Back to the Dark Ages, Says New Report
By Paul Homewood
Yet more juvenile reporting from the BBC (and apparently yet another “Environmental Correspondent”):
A landmark review has called for transformational change in our economic approach to nature.
The long-awaited review by Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta, of the University of Cambridge, says prosperity has come at a "devastating" cost to the natural world.
The report proposes recognising nature as an asset and reconsidering our measures of economic prosperity.
It is expected to set the agenda on government policy going forward.
At its heart is the idea that sustainable economic growth requires a different measure than Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
"Truly sustainable economic growth and development means recognising that our long-term prosperity relies on rebalancing our demand of nature’s goods and services with its capacity to supply them," Prof Dasgupta said in a statement.
"It also means accounting fully for the impact of our interactions with nature across all levels of society."
Covid-19 has shown us what can happen when we don’t do this, he added. "Nature is our home. Good economics demands we manage it better."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55893696
For a start, the comparison with COVID is not only absurd, but utterly insulting. Before we had our modern, technological and industrialised society, all sorts of diseases ran rampant. Thanks to our new developed economies, we have managed to avoid most of the deaths and misery, which sickness and disease used to bring to young and old alike.
As for the idea that we should not measure GDP, but some sort of wellness index instead, this was the inane drivel David Cameron used to rattle on about (and Prince Harry still does!)
It is, of course, easy for the well off to lecture poorer people how they should place less emphasis on material goods, and instead concern themselves with more ephemeral concerns. Particularly when their main concern is which Caribbean island to jet off to next winter.
Governments and media may focus on GDP, but to the man in the street, it is his standard of living and job security that is all that matters. And ultimately it is this concern that governments have to answer to at the polls.
And let us be clear – what this latest report calls for is reduced consumption. That is a fancy description for making us all a lot poorer.
Forget about enjoying the fruits of our endeavours, owning practical cars, holidays abroad, eating nice food, living in comfortable houses with the latest technologies, bringing up well fed and clothed families and living in societies which can afford to provide the health care, education, welfare and security that would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago.
What these new age hippies really want is to return us all to the dark ages!
Worse still, they want to condemn the third world to a life of poverty.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Not quite true. They want us back in the dark ages. They will then have mansions and the lucky few of us to serve them. This idiot should read up about the French Revolution because this sort of mis-thinking caused many avoidable deaths.
They consider all of this without China or Russia indeed without the despot run failed states who could not give a monkeys chuff about what the West does to it’s self as long as it saves them the trouble!
Ah, despot run failed states – you must be refering to USA 2021 post its rigged election!
Yes, it is all about reducing taxes on high incomes and on ‘wealth’ and moving revenue gathering to things that the poor and those on low incomes cannot do without: housing, heat, light, food and water. No wonder the BBC promote it so much!
“Covid-19 has shown us …”
. . . politicians have neither common sense nor honesty.
Helen Briggs is no newbie in the entrenched BBC climate mafiosi, she’s been around for a while. I recall reading an article penned by her a while back claiming that something like 40% of our plants were facing extinction due to, you guessed it, the usual. Her record isn’t quite stuck but it does seem to have a ‘Double A’ side! And being on the Beeb payroll for quite some time I dare say that she has many dud releases under her belt if you look back far enough.
Paul, you have nailed it.
This indicates exactly what has been interpreted by looking at the pronouncements of the self appointed elites who attend the global conferences, going back decades. Not all, but there will be those among them, promoting one world government and the subjugation of the ones not done away with by some means or other….maybe by over-vaccinating until a critical point is reached, of some additional constituent is slowly added to each successive dose. . ????
The early statements in UN circles talked about “thinking the unthinkable” i.e. eugenics. and reducing the world population by 75% or even more. Conspiracy theory? Yes, and being gradually demonstrated as conspiracy fact. Outrageous? Yes. Achievable? I would say, possibly yes, also.
The restriction of travel will be lifted only for those with the vaccine passport. And conveniently cars will be done away with…..getting rid of all that nasty CO2, and so people can not circulate throughout society, to discuss ideas, political, philosophical and spiritual.
A very brief answer…..but what are the odds of this ID chip “tagging” system coming into being…..everything monitored.
Events are on a cusp at the moment. This degeneration could be halted if enough people stop believing everything and every exaggeration they are told, and stop just complying unquestioningly with every new edict.
But this is preaching to the already converted…………
Most of our politicians, elected to defend our wellbeing, are not doing that, as in their futile , terribly damaging decarbonisation policy, expected to cost as much as a war.
