。(great minds think alike.)

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if you spot a PLA Navy submarine looking for lost islands.. knock on the hull to say hello.

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"I have 4 cars, 2 boats and a motorbike and that's not changing"
Are you lacking physical size in some department?
me: I am driving a Nissan Micra.. and I am 100% comfortable with what I got!

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I have a complex set-up, I'm not a car nut.

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34,000 US scientists including 9,000 with Phd's disagree with the AGW hypothesis. It's a shame that such a controversial topic, rests on such manipulated data. http://www.petitionproject.org/index.php
The science is far from settled and as soon as AGW stops being a virtue signalling talking point and becomes oppressive regulation, people will become more informed very quickly. It's already started with the US pulling out of the Kyoto protocol.
I'm a conservationist but I don't believe in tilting at windmills.

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I wasn't aware of that, but I'm not surprised. What I dislike most about the climate change lobby is that they grab the moral high ground but the reality is that those who question it are probably more involved in hands-on conservation, I bet I am.

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You miss the point.

In spades.

Purposely or real blindness?

Conservation in the old sense, is inadequate when facing the LTG problem.

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Shifting the energy balance of the planet we live on, is guaranteed to undo your conservation work!

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25,000 of them did not have PhDs? And I bet they really checked those who claimed to. Not to mention that the website looks *at least* 10 years old. These guys make a better fist of it: https://dissentfromdarwin.org/

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There is no space in the media for any kind of debate or any kind of discussion. Which is actually quite ridiculous when you think about it.

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Yeah that petition was a joke, although that is the level of denialisms attempted rebuttal of physics. The author (Frederick Singer) of the covering letter sent with the petition, had to be censured because he attempted to make the fake science it contained appear like a scientific paper from the National Academy of Sciences. That is where the fraud lies! Science in no way backs denialdoms position! https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/1998/04/statement-of-the-council…

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I guess you should be in lockdown then? Interesting how the most vocal supporters of AGW are also the most flagrant consumers and producers of C02.

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Interesting how you have no facts at all to back your statement up.

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Interesting. In effect you are spreading fake news about the severity of the climate crisis, yet I'm the one to blame for making climate stability worse? Now if that isn't perverse thinking, I don't know what is?

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It's happening whether we like it our not. The planet don't care about your motorbikes or boats, big house or bank ballance.

Finite fuel sources. Ever increasing energy needs.

To progress society (growth) We are burning millions of years worth of saved energy in the space of decades and the pace of consumption is ever increasing.

There is no current plan in place that avoids long term disaster.

Some high energy intensive industry (steel and concrete production) do not have viable sustainable energy sources.

Rather than accept reality and have a good plan in place, some current leaders (David S from act, trump) actually promote policy that turns back recent progress.

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Te Kooti,

"I think climate change is a control mechanism". By whom? Are you referring to some global conspiracy by let's say, the UN, Bill Gates, George Soros and other shadowy figures? You may be 'reasonably well educated', but analytic you are not.
Climate change/global warming rests on very basic and long understood physics. It is a simple statement of fact that adding CO2 to the atmosphere produces warming. If you have any analytic cabability, take a look at the role of trace gases, look at the Keeling Curve and take a little time to grasp the way solar energy reaches and leaves the earth. You might also want to ask yourself what causes glaciers to melt-on a global basis.
You might also want to increase your understanding of how apostrophes are used. Thus, scenarios is just the plural of scenario and Does Not Need an Apostrophe. Reasonably well educated?

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It's whats his name - Al Gore - a lizard person and his deep state reptilian cabal won't be able to regulate their metabolisms properly if it gets too warm.

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How much information have you read that originates from non-politically funded sources or funded by people who stand to gain from control.
And you have the presumption to label people more knowledgeable than your (lazy) self as "ignorant".

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Is the author ignorant or duplicitous? The “unbearable heat” link assumes the implausible RCP8.5 scenario “assuming business-as-usual scenarios for climate (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 [RCP8.5])”.

