Just finished reading your extraordinary article. There is a lifetime of work in that. Would I be right to suggest that what we are looking at is a series interlocking limited hangouts, often contradictory, but never touching the real problems facing us? I need to burrow into your and Corey's work further and will.
On 350.org, you might remember an attack on the Michael Moore produced film "‘Planet of the Humans’. It had some flaws such as its emphasis on over-population. Yet, some of its attacks on the green entrepreneurs were well placed. What was more interesting was The Grayzone's investigation of the people doing the attacking such Bill McKibben of 350.og and his biofuel solution to energy problems. As the Grayzone team explained, that film got some things right too . (https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/).
Locally, I have just found the remarkable existence of an outfit called The Katoomba Group with links to USAID, the State Dept and the World Bank. 28 conferences in16 countries between 2000-2024. Billionaires everywhere using our town's name to make their money but none of the people or their money ever touch our town aside from making visits every 25 years (see .
Thanks Warren, The limited hangouts abound! Because NPIC operatives serve narratives rather than truth they need to continually maintain silences on key issues/facts that don't serve their narratives, but they also need to create the appearance that they attend to relevant issues. For instance: Naomi Klein makes a brief reference to the fact that CO2 enhanced oil recovery could quadruple US proven reserves in her 2014 book This Changes Everything, but neither her nor the networks of NGOs she is part of have done nothing anything of note to resist bipartisan efforts to expand tax credits for CCS in the US that are an effective subsidy for the production of anthropogenic CO2 for use in enhanced oil recovery. The same lethargy can be seen in NGO networks campaigning on the 'rights of nature' (Michelle Maloney et al). They continue to fail to resist natural capital accounting which is a central component of the work of networks like ICLEI. I see that the brilliant Kate Mason speaks highly of your work. You should be proud! I'm glad there are people like yourself out there doing the necessary work.
Your point on Natural Capital Accounting is well made. We had a fellow called Professor Mark Diesendorf address a Council Planetary Health Initiative event. He has written a book: "The Path to Sustainable Civilisation". Talking to a home crowd, so everything was running smoothly. At the end, they threw matters open to questions. I pointed out to him and his adoring audience that Neoliberalism is NOT about small government as he confused it with laissez faire (as you know it is about government being as big as the market needs). I also explained that the Federal Government had put out its Natural Capital Handbook and probably has plans to put the Blue Mountains 11,000 sq kilometres of bushland to good use.
This presented our Council with a problem. They were recording the event. What were they going to do? They did something brilliant. They cut out all the questions and the questioners. So Diesendorf came across as someone suffering dementia, jumping unprompted from one subject to another. I put the edited questions back in a version of the recording (https://warrenross.substack.com/p/planetary-health-in-a-town-on-life).
Your point on Naomi Klein was very interesting. I remember a Professor Philip Mirowski presentation at UTS where he explained, what he called the right, will play with climate change and he argued there that Klein had been unhelpful in assessing it . He explained how these people, better described as Neoliberals, are three steps ahead of their opposition. Sadly, though it has been available for at 12 years, it has now been removed from Youtube.
One of Mirowski's clips that is still available is an audio history of Neoliberalism which started, technically, in 1947 with the Mont Pelerin Society. I am not sure that Hayek really was in opposition to socialism. I suspect he and Keynes were a double act similar to the sort of deceptions you are describing but it is a good history (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf2YQ-1wvrc&t=33s)
I thought I recognised that name 'Brand'. I found links in a natcap bibliography of mine. Launched New Forests in 2005/6. Al Gore's Generation Investment Management took an equity stake in 2008. Gore, Blood, Paulson and Brand were way ahead of the curve in terms of natural asset companies (the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in the U.S. and the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC) in Great Britain). https://web.archive.org/web/20170225000720/https://www.newforests.com.au/generation-investment-management-to-take-equity-stake-in-new-forests-pty-ltd/ I first encountered Diesendorf through his paper 'The Baseload Fallacy'. I wrestled with the proposition for a while before realising that baseloads are a function of energy grids, the real fallacy that he and others sought to challenge is renewable intermittency. That fallacy can only be truly challenged by implementation at enormous scale. I challenged leaders of Beyond Zero Emissions to discuss the issue in the early 2010s, but they refused. My point is that Diesendorf is prone to misapprehensions. I applaud you for your persistence and vigorous inquiry, and I completely sympathise with your struggles with Q&A sessions! Let me know if you would like some more links re: New Forests and NatCap.