Those in charge are inflicting all that on us, typified by wind turbines, electric cars, potentially enforced vegetarianism and the like.
This is the stufbthat could justify a UK revolution but the Establishment has deceived us.
What should/can the public do to counter this ruinous deception?
One point is true – GDP is not a good gauge of an economy’s ‘output’. In current usage it does not measure product but rather ‘turnover’. Its simply an estimate (yes its not measured with data but just guessed at) of ‘transactions’. So if i sell you a hat for $1 the GDP goes up $1. Then you sell the hat back to me for $2 the GDP is now $3 total on our 2 transactions. What have we PRODUCED? Nothing, but GDP has gone up!
bobn:
And how much does the bureaucracy add to the GDP? They take money in and out, but do they PRODUCE anything? (except confusion, time wasting and delays).
Once the funding stops I’m sure you’ll eventually be noticing the lack of it. It will start with major staff shortages,less pay for existing staff having to do the work for the missing ones and shorter hours to the point nothing is open at all.
This is a small example:https://socialnewsdaily.com/17541/national-weather-service-posts-secret-message-please-pay-us/
Eventually libraries will be gone so you want to check out a book? Nope sorry! Government funding cut so bye bye library and millions of poor folks who have no other way to get books are left high n dry!
Funding goes more then just feeding the fat cats. Though new fat cats will take the place of the government ones in the form of semi private enterprises like EA Games and Microsoft. You know how well THEY care about consumers!
“Sir David Attenborough, who wrote the foreword to the review, said: “This comprehensive and immensely important report shows us how, by bringing economics and ecology face-to-face, we can help to save the natural world and, in doing so, save ourselves.”
you just knew he would chip in with “save ourselves” – clap for the planet next!!!
But surely Attenbollox wants lots of people to die which is strange way of saving them.
” clap for the planet next ”
Haven’t we got enough problems without getting the clap as well !!
Guido did a piece on Helen Briggs a few years ago.
https://order-order.com/people/helen-briggs/
‘The long-awaited review by Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta, of the University of Cambridge, says prosperity has come at a “devastating” cost to the natural world.’
As a human, I consider people more important than ‘the natural world.’ Additionally, the earth is so big, the natural world hardly notices us. And another another thing: prosperity is best for the environment. Wealthy people look after the planet. Poor people can’t and don’t. The thrust of Dasgupta and Attenborough will be catastrophic on ‘the planet.’ Reality is they should want MORE prosperity.
Yes poor people create devastation in an endeavour to make a living. Their views on animals which need the same resources is that they should be eradicated and vegetation should be cleared unless it produces food. They need food and a roof over their heads and clothing to protect them from the natural world . Vegetation gets in the way.
“Prosperity is best for the environment.”
Not something that our green friends would admit, but it is true. Developing societies increase their impact on nature as they grow. Poor people will eat anything because they have to. They will cut down trees to burn them, and farm every scrap of land because yields are so low.
There comes an inflexion point when folks have enough wealth that they can afford to care about the environment. At the same time birth rates decline. The area of land needed to be farmed goes down because of improved methods.
If our politicians had the sensible views of our host, the world would be in a better place
Circuitous career to Al Beeb
She holds a Master of Philosophy (medical faculty) and Bachelor of Science degree (Biochemistry and Genetics) from Newcastle University.
She is also a published scientist and author.
Before joining the BBC, she worked as a presenter, news reader and reporter for local radio and network radio news.
According to her Reuters profile:
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/people/helen-briggs
Looking at her scribblings at MuckRack – she didn’t seem to learn much at Newcastle.
Yes poor people create devastation in an endeavour to make a living. Their views on animals which need the same resources is that they should be eradicated and vegetation should be cleared unless it produces food. They need food and a roof over their heads and clothing to protect them from the natural world . Vegetation gets in the way.
You’re making a case for the eradication of the poor … there are two obvious ways …
which would you choose & why ?
Eradication of poverty by improving access to cheap reliable energy and the consequent benefits. Not eradication of the poor!
Tim, that’s the correct answer (they also need education) IMHO, but it’s amazing how many ‘greens’ would prefer the other way !
I disagree strongly. He means to let us have it but with words of caution not to abuse it or we are going to f’k ourselves and the CCP not required to help us hurt yourselves.
Ironic isn’t it that these insane ideologically driven policies will cost the poor most.
Born in Dhaka, Sir Partha Dasgupta, wasted no time in leaving there once he got an education there that would give him personal access to all the benefits of being in the elite of an affluent society.
