Panel 3 Discussion Session

This is an edited transcription of the discussion session that followed Panel 3, “There Are No Limits to Growth in the Universe,” of the Schiller Institute’s Nov. 13-14 Conference, “All Moral Resources of Humanity Have To Be Called Up: Mankind Must Be the Immortal Species!”

Megan Dobrodt (moderator): A lot has been put on the table by our speakers: from the fraud of the panic around climate change, to the real science of climate, to the role of youth, and the capabilities of the human mind in this universe more generally. Several questions have already come in, which I’ll be posing in a moment.

But before we do that, I want to bring up Mr. Adrian Badescu from Romania, who would like to ask a question or make a comment. He is the former advisor to the Prime Minister on infrastructure, and president of the Group for the Promotion of Infrastructure in Romania. Welcome!

Adrian Badescu: Hello, and thank you for the invite. I am a sociologist, so from my point of view, I see the manipulation used by scientists as we’ve seen in the pandemic. Also it is used to make us use the Green Deal, because in my country and in [inaudible words] for Saudis and European countries, they are forcing us to make a lot of Green Deal, to put a lot of Green Deal ideas in our government programs, in order for us to have access to the European Union funds. As a sociologist, I see the use of fear. This word may not be the most appropriate, but fear is being used by the system and a lot of the corporations, from the Big Pharma to the pro-Green Deal companies and the Western states. They are using fear and are using scientists to manipulate a lot of studies to make the population have the sentiment of fear. They are using it to promote their agenda.

How Can Scientists Use the Media To Promote Truth?

How can scientists nowadays use the mass media, social media, and other platforms to show their real perspective about the Green Deal, about the pandemic, about a lot of stuff [for which] they are making the population, which is not trained in this domain, to have this fear in their system. This is the question, and this is the problem with it I have, and the solution that we have to find for us so that we can explain this fear, and to get rid of it.

Jason Ross: I think that what this is representing is how environmentalism is used as the new colonialism. How nations are told that if they want access to financing, if they want access to markets, if they want to be part of the international community, they have to make certain concessions. They have to accept certain defeats for their own future in the area of energy and in the area of sovereignty.

One of the biggest ways that the Green agenda is pushed, is not only through governments. FLOP26 had little to show for itself in terms of the main goals that were stated at its creation and leading up to it. But, if you look at the non-governmental side of things, the bragging that is made about how banks, how financial institutions managing tens of trillions of dollars worth of assets are committing themselves to a zero carbon or net-zero carbon future. How regulations on financing, on adding environment sustainability governance reporting for what should simply be business transactions—for stock market listings, and things like this. And through the use of civil society, there’s a push from all these different directions to prevent the growth of nations.

So, to your question about what role scientists can play in this, I think scientists have an indispensable and a very unique role in a couple of ways: One of them is to directly take on the specific claims of climate catastrophe, as we’ve heard on this panel. To directly say, “Are these statements true? What are the risks? What is CO₂ doing?”

Another aspect of it is to help create a better sense in people of what it is to be a human being. Science has, as its subject, the natural world, it seems. But science also has as its subject the fostering in the mind of a vivid hypothesizing process, capable of making the new discoveries in the future that will unlock for us totally new approaches to biology, to energy through nuclear fusion, through anti-matter as Professor Weiss had brought up.

Acquainting people, helping people understand what it is that the human mind is capable of doing, is a part of the antidote to the cultural degradation in the new Green religion; where people believe that the ultimate sin is existing; that the original sin is that there is a human species; and that our goal should be to reduce to zero or negative our impact on the world around us, when in fact, it is exactly the opposite. We must increase our power over nature to improve it and to improve our own lives.

In terms of how to do that, I think that people who are informed on these things have to inject themselves into the public debate as people on this panel have done. And to do various forms of outreach through—I don’t have really tactical suggestions in terms of reaching out to media in your area—through universities, through schools, through holding events. There are many options, but sitting on the side and hoping that this will go away because it is unreasonable—that won’t happen. Scientists have a specific role to play in stepping up to intervene.

