BIDEN’S ‘LEADERS SUMMIT’ ON CLIMATE

Resistance Grows to Green Suicide Pact

by Mike Billington

[Print version of this article]

April 25—President Joe Biden rolled out the virtual carpet for 40 world leaders, a dozen leading financial oligarchs, environmental NGO’s, and several members of his Cabinet for the “Leaders Summit on Climate” on April 22-23, planned to coincide with “Earth Day.” Virtually every speaker began with effusive praise for Biden for “bringing America back” to leadership in the campaign against the imagined climate crisis, after President Donald Trump had exposed the fraud of the British-spawned hoax that carbon is driving global warming, by pulling the U.S. out of the Paris accord signed at the 2015 COP-21 summit. Britain’s Alok Sharma, appointed full-time President for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), now planned for Nov. 1-12 in Glasgow, put it this way: “We welcome America back into the fold,” clearly meaning the Malthusian death cult known as the British Empire and its Paris Agreement.

But the reality behind the fake science and social fear mongering was also abundantly clear at the summit, as speakers from Russia, China, India and from the less developed nations—and even some developed nations—told the gathering that they would not sacrifice development on the altar of climate hysteria.

Scientific American captured the reality of the summit with the blunt headline: “U.S. Commits to Greater CO₂ Reductions, China and India Do Not.” The article, taken from E&E News, which is owned by Politico, says that Joe Biden, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Climate Czar John Kerry, were “shaking off years of denial and embracing steep cuts to carbon emissions that scientists say might keep global warming in check.” “But,” they report sadly,

Biden’s plea, and his new climate plan, didn’t propel many of the world’s major contributors of greenhouse gases into action. China, the top emitter worldwide, resisted diplomatic pressure to reduce its carbon output over the next 10 years. So did India, Russia and Australia.

Not mentioned is the fact that many developing country leaders also rejected the suicide pact, insisting that they would not sacrifice the development of their people, or even their survival in the face of the current pandemic and mounting famine, which is already taking tens of thousands of lives, and threatening millions more.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in an article titled “The Biggest Threat is Not Climate Change, but Nuclear War and Indifference” published April 29, 2021 in the German weekly Neue Solidarität, writes:

Given the warnings from David Beasley, head of the World Food Program, that 270 million people are at risk of starvation this year alone, and from Cardinal Zenari, the Apostolic Nuncio to Syria, that 90% of the population in Syria has fallen below the poverty line—not principally due to the effects of the pandemic—it is moral imbecility if the supporters of a global climate dictatorship want to enforce their murderous ambitions. The horrific indifference with which not only the “lifestyle greens,” but the majority of the population, react to the already existing hunger of hundreds of millions of people, is nothing other than implicit support for the genocide, which will be the result of these policies. Wanting to pass the costs for a scientifically completely untenable climate policy on to the affected countries, can only be explained by the fact that the conscience of these people died long ago and has therefore become “green.”

Which is worse, indifference to the threat of nuclear war, or indifference to genocide in developing countries?

A Summit Divided

Biden, Macron, Merkel, Trudeau, Draghi, et al. described the so-called “climate crisis” as the greatest existential crisis facing mankind today, putting the major emphasis on the demand that all countries join in the suicide pact of eliminating fossil fuels and shutting down major portions of industry and agriculture to save Mother Earth from the non-existent danger of carbon. But the West no longer can dictate to those nations still guided by reason, rather than by Chicken Little screaming that the sky is falling.

Xi Jinping spoke poetically about the harmony and balance between man and nature—a deeply Confucian concept—but added that it must follow a “people-centered approach,” focusing on those “longing for a better life.” He said that “Green mountains and rivers are gold and silver,” clearly referring to the need to stop the actual air and water pollution, rather than carbon, which is anything but a pollutant. “To protect the environment is to protect productivity,” he added, “and to improve the environment is to boost productivity—the truth is as simple as that.”

Most importantly, President Xi, like many other national leaders, emphasized the “common but differentiated responsibilities” between the advanced sector and the developing sector, insisting that the concerns of the developing countries must be accommodated. It is of note that climate czar John Kerry, who chaired part of the Summit, called on China to give up its intention to allow coal-fired energy production to “peak” only in 2030. Xi did not obey, stating that they would continue producing coal-fired plants, as presented in China’s 14th Five Year Plan. That plan makes clear that moving beyond coal depends on the capacity to expand the use of nuclear power and the development of fusion power, which China intends to make commercially viable by 2040.

President Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin both emphasized that climate policies, like all global issues, must be based on the institutions of the United Nations. This is in direct opposition to the now-common reference to the “global rules-based order,” an artificial construct used by the U.S., EU and NATO to assert that the liberal western form of “democracy” and “human rights” can and will be enforced, even by military means.

The Biden Summit even included Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin asserting:

Today, no nation can find lasting security without addressing the climate crisis. We face all kinds of threats in our line of work, but few of them truly deserve to be called existential. The climate crisis does.… Climate change is making the world more unsafe and we need to act. The climate crisis is a profoundly destabilizing force for our world. As the Arctic melts, competition for resources and influence in the region increases. Closer to the Equator, rising temperatures and more frequent and intense extreme weather events in Africa and Central America threaten millions with drought, hunger, and displacement.

This is a duplicitous and vile attempt to blame the climate for the current devastating poverty and starvation, rather than the result of the combined effects of U.S./NATO military destruction and 50 years of neoliberal economics that have denied these countries their sovereign right to economic development. But there is also the threat that failure to implement the anti-growth dictates of the Green Global Reset, will be met not only with economic punishment, but even by military operations to impose the “rules-based order.” To doubt this is to be oblivious to the lack of any justification for the U.S.-British destruction of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen.