“Recent (post-2005) trends and energy outlook projections (to 2040) of global CO2 emissions are substantially lower than projected by baseline scenarios used in the IPCC’s AR5 and AR6, and are well off-track from widely-cited high-emission marker scenarios such as RCP8.5.
…Our analysis supports the conclusions drawn by previous studies (Hausfather and Peters 2020; Pielke and Ritchie 2020) that high-emission AR5 (RCP8.5) and high-emission AR6 (i.e. SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5) baselines should not be utilized as meaningful reference scenarios in climate research.”
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/ahsxw/

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More climate denial.

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Coal is dead mate. Why on earth do you think RCP8.5 is realistic? The author is a typical scaremonger using unrealistic scenarios to scare the horses.

"Two of the SSP baseline scenarios (SSP3 and SSP5) have a heavy reliance on fossil fuels with an increasing contribution of coal to the energy mix."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378016300681

"Accounting for this bias indicates RCP8.5 and other ‘business-as-usual scenarios’ consistent with high CO2 forcing from vast future coal combustion are exceptionally unlikely. Therefore, SSP5-RCP8.5 should not be a priority for future scientific research or a benchmark for policy studies."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544217314597

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Just out of interest 2c, what are your qualifications on the climate change matter?

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BSc in computer science and 30 years working in the oceanographic and environmental monitoring industry.
And you ?

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then you should know better.

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Could not agree more. My degree from the University of California was in environmental sciences. I just cannot believe the alarmist garbage being perpetuated from the media, when in fact the issue is primarily one of natural cycles. But there is an agenda here, and that is to outlaw the free market in favour of a state-controlled economy.

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Obviously your degree taught you nothing. Worshipping the invisible hand is all you need to know!

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elmoboy - natural cycles? From environmental sciences? Did they not teach you about overshoot, collapse, extinction. Extinction sure as hell has trouble being classified as a 'cycle'.

Try reading Garrett Hardin's two wee classics; The Tragedy of the Commons and Lifeboat.

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You're playing into the populist stereotype. This isn't going away, a lot like the pandemic. Engagement is key, not deliberate ignorance

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Serious question, On our current course of action, How much do you expect temperatures to rise in the next 100 years?

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Anthropocentric climate change has always been a hoax since the first day when it was coined.

About 99.99999999% of climate change is directly related to our Sun.

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Maybe you should check out the temperature of Venus if you think the greenhouse effect is non existent.

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ye. but our sun is a lot closer to Venus. is that right?

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If you don't understand the system involved, please don't spout nonsense. Simple science tells us why surface temps on Venus are hotter than Mercury.

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The Sun Is Slowly Expanding. How Can We Stop It From Killing Us All? Stephen Hawking
While some scientists contend that the expansion of the Sun results in its loss of mass, and thereby the gravitational tug on the Earth should lessen, others disagree with this prediction. In fact, several papers suggest that Sun will expand too far and too quickly
https://futurism.com/the-sun-is-slowly-expanding-how-can-we-stop-it-fro…

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"In fact, as the Sun expands, many scientists extrapolate that, in about a billion years, the oceans will dry up." Fascinatingly irrelevant. Unless you are planning to be around as a microchip implant, embedded in an eternally upgraded automaton?

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The science is beyond doubt. Please don't spread deliberate misinformation.

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you sound like a reincarnation of someone to burned Galileo alive.

lol

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No, that sounds more like you actually. Deniers have no relationship with the father of science, other than to abuse his name!

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You're contradicting official doctrine. President Xi pledged today that China will become carbon neutral by 2060.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/22/china/xi-jinping-carbon-neutral-2060…

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What drivel - seriously Interest.co.nz - where do you find these people??

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Stick around another 10 years TJ and I think you find much of this has eventuated at least in part. Of course it goes against your ideology despite what your gut tells you.

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There is a lot of it about - mostly if you scratch the surface, there's fear. Scratch further and there's personal insecurity - like the one who needs the toys to express who they are. Past of the morph will be teaching people to be happy without having to be their label-association.

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Will Obama have drowned in his his beech condo by then?

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Is that what it's built of?

Is it anywhere near the coast?

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Being facetious gains you no credibility. BTW you still haven't addressed any of the questions put to you earlier.