Prof. Franco Battaglia: The question is actually not easy to answer. There are several comments that could be made. One of these is political, would be on a political ground. The leader in the world in this crazy behavior is Europe. Once the European Union crashes—and personally I hope it will crash soon and we’ll go back to the national interests as it was before—people will start to realize that this is a major problem, an economic problem. Why? Because the richness of a country, as has been said in one of the speeches before, is the energy, the availability to energy at low prices in abundant quantity.

These new technologies like wind farms and solar energy are not able to give us the energy we need. These technologies require a huge amount of money, and there are people, of course, who are interested to get their hands on this money. However, these technologies are so unreasonable, that the only way to implement them, is to not give to people the power to decide who their politicians will be who rule their countries. Nowadays, we live in a European Union, where people don’t even know who the politicians are who are ruling this European Union. If one asks to anybody on the street if they know who are in the European Parliament, they don’t even know who are in the European Parliament of their own countries. So, every country in Europe seems to be ruled by people who nobody knows, and they are able just because of this, to introduce laws, enforce laws that people might not agree with, if only they would be able to discuss them.

The specialist who asked the question has made a sort of comparison with the pandemic. I don’t know how it’s been in other countries, but at least here in Italy, the pandemic has been described by the media with only one voice, without even allowing anybody who intended to ask a question about the vaccine, about how the pandemic has been confronted by those politicians. In Italy, we have had from the pandemic, more than 130,000 deaths. Yet, we have said that the way Italy has confronted the pandemic has been one of the best in the world.

What I’m trying to say is, that it is already for several years that people are not able to know what the politicians are deciding, and not to control what they are deciding.

Prof. Guus Berkhout: It’s a very good question, Mr. Badescu. Let me be direct, and say the science system is in a crisis. That’s the only thing we have to point to ourselves.

Let me tell you this. The academies of sciences, where I really have a hard time to even discuss with them these matters, but the academies of sciences and the university management have adopted a business model that when you agree with the consensus, they give you money. It’s a business model! I am ashamed about so many scientists, and especially the scientists who should know better. That’s why I say again the academies of sciences, and the leaders of the universities—they should have stood up and they should have said, “Oh, politicians, what you are telling us is wrong,” as Professor Battaglia exactly said. “It’s wrong what you say!” Because by far, we don’t know what really happens in the climate system.

The climate system is so complex that it’s a challenge. It’s great to work on it, and we are already making progress. But what we are doing now, and you explained it very nicely, Professor, is that what we see is that they are trying to get their point—that CO₂ is the problem—in their models. So, they put in their models what they want finally to conclude. And I can tell you, this is the worst thing you can ever think of in science.

To conclude: if you go along with the consensus, you get money. If you don’t go along, you get excommunicated. It’s as simple as that. And that’s why our conclusion should be: the science—in particular, climate science, but all academies of science agree with it—is in a crisis. And the way we are educating the young people is a big shame. My story was there for this. We have taken away their future by the stories of the scientists. We have taken away the future, saying, “the future is terrible!” The future is so bad, that the only way that we can escape from a catastrophe is that you go get poor. And it should be the other way around!

That’s why I like the Schiller Institute, because we agree with the fact that the future is on people; the future is on our youngsters. The future is on science and technology. The future is on discovering what we still don’t know yet. And Mr. Badescu, that is the problem—not the politicians, who, of course, don’t know better. But we should tell them where the problem is, but we are silent. And if you speak up, again, you are excommunicated. Thank you.

Dobrodt: Obviously this panel is full of outspoken people who have inserted themselves into this debate very courageously. So, I would just encourage you to work with us, and see how we can multiply this effect.

Here are two questions for Jason:

Why Do You Advocate Vaccination and Infinite Growth?

The first one is a little bit off topic, but because it comes up so much, I hope you can address it efficiently: “Why does the Schiller Institute advocate vaccination, and not the free will of the people regarding the rights over their bodies?” The second question is a little bit more on topic with our panel: “Does the notion of infinite growth make scientific or even philosophical sense? To place oneself in an improper fundamental framework is bad form, and that’s a shame.”