Other sane presentations at the Summit, generally blacked out in the western press, are of note:

President Putin said that Russia had reduced carbon emissions by half since the 1990s. Like China, Russia has a serious problem with real pollution, which they are resolving, with the side-effect of reducing carbon emissions:

Now 45% of our energy balance comes from low-emission energy sources, including nuclear power. It is common knowledge that nuclear power plants produce almost zero greenhouse gas emissions throughout their life cycle. We intend to continue increasing the scale of associated gas utilization.

Putin closed by insisting that global development must “not only be green, but also sustainable,” by fighting poverty and closing the gap between rich and poor. Nary a word about solar or wind.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) began his presentation by stating that Mexico had recently discovered three hydrocarbon deposits, all of which, he said, would be used to meet domestic demand. No longer, he added, would Mexico sell crude oil abroad and import gasoline. Hydro plant turbines are being modernized to produce more electricity at less cost. He also reported that vast reforestation is taking place—700 million trees have been planted, heading for a billion—and Mexico would be helping reforestation in the triangle countries to the south.

Secretary Blinken, who was chairing the panel, then pulled an “ambush” of AMLO (as it was called by a report in Guacamole News), by moving up the presentation by 19-year-old Xiye Bastida, a Mexican version of Greta Thunberg (the Fridays4Future climate fanatic, who was busy testifying before a House Oversight Committee on Environment). Bastida, originally scheduled for a later panel, raged against AMLO and others: “You have to accept that the era of fossil fuels is over,” and lectured the evil white folk in the Global North who caused all the problems, and must now take direction from the brainwashed children. Blinken spent several minutes praising her as one of the “leaders of the future” who are dedicated to saving us from our folly.

Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, interestingly, barely mentioned climate (the climate fanatics insist the island states are about to disappear under rising sea levels), but focused on the financial disaster which, due to the pandemic, is striking countries like his that depend on tourism. He demanded that the debt of nations like his must be forgiven or reorganized—it simply cannot be paid. He praised the fact that China, not only the U.S., was setting the pace on the climate issue, in its own unique way.

Although Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is in a brawl with China, shutting down Belt and Road projects launched by the state of Victoria, he is not a sucker for the global warming hoax, pointing out it would destroy his country:

Our goal is to get there as soon as we possibly can, through technology that enables and transforms our industries, not taxes that eliminate them, and the jobs and livelihoods they support and create, especially in our regions.

The Green Bubble

The rest of the two-day summit was focused on building up Green Finance—the plan for the world’s banks to cut off credit to “carbon emitters,” thereby usurping the power of sovereign governments to direct the economies of their nations. This is not really about funding more useless solar panels and windmills, or creating millions of what Biden calls “good paying, union jobs in the green economy.” The other purpose of Green Finance institutions, set up by the likes of former Bank of England Governor (and cohort of Prince Charles) Mark Carney and the heads of the central banks, is to create a green bubble that can sustain, for at least a little longer, the multi trillion-dollar bubble created by the speculative binge since the destruction of Glass Steagall, and the trillions of dollars printed to bail out that speculative bubble. It is an impossible task, but it will serve to shift much of the burden onto the developing sector nations and the working people of the advanced sector. The intention of this scam can be reviewed in the EIR Special Report The Great Leap Backward—LaRouche Exposes the Green New Deal.

One new aspect of this scam emphasized during the Biden Summit was the urgency to expand carbon markets, carbon pricing, and carbon taxing. Kristalina Georgieva, IMF Managing Director, listed her demands to impose the green lunacy across the economy:

First, a robust tax on carbon. The average global price is currently $2 a ton, and needs to rise to $75 a ton by 2030 to curb emissions in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

This will obviously force millions of businesses to close down. It is based on building “carbon markets” for bankers and businesses to trade “carbon emission credits.” Such markets already exist in Europe, under the 2005 Emissions Trading System (ETS), but are just getting started in the U.S.

Secondly, all farms and companies must provide certain carbon-related data to the Climate Lords, so that the banks can determine how much they must pay for their evil emissions. Georgieva said:

The IMF is working with our members and partners on data quality and disclosure, as well as on financial sector stress testing for climate-related risks.

This refers to the fact that businesses and farms must now measure risk, not based on the potential for financial success or failure, but on the carbon output of the business.

Third, she paid lip service to “financial support to developing countries,” the ubiquitous claim that the developing countries will be paid for giving up development. At the same time, the Chinese approach—building infrastructure as a platform for industrialization, as China did internally to become a modern nation—is denounced by NATO as a “debt trap” or even an imperial trick to take over the world.

Of course, the constant refrain is that the Green New Deal will deal with mass unemployment created by the destruction of industry and development programs, by creating new jobs in the green economy. This was exposed almost comically when President Biden described these new jobs:

I see workers capping hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells that need to be cleaned up, and abandoned coal mines that need to be reclaimed [by] putting a stop to methane leaks.

Plenty of work shutting down the economy.

Also prominent were multi-billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates. John Kerry, chairing the event, praised Bloomberg as the savior of America from Donald Trump, saying that when Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement, “relinquishing U.S. leadership in the climate fight,” Bloomberg stepped up and took leadership. Bloomberg then bragged about his role in shutting down 60% of America’s coal plants. Gates, interestingly, acknowledged that green energy is far more expensive than fossil fuels (Ursula von der Leyen later lied about this, claiming renewables were cheaper). Gates’ purpose was to appeal for billions or trillions of dollars for research to improve inherently undependable and wasteful renewables. That’s the green he likes best.

The Great Reset can be stopped. The world must come together to end this modern-day version of the British Empire, and end empire itself, now and forever.