By Bill Rees: On the Virtues of Self-Delusion—or maybe not!

Dr. Bill Rees, Professor Emeritus from the University of British Columbia, gave a presentation on our overshoot predicament earlier this month to a zoom meeting of the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome (CACOR).

I’m a longtime fan of Dr. Rees and consider him to be one of the most aware and knowledgeable people on the planet.

This is, I believe, the best talk I’ve seen by Dr. Rees and he covers all of the important issues, including topics like overpopulation that most of his peers avoid.

Presentations like this will probably not change our trajectory but nevertheless I find some comfort knowing there are a few other people thinking about the same issues. This can be a very lonely space.

The Q&A is also very good. I found it interesting to hear how much effort Dr. Rees has made to educate our leaders about what we should be doing to reduce future suffering. He was frank that no one to date, including the Green party, is open to his message. Not surprising, but sad. Also inspiring that someone of his stature is at least trying.

Summary

Climate-change and other environmental organizations urge governments to act decisively/rapidly to decarbonize the economy and halt further development of fossil fuel reserves. These demands arguably betray:

– ignorance of the role of energy in the modern economy;

– ill-justified confidence in society’s ability to transition to 100% green renewable energy;

– no appreciation of the ecological consequences of attempting to do so and;

– little understanding of the social implications.

Without questioning the need to abandon fossil fuels, I will argue that the dream of a smooth energy transition is little more than a comforting shared illusion. Moreover, even if it were possible it would not solve climate change and would exacerbate the real existential threat facing society, namely overshoot.

I then explore some of the consequences and implications of (the necessary) abandonment of fossil fuels in the absence of adequate substitutes, and how governments and MTI society should be responding to these unspoken biophysical realities.

Biography

Dr. William Rees is a population ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus, and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning.

His academic research focuses on the biophysical prerequisites for sustainability. This focus led to co-development (with his graduate students) of ecological footprint analysis, a quantitative tool that shows definitively that the human enterprise is in dysfunctional overshoot. (We would need five Earth-like planets to support just the present world population sustainably with existing technologies at North American material standards.)

Frustrated by political unresponsiveness to worsening indicators, Dr. Rees also studies the biological and psycho-cognitive barriers to environmentally rational behavior and policies. He has authored hundreds of peer reviewed and popular articles on these topics. Dr. Rees is a Fellow of Royal Society of Canada and also a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute; a founding member and former President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics; a founding Director of the OneEarth Initiative; and a Director of The Real Green New Deal. He was a full member of the Club of Rome from 2013 until 2018. His international awards include the Boulding Memorial Award in Ecological Economics, the Herman Daly Award in Ecological Economics and a Blue Planet Prize (jointly with his former student, Dr. Mathis Wackernagel).

I left the following comment on YouTube:

I’m a fellow British Columbian and longtime admirer of Dr. Rees. Thank you for the excellent presentation.

I agree with Dr. Rees’ prescription for what needs to be done but I think there’s a step that must precede his first step of acknowledging our overshoot predicament.

Given the magnitude and many dimensions of our predicament an obvious question is why do so few people see it?

I found a theory by Dr. Ajit Varki that provides a plausible explanation, and answers other important questions about our unique species.

The Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory posits that the human species with its uniquely powerful intelligence exists because it evolved to deny unpleasant realities.

If true, this implies that the first step to any positive meaningful change must be to acknowledge our tendency to deny unpleasant realities.

Varki explains his theory here:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-25466-7_6

A nice video summary by Varki is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqgYqW2Kgkg

My interpretations of the theory are here:
https://un-denial.com/denial-2/theory-short/

https://un-denial.com/2015/11/12/undenial-manifesto-energy-and-denial/

918 thoughts on “By Bill Rees: On the Virtues of Self-Delusion—or maybe not!”

  1. A new way (for me at least ) to think of The Great Reset’s “you will own nothing and be happy”.

    Thanks to real growth being constrained by affordable energy depletion, the only way to (maybe) prevent the economy from collapsing is to expand the asset bubble by growing debt faster than the economy and to keep this game going as long as possible with low interest rates. Eventually inflation induced higher interest rates and/or energy scarcity will cause a depression and many people will lose their jobs while living in homes with large mortgages they can no longer service.