Ross: It’s hard to be quick on bringing up the vaccine issue, which really hasn’t been the topic of this panel. I’d just say that within the question there was a contradiction implied that I don’t think exists. It is both possible to advocate the availability of vaccines and their use, without insisting that people must be vaccinated. I’d just like to point out that this exists; it’s posed as a contradiction, and it needn’t be. Another irony that exists in this, for example, demanding vaccination at home, while doing little to ensure the availability of vaccines in other, poorer countries, for example. On the issue of personal rights: do people have the right to receive a treatment that has been developed, has shown itself to be effective, and which they want to receive? Why are so many people in the world still waiting to get vaccines that they want? Is that right? Does that support their rights to make a choice about treatments that they get?

There are so many different topics and directions to go in this, so I’ll just leave it at that, because that requires a whole discussion. One thing to say on it is, I think people are being called upon to make analyses of data without much in the way of tools to be able to do a good job of it. And it is an atmosphere where the potential to be misled in various directions exists very strongly. Many of the topics in it do become quite politicized.

But I would simply come back to the broadest issue, which is, in order to support human functioning, human thriving, well-being around the world, if we say what is required worldwide to have an economic system and a health system capable of delivering a high standard of medical care to everybody on this planet, what is the level of production required to support such a system of health care, the availability of health care? When I say system, I don’t mean centrally administered by the WHO or something, I just mean achieving a state of development where this is possible for everyone. That comes back right back to the topic of this panel, which is, how can you have high living standards without a basic energy system that is reliable, efficient, affordable? So, I’ll leave it at that on that question.

As far as infinite growth: I would turn it around and say, what would be the justification for believing that growth must be limited? This was attempted already, as I discussed in my presentation, in a very famous way by the Club of Rome’s book written in the 1970s called The Limits to Growth. They were way off. Their prediction made with a 1970s computer was that by now we would have largely exhausted our stocks of various industrial elements—manganese, nickel, cobalt, things like this.

But for almost all of the elements discussed in that book, the known reserves today are actually larger, due to better knowledge about the Earth’s crust. For many of these substances, the ability to economically extract them has actually improved. In other words, what was stated to be a limit 50 years ago, now, simply wasn’t. And it arose from the wrong understanding of where a resource is located.

Do resources exist within the crust of the Earth? Yes, and no. The substances exist within the crust of the Earth, but they’re not a resource if we can’t do anything with it. And what transforms a mineral deposit, of interest to a geologist, into an ore, of interest to an industrialist, is the mind: It’s the fact that we’ve discovered a way to make use of these substances, thereby transforming them into resources. Uranium is a powerful resource today. It was not a meaningful resource 100 years ago, it just wasn’t. Or certainly 200 years ago, in potential.

So, I would turn it around, and say, if somebody believes that growth must be limited, considering that this has not been the case so far, and that one form of economic activity perhaps appears to be limited. But we’ve continually veered off of that path towards running out of resources, by taking a new course in which we avail ourselves of new forms of power, new forms of resources, all created through our minds, which are, of course, the greatest of resources available to us. So, I would start from that: limitations are overcome through the discovery of new principles. And we have several on the horizon right now. We should, I think, assume that we will be able to achieve those breakthroughs.

Why Do Scientists Refuse To Accept Earthquake Prediction Successes?

Dobrodt: From Jonathan in Germany, a question for Professor Pulinets: “You mentioned that the current successes in predicting earthquakes are not accepted by everyone. Do you have an idea of why scientists refuse to accept those successes? I wonder, concerning the current and ongoing catastrophe in Haiti, could that earthquake which destroyed so much on the island and killed over 300,000 people, have been predicted, and those people rescued? If so, why was it not predicted, or why weren’t the relevant authorities informed?”

Prof. Sergey Pulinets: That’s several questions. Number one: It does not mean that all scientists do not accept our conception. The problem is that seismologists do not want to do this, because it’s sweet to their financing. When they get financing, they associate this [with] that they are protecting humanity, but when they are requested to predict with their experiments, they say no, we don’t predict it, we are making science, we study the physics of Earth’s crust, formation of faults, and so on, but we do not make predictions. So, it is, I suppose, the grounds for this is money.

The second one, about Haiti: We can predict earthquakes. But for this, it is necessary to have a system, a system like emergency [responders], like firemen, and so on. You have the special bodies, mainly government bodies, that work. We are only a few scientists, we cannot monitor all the world; it is impossible. Even in Russia, I was not able to get enough financing to organize something in Kamchatka. Compared with the world, it’s a small region. Everything was done by ourselves, without any financing. The precursors appear only a few days before, so it means that every day I need to monitor all the globe, which is impossible. First, I must get money for other things; I need to work to support my family. There should be created the infrastructure to make this possible.