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Lomborg certainly knows his market niche. Accepting climate change but advocating to do nothing is appealing to many.

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But he doesn't advocate doing nothing does he. Unless you call this list doing nothing. The global government class so arrogant to think they can change the weather back to the Little Ice Age but still haven't done the basics like feed children.

Lower chronic child malnutrition by 40%
Halve malaria infection
Reduce tuberculosis deaths by 90%
Avoid 1.1 million HIV infections through circumcision
Cut early death from chronic diseases by 1/3
Reduce newborn mortality by 70%
Increase immunization to reduce child deaths by 25%
Make family planning available to everyone
Eliminate violence against women and girls

Phase out fossil fuel subsidies
Halve coral reef loss
Tax pollution damage from energy
Cut indoor air pollution by 20%

Reduce trade restrictions (full Doha)
Improve gender equality in ownership, business, and politics
Boost agricultural yield increase by 40%
Increase girls’ education by 2 years
Achieve universal primary education in sub-Saharan Africa
Triple preschool in sub-Saharan Africa
https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/post-2015-consensus/nobel-laureates…

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Yip..nothing about doing anything about climate change as I said. Thanks Profile.

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Make family planning available to everyone

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Timmy, Timmy, timmy.

"Lomborg does not lack solutions. In False Alarm, he advocates a range of cost-benefit tested policies to address both climate change and global poverty.... Lomborg does a service in calling out the environmental alarmism and hysteria that obscure environmental debates rather than illuminate them."

Let's just say you have been debunked!
Your welcome.
Go well.

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Thats not debunking, its just a hit piece.
Mind you, be as subjective as you like.

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If the right wing think tanks Lomborg rubs shoulders with give an indication of his true agenda, his stated concern for third world countries is probably less of an objective than keeping oil revenues flowing. Ironically the list of development goals he says he cares about, are unobtainable on a planet with an unstable climate and flooded coastlines!

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What he does is acknowledge some of the problem. At the talk-back end, you just need to denigrate. Part way up the scale, you Lomborg (acknowledge Climate Change, but obfuscate soothingly and can-kickingly. Further up the scale, there's McAfee - and it took me a whole night to get my head around the flaw in his book

https://www.amazon.com/More-Less-Surprising-Learned-Resources_and/dp/19…

Read it - he's a notch up on Lomborg

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No driving cars and no fart for at least 4 weeks.

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Geeez Interest.co.nz you are scrapping the bottom of the barrel with this drivel

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Scrapping?

It'll be f--- - all use without a bottom.

:)

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Your comment has no basis in fact. Everything above is backed in science.

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So we must surrender the control of the economy and our lives to some authoritarian leftist technocracy or face doom. Go away! (being polite)
I'm a fatalist on climate change. Until it's undeniable to the majority of worlds countries and population and we have been unable to adapt to it, we will never get the cooperation to change anything. Every ton of co2 we save just allows more deforestation and more coal to be burnt before we reach this stage.

We are getting the technology ready for a transition as we reach this stage and governments are making progress but the authoritarian greenies should realise the electorate will find a populist climate change rejecting alternative to them every time they make a play for power.

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It's undeniable.

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The road to "authoritarian leftist technocracy" has been paved by invisible hand worshipping, right wing reality deniers though.

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I'm not following, what road? I think if you gave the global population the choice of a permanent "climate lockdown" or taking their chances with climate change they would pick the latter by a large majority. There are many other options here as well.
You say that like that an "authoritarian leftist technocracy" is inevitable, what humanity deserves and your desired outcome.

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The road, you know? The current trajectory of the human species? The deeper denial sinks us into our self created extinction event, the more options for a tolerable future come off the table. Personally I think a permanent authoritarian, oligarchical, dark age more likely. Something like a hybrid of Putins' gangster economy and Uns' stone age one. Technocracy is too reliant on the dwindling quality of energy reserves to be more than niche.
What do I wish? I wish the human species would come to its' senses, so the grim future younger generations fear doesn't come to fruition.

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This is a punishment fantasy for people not listening to or obeying you or your group. There is not straight line here, your way to specific. You have indoctrinated by intellectuals who are ignoring information and possibilities that don't suit them. There is no coherent argument (but I sure someone has written some catastrophization somewhere that you can find for me) for this being an extinction or that we will run out of energy.

