“Why is this a problem? Why should you care? Well, the saviours at Deloitte admit that there will be a short-term cost to implementing their cure (net-zero emissions by 2050, an utterly preposterous and inexcusable goal, both practically and conceptually). This, by the way, is a goal identical to that adopted last week by the delusional leaders of Australia, which additionally committed that resource-dependent-and-productive country to an over 40 per cent decrease by 2005 standards in "greenhouse gas emission" within the impossible timeframe of eight years. This will devastate Australia”.
Jordan Peterson
https://thedeepdive.ca/jordan-peterson-proposes-alternative-to-world-economic-forum-will-he-be-the-new-klaus-schwab/
The worldwide group, according to Peterson, will be based in London, with the first meeting scheduled for the fall. He didn’t say anything about the group’s name or who will be involved.
Peterson went on to say that the consortium will be founded on questions rather than solutions, one of which would be bringing the most energy and resources to the most people at the lowest possible cost.
“You don’t get to save the planet by making energy prices so expensive that no one poor can afford them. That’s off the table,” he said. “You don’t get to impose your utopian vision in the service of your narcissism on the poor.”
Another dilemma is how to prioritize human well-being “in harmony with nature,” with the caveat that it should not be “predicated on the idea that there are too many goddamn mouths to feed and that you’re evil if you just think about having children.”
Other issues the consortium hopes to address, he says, are “how do we arrange systems of governance” without a top-down approach like the WEF and how to promote long-term monogamous child-centred families.
“Some spirit is going to guide you – that’s life. The question is, what is the highest spirit that could guide you?” Peterson said.
The psychologist’s proposal garnered mixed reactions from online observers, with some noting that another global organization is not a solution to the prevalence of such influential groups.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/15/peddlers-environmental-doom-have-shown-true-totalitarian-colours/
Jordan Peterson Deloitte is the largest “professional services network” in the world. Headquartered in London, it is also one of the big four global accounting companies, offering audit, consulting, risk advisory, tax and legal services to corporate clients.
With a third of a million professionals operating on those fronts worldwide, and as the third-largest privately owned company in the US, Deloitte is a behemoth with numerous and far-reaching tentacles.
In short: it is an entity we should all know about, not least because such enterprises no longer limit themselves to their proper bailiwick (profit-centred business strategising, say), but – consciously or not – have assumed the role as councillors to believers in unchecked globalisation whose policies have sparked considerable unrest around the world.
If you’re seeking the cause of the Dutch agriculture and fisheries protests, the Canadian trucker convoy, the yellow-jackets in France, the farmer rebellion in India a few years ago, the recent catastrophic collapse of Sri Lanka, or the energy crisis in Europe and Australia, you can instruct yourself by the recent pronouncements from Deloitte.
Whilst not directly responsible, they offer an insight into the elite groupthink that has triggered these events; into the cabal of utopians operating in the media, corporate and government fronts, wielding a nightmarish vision of environmental apocalypse.
Outlandish claims
In May this year, Deloitte released a clarion call to precipitous action trumpeting the climate emergency confronting us. Called ‘The Turning Point: A Global Summary’, it is a stellar example of a mentality more common among officials in the EU: one of fundamental bureaucratic overreach (and one which generated Brexit – a very good decision on the part of the Brits, in my view) that threatens the very survival of that selfsame EU.
The report opens with two claims: first, that the storms, wildfires, droughts, downpours, and floods around the globe in the last 18 months are unique and unprecedented – a dubious claim – and implicitly that the “science” is now at a point where we can say without doubt that experts can and must model the entire ecology and economy of the planet (!) and that we must modify everyone’s behaviour, by hook or by crook, to avoid what would otherwise be the most expensive environmental and social catastrophe in history.
The Deloitte “models” posit that “climate impacts” could affect global economic output, and say that unchecked climate change will cost us $178 trillion over the next 50 years – that’s $25,000 per person, to put it in human terms.
Who dares deny such facts, stated so mathematically? So precisely? So scientifically?
Let’s update Mark Twain’s famous dictum: there are lies, damned lies, statistics – and computer models.
“Computer model” does not mean “data” (and even “data” does not mean “fact”). “Computer model” means, at best, “hypothesis” posing as mathematical fact.
No real scientist says “follow the science.” Yet this is exactly what bodies such as the EU consistently pronounce, pushing for collectivist solutions that do more harm than good.