    To limit social unrest and to keep the asset bubble inflated so the economy does not implode, banks will foreclose on defaulting mortgages and transfer ownership of the assets to central banks who will “service” the debt with printed money. The homes will then be rented back to the previous owners at a rate compatible with their means.

    The slogan “you will own nothing and be happy” is propaganda to prepare us for a world with assets mostly owned by the state and the elite.

    Governments are also looking for tools to control the movement and activities of citizens in case social order breaks down when scarcity becomes severe. Vaccine passports may be one of these tools.

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    1. Another useful tool would be to replace cash with some form of digital currency which I suspect is a prerequisite for negative interest rates which might help keep the wheels on a little longer.

      Digital currency might also help with controlling the movement and activities of citizens, and in distributing a subsistence income to those out of work.

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  2. Well that was disappointing. I was looking forward to Joe Rogan’s discussion with Jordan Peterson. Peterson is yet another polymath that denies unpleasant realities.

    The fastest way to make the planet sustainably green is to make poor people as rich as possible as fast as possible.

    He forgot to add that we should give everyone a pony to make sure they’re happy. But first we need to figure out how to power our tractors, combines, trucks, trains, and ships with dilithium crystals. Better get on it boys.

    I confirmed Peterson is already on my list of famous polymaths in denial:

    On Famous Polymaths

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      1. Thanks. I’ll read that carefully because Nikiforuk has done very good work in the past. It won’t surprise me though if he’s on the wrong side of history with covid because a lot of previously wise people have lost their minds in the mass psychosis.

        For the record I have read all of Jordan Peterson’s books and respect many of the things he says. That also applies to most of the other famous polymaths on my list. It fascinates me that they get almost everything right except overshoot. That can’t be a coincidence. Just like it can’t be a coincidence that the only thing the thousands of our religions have in common is a believe in life after death.

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        1. I’m not “in” to the tribal politics of personality evaluation, despite the temptation of these latter days of idiocracy where we seem to be encouraged to do so. There are otherwise good people that say stupid things, as well as stupid people who can on occasion say true things. And I’m wise enough to know that my own assumptions can always be revised based on new evidence.

          I remember coming across an aphorism in the Hindmarsh paper I referenced here some time ago that said it succinctly:

          “Even a crooked stick can sometimes draw a straight line”

          I like that!

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  5. Matt Taibbi today…

    https://taibbi.substack.com/p/lets-not-have-a-war

    Let’s Not Have a War

    The American foreign policy establishment, chasing decades of failures, appears to be seriously considering the unthinkable in Ukraine.

    No one will say it out loud, but the greatest argument against U.S. support for military action of any kind in Ukraine is the inerrant incompetence of our missions and the consistent record of destabilizing areas of strategic interest through our involvement, including in these two specific countries. At the moment the Berlin Wall fell the United States had almost limitless political capital with these soon-to-be ex-Soviet territories. We blew it all within a few years. Now that we’re really in trouble in Ukraine, why would we keep to the same playbook that got us here?

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  6. No hope!

    Kurt Tucholsky – a stairway: speaking – writing – keeping silent
    (it’s the last entry in his »sudelbuch«, 1935)

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    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Tucholsky

      Kurt Tucholsky (German: [kʊʁt tu.ˈxɔls.ki] (audio speaker iconlisten); 9 January 1890 – 21 December 1935) was a German journalist, satirist, and writer. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Kaspar Hauser (after the historical figure), Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger and Ignaz Wrobel.

      Tucholsky was one of the most important journalists of the Weimar Republic. As a politically engaged journalist and temporary co-editor of the weekly magazine Die Weltbühne he proved himself to be a social critic in the tradition of Heinrich Heine. He was simultaneously a satirist, an author of satirical political revues, a songwriter and a poet. He saw himself as a left-wing democrat and pacifist and warned against anti-democratic tendencies – above all in politics, the military – and the threat of National Socialism. His fears were confirmed when the Nazis came to power in January 1933. In May of that year he was among the authors whose works were banned as “un-German”,[1] and burned;[2] he was also among the first authors and intellectuals whose German citizenship was revoked.[3][4]

      According to Istvan Deak, Tucholsky was Weimar Germany’s most controversial political and cultural commentator, who published over 2,000 essays, manifestos, poems, critiques, aphorisms, and stories.