Progress is being made towards lowering emissions and we will find out how effective it will be but this kind of thinking and writing will set it back decades if its pushed on the general public. Write something interesting, if you want to discuss the further.

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The only time we progressed towards lowering emissions.....

was during lockdown.

The rest is fantasy, so far.

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Labour & the PM would fully believe this article & are keen to implement policy to support all these extreme ideas. And allows more control of the citizen.

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Total mainstream rubbish, I expect better from interest

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You're having a little trouble linguistically - let me help you:

I expect lies from Interest - I expect them to peddle the myth that growth can go unfettered forever without side -effects within a bounded system.

There, better?

But seriously, how about rebuttal rather than fear-evident avoidance?

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You sentences make sense, but they are no stairway to heaven. They paint no meaningful vision at all.

This author is advocating for what ?? .. The Cult of Pseudo-Green Totalitarianism

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Well well well - all the whingers are out today, eh?

The problem is that Mazzucato is understating the problem.

But I would ask all the wee whingers to either put up some argument of substance, or p--- off.

And that goes for folk who peddle Lomborg.......

This link sums up the full problem. Short-term gratification goes out the window:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067

Thank you Interest.co.nz - often I sigh at your pandering to economics-spawned flat-eathery, but you do more in raising the topics we really need to be discussing, than perhaps anyone else in NZ. Kudos.

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Edberry.com preprint 2 and 3 , if the science is a bit hard read the comments on both as they give great insight. Also Ed will respond to any sensible questions or challenges

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He's a real piece of work. Right back to Communist, I see.

You a talk-back listener too? It would go with the territory.

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Attacking the person is just diversionary, I would like your opinion on the science

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You have it upthread. Read the link I provided - I know you haven't because you haven't had long enough.

We inherited a finite planet - a wee tennis ball spinning in space. In the ground, resulting from conditions a long time ago (a tad more than 4,000 years) was some fossilised sunlight - coal, oil and gas. We evolved with it out of the system. We are putting it back into the system - and unsurprisingly it's creating conditions outside those we evolved in. Who'd have thought? (rhetorical question).

But when someone conspiracies climate, covid and mentions communism, forgive me for pigeonholing them.

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Yes I can understand your initial reaction . If you look into Eds physics and related comments you find a well reasoned and researched paper which has not been successfully debunked for the last 18 months. To Eds credit he seems willing to respond to queries in a fact like manner, hence the comments section is a great insight.

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Actual scientists are too busy to debunk every quack!

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what part of Eds Preprint 3 is quackery

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This paper is a good read PDK. This is particularly true and reflected in the comments on this page:

"Cognitively, the implications presented in this paper are understandable to most people fluent in the issues, but behaviorally remain almost the perfect storm for the human brain to ignore or deny. The issues are: complex, abstract, in the future, threatening to politicians and business owners, difficult to answer, largely ignored by leaders, and depressing to think about. Typically, a description of our biophysical reality is met with denial or nihilism.

Both denial and nihilism help the mind remove dissonance and thus emotionally absolve a person from working to make (uncomfortable) changes that might improve our chances."

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"sustainable growth initiatives ... green transition.....Financially powerful institutions such as banks and universities must divest from fossil-fuel companies"

All hogwash
there is no green transition & no such thing as sustainable growth
And you cant divest from the energy efficiencies of fossil fuel & somehow simultaneously hold up Debt ...
the economy is about to blow with fossil fuels as it is

A green transition entails a shift to hunter gatherer
And i imagine thats not what the author is imagining

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She's an interesting type, and very common in academia. They absolutely know we're in trouble, probably terminally. But on any given day, they don't want to stop the income, the comfort, the mana. So they kick the can, and ease their consciences with virtue-signalling. She chaired this at Davos (I linked it here at the time). She's all over the place, you can't get a handle on her at all. Then you get McAfee, and you realise why the session happened. She can't be coherent, his tale is too tenuous to stand much shaking. So she dances there, but here we see a conscience surfacing. Or maybe her economics training blinkers her?

https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2020…

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Interest.co.nz You will never receive donations from me for as long as you run misinformed material like this.
Perhaps you would like to declare whether you were paid (and by whom) to run this "opinion" piece.