Perhaps he should direct his comments using his native language to advise the residents of India and Bangladesh that they should stop wanting to improve their lives, forego hopes of ever having electricity as a basic condition of living, hot and cold running water and a modern health care system.
I mean it is more labor cost effective to convince people that don’t have a pathogen free water distribution system and a food supply chain free of contaminants, that they don’t need such things rather than those whose whole lifestyle is based on their availability at virtually no apparent cost.
Do the do, Sir Partha Dasgupta. Get out there and convince your former compatriots about all the terrible personal sacrifice you have to make. Explain to them just how terrible it is to have seemingly free, advanced health care. Reliable and safe transportation. A western household with all its amenities. A princely income, complete with gold plated pension and free, first class transportation to conferences in luxury conditions at various resort cities around the world. Convince them how terrible it is and how they should not listen to political and civil leaders trying to bring some of those benefits to them.
Born into poverty, I had TB as a child, a thing that left its mark on me for life. It has always been the case that poor living standards are the basis to such illnesses and so this BBC statement falls into line with negative connotations.
If you are to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, how much do you take? I feel sure that every nation would have its own ideas on the subject; could it become a weapon? In the name of ecology, how much of our land do we cover with the mechanical output of mankind with a view to provisioning just one of the elements on which our lives are based? How many fields of voltaic cells can nature accommodate? What is the balance between covered lands and open pasture before other circumstances, unforeseen, prevail? If cattle are a contributory factor, is this the end of the Serengeti’s herds or will exceptions become so prevalent that they turn dramatic interventions into equally unreconcilable free choices? Would ecologists prefer our dairy herds be preyed upon by some apex predator to turn management into a natural process mimicking the African plains? Would that satisfy them? Could we learn to love our herbivores once we have seen them mauled by wolves or leopards?
If we seek to control the planet with science there will always be the fear that some may use these processes for malign purposes. At the moment it is considered humane and considerate to sustain nature and the evidence of such application is universally understood. There is a huge emotional approach, massive kudos, no matter what the dogma, towards people who do universally understood actions in support of creatures and environments. Despite the fires, winds, floods and other phenomenon, the great scheme is still functioning. Nature only needs the slightest light touch intervention to prosper, which usually means leaving it well alone.
The concept being dreamt, being promoted, is based on control. Paul alludes to the great concerns being promoted by essentially, the comfortable. They have too much to lose, too high an opinion of themselves, to allow numbskulls like ‘deniers’ to question their hegemony. Based in the great cities of the world, this control thinks in terms of complexity and rapture of an extremely ordered convention and must cause endless perturbation when they think in terms of wild nature and its denial of control and intervention. Would our car journeys be controlled when electric cars could end-up being programmed for certain routes at certain times and for certain people?
Our country is being built-over but that hardly seems to turn an eye in the remonstrations of the green mind. Replacing environments which sequestrate naturally with heat sink constructions, which then have to have half-thought-through processes to control them, seems counter-intuitive. Had my parents had the money even their hovel could have been improved; the environment there, the social network was admirable. Instead they had to move to a council built housing estate which had no society and only created problems of a different sort that propelled those inhabitants into a whole lot of threat and ignorance. Rather like a tale of the Green movement only answering the question it poses and ignoring the threats, dysfunction it creates elsewhere.
Well stated
The China virus (the name banned in the US by a Biden executive order) was almost certainly created in a laboratory, the most likely the Wuhan Lab due to its proximity to the outbreak. Whether it was intentional or not, one has to consider the perfect timing to get the Chinese puppet into the WH.
This is pure verbatim 2030 Agenda (previously Agenda 21) and its everywhere. Under the guise of “sustainability” technocrats can get away with anything. From today’s DT front page we see that the Secretary of State for Transport (the idiot Grant Schapps) has no control over Highways England (an unelected NGO) regarding “smart motorways”. Who voted for them? Who voted for HS2? A few minutes ago Ian King (Sky News) was interviewing an investment fund owner who is going to put £5 billion into sustainable investments for a better planet. This ideology is EVERYWHERE and seems to be unstopable.
‘an investment fund owner who is going to put £5 billion into sustainable investments for a better planet’
‘Sustainable investments’ is like loaning money to your brother.