      In his writings he hit hard at his main enemies in Germany, whom he identified as haughty aristocrats, bellicose army officers, brutal policemen, reactionary judges, anti-republican officials, hypocritical clergyman, tyrannical professors, dueling fraternity students, ruthless capitalists, philistine burghers, opportunistic Jewish businessman, fascistic petty-bourgeois, Nazis, even peasants, whom he considered generally dumb and conservative….He is admired as an unsurpassed master of satire, of the short character sketch, and of the Berlin jargon.[5]

      Death
      Weakened by chronic illness,[clarification needed] on the evening of 20 December 1935 Tucholsky took an overdose of sleeping tablets in his house in Hindås. The next day he was found in a coma and taken to hospital in Gothenburg. He died there on the evening of 21 December. Recently, Tucholsky’s biographer Michael Hepp has called into doubt the verdict of suicide, saying that he considers it possible that the death was accidental.[citation needed] However, this claim is disputed among Tucholsky researchers.

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      1. My favourite quote from Tucholsky is:

        “In Deutschland gilt derjenige, der auf den Schmutz hinweist, für viel gefährlicher als derjenige, der den Schmutz macht.”

        Translated into English, this means something like:
        “In Germany, the person who is pointing at the dirt is considered to be much more dangerous than the person who is making the dirt.”

        If I look into the Covid situation and other important issues like overshoot, this could be applied to the whole world.

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      1. TAE was I think founded by the duo of Ilargi and Foss. I always preferred Foss’s writing because it focused more on overshoot and the interplay of energy and economy. Foss went quiet and moved from Canada to New Zealand when (I’m guessing) she thought the end was near. Most experts on the matter seem to think New Zealand will be the best place to live as the economy collapses and wars begin.

        Here is Nicole Foss’s excellent archive of writing for anyone not familiar with her:
        https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/05/the-automatic-earth-primer-guide-2017/

        Here is the last good interview with Foss that I am aware of:

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      1. Thanks Perran for finding Foss.

        Now I remember why I stopped following her on Twitter. I thought she went crazy when Trump was elected and talked about nothing else. I have another female friend in the doomer community that did the same.

        Now that Trump is gone I see Nicole is fully engaged like many of us truth seeking doomers in trying to understand the covid insanity.

        Nicole is very bright and an excellent dot connector. I had the pleasure of attending a live talk by her in Vancouver. If she has a flaw it’s that she was too confident on the timing of collapse and underestimated how much money they would print to keep the wheels on.

        I’ll keep on eye what she’s up to.

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    3. She’s very active on Facebook and seems to be keeping well in NZ. When Trump was in power she pretty much focused solely on that whole debacle

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  8. I donated to this.

    https://www.gofundme.com/f/taking-back-our-freedom-convoy-2022

    $5M (and climbing) raised so far for fuel and food to support a convoy of thousands of trucks driving across Canada to protest against vaccine mandates in our capital.

    I’m not so keen on their focus on freedom. I think there could be circumstances when vaccine mandates are required and I think focusing on freedom will offend people who think those circumstances exist today.

    It would be much wiser to focus on the required criteria for mandates and whether they are being met.

    I think a mandate is reasonable if:
    1) the virus is a serious threat to many; and
    2) the vaccines stop virus transmission; and
    3) the vaccines have been properly tested for safety.

    Not one of these three conditions is true today and therefore mandates are not reasonable today.

    In any case, who cares what I think.

    It’s a brilliant strategy. Park a 100,000 trucks in Ottawa until the mandates are revoked. No goods delivered to stores while we wait.

    Go get ’em boys!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma06kYUt1Hc

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    1. The censors strike again:

      “Video unavailable
      This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.”

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    1. I finished this episode. Two very intelligent, aware, and good men discussing the overwhelming nature of our overshoot predicament and exploring possible responses and concluding that each possible solution is extremely complex and difficult to implement and many of these “solutions” will need to be applied simultaneously.

      And yet they do not mention the only “solution” that is guaranteed to help even if applied in isolation with no other solutions, and even if it is only applied by a single country without global cooperation: population reduction.

      When you understand the overshoot predicament you also understand that most people on the planet will suffer, regardless of what we do. The obvious goal then should be to minimize suffering and the best and perhaps only way to achieve this goal is to reduce the population.

