Upon completing a number of articles on this theme, I discovered this commentary by Brian Davey, published on the Feasta website, Greta Thunberg, PR and the “Climate Emergency,” by Brian Davey, May 6, 2019.
Rather than re-write all that I have written, I shall merely cite passages which support the views I have expressed and add comments of my own, referring readers who wish to read in more detail to Brian Davey’s insightful and well-informed article.
The issue is both difficult and sensitive, involving as it does dissent from the consensus supported by so many who understand the need for immediate and substantial climate action. The will to belief is born of need, necessity, and desperation, and the emotional involvement in the issues encourages conformity. It is entirely possible for our commitments to be hijacked and our loyalties and solidariti
es to be diverted, converted, and perverted. And if I may adapt the preliminary remarks to this article, let me say that I learned a lot from the articles by Cory Morningstar and Brian Davey, but our politics should not be taken as identical. It seems, however, that we share the same concerns.
Davey describes how, to use the Biblical expression, “the scales fell from my eyes”, as he read Cory Morningstar’s The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent. My skeptical, and increasingly critical, view of the Thunberg phenomenon developed before I read Morningstar. But I was relieved to see I was not alone in my concerns. I was also relieved to see criticism that was not motivated by climate denial, either with respect to climate problems or solutions, nor characterized by ad hominem attacks.
Davey understands the difficulties of seemingly criticizing Thunberg, or being seen to criticize Thunberg, and how easy it is for those with an agenda to portray critics as making personal attacks on Thunberg. It is a ruse that has been spotted for what it is, and is incapable of being sustained in the long run. But it is effective in the short, which is all that is needed in terms of branding, marketing, and mobilization.
Davey writes:
‘I wonder though if what I wrote was quite nuanced enough. The danger is of appearing to imply that Greta Thunberg is manipulated and be implicitly insulting.
Clearly one is very vulnerable if one appears to criticise a young person – that is why I pointed out when she went “off message” – but that seems to imply that otherwise she was “on a message” – promoting particular ideas – and that might appear to imply that she was being manipulated. It was clumsy of me not to be clearer at this point.
Being “on message” does not necessarily mean you are receiving instructions about what to say and doing what you are told. In fact it usually does not mean this because usually people, including children, feel bad if they feel they are being used like that. Being “on message” usually means that you agree with the people around you and generally say the sorts of things that they do – but say them very clearly and articulately. So, you get chosen as a spokesperson – that is not the same as being a puppet and I didn’t mean to imply that she was or is. Clearly she isn’t and, when exposed to the World Economic Forum and the COP, obviously she has shown that she has a mind of her own and notices the contradictions. But when she comments on these, as I said, she doesn’t always get reported.
I hope that is a clearer formulation.’
Let us note the incredible lengths people have to go to merely to avoid being criticized on account of targeting a vulnerable person (on account of sex/age/disability, delete as appropriate). The people seeking to promote a political platform from behind an unquestionable moral and intellectual shield are utterly reprehensible, and we should say so clearly and directly.
It takes courage to break ranks and resist the heavy pressure to conform and join in with a wide and growing consensus. After decades of frustration as a result of suffering constant political defeat against forces for procrastination, and worse, people naturally find hope in the appearance of movement. There may well be movement afoot. The hope is that the mobilization develops a momentum of its own, and radical questions receive with radical answers to issue in radical demands and actions. That’s what it will take to break the stranglehold that capital has on the world, which includes a capacity to colonize movements for change. Instead of a manufactured mobilization, we need a genuine ecological self-socialization so as to give social democratic content and force to the comprehensive concerted climate action from above that is certainly required. A genuine mobilization proceeds from the ecological grassroots and stands in contradistinction to a manufactured mobilization at the behest of the financial and political elite presiding over the system which has caused the crisis in the first place.
Here, I go back to one of the key themes I learned in philosophy, and developed throughout my work on ‘rational freedom.’ It is necessary at all times to be critical and forever test the boundaries of illusion and reality. Only thus can we become aware of how human beings, including not least ourselves, can become prisoners of the shadows on the wall, brainwashed and manipulated in ‘normal’ society by those who light the fires and cast the shadows. I cite Plato’s Cave. In philosophy talks, younger persons cite The Matrix.
Thunberg the person is not the issue. The focus should be on the agenda, the principal players, and the end-game. As Davey argues, Morningstar’s articles ‘show the main actors in the drama, how they are connected to, or part of, major factions of the global corporate elite – and how they are pursuing what is in effect a global public relations campaign to “lead the public into emergency mode” – an emergency where the public will call for action and this part of the global elite will then have a mass backing and be able to deliver.’ That, in a nutshell, is what I have argued.