But I have optimistic information. There is a very young company, Quantectum Earthquake Forecasting Center, in Switzerland. They are making forecasts for several weeks up to two months in dangerous regions all over the world, and by uniting with their efforts in identifying these hotspots, it will be easier to monitor. In this case, I suppose we will be more successful in predicting quakes in real time.

In regard to Haiti, if anybody is interested, I could have demonstrated all the precursors before this earthquake. But taking into account that I do not monitor in real time all the world, we missed this earthquake, because we didn’t look at this.

What Can We Do To Return Germany to Nuclear Power?

Dobrodt: Jan Christian Levitz in Germany asks about nuclear power in Germany:

“I am a German physicist and work internationally in nuclear technology. The role of Germany in a climate-friendly, low air-polluting production of safe and economic nuclear power—independent of wind and solar—is disappointing. Germany has ordered the end of nuclear production by the end of 2022. Three of six remaining nuclear power plants have to shut down by the end of 2021. I know that, for example, Russia, China, India, and other countries are currently expanding the use of nuclear, while Germany is trying to force every other country possible to follow the German way of destruction of industry, of nature, etc.

“The use of current light-water nuclear technology, followed by innovative fourth-generation plants under development, will enable mankind to be provided with cheap and clean electricity, heat, propulsion, and last but not least, potable water from seawater. Nuclear power reduces the risk of wars over energy, resources, and food. It will help end poverty, and enable a good life for the people around the world. What can be done to shift Germany and other EU countries back on the track of nature- and people-friendly use of nuclear power?”

Dr. Kelvin Kemm: What we’re seeing at the moment in Germany is the result of political pressures, not the result of the opinions of scientists, engineers, and technologists who really know what they’re doing. So, to me, it’s very interesting to see what’s happening in Germany. That sort of popular votes by large groups of people who really don’t know what they’re doing are having such a pressurizing effect on the government—as we heard earlier, the whole EU system where people don’t even know who their EU representatives are—that what you’re seeing is the result of this political pressure. You’re not seeing the result of German brains and science. For many years, Germany has been a world leader in technology and innovation. I believe there’s still a huge amount of technology and innovation in Germany. But as far as this is concerned, it’s being suppressed by the politics.

Another topic that has come up a few times related to this: One hears about the limits to growth, and you say, “Are there limits to growth?” And the answer is clearly, “Yes, there are limits to growth, if you limit technological innovation.” We heard earlier from another speaker that the Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of stones—quite true. But the Stone Age would have continued at that level had they been prevented from discovering bronze. As soon as they discovered bronze, they were able to get more food, and therefore sustain larger communities, and so on. Then, iron was discovered. The Iron Age came, which meant you could expand, and have a better way of life. Then, the steam engine enabled clothes to be produced much more cheaply because they gave motive power to the weaving and the clothes-making industry, and so on. So, each technological advance has enabled more growth to take place.

There’s an erroneous assumption that growth just means the consumption of more. More coal, more this, more that and so on. And that’s not the case. Growth is different technologies coming about. There are well-known stories about people in the early 1800s calculating how many horses there would be in London in 100 years’ time, because transport was expanding. Nobody took into account at that stage that horses would be replaced by cars and buses, and so on.

It’s my firm belief that in the future, the whole world will run on nuclear power. I think there’s no doubt about that. We’re going to have nuclear reactors on Mars and on the Moon, and so on. It’s the only solution. Already there are nuclear power sources in space. The Perseverance rover driving around on Mars’ surface right now is nuclear-powered.

I have no doubt that that’s going to happen. We’re in a transitional phase at the moment, where the world is being scared to death as Dr. Guus Berkhout has pointed out; that people are being scared into putting a clamp on this. There’s a clamp on nuclear, because there are groups of people who don’t want that technology to become available. They don’t want that extra energy to become available, they don’t want the growth to occur, so, they’re putting a limit on growth artificially; and saying, rather live with wind and solar. And you say, “There’s no sun out now.” They say, “That’s fine. Just go to bed when the Sun goes down, like people used to do.” They’ve actually said that to me in discussions.

