Radical resetters’ press release: Degrowth, radically reduce living standards

By Paul Homewood

 

A new peer reviewed study from the University of Leeds reveals the objectives of the Great Reset.

CFACT report:

 

 

 

Apparently the problem with the world is that you are too free.

Americans must slash our energy use 87% and abandon limited government and our free economy if we are to live “sustainably” and meet the goals of the Paris Climate Accord.  That is according to a peer-reviewed study by five lead authors published June 29th in the journal Global Environmental Change.

Read the entire study at CFACT.org.

It’s not often that the Socialists planning our future dystopia make their intentions plainly known.

We can thank five academic radicals for doing just that.

Although the study’s authors concede that only countries with high energy use accomplish “decent living standards,” they nonetheless conclude that our political and economic systems are “misaligned with the aspirations of sustainable development” and are “unfit for the challenges of the 21st century.”

You can kiss individual freedom and prosperity goodbye, along with individual housing, cars, air travel, entrepreneurship, and even eating meat.

Their prescription:

• Slash annual energy use per person from Canada – 232 Gigajoules (GJ), U.S. –  204 GJ, and France 95 – GJ to a very low 27 GJ per year
• “Fairer income distribution is crucial for achieving decent living standards at low energy use”
• “To reduce existing income disparities, governments could raise minimum wages, provide a Universal Basic Income, and introduce a maximum income”
• “We also need much higher taxes on high incomes, and lower taxes on low incomes”
• Move from “an animal-based to a plant-based diet”
• Move from “individual to collective transport”
• Move from “motorized to active” (walking and cycling) travel
• “Economic growth beyond moderate levels of affluence is detrimental for aspirations of sustainable development”.
• “Degrowth… is an idea whose time has come”

https://www.cfact.org/2021/07/05/radical-resetters-publish-plan-to-wreck-america-and-the-free-world/

 

According to the study’s Press Release:

 

Securing decent living standards for all while reducing global energy use.

Fundamental changes in our economies are required to secure decent living standards for all in the struggle against climate breakdown, according to new research.

Governments need to dramatically improve public services, reduce income disparities, scale back resource extraction, and abandon economic growth in affluent countries, for people around the world to thrive whilst cutting global average energy use in half.

Without such fundamental changes, the study warns, we face an existential dilemma: in our current economic system, the energy savings required to avert catastrophic climate changes might undermine living standards; while the improvements in living standards required to end material poverty would need large increases in energy use, further exacerbating climate breakdown.

By 2050, global energy use needs to be as low as 27 gigajoules (GJ) of final energy per person to reach the aspirations of the Paris Agreement of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C without relying on speculative future technologies, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That means current global average energy use (55 GJ per person) needs to be cut in half, while affluent countries like the UK (81 GJ per person) or Spain (77 GJ per person) need to reduce their average energy use by as much as 65%, France (95 GJ per person) by more than 70%, and the most energy-hungry countries like the USA (204 GJ per person) or Canada (232 GJ per person) need to cut by as much as 90%.

https://www.cfact.org/2021/07/04/radical-resetters-press-release-degrowth-radically-reduce-living-standards/ 

The authors go on to explain how everybody is going to be much better off living in a communist dystopia, where nobody needs consumer goods, or most other things for that matter. I wonder where we heard that before?

We will all have jobs in the public sector, along with guaranteed universal incomes, high taxes for the rich and high minimum wages.

But just what will life be like with a per capita energy consumption a third of what it is now?

27 GJ per person would put us on a par with, for instance, N Macedonia, Iraq, Egypt and Vietnam. I should also point out that it would mean China had to cut its per capita consumption by a half.

Private ownership of cars would be straight out of the window, except for the elite. Forget about air travel too.

Industry would be decimated and household usage cut to a minimum.

 

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/updated-energy-and-emissions-projections-2019

 

 

Forget too all of those goods we import at the moment. Not only would we have no money to pay for them, countries like China would also have to cut industry to the bone as well, and international shipping would also be out of the question.

Quite what jobs we would all be doing, once most of the private sector was shut down, is not made clear. No doubt we could create millions of non jobs in the public sector. But, more to the point, how would the country afford to pay them, when it was already broke?

 

Don’t make the mistake of regarding this as a fringe study, as this kind of radicalism is already taking root.

What it does above all however is inconveniently point out that the world cannot meet climate objectives simply by embracing renewable energy. Something much more radical is in store.