As to what, precisely, is to be delivered, Davey argues that the agenda is to sell the need for a fourth industrial revolution, under the name of the Green New Deal. Davey identifies this global green elite as the ‘group of people are networked in organisations like the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockfeller Institute as well as 20 not for profit NGOs who are backing the idea like the World Resources Institute, Avaaz and its offshoot Team B, Greenpeace…and others. To these should be added other organisations and movements like 350.org which are part of the influencing environment for the people who set up Extinction Rebellion, influencing XR’s limited statement of its aims.’
What is wrong with this? Effective action presupposes effective organizational capacity. This group of powerful organizations give effective content to climate goals, and surely that is the very thing that is needed? We may be confident in answering in the affirmative ‘only if the way that this network intends to follow through to address “the emergency” would actually work.’ There are, however, ‘good reasons to believe that their approach won’t work – although they will be an enormously generous gift to the corporate aristocracy and some NGOs – they won’t solve the emergency. They will make it worse.’
Why? ‘Because they want to address the global climate and environmental crisis to “save nature” by turning it into a huge money spinner. The policies that have been developed are intended to be an engine for re-kindling failing economic growth by “financialisating nature”. Natural processes are to be designated as “natural capital” and natural capital is to be priced and tradable on financial markets.’
‘The key idea here is that, in order to protect nature, you must incentivise nature protection with money. You must pay to protect so called “eco-system services”. The idea is that if we want to prevent extinction we need a system that makes it pay in money terms and we will need a system that will bring about a whole new set of technologies – so called “clean tech”’.
Which other agency or agencies possess the power, capacity, and resources to undertake climate action on the ambitious scale that is required. Pragmatically inclined people desperate for action will dodge awkward questions here by asking for alternative solutions from critics. The end in view is the financialization of nature through corporate capture and control. That betrays the natural and social environment into the hands of the very commercial forces responsible for crisis, thereby ensuring catastrophe, completing the absorption of social and natural metabolisms under the control of capital.
This is a vision of the world totally subsumed under the alien control of capital, completely annexed, commodified, and commercialized. It is the completion of the process of capitalist enclosure of the commons.
‘There is a reversal of means and ends in their minds. The ends of the players on the natural capital markets is to make money – and, supposedly, making money is achieved by means of protecting nature.
Yet the experience of schemes like this is that money-making wins over nature because there is no obvious price for eco-system services, or for biodiversity loss or for carbon emitted. There is far too much uncertainty and a real ethical and conceptual question about whether you can or should value the carbon emissions, or the lives of people, species or eco-systems (eco-system services).’
‘Decisions about climate, vital ecosystem functions and species should not be market decisions, they should be political ones – taken democratically by those affected.’
Instead, actors game the systems so as to make as much money as possible by scams and frauds, as happened on a massive scale during carbon trading. Nevertheless, capitalism is the new religion, worshipping the great god Capital, and so, as Morningstar argues:
“The development of the Natural Capital Protocol Project was made possible with generous funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, International Finance Corporation (World Bank) with the support of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Netherlands, The Rockefeller Foundation, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). The Coalition is hosted by The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). Other funders include; World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, the Google Foundation, the Inter-American Development Bank, Unilever, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, U.S. Department of Defense and the World Bank.”
“World Resources Institute provided the technical insights and review for the Natural Capital Protocol. The protocol was developed by Conservation International, The B Team, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sustain Value, ACTS, Management (ERM), Imperial College, ISS, Natural Capital Project, Synergiz, WWF, Accenture, Arcadis, eftec, Environmental Resources CDSB, Deloitte, Dow, eni, GIST Advisory, Kering, LafargeHolcim, Natura, Nestlé, Roche, Shell, and The Nature Conservancy. The protocol was led by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) consortium.”
Davey comes next to how the Greta Thunberg phenomenon was ‘manufactured.’ Davey makes it clear that The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg does not imply, as is frequently alleged, that critics are claiming that Greta Thunberg is a simple puppet who does what she is told. Of course, it is much easier to refute that charge than it is to address the main issue of who or what is behind her and to what end. Thunberg ‘would not have got a place in the World Economic Forum and at the United Nations FCC COP in Katowice, had she not been very well connected and had her rise to eco-stardom not been stage-managed from early on.’ Morningstar and Davey identify those connections. Davey examines the foundation “We don’t have time,” active in social media, digital advertising, and carbon offsets. [“In the US alone estimated market for carbon offsetting amount to over 82 billion USD of which voluntary carbon offset represents 191 million USD. The market is expected to increase in the future, in 2019 estimated 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions to be associated with any kind of cost for offsetting.”] It’s all about branding and marketing and public faces operating as influencers.