“Covid-19 has shown us”….what relying on overseas manufacturing of PPE, testing and soo many other things leaves us open to.,
After being in business in a customer facing enviroment (motor trade) for the last 30 years or so I have found that most people only pay any attention the the things that intrest them, therefore most of the climate alarmist stuff and ‘great reset’ guff will go in one ear and out the other. I have found that the majority of people (not all and I accept one should not generalize) are more interested in whatever sport they follow or what is going on in the latest soap opera or reality show. many are only dimly aware of the way the world works.unless money is involved with tends to sharpen focus on the situation.If I try to engage anyone with the type of view we hold here it is generally met with rebuttal or a blank look.I have a couple of family members who are convinced they are saving the planet with their EV’s,any mention of cobalt or cadmium extraction or knowledge of where the electrickery comes from is beyond their wit.
I fear we are all in a small minority.
Lord Late: The points you address are made and explained comprehensively in Patrick M Woods excellent book “Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order” ( or “reset” as some call it or “sustainability” as others call it.
Report ‘says prosperity has come at a “devastating” cost to the natural world.’
– – –
So let’s dig up vast quantities of minerals necessary for batteries, solar panels, wind turbines etc. etc. Then splatter renewables all over the countryside and oceans, and create thousands of miles of new power lines and undersea cables. Marvellous 🙄
And don’t forget to take more and more agricultural land and devote it instead to plantings for ethanol production to add to fossil fuels (90%) that will be burned right away adding CO2 back into the atmosphere. Ignore the fact that this land is also needed for solar panel and wind turbine ‘farms’ and then for planting millions of new trees. Something’s got to give somewhere. The same land cannot be used for all of these things and be able to feed and house an increasing number of stakeholders.
University of Cambridge getting two highly fashionable topics together in one report here.
Whether for business efficency by aiming to guarantee funding from Europe, or doubling up on publicity when key words are typed into search engines is unclear.
But the band-waggon springs to mind.
‘Global greenhouse gas emissions over the last century have made southern China a hotspot for bat-bourne coronaviruses…’
Journal – Science of Total Environment.
Article – Climate change may have driven the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 by Dr. Robert Beyer.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/climate-change-may-have-driven-the-emergence-of-sars-cov-2
Let’s be clear. One of the origins for this desire to decrease living standards has its roots back in Paul Ehrlich’s bet with Julien Simon on whether the earth would be more bountiful with a consequent increase in resources. Being Malthusians and believing that a catastrophic depletion of resources would lead to a huge drop in living standards. Ehrlich accepted a bet that the cost of five items would increase and Simon, basing his understanding that human ingenuity was limitless and productivity would increase, accepted a bet that the prices would decrease. He won.
The important point to understand that Simon stipulated that the commodities were not price-controlled by government so no Carbon tax. I’ve read it recently that some leftists in power believe that we have to reduce consumption by stealth as the world cannot sustain the population that we have. Therefore cars have to be rationed by price. Flying can only be undertaken by VIP’s. Seafront houses can only be acquired by the very deserving. The earth is running a resource depletion and at our present level of consumption, we require 2,3,4 (make up your own number) earth’s to survive. These Maltesers understand nothing.
Steve Jobs stated that productivity enables him to undertake more tomorrow, utilising the same or less resources that he did today. Think about it. How many pieces of equipment did I require 20 years ago to undertake what my phone does today – at a higher-quality, with more facilities and a lower cost. If I was a linear Malthusian sitting in those hallowed spires, or Houses so Common, I would add up the cost of all the individual items, increase to allow for inflation, and result in a product that very few could afford. But I could write a very important book blaming it all on the Population Bomb. (Incidentally, the Chinese CP are now worried about their declining population.)
This argument is years old. Rolls stated that you would never arrive at the stage where everyone could afford a car. He said “where would you get all the chauffeurs.” Ken Olso said that it was impossible for everyone to own a computer – where would get the programmers from. On TV this evening Greg Wallace was walking around a village in Kwa Zulu Natal and in the background was a girl using a mobile phone doing more intensive computation tasks than Olsen could ever undertake with his DEC – VAX, at a fraction of the cost. Ehrlich stated that the reason he lost the bet was a computer program problem. You couldn’t make it up.
Now the most galling thing is that so-called working-class defenders of Socialism have fallen for the green c*^p analysis. Milly is no different that David or Corbyn. They believe consumption has to be curbed. Energy use cannot rely on when people need it – only when it is available. We have to educate you by stealth until you learn better. So no holidays for you, no secure jobs working in a mine. And both here and in the states – we have to shut you down for your own good. “We have to find alternatives for these people.” Let them eat code. Except that these vermin never do. They go on TV and that is the end of their involvement. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. But who determines either of these. These people ARE evil not just wrong.