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Maybe you'd like to reciprocate?

:)

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I'm just a person who thinks rather than digest unquestionably whatever comes out of the MSM as I know how easy it is for the MSM to condition peoples thoughts and behaviors.
I've done a search on the author of the article as it appears she is extremely well connected at a media and academic level. She also appears to be one of those people who have been engaged in so many things it's almost a wonder she has time to breathe. She has regular appearances on British TV and has authored 10 books and about 30 articles. From 2013 to 2014, she was a commissioner at Centre for European Reform. She was a member of World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Economics of Innovation from 2014 to 2016.
All these appointments are only possible if one does not deviate from the preferred narrative on agendas such as climate change and presently Covid II.

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Well I didn't vote for her. Actually nobody did.

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I don't see contributing some money to keep Interest.co going and developing as a donation rather it is a paying for a service we all enjoy and get something from.

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You sensitive wee thing. I count 48 articles on the “front page” of Interest, of which 2 have anything to do with “sustainability”. You can boycott whatever you like but I think you actually mean censorship in case you feel too hurt or confronted or something.

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Well it is nice of interest.co.nz to present some considered options, even if we mostly prefer to ignore them.
Only about one degree C so far. This is fine.

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So pretty much saying she's wanting radical change while really advocating for BAU. Finite planet, infinite growth, mmmmm.

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She talks about "shifting Arctic Ice" as if there's a problem but Arctic Ice shifts in cycles.
See this short video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMn_qNY5KZE

She talks about "raging wildfires in western US states and elsewhere"
Wildfires have been around since the dawn of time. The biggest wildfire in the US was in 1910 and burnt 3 million acres in Idaho, Montana and Washington state.
See this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-feKJMGBFwM

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Yeah, but we know why arctic sea ice is in decline and hint, this time it isn't a (natural) cycle. We also know that fires are becoming more intense, due to drying and heating caused by AGW. No one is saying there aren't natural cycles, just that humans are the dominating force now, therefore the negative consequences are something we can mitigate.

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" therefore the negative consequences are something we can mitigate."

China, "you go first"
USA, "no you go first"
Europe, "no both of you go first"
Greta, "all of you just start now"
Everyone else, "who let the child in?!"

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Hamish - "so I've got a perfect excuse too".

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The point I'm trying to make here is nobody is going to volunteer to go first. If they do, they leave space to get crowded out by the others in this dog eat dog world.
If NZ wants to get on and find a mix of innovation and curbing 'lifestyle' (although honestly given some of the chatter during lockdown #1 here and how much people were enjoying a slightly simpler life and smelling the roses a bit more you think it wouldn't be a hard sell), then we should just get on and do it. Not sit around waiting for others, or waiting for the next big talkfest where world leaders get to fire off a few more selfies with other bigwigs.
You might be surprised how many upvotes I give you over these pages. But you often come across with a default position that nobody else lives such a virtuous low carbon life as yourself and therefore have no right to comment. Or just don't understand the issues. Well I play by the rules put in front of me at the moment, I understand something about the history of the planet and am not particularly precious as to whether humans are here in another 10,000 years or whatever. Why would it matter if they are or not anyway? I'll carry on living my life best I can without the guilt, thanks very much.

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Now that one, I gave an uptick.

:)

Note I included myself in the cohort which had shafted future generations' chances. Nobody is perfect, but we can all give it a heave. My frustation is that the time remaining to effect a change has probably run out. Yet our social narrative is away back about 1970, LTG-wise. And as you can see from the dinosaur remarks on this thread, there are some who need to stay back in the old narrative for whatever fear/comfort reasons.

But the orders-of-magnitude of the change required is so vast now, the inertia so strong, that I'm more looking at how to pick up the pieces post-crash (post collapse event). It may well be that we can't steer the ship away from the iceberg. That will require a blueprint, simple and clear (Moses came back with 10 bullet-points on an A4, not a dissertation). And a massive re-skilling. The knock-on is that it will need sure leadership, and some areas will thrive while some won't (depending on leadership).

