The Green Movement Bubble Will Burst

With the visible demise of the worldwide fiat money bubble experiment in 2008, it was only a matter of time before one bubble supported activity after another fell by the wayside.  Stock markets around the world have failed to recover bubble-level highs of 2008, let alone the highs of 2000.  Real estate, already five years on the downside, still appears to have years – if not a decade or more – of travel time on the road to recovery.

The bursting I have anticipated with glee, and which seems to be coming to fruition, is the bursting of the green bubble.  It is well known that Time Magazine reported on the coming global cooling in 1974.  It would have been silly to consider - for even the most egregious government - that the state would attempt to do something about the weather.

Well, it didn’t take long.  The green movement sprung forth in its glory.  This year marks the 20^th anniversary of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.  Since then, we have seen government incentives for wind power, solar power, wave power, hydrogen power, electric cars, and other various sorts of “alternative” energy.

Now we have the financial calamity, marked by spending and debt far greater than the capacity of productive society’s ability to support.  In this time, governments around the world are fighting to do everything they can to revive these struggling economies (through central planning, a losing cause).  In fact, what they are doing is trying to find ways to extend the gravy train, for them and those who are close to them – both higher and lower in the hierarchy.

Many bubbles will burst – think through everything supported by the Ponzi scheme of government debt and regulation.  Start at the top with government debt and banking as we know it today.

Eventually on the list will come the green movement – the attempt to move mankind into a world of renewable energy (masking the true intent: to bring more control over society including moving further toward global government).

It seems this day of bursting is closer than ever.  Of course, a great blow to this movement, a big step toward bursting the bubble was the bit of email discovery that climate data was manipulated, and scientists with opposing views were ostracized – commonly known as climategate. 

The Climatic Research Unit email controversy (also known as "Climategate") began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA).  Several weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change, an unknown individual or group had breached CRU's server and thousands of emails and computer files were copied to various locations on the Internet.

This certainly helped take the wind out of the sails of the green movement, the cover to move to a global tax and therefore a one-world currency (in my view).  Sadly, even after this event, funding of several non-economic programs continued.  Wonderfully, this bubble finally appears to be bursting.

To mark the 20^th anniversary of the first Rio summit, there is now a reunion of sorts – in Rio, once again.  Sadly, even the proponents are recognizing the futility of these grand political parades:

As more than 100 world leaders descend on Rio de Janeiro for a global conference on the environment this week that’s supposed to build on the 1992 Earth Summit, some environmentalists say these large international gatherings have lost their value.

“We don’t need the heads of state here, frankly,” Pat Mooney, executive director of ETC Group, an Ottawa-based environmental organization, said from Rio. “Quite honestly the grandstanding around some of these treaties, it was nonsense and we knew it was nonsense at the time.”

Pat Mooney knew it was nonsense at the time?  I wonder if this ever stopped Pat from attending a previous conference or advocating for government to take resources from taxpayers, and other such benefits associated with being a green globetrotter. 

More importantly, there seems to be a sense that the hope of large projects run through national governments is becoming futile:

Mr. Mooney and others say progress on environmental protection is more likely to come “bottom up,” from regional initiatives and non-traditional players and not from big international conventions.

Of course, as government promises break, I think this type of thinking will be true in all aspects of life – when Washington or Brussels can’t deliver the promised goods, people will look to local solutions once again.  More good news for those who prefer a decentralized society.

The government promises to the green movement are being broken.  The credibility (what there was of it) was broken when the emails were exposed, and the funding no longer exists – certainly not for a project in which the public has been shaken free from the brainwashing of the politicians and mainstream media.

It’s easy to see why there is so much skepticism about this week’s meeting in Rio, officially called the UN Conference on Sustainable Development or “Rio+20.” When leaders met in the same convention centre 20 years ago for the first Earth Summit, they signed Agenda 21, a series of pledges for the 21st century to protect biological diversity, curb climate change, eradicate poverty and stop desertification.

Today, almost none of those pledges has been fulfilled. A recent report by the UN’s Environment Program tracked 90 goals from Agenda 21 and hundreds of other international conventions. It found that significant progress had been made on just four; reducing ozone depletion, removing lead from gasoline, improving access to water supplies and boosting research for marine pollution.

The countless resources wasted, for a program that has delivered progress on less than 5% of its objectives over the course of 20 years (another plank in the eye of supporters in the state, perhaps).  Certainly a waste of money and resources, but a wonderful outcome for those who prefer freedom.

For all of the justifiable concerns of the increasing encroachment by government into the lives of individuals, such failures should be highlighted and celebrated.  This green movement, a move toward carbon taxes all in the name of global cooling / global warming / climate change, was intended to usher in a new global currency at just the time the financial calamity hit.

Happily, it all is coming apart.  Certainly there will be another scheme, but this one seems to be on its last legs.