Solutions in sovereignty
What might we rely on, instead, to guide us forward, in these times of accelerating trouble and possibility?
Valid authority rests in the people. Truly valid structures of authority are local, not centralised for reasons of efficiency and “emergency”. This must not become the generation of yet another top-down Tower of Babel. That will not solve our problems, just as similar attempts have failed to solve our problems in the past.
Ask yourself: are these Deloitte models – which are supposed to guide all the important decisions we make about the economic security and opportunity of families and the structures of our civil societies – accurate enough even to give those who employ them any edge whatsoever, say, in predicting the performance of a stock portfolio (one based on green energy, for example) over the upcoming years?
The answer is no. How do we know? Because if such accurate models existed and were implemented by a company with Deloitte’s resources and reach, Deloitte would soon have all the money.
That is never going to happen. The global economy, let alone the environment, is simply too complex to model. It is for this reason, fundamentally, that we have and require a free-market system: the free market is the best model of the environment we can generate.
Let me repeat that, with a codicil: not only is the free market the best model of the environment we can generate, it is and will remain the best model that can, in principle, ever be generated (with its widely distributed computations, constituting the totality of the choices of 7 billion people). It simply cannot be improved upon – certainly not by presumptuous power-mad utopians, who think that hiring someone mysteriously manipulating a few carefully chosen numbers and then reading the summarised output means genuine contact with the reality of the future and the generation of knowledge unassailable on both the ethical and the practical front.
The impact of delusional thinking
Why is this a problem? Why should you care? Well, the saviours at Deloitte admit that there will be a short-term cost to implementing their cure (net-zero emissions by 2050, an utterly preposterous and inexcusable goal, both practically and conceptually). This, by the way, is a goal identical to that adopted last week by the delusional leaders of Australia, which additionally committed that resource-dependent-and-productive country to an over 40 per cent decrease by 2005 standards in "greenhouse gas emission" within the impossible timeframe of eight years. This will devastate Australia.
Here is the confession, couched in bureaucratic double-speak, from the Deloitte consultants: "During the initial stages the combined cost of the upfront investments in decarbonization, coupled with the already locked-in damages of climate change would temporarily lower economic activity, compared to the current emissions-intensive path.”
The omniscient planners then attempt to justify this, with the standard empty threats and promises (the suffering is certain, the benefits ethereal): “those most exposed to the economic damages of unchecked climate change would also have the most to gain from embracing a low-emissions future.” Really? Tell that to the African and Indian populations in the developing world lifted from poverty by coal and natural gas.
And think – really think – about this statement: “Existing industries would be reconstituted as a series of complex, interconnected, emissions-free energy systems: energy, mobility, industry, manufacturing, food and land use, and negative emissions.”
That sounds difficult, don’t you think? To rebuild everything at once and better? Without breaking everything? ….
Integral Ecology and the Ecological Virtues in Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’
November 29, 2015 by Dr. Matthew J. Ramage, PhD
Introduction
….
After finishing the encyclical [Laudato Si’], I started to peruse the blogosphere and, unsurprisingly, encountered a wide range of reactions. There were those on the left who cheered the Church for finally having gotten with the times, and accepted the human causes behind climate change. And there were those on the right who dismissed the entire document, moved by their skepticism regarding this same claim. It turns out, however, that the question of climate change holds a minor place within the scope of the encyclical, and it is largely irrelevant to Francis’s overarching message. In other words, the text is not “an encyclical on climate change,” as some have called it. It treats a number of other scientific issues and much, much more besides that. In this piece, what I would like to do is to offer a reflection on what I take to constitute the heart of Francis’s vision for an “integral ecology” and the “ecological virtues” demanded by it. In so doing, I will assuredly touch on certain themes that others have treated, but I also hope to add some nuances that have not been addressed in the various commentaries currently circulating in the blogosphere.
Francis’s Vision for an Integral Ecology
If there is one theme that runs throughout Francis’s encyclical, it is his repeated insistence that everything in the world is “interconnected” or “interrelated.” This thought is expressed dozens of times throughout the text, and it is probably the most concise way to capture the core conviction undergirding the pontiff’s vision for an “integral ecology.” According to Francis, the problem is that we have forgotten that we ourselves are the dust of the earth. Echoing St. Francis and St. Bonaventure, the pontiff does not shy away from speaking of all creatures as our brothers and sisters. But in invoking this turn of phrase from the Franciscan tradition, Francis is, by no means, denying the uniqueness of man and his place in the cosmos—far from it, as we shall see below.