The Gore piece interesting. Yes, USAID is a regime change operation. They appear to be interested in weaponising climate change and weather in general. So good to see that its experts are included in Australa's "Stengthening Democracy Taskforce". Larry Diamond is the sort of person we need shaping our democracy. He is up for a bit of regime change: https://warrenross.substack.com/p/strengthening-australian-demagoguery
Maurice Strong's history in this needs more telling as does Prince Phillip's part and the resto of the British aristocracy and intellectual class. Here is an 8 minute video I made on the work of John Cook, the inventor of Inoculation Theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7qKtwd9Ls8 and an article that deals in more with his climate change theories and exchanges with David Legates: https://warrenross.substack.com/p/consensus-in-the-age-of-agnotology
Just a quick note to say I'm pleased and delighted to see TIMN referenced (and to see Jay Taber remembered). I'm adding a note of thanks to you in a post I nearly have ready about quadriformism as a political stance worth advancing. Then I'll try to get back here with some updated thoughts about the +N part of TIMN, which move beyond what I initially theorized in 1996. Onward.
Thank you. I'll be glad to read any of your writings about quadriformism. When I first read about TIMN it was transformative. The concept resonated with everything I'd come to understand about social evolution, state formation, market economics and religious institutions during my undergraduate studies in anthropology. I'm especially interested to understand how networks developed by groupings of what we might crudely call 'the elites' have shaped global affairs. It seems to me that secret deliberations can have a force multiplying effect that escapes public discourses. I'm also interested in institutionalisation as a constant dynamic. The work of Ivan Illich has had a great effect on me. It seems to me that networks have the capacity to shift narrative focus with more agility than institutions fixed to a purpose. I look forward to working my way through your writings.
Just finished reading your extraordinary article. There is a lifetime of work in that. Would I be right to suggest that what we are looking at is a series interlocking limited hangouts, often contradictory, but never touching the real problems facing us? I need to burrow into your and Corey's work further and will.
On 350.org, you might remember an attack on the Michael Moore produced film "‘Planet of the Humans’. It had some flaws such as its emphasis on over-population. Yet, some of its attacks on the green entrepreneurs were well placed. What was more interesting was The Grayzone's investigation of the people doing the attacking such Bill McKibben of 350.og and his biofuel solution to energy problems. As the Grayzone team explained, that film got some things right too . (https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/).
Locally, I have just found the remarkable existence of an outfit called The Katoomba Group with links to USAID, the State Dept and the World Bank. 28 conferences in16 countries between 2000-2024. Billionaires everywhere using our town's name to make their money but none of the people or their money ever touch our town aside from making visits every 25 years (see .
https://warrenross.substack.com/p/katoomba-the-us-state-department). Meanwhile, our Council s zealously committed to the SDGs and their implications.
Thanks for your excellent work.
Thanks Warren, The limited hangouts abound! Because NPIC operatives serve narratives rather than truth they need to continually maintain silences on key issues/facts that don't serve their narratives, but they also need to create the appearance that they attend to relevant issues. For instance: Naomi Klein makes a brief reference to the fact that CO2 enhanced oil recovery could quadruple US proven reserves in her 2014 book This Changes Everything, but neither her nor the networks of NGOs she is part of have done nothing anything of note to resist bipartisan efforts to expand tax credits for CCS in the US that are an effective subsidy for the production of anthropogenic CO2 for use in enhanced oil recovery. The same lethargy can be seen in NGO networks campaigning on the 'rights of nature' (Michelle Maloney et al). They continue to fail to resist natural capital accounting which is a central component of the work of networks like ICLEI. I see that the brilliant Kate Mason speaks highly of your work. You should be proud! I'm glad there are people like yourself out there doing the necessary work.
And Maloney is hilarious
Yes. She seems to be utterly blinkered regarding natural capital accounting. I wrote about her in my WKOG article 'The Insane Nexus of “Natural Capital” & the Rights of Nature'. I described the appearance of the godfather of natural capital accounting Robert Costanza at the NENA 2017 conference. https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2020/01/03/the-insane-nexus-of-natural-capital-the-rights-of-nature/
Your point on Natural Capital Accounting is well made. We had a fellow called Professor Mark Diesendorf address a Council Planetary Health Initiative event. He has written a book: "The Path to Sustainable Civilisation". Talking to a home crowd, so everything was running smoothly. At the end, they threw matters open to questions. I pointed out to him and his adoring audience that Neoliberalism is NOT about small government as he confused it with laissez faire (as you know it is about government being as big as the market needs). I also explained that the Federal Government had put out its Natural Capital Handbook and probably has plans to put the Blue Mountains 11,000 sq kilometres of bushland to good use.