‘A nice little earner then…and that’s the philosophy of the people at the top who are leading this process. In their world view you have to make it pay to protect nature.
If you are not paying attention this looks like a child doing it all herself and getting a fantastic amount of attention – starting a snowball. Indeed the process is snowballing with big support. That was the idea and it was very successful – but what actually is the agenda of the elite faction behind all of this?’
Here’s a quote from Cory Morningstar about how it started:
“The ‘one kid immediately got twenty supporters’ – from a Swedish network for sustainable business. What is going on is the launch of a global campaign to usher in a required consensus for the Paris Agreement, the New Green Deal and all climate related policies and legislation written by the power elite – for the power elite. This is necessary in order to unlock the trillions of dollars in funding by way of massive public demand.”
The agenda of the global green elite is the Fourth Industrial Revolution:
“These agreements and policies include carbon capture storage (CCS), enhanced oil recovery (EOR), bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), rapid total decarbonisation, payments for ecosystem services (referred to as “natural capital”), nuclear energy and fission, and a host of other “solutions” that are hostile to an already devastated planet. What is going on – is a rebooting of a stagnant capitalist economy, that needs new markets – new growth – in order to save itself. What is being created is a mechanism to unlock approximately 90 trillion dollars for new investments and infrastructure. What is going on is the creation of, and investment in, perhaps the biggest behavioural change experiment yet attempted, global in scale. And what are the deciding factors in what behaviours global society should adhere to? And more importantly, who decides? This is a rhetorical question as we know full well the answer: the same Western white male saviours and the capitalist economic system they have implemented globally that has been the cause of our planetary ecological nightmare. This crisis continues unabated as they appoint themselves (yet again) as the saviours for all humanity – a recurring problem for centuries……”
And Thunberg? Davey concedes that she ‘goes off message,’ which implies that she really is, as her defenders say, her own person with her own views. But that there is a message, all the same, also implies she is being used to build popular support and legitimacy for an agenda that isn’t hers or ours but is that of the green corporate elite.
Davey thus states that none of this means that Greta Thunberg necessarily understands or believes the entire elite agenda. He cites her Katowice speech as one which was off-message in terms of the global green elite agenda. ‘Perhaps she got the ideas from Professor Kevin Anderson whom she met there,’ he suggests. ‘Anderson is a climate scientist who argues that the economy must contract to meet climate goals. He also argues that it is the rich who must bear most of the burden of this.’ Anderson is a fine fellow and eminently trustworthy. Here is where the views being expressed gel with mine. In the speech in Katowice, Thunberg argues:
“You only speak of the green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake.”
“But I don’t care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet. Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money.”
That’s a radical and not an ideological or apologetic claim. That claim entails a critique of political economy, something which subjects capital and the encroachment of the corporate form upon society and nature to public scrutiny, controversy, challenge, and change. That claim is not merely ‘off-message,’ it is diametrically opposed to the message of capitalism as usual. Or at least it would be, were it accompanied by a close critical analysis of the capital system under the corporate form.
“We can’t destroy a system when we don’t understand its structure and our place in it. It’s impossible to defeat a dominating class if we don’t even perceive them as such.”
~ Stephanie McMillan
Without that analysis, it can function as a moralism that sounds radical enough to appeal to those demanding action but without any institutional and structural teeth to back it up in practical terms.
Davey notes that this part of the speech, where Thunberg condemned making enormous amounts of money and eternal growth, is the part that Avaaz cut from their reporting of Thunberg. Morningstar comments here:
“It is not surprising Avaaz would strike Greta’s comments considering a primary function of Avaaz is to promote market solutions that accelerate “green” economic growth – in servitude to “a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money.””
The focus needs to come off Thunberg and quickly. Those with an agenda have a vested interest in keeping the focus on her, portraying critics as bullies of one description or another. That is also designed to mobilize people as defenders of Thunberg and, by proxy, defenders of the agenda behind her. I am very much a critic of ‘fairy tales’ of ‘eternal economic growth,’ ‘green’ or otherwise. I wonder how many of those behind Thunberg are as critical as she seems to have been in this speech at Kotowice and the speech at the U.N.