      Population reduction will surely be difficult to implement, but probably not more difficult than any other useful solution. The great thing about population reduction is that you only need to focus on one thing, because every single one of our thousands of overshoot related problems improves with fewer people. And you don’t need to be completely successful with population reduction goals to have achieved something useful. If you prevent one birth you have reduced total suffering and that is a worthwhile accomplishment. If you prevent two births that’s twice the accomplishment, and so on.

      And yet despite this obvious path that we should focus on, they, and almost every other overshoot aware person, never mention it.

      How is this possible without MORT?

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      1. Population reduction – yes! Birth reduction vs. excess mortality? We’ll see! The rights of the elderly to be supported vs the rights of the young to have families…How would power shake out? I think we need both, actually – but all things considered I think allowing excess mortality is the better path. A hard future will need young people ready for what comes. It depends on what one’s goal is – but if it is a future for humans, we need to sacrifice the old, over the young.

        If we’re talking sober – why forbid young people from having children vs refusing healthcare for those over ~60?

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        1. Good point but I assumed the population of old people will decrease without the need for any policies because we simply won’t be able to afford the life extending technologies we use now.

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      2. What are you thinking about the “issue” of population implosion? In most of the so called first world countries we have a population reduction already going on without any coercive measures due to plumeting birth rates. I live in a region in Germany, where the projection for 2030 is to 15% less people. We currently have more people older than 75 than people under 18 in our town. There are towns which will be empty in 20 years if this trend continues. The country-wide fertility rate currently hovers around 1,6 children per woman, which is 0,5 less than needed to keep the population stable. “Unfortunately”, the government policy is trying to fill up the void with people from other countries. So any positive effect of reduced energy usage due to declining population is negated. Wouldn´t it be an option to close of the rich countries to reduce our energy usage? I know this is not an option as this reeks of xenophobia, which is one of the worst crimes one can commit today.

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        1. This is also one of the reasons why I don´t vote for the Green Party in Germany. They want us to reduce our energy usage (which I appreciate) but at the same time want to increase the population by a factor of 3 by inviting the whole world to our land of milk and honey (which does not make any sense, if you want to achieve the first part).

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        2. Same problem here in Canada. Our population would be declining a little without immigration. With immigration we have (I think) the fastest growing population of any country on the planet.

          The driver for this is the fractional reserve debt backed monetary system that every country in the world uses. Without growth this monetary system collapses by design.

          I think we should stop all immigration because economic problems are preferable to over-population problems when scarcity starts to bite.

          The Canadian Green party also does not mention overshoot or populaiton reduction. I no longer vote for them.

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          1. I was thinking that a coalition of the Green party and the AfD, our “far right” party, would be interesting, if the Green party would work on reducing our emissions and the AfD would cease immigration to Germany. In reality, the parties have nothing in common and something like this would never happen. Too bad for us…

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  10. New essay today from xraymike79.

    https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2022/01/26/heads-up-truth-is-stranger-than-fiction/

    Circling back to the movie I was discussing earlier, there is a scene in which junior astronomer and Ph.D. student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) is with a group of disaffected youth who are discussing conspiracy theories regarding the global elite, and Dibiasky says in an exasperated voice, “You guys, the truth is way more depressing. They’re not even smart enough to be as evil as you’re giving them credit for.” Perhaps the truth is even more depressing than that. In the grand scheme of things, free will appears to be nothing more than a figment of our imagination. Like microbes proliferating in a Petri dish and dying off after overshooting their confines, humans are essentially replicating the same process albeit on a planetary scale. Evidently, we are biologically programmed to eventually crash and burn. Just as with all other species, humans have the imperative to expand their numbers, exploiting all resources until stopped by environmental constraints, and those limits to growth are fast approaching as we speak.

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    1. If I look at the first half of the 20th century, I would say that we are pretty good at losing our minds.

      I would not say that we are back at 1930s level but if you look at our insane Covid policies and other pretty stupid policies (the agenda of the Green party mentioned above comes to my mind), it seems like we are on a good path to become insane again.

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    1. Awesome. The problem is, if you confront an “NPC” with this, it is likely that he gets the support of all the other NPCs, while the “chad” is more or less alone.

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        1. Normally, I am also pretty much out of touch of the current youth culture, but I incidentally stumbeld across these terms on YouTube a while ago. This whole meme culture is a book of seven seals for me, but I am in the process of understanding the basics now.