That’s the point of pushing for this wind and solar, and excluding other sources like nuclear which produces no CO₂. I do not believe CO₂ is causing the climate change, but CO₂ is an undoubted major political problem right now. So, you say, “Nuclear doesn’t produce CO₂.” But then they say, “Yeah, but nuclear produces this nuclear waste.” Which is also actually a silly story. It’s completely incorrect. The amount of high-level nuclear waste produced by nuclear is so incredibly small, that it really is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. And scientists know exactly how to handle nuclear waste. The story that we don’t know [what to do with] nuclear waste, that it’s an unsolved problem that is beyond our capabilities, is just plain and simply not true.

This whole thing about limits to growth, is that political groupings are trying to make a limit-to-growth cover-up by blocking extra energy, by blocking expansions in technology. And limits to growth is not just this unconstrained consumption, which scares people. I can understand why they get scared. We’ve got LED lights, for example, which produce light with much less electricity consumption than the old incandescent bulbs. We have all sorts of energy-saving devices and clever ways of doing things. More technological advance will allow a lifestyle of people which is growth, to improve, allow the economies to go forward, but not with just this unconstrained consumption and waste, dumping of all sorts of things, which is the scary image.

There’s no limit to growth as long as you don’t try and put blockages in the way of technology.

Ross: Two things: One is to re-stress the origin of the outlook that we’re fighting against right now. Although people might think that leftist circles promote the climate change catastrophism, and therefore it comes from the left, it’s just not true. As we saw at FLOP26, this is the world’s financial leaders (they’re not much in the way of leaders), but this truly is an oligarchical outlook, and it’s not any different than the promotion of Malthus centuries ago, at a time when he had said—when the world’s population was far below what it is today—that we were going to reach the limits to growth. That it was inevitable, and that trying to help people live better was an exercise in futility, since the population was simply going to surpass what could be supported by the resources of the Earth and agriculture.

He was wrong. He was promoted at the time, and that same outlook is alive today. That’s why it’s essential in combatting it, to address the nature of the human identity and the double importance of understanding the role of science from the standpoint of creating new resources. And the other aspect, from the standpoint of understanding what it is to be a human being.

The next panel, on culture, will address this from a different direction. But science and science education have a very special role to play, particularly among young people—but not only—in helping people understand what their mind is capable of, of sharing that experience with other young people: This should be what occurs in schools, not rote memorization of formulas which may be correct; that’s not the problem. The point is, where is that process of discovery?

And then on the economic side, I’ll refer back to the work of Lyndon LaRouche in thinking through a specific way of understanding that non-linear characteristic of true economic growth. As other speakers have said, it’s not more of whatever you’ve got; it’s more than whatever you had. It’s the creation of a real new future, through expanding that resource base, and trying to understand the economic value of those new resources in terms of the old resources. Trying to put a dollar value on something that simply could not have been created from that earlier space, runs into difficulties like those that came up when trying to quantify the value of the U.S. Moon mission, where economists arrived at a number of roughly 10 to 1—ten times the value in economic benefits, compared to the initial cost to go to the Moon. But such numbers always fail for the two reasons: that the benefits continue, indefinitely; and second, that you didn’t get ten of what you used to have; you get entirely new technologies.

Attempting through linear approaches to understand the economic value of technology itself, leads to under-valuing, to under-counting, to mis-estimating the value both of technology, and for a different reason that I won’t say, infrastructure—which both need far more investment than they are receiving today from governments.

Why Don’t the Climate Nobel Winners Admit Their Mistake?

Dobrodt: Betty Jennings in the United States, asks: “How can two scientists win a Nobel Prize on their computer climate models which are inaccurate? Shouldn’t they admit that the modeling is wrong and change their assumptions? These two scientists should open up public discussion on where the modeling went wrong, and that the mathematics couldn’t predict 200,000 years of solar phases in our Solar System. Why is it such a taboo to challenge a Nobel Prize winner?”