This presented our Council with a problem. They were recording the event. What were they going to do? They did something brilliant. They cut out all the questions and the questioners. So Diesendorf came across as someone suffering dementia, jumping unprompted from one subject to another. I put the edited questions back in a version of the recording (https://warrenross.substack.com/p/planetary-health-in-a-town-on-life).
Your point on Naomi Klein was very interesting. I remember a Professor Philip Mirowski presentation at UTS where he explained, what he called the right, will play with climate change and he argued there that Klein had been unhelpful in assessing it . He explained how these people, better described as Neoliberals, are three steps ahead of their opposition. Sadly, though it has been available for at 12 years, it has now been removed from Youtube.
One of Mirowski's clips that is still available is an audio history of Neoliberalism which started, technically, in 1947 with the Mont Pelerin Society. I am not sure that Hayek really was in opposition to socialism. I suspect he and Keynes were a double act similar to the sort of deceptions you are describing but it is a good history (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf2YQ-1wvrc&t=33s)
Thanks again for your work and your reply.
I thought I recognised that name 'Brand'. I found links in a natcap bibliography of mine. Launched New Forests in 2005/6. Al Gore's Generation Investment Management took an equity stake in 2008. Gore, Blood, Paulson and Brand were way ahead of the curve in terms of natural asset companies (the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in the U.S. and the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC) in Great Britain). https://web.archive.org/web/20170225000720/https://www.newforests.com.au/generation-investment-management-to-take-equity-stake-in-new-forests-pty-ltd/ I first encountered Diesendorf through his paper 'The Baseload Fallacy'. I wrestled with the proposition for a while before realising that baseloads are a function of energy grids, the real fallacy that he and others sought to challenge is renewable intermittency. That fallacy can only be truly challenged by implementation at enormous scale. I challenged leaders of Beyond Zero Emissions to discuss the issue in the early 2010s, but they refused. My point is that Diesendorf is prone to misapprehensions. I applaud you for your persistence and vigorous inquiry, and I completely sympathise with your struggles with Q&A sessions! Let me know if you would like some more links re: New Forests and NatCap.
Michael, I would love anything you on New Forests. I am on Forest Trends mailing list and they emailed over the weekend explaining that USAID and State Department money for "aid" has been stopped which has mucked up their operations in Peru: https://apnews.com/article/trump-foreign-assistance-freeze-684ff394662986eb38e0c84d3e73350b
It's amazing how the conflation built into the name Agency for International Development (AID) is carried on. USAID is about development/imperialism, not aid. Here's a link containing a case study on New Forests as 'blended value investing'. https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-10/Blended_Value_Investing_Real_Estate.pdf and here's an archived link showing that Al Gore & Co were pioneers of the climate exchange/natural asset company model. https://web.archive.org/web/20170316143152/http://humanevents.com/2007/10/03/the-money-and-connections-behind-al-gores-carbon-crusade/ Notably the Joyce Foundation who are a party to John Podesta's Design to Win plan and Maurice Strong were key players in establishing the Chicago Climate Exchange.
The Gore piece interesting. Yes, USAID is a regime change operation. They appear to be interested in weaponising climate change and weather in general. So good to see that its experts are included in Australa's "Stengthening Democracy Taskforce". Larry Diamond is the sort of person we need shaping our democracy. He is up for a bit of regime change: https://warrenross.substack.com/p/strengthening-australian-demagoguery
Maurice Strong's history in this needs more telling as does Prince Phillip's part and the resto of the British aristocracy and intellectual class. Here is an 8 minute video I made on the work of John Cook, the inventor of Inoculation Theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7qKtwd9Ls8 and an article that deals in more with his climate change theories and exchanges with David Legates: https://warrenross.substack.com/p/consensus-in-the-age-of-agnotology
Just a quick note to say I'm pleased and delighted to see TIMN referenced (and to see Jay Taber remembered). I'm adding a note of thanks to you in a post I nearly have ready about quadriformism as a political stance worth advancing. Then I'll try to get back here with some updated thoughts about the +N part of TIMN, which move beyond what I initially theorized in 1996. Onward.
Thank you. I'll be glad to read any of your writings about quadriformism. When I first read about TIMN it was transformative. The concept resonated with everything I'd come to understand about social evolution, state formation, market economics and religious institutions during my undergraduate studies in anthropology. I'm especially interested to understand how networks developed by groupings of what we might crudely call 'the elites' have shaped global affairs. It seems to me that secret deliberations can have a force multiplying effect that escapes public discourses. I'm also interested in institutionalisation as a constant dynamic. The work of Ivan Illich has had a great effect on me. It seems to me that networks have the capacity to shift narrative focus with more agility than institutions fixed to a purpose. I look forward to working my way through your writings.