Davey concludes by arguing that a global environmentalist elite wants to revive the Paris Climate Agreement, with the Green New Deal in the USA designed to become a global process brought about by having the public clamouring to declare climate emergencies. ‘To achieve all of this, strategic NGOS and campaign movements and new emerging celebrities like Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion have been supported and their leaders partially co-opted.’
Davey feels the need to add that he does not deny that there is an ecological crisis, nor that there is a climate emergency, nor that urgent action is needed. Morningstar says precisely the same, and so do I. This is important. Those driving the agenda of green corporate capture and control have a clear interest in dividing this issue into a simple choice between climate actors and climate deniers. The reality of climate change is so clear now that the days of climate denialism are numbered. It makes sense to present the enemy before us as the ‘climate deniers.’ The broad masses can all unite – or be united – against such a manifestly wrong enemy. But that is merely the phony war, the war being fought out for public show. Behind that war there is another war, a war which involves more than two sides. There is a capitalism against capitalism, a dirty, fossil-fuel capitalism against a clean, renewable energy capitalism. Then there is the radical agenda which sees the capital system itself as lying at the root of the climate crisis. It is that radical agenda which is in the process of being sidelined, derailed, hijacked, and diverted. Radical energies are at risk of being absorbed in a much less than radical project, one that entrenches and extends the corporate form under the pretext of being ‘green.’ If it is true that capital is systemically destructive of nature – and society and morality to boot – then this will prove fatal. To reduce this question to a choice between dirty capitalism and clean capitalism is like being asked whether one wishes to die of a heart attack or of cancer.
‘There is a sophisticated PR campaign behind what is happening and the agenda is that of a major faction in the global elite. This agenda will not work – indeed it will complete the destruction of nature and the eco-system.
How can I claim that with complete conviction and certainty? Because this is an expansionary programme and ecological footprint analysis has already established that the biosphere is being consumed as if there were 1.7 planets. All serious approaches to resolving the ecological crisis recognise that the global econony must contract back to a one planet level. The economy must degrow.
What’s more it is richest 5% of the planet that consume 50% of planetary carbon – so the very people who are promoting this campaign must cut back the most. Instead they want to expand the economy. But how is this to be made compatible with reducing carbon emissions?
It isn’t – but a careful looks at the language of nature financialisation refers to carbon neutrality, not zero carbon. This is “convenient language when one of the main pillars of the business model is the sale of carbon offsets – rationalizing a continuance of the same carbon based lifestyle by constructing a faux fantasy one, that anyone with monetary wealth, can buy into.”
Davey adds an afterword which cites an “XR Business Blog” which revealed some of the business interests behind Extinction Rebellion. That XR blog rapidly disappeared in the aftermath of the controversy it caused. ‘Several of the named individuals are venture capitalist funders – looking to make money from what they claim to be “sustainability” and very much within the green growth camp. I doubt that many of the companies named, including Unilever for example, would embrace degrowth, the revival of the commons, co-operatives or other types of institutions for sharing so needed for economies which contracting back to the point of one planet living. Above all it seems to bear out the suspicion that for some of its leaders and initiators the XR Rebellion was seen as part of the planned PR offensive to build support for the phony Green New Deal….’
For more details:
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/04/24/rebellion-extinction-a-capitalist-scam-to-hijack-our-resistance/
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/21/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-inconvenient-truth-behind-youth-cooptation/
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/28/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-most-inconvenient-truth-capitalism-is-in-danger-of-falling-apart/
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/02/03/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-house-is-on-fire-the-90-trillion-dollar-rescue/
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/02/13/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-new-green-deal-is-the-trojan-horse-for-the-financialization-of-nature/
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/02/24/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-a-decade-of-social-manipulation-for-the-corporate-capture-of-nature-crescendo/
For Reference –
“This changes nothing: The Paris Agreement to Ignore Reality” – Clive Spash
Brian Davey
Brian Davey graduated from the Nottingham University Department of Economics and, aside from a brief spell working in eastern Germany showing how to do community development work, has spent most of his life working in the community and voluntary sector in Nottingham particularly in health promotion, mental health and environmental fields. He helped form Ecoworks, a community garden and environmental project for people with mental health problems. He is a member of Feasta Climate Working Group and former co-ordinator of the Cap and Share Campaign. He is editor of the Feasta book Sharing for Survival: Restoring the Climate, the Commons and Society, and the author of Credo: Economic Beliefs in a World in Crisis.