Prof. Battaglia: The two scientists who got the Nobel Prize are basically excellent scientists. I think the Nobel Prize committee has made a mistake. They just thought that the models, which are quite complicated programs to write, because the climate system is the most complex system one can think of, they just thought that the models were validated because they said, “If we run the models without human forcing, we don’t get agreement with the experiments. When we add human forcing, we get agreement.” And then, they conclude that the models are valid, and that humans are responsible for the warming. But there is another way out of this, another possibility of this disagreement: That the models were wrong.

I don’t know whether it’s a big challenge to challenge the Nobel Prize. After all, the Nobel Prize is made by humans, and those humans could also make a mistake. I don’t think the Nobel Prize is a very important thing. After all, “consensus” is an oxymoron, it’s a contradiction. There is no consensus in science. What is important in science are the facts, and the facts are, in the case of the models, that the models have not predicted the Roman Warming, the Medieval Warming, Holocenic Warming: They failed in predicting the warming for the future; they have failed to predict, to construct the temperature factor of the atmosphere, so the models are wrong. And the Nobel Prize committee was wrong as well. So what?

Comments on COP26

Dobrodt: Ulf Sandmark in Sweden wants to know if any of the speakers wish to comment on the final resolution of COP26, “one of the first conferences of science.”

Prof. Berkhout: The bad thing about COP26 is that climate change was one-to-one connected to CO₂ emission. So, actually, the whole COP26 was focussed on CO₂! As was said earlier, if that connection between global warming and CO₂ emission is actually—and let me say it nicely—a very weak connection, then, of course, you’re wasting an entire meeting of ten thousands of people! And you make decisions, and you try to get an agreement, which has nothing to do with the real problem. I’ve liked to formulate it like that.

Climate change is much more than CO₂. And CO₂ is much more than climate change. And that is extremely important, because we know how important CO₂ is for life! And we know already, there occurred models, even the Nobel Prize committee went wrong on that—these models are just wrong! They are not validated. For 40 years they have predicted something that is not little bit wrong, but a lot wrong! And we know why: Because validation is something else than verification, but I won’t go into details about that.

To conclude, I hope that this COP26 is the very last conference of its sort, because it starts with the wrong principle. We know what’s happening at the moment, because we see that with all these climate measures that have been taken, energy prices are rising; food prices, therefore, are rising; and hunger will increase. So it is not climate change that is the problem: It is the climate policies, that are the problem.

Dr. Kemm: Also very worrying about where the COP is going, is that they’re now giving instructions at the end, in the form of these resolutions. For example, to get rid of the coal. And to my mind, this is like a world government forming, giving orders to the sub-elements.

In our case, sitting here in South Africa, and other African countries, we sort of see this group of developed European countries, and so on, sending out an instruction, “You will not use coal. You will just crash your economy. You will collapse, you will not make more clinics for your people, you will not advance education, you will not do this, you will not do that.” Preventing coal use in a number of African countries means totally blocking the advance of the economy.

Wind and solar [electricity production] doesn’t work adequately. It doesn’t work. If you look at the sizes, as I’ve mentioned before, the whole of Europe is small and the whole of Europe, electrically, is incredibly interconnected. In England, they draw hydropower from Norway, under the ocean; they draw nuclear power from France under the ocean. So all of Europe is each other’s insurer. Nobody can collapse without just automatically getting electricity over of the border.

That’s not the case in Africa. African countries are on their own. South Africa has some exports that we do of electricity to neighboring countries, and we have a couple of very minor imports; but the amount of electricity moving over the border is very small. And in other countries, there’s much less of this trait. If you ban certain other African countries from expanding their electricity production, you’re just condemning the country. A number of African countries are only 15-20% electrified.

The only honorable thing they can do, is double their electricity consumption—and double it again, and double it again, and again. And that is the way they address the population [growth] and how they can increase the quality of life, which means there will be a natural limitation on births and natural limitation on the growth of other things, such as burning fires at night using wood and dung, and so on, which really is polluting. You’ve got to allow their growth to occur; you can’t block it.