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    1. That does look promising. The unraveling seems to be accelerating. I’d really like to see some people go to prison, but I bet it never happens. Every single person that committed fraud in the 2008 GFC got away with it.

      Aside from the spike in miscarriage diagnoses (ICD code O03 for spontaneous abortions), there was an almost 300% increase in cancer diagnoses (from a five-year average of 38,700 per year to 114,645 in the first 11 months of 2021). There was also a 1,000% increase in diagnosis codes for neurological issues, which increased from a baseline average of 82,000 to 863,000!

      Some other numbers he did not mention at the hearing but gave to me in the interview are the following:
      – myocardial infarction –269% increase
      – Bell’s palsy – 291% increase
      – congenital malformations (for children of military personnel) – 156% increase
      – female infertility – 471% increase
      – pulmonary embolisms – 467% increase

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  15. I keep mulling different models trying to figure out what’s behind the covid insanity. Here’s the latest version of my theory.

    There are three programs running simultaneously and somewhat independently.

    The first program can be understood by following the money:
    1) Politicians depend on pharma donations.
    2) News & social media depend on pharma ads.
    3) Scientists depend on pharma contracts.
    4) Pharma CEOs depend on profit growth.

    The second program is the mass psychosis of most citizens as explained by Mattias Desmet. This is a natural phenomenon that may or may not have been intentionally juiced.

    The third program is more murky but I suspect a small group of elites, probably with good intentions, maybe led by Mark Carney at the WEF/UN, are trying to figure out what to do about the coming social unrest caused by energy depletion, climate change, and economic collapse, and have used covid as cover to implement methods of monitoring and controlling the movement and activities of citizens.

    I hate to say it, but this third program, if it exists, may not be a bad idea. Given that we can’t even discuss peak oil or overshoot, when scarcity hits in the next few years, people are going to be surprised and will likely go bat shit crazy. Allowing the social unrest to get out of control will only make things worse.

    Let’s hope that version 2.0 of the monitoring and control program does not require us to inject a novel insufficiently tested substance.

    A better idea for controlling and monitoring citizens might be digital cash, which offers the extra benefit of making it easier to implement negative interest rates which might help keep the wheels on a few extra years.

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    1. I agree with your assessment of the three programs. It is really hard to find out, how these programs are connected. Since I think that the global elite is aware of the upcoming troubles, I would expect that they are at least trying to plan for it (partly in public like the Great Reset, partly in secret). The pharma industry, media and national governments are just tools to execute their plan, with the nice side effect of making them richer in the process.

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    2. Our inflation in NZ just topped 5.9%, house prices are near a million dollars on average. Our central bank is probably going to up the official cash rate

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  17. HHH today…

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-january-22-2022/#comment-734143

    Net effect so far from yesterday FED news is a stronger dollar. Dollar is up against all major currencies including Chinese yuan. Which here lately has also been a strong currency due to it’s peg to the dollar.

    So you have a Eurodollar market that is 3-4 times as large as the onshore US dollar market and you have a dollar that is appreciating in value due to FED policy.

    It’s a recipe for disaster for dollar credit outside US. And maybe that is where we should be looking.

    There has been a lot of new dollars borrowed since the beginning of the pandemic. Just that two years of credit creation alone can’t handle a move in interest rates. And if you borrowed dollars via Eurodollar market as dollar continues to appreciate. Your financial gain from borrowing cheap dollar credit and investing outside US start to shrink. Dollar moves high enough and your underwater in your trade and eventually you face margin call.

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          1. No, not that I know of. But I think it is very pertinent that she wrote a book called “When The Trucks Stop Running”. As for my Goebbels reference…just look around you. ANYBODY who has anything honest or truthful to say is censored and demonized. Anybody that is useful in propagating lies is enabled and rewarded.

            By the way, have you come across this yet? It kind of destroys the notion that these truckers have “unacceptable” views or are “radical operators” or “foreign operatives” or somehow “extremists”. I urge you to watch the whole thing. Fuck me, what happened to reality?

            We’ve ALL had ENOUGH! | Interview with Brigette Belton, Convoy Trucker January 19, 2022

            https://rumble.com/vsx3r8-weve-all-had-enough-interview-with-brigette-belton-convoy-trucker.html

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    1. Awesome video. The Canadian truckers somehow remind me of the French farmers who also use their vehicles (tractors) for protests. Sadly, we Germans seem to be pathologically obedient to authority that something like the freedom convoy is unthinkable here. Even our revolutions prove to be ineffective (e.g. 1848 and 1918/19).