Rather, the thrust behind this expression is to emphasize that the natural environment, and man’s social environment, are really two sides of a single reality in crisis today. This is expressed well in the following paragraph:
When we speak of the “environment,” what we really mean is a relationship existing between nature, and the society which lives in it. Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves, or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it, and thus in constant interaction with it. … We are faced, not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis, which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and, at the same time, protecting nature (§139).
This paragraph is of paramount importance, especially for some traditionally-minded Catholics who have claimed that the environment is a secondary issue, and that the Pope has more important things he should be talking about.
On this score, we should recall that Francis inherited his office from predecessors who thankfully did do a whole lot of talking on the subjects conservative Catholics want to hear about. Francis’s own view on the matter is perhaps best expressed in his first major interview as Pope:
We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage, and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the Church, for that matter, is clear, and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.1
Thus, this encyclical, which is not focused on your typical pro-life issues, but on care for mankind’s common home.
The irony is that some people get caught up on the climate change question and miss the fact that Laudato Si’ is, in fact, a deeply pro-life encyclical that ought to be applauded by conservatives. Specifically, Francis’s insistence upon environmental issues offers an exceptional backdoor entry into issues concerning human dignity, and what the Church’s social doctrine tradition calls “integral human development.” To be sure, Francis is not simply using environmental issues as a means to talk about thorny social problems, but since we are inextricably connected with the rest of nature, to talk about how to treat the environment is also to talk about ourselves—how convenient!
An example of this can be seen in what Francis has to say about cruelty toward animals.
While we certainly ought to respect God’s creatures, and see in all of them a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness, Francis emphasizes that the abuse of God’s creation is “contrary to human dignity” (§92; 130; cf. CCC §339; 2418). In other words, regardless of whether Francis is right on every last scientific point in the encyclical, it is, in the first place, bad for us to treat the environment the way we often carelessly do. As in the Catholic moral tradition, so here, it is largely about the habits we are creating in ourselves. Francis wants us to ponder these questions: In a world where people have grown accustomed to disrespecting the natural environment, why should we expect them to respect man’s nature? Or, conversely, in a world where we habitually manipulate our own bodies without any concern for their nature, why should we expect people to respect the nonhuman environment around us?
Pro-life Implications of an Integral Ecology
To draw out the implications of his integral vision, Francis builds on a little understood concept introduced into Catholic social teaching by Pope John Paul II, and reiterated by Pope Benedict XVI: human ecology (or, if you prefer, ecology of man). In a 2011 address to the parliament of Germany, Benedict pointedly stated:
The importance of ecology is no longer disputed. We must listen to the language of nature, and we must answer accordingly. Yet, I would like to underline a point that seems to me to be neglected, today as in the past: there is also an ecology of man. Man, too, has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it, and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.2
In his social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, the emeritus pontiff wrote in a similar vein:
There is need for what might be called a human ecology, correctly understood. The deterioration of nature is, in fact, closely connected to the culture that shapes human coexistence: when “human ecology” is respected within society, environmental ecology also benefits. Just as human virtues are interrelated, such that the weakening of one, places others at risk, so the ecological system is based on respect for a plan that affects both the health of society, and its good relationship with nature …
If there is a lack of respect for the right to life, and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation, and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves.
The book of nature is one and indivisible: it takes in, not only the environment, but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development. Our duties toward the environment are linked to our duties toward the human person, considered in himself, and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties, while trampling on the other. Herein lies a grave contradiction in our mentality and practice today: one which demeans the person, disrupts the environment, and damages society.3
I find this to be a remarkably fresh and brilliant way to discuss pro-life issues today in the public square: We begin by recalling that man is part of nature. And every school kid these days is told he needs to respect nature. But then it must be asked: how can we be expected to respect non-human nature if we do not even respect our own human nature? Francis invokes this argument several times in his encyclical:
When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities—to offer just a few examples—it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected (§117).
….
https://www.hprweb.com/2015/11/integral-ecology-and-the-ecological-virtues-in-pope-franciss-laudato-si/