And to my mind, that is serious, when people sit in these rooms in Glasgow, and make rulings across the world, as if the whole world is somehow a uniform type of place, where some ruling coming out of Glasgow is applicable to everybody else. It just isn’t. And I’m glad to see African leaders like President Buhari of Nigeria, and certain others, saying, essentially, “Go and jump in the ocean. We’re not going to listen to you.” And I have no option but to agree with that. We’ve got to advance our own course in the most responsible and sensible way possible. Here in South Africa we are using a lot of coal very well, and we are advancing the nuclear program. We already have nuclear. We’re going to be expanding nuclear some more; that’s already started. I just hope that we advance nuclear much, much more into the future.

Green New Deal as a Smokescreen for Bankruptcy of the Banking System

Dobrodt: Because of the point you raised, this colonialist intention over other nations of the world, I want to bring in a question which was sent in, which I don’t know that we have the ability to answer on this panel: It’s directed to Paul Gallagher, our keynote speaker yesterday afternoon. But I at least wanted to read it, to be on the record, so to speak, for this panel, because it does raise an important dimension that we would be remiss to leave out. And then perhaps we can send it on to Paul, for perhaps a video answer. The question is from Renée Sigerson [in New Jersey]:

“Senator Thompson referenced the tax swindle that has just been reintroduced by the United States so-called ‘Infrastructure Bill’ into the magic mixture used by politicians, to keep the discredited Green New Deal in effect. What needs to be emphasized is that this is just the tiny tip of the iceberg on what is really happening with the financial system. The Green New Deal is a smokescreen for the fact that the financial elites know that the trans-Atlantic financial system is in fact bankrupt.

“Yesterday, Paul Gallagher referenced the financial reorganization concepts needed to get control of this, and put trans-Atlantic finances in the hands of responsible people.

“Science has been under attack for decades, because the Malthusians know that a dedication to science is irreconcilable with the monetarist and Malthusian blueprints that have dominated the 20th century and led to two World Wars.

“Paul should tell us how we can haircut the derivatives market and pour funds into the infrastructure projects that would turn the tide.”

How To Reach Youth?

Dobrodt: I have one more question I want to read, and open up to all of you, and then after that we’ll go to concluding remarks. The question, from Fred Haight in Canada, turns to the issue of the youth and the culture:

“Recently I had a conversation with a fellow in his ’30s, who was railing about climate change. When I confronted him with the fact that there is scientific opposition, of which he was unaware, he paused and said, ‘Well, one thing I know for sure: Man is bad!’

“Most of these excellent presentations have been made by older people, old enough to have experienced the enforced paradigm shift from enthusiasm and optimism, to unbounded pessimism. Younger people, several generations into the enforced paradigm shift, not only lack access to the earlier, beautiful idea of man having dominion over nature, but view it as a problem! Has there ever been a situation before, where an oligarchy induced a large section of humanity to hate itself? Facts alone will not change how they think, so how do we address the problem at a deeper level?”

Prof. Berkhout: It’s at the heart of why I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s a big item with CLINTEL. From early on, you see that our youngsters, when they’re even young kids at the primary school, and then, at the secondary school, they’re completely brainwashed by this negative issue. So they’re completely brainwashed, by saying that their parents and grandparents did it wrong. I talk often with them. We cannot expect that immediately it will pass, because we are the parents and grandparents. [laughs] So we are the bad guys! Or girls.

If we don’t start with the educational system, we will not be successful. Always I find out when I talk to them, they completely confuse climate change and the wellness of our natural environment. If we could split that, that would already be a blessing, because I can tell you that if we agree with the youngsters that we should have much better stewardship about our planet, and that we should take care of our planet; and that with our science and technology, we can do that! Then, we, of course, have won half the battle.

And then, if you admit the vision, then you can go to the climate and tell them about the huge forces and about the past, as was nicely said in this session.

For the educational system and also from our point of view, let us make a clear distinction between the environmental care, stewardship of our planet, things about the circular economy, so that’s the raw materials on the one hand; and about climate change on the other: They are completely different issues. And the only thing—that’s why I like Schiller—the only thing is, educate them! Science and technology. Then they’ll bring some further. I agree with Dr. Kemm; I say it a little bit differently. I say it in this way: unlimited growth means unlimited growth of added value. And the more science and technology we bring in, the larger we increase our added value, and if we say we have unlimited brains, yeah, making things pass well, we have also unlimited added value, which brings us everywhere!

I think this was a great session, and I like to keep in touch, because you’re great guys.