      I must admit though that I am positively surprised by the amount of protestors at the German anti Covid policies demonstrations. However, the protestors are smeared as fascists by the media, and I know many people who just recite what they learned by watching the news.

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    1. I have read in the comments of one of John Michael Greer´s blogs that Trudeau “has caught a case of COWARD-19″…This somehow confirms my impression that he is the same kind of “fair-weather politician” as we have in Germany. They panic and hide as soon as a crisis is brewing.

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  28. Brent again over 90 USD dollars at the moment. An this with a backdrop of economic deceleration. What does that tell us?

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      1. Man I’m glad I’m a small-scale seed producer and grow a shit-ton of my own food annually. I only wish I lived in a community where that kind of thing would catch on, and people would get the fuck off their devices, dispense with their yearning for cruise ships in January, and remember what serious mutual aid is all about. Time’s-a-coming!

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      2. I think instead you wag the dog – have a good old-fashioned WAR! Ukraine anyone? What could go wrong?? The U.S. is the only SUPER POWER and Russia is merely a gnat bothering the U.S. – swat them down!! Neocons unite. (Irony).
        AJ

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          1. We (the U.S.) shouldn’t fuck with the Russians, BUT we are led by a senile fool and a bunch of neocons (they used to be Republicans when we were invading Iraq and Afghanistan) who think this is 1990 and we are the world’s only super power. There is a lot of denial about the U.S. military status in the world in Washington – and it’s going to get us (U.S.) our ass kicked (only if we can avoid canned sunshine).
            AJ

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  33. Al Jazeera is the last decent main stream news outlet.
    Yesterday’s piece on Julian Assange was good.
    Our western governments really have become evil.

    Julian Assange’s legal cards are running out. And when UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer was asked to take on the WikiLeaks founder’s case in 2018, he found himself surprisingly uninterested. One allegation after another had come to cloud the narrative of Assange, liberator of state secrets. But Melzer has since investigated them all and discovered just how far reality is from the narratives.

    https://omny.fm/shows/the-take/the-trial-of-julian-assange

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    1. Have you ever found yourself asking : “Does our Government have our best interests in mind?”

      At this juncture in history I can only hope so. Desperately so.

      Exploring Biodigital Convergence Policy Horizons Canada| Horizons de politiques February 11, 2020
      https://horizons.gc.ca/en/2020/02/11/exploring-biodigital-convergence/

      From the forward:

      “In the coming years, biodigital technologies could be woven into our lives in the way that digital technologies are now. Biological and digital systems are converging, and could change the way we work, live, and even evolve as a species. More than a technological change, this biodigital convergence may transform the way we understand ourselves and cause us to redefine what we consider human or natural.

      Biodigital convergence may profoundly impact our economy, our ecosystems, and our society. Being prepared to support it, while managing its risks with care and sensitivity, will shape the way we navigate social and ethical considerations, as well as guide policy and governance conversations.

      Guided by its mandate, Policy Horizons Canada (Policy Horizons) intends to start an informed and meaningful dialogue about plausible futures for biodigital convergence and the policy questions that may arise. In this initial paper, we define and explore biodigital convergence – why it is important to explore now, its characteristics, what new capabilities could arise from it, and some initial policy implications. We want to engage with a broad spectrum of partners and stakeholders on what our biodigital future might look like, how this convergence might affect sectors and industries, and how our relationships with technology, nature, and even life itself could evolve.

      We welcome your comments and participation, and look forward to diving more deeply into the questions raised in this paper.”

      Am I the one feeling like he’s going batshit crazy?

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      1. I believe there is a coordinated program underway to prepare for the coming economic collapse caused by energy depletion and climate change. They call it the Great Reset.

        Maybe not entirely a bad idea since we can’t even discuss peak oil so when scarcity soon bites people will be surprised and will likely go bat shit crazy. Violent social unrest will only make things worse.

        I object to them using a novel insufficiently tested substance that must injected into your body as one of their tools for control.