Thanks for the post

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"I understand something about the history of the planet and am not particularly precious as to whether humans are here in another 10,000 years or whatever." Personally I like to think humans can be better than that. What about the species we are casting into oblivion as pursue our myopic, hedonistic, thoughtless behavior? Our current wasteful, indulgent, lifestyles are learned behavior, we can unlearn as well.

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The green industry in a nutshell.
"Nikola has admitted to filming one of its lorries rolling downhill in a marketing video.
Hindenburg Research, an American short-seller, claimed last week that the electric lorry maker had faked a promotional video in 2018 by rolling its Nikola One truck “down a big hill” to disguise the fact that the vehicle had no working engine.
However, Nikola insisted that it had only ever described the lorry as being “in motion”, rather than being driven."
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lorry-maker-admits-downhill-roll-vid…

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I've always supported the need to address climate change - even argued regularly with my Dad, an outspoken climate-change denier.

Then in the last couple of years it has all gotten so hyped up, so hysterical, and so horribly political that I started to become a little jaded and cynical about it all.

Final straw for me was that silly spoilt Swedish girl throwing a tantrum at world leaders - and people actually allowing this, and taking seriously the opinion of an ignorant child. Now I've joined the growing ranks of climate-change sceptics.

I suspect there are many more like me that are being totally turned off by the hype. Those who champion the cause are shooting themselves in the foot.

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So you've decided to drop the truth, because it inconveniences you. Trump does it too, but I've never managed to admire the trait.

Thunberg has every right to berate; her generation is being handed an insurmountable pile of poo, and emptying energy tanks to do anything about it.

BTW - your name suggests a conceptual problem. There were 1 billion humans on the planet in 1800, 2 by 1930, 3 by 1950, 4 by 1980, 6 by 200, 8 now. You notice anything about that trend? History is not repeating, it's a ponzi.

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Thunberg has no right to berate anyone... until she finishes school - ideally with a science degree. Learning manners and respect for others would come in handy. In fact, *nobody* has the right to berate world leaders. A civil discourse is what is needed, not hysteria.

But it is not her fault. She is simply being used by a bunch of hysterics. It is really clever actually - you cannot criticize a child who is "so passionate about saving the planet".

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Myths of the right. Plenty of them in this comment. Thunberg can and should berate who she likes. And she's a very intelligent, well spoken young woman who knows what she's talking about.

Oh, manners and respect huh? Maybe she should be seen and not heard? Being used? Nah, she's a strong independent woman. A threat to someone like yourself, obviously.

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Just because I think she behaves like a spoiled brat, does not mean I am threatened by her. Your conclusion is completely illogical.
Sad to see that you have to resort to personal attacks. Happens when we run out of ammunition...
Also, why do you automatically conclude that I am on the 'right'? I am not. Is everyone you disagree with 'on the right'?

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Lol. .. Heard of the phrase.... When you are left of stalin everything else is on the right :)

just let that commie have his 5 min fame in front of his other comrades.... Extra ration is worth fighting for lol!!!

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Greta Thunberg, and more accurately her parents, need a good hard dose of reality. While little Greta gets media attention as an "eco warrior" she happily enjoys the trappings and benefits of modern society. Trump was right - she needs to go back to school and learn the practicalities of the real world she is happily denigrating. TBH if she was my daughter I'd just tell her to focus on the near term. She's nothing but an unwitting pawn in the massive gravy train of climate debate. The UN giving her a platform is disgraceful

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Too true. If she had been willingly chose a life of poverty amongst the poor while talking about climate change then at least we can all see she is not in bed with the EU control agenda.

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Yawn. Seems the hysteria is all yours. In case you hadn't noticed "civil discourse" hasn't worked. Those unhappy with invisible hand worshippers are getting angrier. At some point, it will get ugly. Time is running out, especially for those on the wrong side of history!

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The problem is that a 16 year old Autistic kid and the wellknown megalomaniac Bill Gates say they have the solutions to the whole world's problems. That in itself is why the causes they back have a lot of trouble with credibility.