Dobrodt: Would anyone else like to address Fred’s question about how do we get through to the young generations? How do we break them out of the pessimism?

Dr. Kemm: The two sides of the confrontation are not playing by the same rules. If you were playing football and rugby on a field with two different teams, a football team and a rugby team, there’d be constant confusion. Scientists always are honest, they tell the truth, they do it quietly, they do it gently, because that’s how scientists are trained. The extreme Greens, at the other end of the spectrum, are prepared to do street demonstrations, block roads, wave banners, assault people, and do all sorts of absolutely unacceptable things, which means the authorities tend to buckle under the pressure from the extreme Greens. They don’t go and stop the street demonstrations, they allow it to occur, they allow all these things to happen, and so, the scales are highly tilted.

And what the people are seeing in education, like the young people, that is, they’re seeing the press stories about the demonstrations and the crying on television, and so on, and there’s a huge emotional content in there, which is getting the upper hand. And when you try to say, “Can we calmly quietly look at the truth?” Then the extreme Greens say, “Yes, but he’s a denier, you can’t actually believe him.” You find anybody who tries to counter it, is immediately accused of being dishonest, a denier, some secret motive, and those sorts of things.

And that is where, at the political leadership, we somehow need them to try and ensure that the rules stay in place, the rules of debate. And this is where the leaders of the country, which include people like the bankers, and so on, bankers getting together to say, “I don’t want to give any money to coal plants and coal projects,” which means they’re just going to happily damage whole countries. To my mind, that is unacceptable. So we need to look at those rules of the game as well, and then try and address them, because it’s a very serious problem.

Concluding Remarks

Prof Battaglia: I would like to remind, that in “COP26,” the “26” means that these people have already gotten together 26 times, which means they have failed 26 times. Now, they’re going to meet again, in Egypt for COP27, I guess, so it will be the 27th failure. I wonder when these people will realize that they’ve been failing so many times.

In a way, I’m quite optimistic, because those young people, like Greta Thunberg or others, are really a minority among the young people. I think that 90% of the people are not so pessimistic. They don’t follow Greta Thunberg.

The problem is, that there are two different realities. The reality that is given to us by the media, and the real reality. As long as the media are controlled by people who try to rule the whole planet without anybody, and as long as we give them the power to rule the whole planet, we have no way out. We have to go back to the position where people are able to decide who their leaders have to be.

Prof Pulinets: I would like to mention two optimistic things going on in Russia. First, in the Northern Sea Route, we put an icebreaker with a nuclear plant onboard, which is providing electricity to a whole city there. No pollution, no emitting of carbon dioxide.

Second, Russia is now developing a fast neutron reactor. The advantage of this new type of reactor is that it transforms and elaborates all types of nuclear substances, including the nuclear waste. So after this reactor, there is no nuclear waste, so it will be completely clean from nuclear remains. I suppose in two or three years this reactor will be running. Looking to the best activity of nuclear energy, Russia is starting to have very positive results.

Dr. Kemm: If one looks at COP26 and seeks what positives came out of it, something to note is that running up to COP26, and during, there were a lot more pro-nuclear articles that came out in the media, and a lot more articles questioning the whole story about climate change, whereas, a few years ago, there was virtually nothing. So I think a positive out of all of this, is that this caused a lot of people to think. I think the extreme Green philosophies have gone so far, that journalists and others are saying, “Wait a minute, let’s sit down and think a little bit.”

I see that we are turning a corner—I think that we already probably have turned a corner—and that this will result now in a lot more probing about “is this whole Green thing true? Is the wind and solar really the answer?” And so I think a lot more good questions are going to come out of this. I see some positives coming out of it in that sense.

Dobrodt: Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Battaglia, Professor Pulinets, and Dr. Kemm. I also want to thank those speakers who couldn’t be with us in this dialogue, Professor Weiss, and Senator Mike Thompson.

The LaRouche Legacy Foundation published last year the first volume of the Collected Works of Lyndon LaRouche, which includes, very importantly, a couple of crucial economics works, which I would urge everyone to study in light of yesterday’s discussion on economics, and today’s discussion. It includes a book he wrote in 1983 called There Are No Limits to Growth. You can get that on the LaRouche Legacy Foundation website.