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  34. El gato focused on politics today arguing that the left vs. right “debate” is all bullshit and we need a new game. I thought it was quite good. It would of course have been a lot better if he was aware of the coming collapse and factored that into his discussion.

    What a clusterfuck we face with huge problems coming and completely incompetent leadership.

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/horseshoe-theory-and-the-politics

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  41. I wrote to the Premier of my province today.

    Dear Premier Horgan,

    I am a retired BC homeowner and demand you revoke all covid mandates and rehire all employees fired for non-compliance immediately.

    I support the trucker convoy but I disagree with their focus on freedom because I think there are circumstances when vaccine mandates are the right thing for a society.

    Mandates would be reasonable if and only if all three of these conditions are true:
    1. the virus is a serious threat to many; and
    2. the vaccines stop virus transmission; and
    3. the vaccines have been properly tested for safety.

    An analysis of the data not distorted by pharmaceutical industry interests clearly shows that not one of these three conditions is true today, and therefore mandates are not reasonable today.

    I also demand that you fire your senior health leaders. Public health is clearly not their priority. I will know your health officials care about my health when they promote vitamin D, early treatments, and protect our children who have zero risk from the virus. You should replace your health leaders with experts that have sufficient intelligence and integrity to do independent analysis of data rather than simply echoing the corrupt policies of Fauci.

    I am not anti-vax. I have taken all the vaccines that we grew up with. I will take a vaccine for covid if a more dangerous variant emerges, and if it is proven to stop transmission, and if the vaccine offered has been tested and monitored for safety using the same rigor that we used to trust our health officials to do.

    We are on the right side of history. I suggest you join us quickly.

    Sincerely,

    Rob Mielcarski

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    1. Good on you. My sentiments exactly. I’m still waiting to start this vaccine trial with covax 19. I thought I would have had my first shot by now but obviously there has been some delays.

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    1. While I was never part of the Elon Musk fan club (or religion), I must admit that he is a very smart guy with a whitty humor. Have was interviewed by the BabylonBee in January 2022. Maybe I have to watch the interview for a few more good laughs.

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      1. I not a big fan of Elon either. He has lots of wheat and lots of chaff.

        I’m pretty certain he understands we are screwed due to overshoot and thinks leaving the planet to live on Mars is our only chance of preserving our species with it’s vanishingly rare intelligence. He might be right. Even if there is only a one in a billion chance of successfully colonizing Mars, maybe it’s worth trying.

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        1. Hopium? Denial??
          Elon is crazy. I thought enough people had already demolished as impossible any chance of setting up a successful Mars colony? (far greater than one a billion, IMHO). And the waste of energy/resources to attempt to accomplish such a feat – astronomical. Besides any attempt would be filling the mass of humanity with false hope. I think Science Fiction is to blame as it fosters illogical fantasy thinking.
          AJ

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          1. I ‘d also say colonizing Mars is impossible but many disagree. I agree Elon is crazy but then perhaps so am I for not conforming with the 99.9% that see a different reality.

            News coverage of the Ottawa protest and Trudeau’s response has been mind boggling. Not one critic appears to have actually looked at what happened. Ditto for all the people criticizing Joe Rogan. Not one seems to have listened to the episodes with Dr. Malone and Dr. McCullough that caused the fire storm. They are must listens if you have not already done so.

            The vast majority of people simply do not care about what is true. They only care about what they want to believe is true. Sadly that also applies to my friends and family. As the ship sinks not one in a million people will understand what’s going on.

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            1. But, I saw some “poll” (today or yesterday) that said over 40% of Canadians thought that masking should go on forever! So, Trudeau is just playing to his base. So sad. Why are all the tacitly “liberal” people turning into such totalitarian fascists? Also, just to show you can’t always tell who’s on what side. The morning blog by the National Review (mainstream U.S. conservatives) was defending Joe Rogan’s free speech right to have anyone on his show he wants and have reasoned discussions with them, even if it goes counter to the current narrative. I will have to watch the interviews.
              Sad about all the friends and family in denial. My wife is – living in a hopium/denial universe. Only one of my daughters really gets where we are headed (and she’s working on a degree in sustainable ag – the only one I can talk to about collapse/extinction).
              AJ

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        2. If Musk was deadly serious about colonizing Mars he would be pumping vast amounts of money and resources into biosphere (closed system vivarium) research. He is not. Turns out it is really hard to do.

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