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Part of the problem is there's a whole bunch of envy tax and tall poppy syndrome going on around here.

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Bill Gate is a wannabe saviour of the world. His so called donations into charities are mostly locked up in the so called "foundations" the many ultra weathy also do to make themselves look good while not donating much at all.

Why can't they just give their money to reputable charities???? Maybe they just don't want to is the simple answer.

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Any comment on the other billionaires and their unnatural influence? Koch brothers? Mark Zuckerberg? Peter Thiel?

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Then 6 again. As you say - history does not repeat. "23 countries in the reference scenario, including Japan, Thailand, and Spain, were forecasted to have population declines greater than 50% from 2017 to 2100; China's population was forecasted to decline by 48·0% (−6·1 to 68·4). China was forecasted to become the largest economy by 2035 but in the reference scenario, the USA was forecasted to once again become the largest economy in 2098. Our alternative scenarios suggest that meeting the Sustainable Development Goals targets for education and contraceptive met need would result in a global population of 6·29 billion (4·82–8·73) in 2100 and a population of 6·88 billion (5·27–9·51) when assuming 99th percentile rates of change in these drivers."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)3067…

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These are the same "forecasters" who predicted Brexit wouldn't happen and Trump wouldn't gain the Presidency? Believe or even acknowledge forecasters at your peril

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Where did that nonsense come from?

Brexit and Trump, are indicative of an ex-middle class under stress. They've been hollowed out and they are angry. But at this stage in human affairs, we have a predicament, not a problem. There are best-moves but no perfect ones.

And fossil-fuelled monocultural (in more ways than one, it seems) agribusiness is not possible long-term. It drew down too many parameters; rainforest (via PKE) topsoil, aquifers, wild water, biodiversity but most of all, fossilised sunlight.

There IS a different model. Try going there.

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I applaud Interest for 'standing up' this article. It certainly highlights one fringe of the State of Fear -mongering that sadly infects young and impressionable minds. The link introduces the notion of '"information invalids"- people sickened by bad information." Discerning readers may draw their own observations of this right here on this Very Thread....

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They may also be interested in your solar array, Waymad. Unlike your idea of sieving thorium from seawater (how much energy would the sieving take, for how much return?) I have a sincere respect for what you've done solar-wise.

But you have enough cohones to have watched the Aussie bushfires, the Californian ones, the record melts, temps, storm events. And Climate is merely the exhaust-pipe of our one-off energy-burn.

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The Aussie and CA bushfires have two simple-to-understand causes.

  1. Failures to control fuel load by prescribed/cool/cultural/traditional burns. This provides the core element in the Fire Triangle: fuel, oxygen, source of ignition. Note that WA is not included in the AU coverage, because they cool-burn 8-10% of their bushland every year to control fuel load and thus have no megafires.
  2. Allowing building in inherently fire-hazardous areas: the tops of ridgelines being the classic case. But those Views....to Die for....

Thanks for your nod to the solar: although I do worry (every year or so, it's for the next generation) how they are gonna Dispose of the panels.....the public portal is here.

The Thorium is neither my idea nor Thorium - it's Chiefio reporting on Japan's advances in U extraction. But the ocean is full of Interesting elements......and when push comes to shove, we'll start Sieving.

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And yet the experts disagree with your half truth! The window for hazard reduction is closing, DUE TO A HEATING CLIMATE! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1iya-k4sQY

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What utter rubbish. When unelected megalomaniacs like Bill Gates, and his useful idiot, ivory tower, utterly clueless academics are allowed platforms to push their views on running the world, we all have to do the opposite, real fast, while we still have time. The unelected are trying on a power grab, and have to be resisted. A few of the government banks are in on it, mainly to save their own bosses skins, and to keep their egos going. Interest rates are going nowhere, for as long as on paper, these people owe the amounts that they do. It isn't going to be dull over the next few years.

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This is pure conspiracy theory rubbish. Come on interest, your editorial policy has to be better than this.

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The comments section to this article is an exemplar of cognitive dissonance.

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Almost as bad as stuff.co.nz and that's saying something.

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