The UN Climate Summit in Glasgow began on October 31 with the aim of "saving the world from a climate catastrophe". Earlier, the leaders of the world's 20 largest countries (G20) met in Rome, which the global climate activists tried to get to agree on the need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
However, the G20 leaders did not reach a common decision: to achieve carbon neutrality for all G20 countries by 2050. The final statement of the G20 summit made an abstract call for "meaningful and effective" action to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but did not set out any specific commitments.
The view that civilization does not currently have any means of fundamentally and predictably altering the flow of solar energy to the Earth and the flow of the Earth's heat radiation (changing climate on the Earth's scale) does not appear in much of the global media associated with the Western world. Nor will it appear, because the preaching of climate catastrophe, global warming and the green economy is the new ideology of the Western world, which aims to prevent further threats to the Western world's economic influence and political power in the world.
Much remains to be done to turn the ideology of "climate disaster prevention" and "triumph of the green economy" into a powerful tool for strengthening Western power.
The first step is to achieve universal formal recognition of the climate catastrophe, so that as many governments in the world as possible make a public commitment to "act now" (the slogan of the uneducated youth movement, inspired by the so-called climate prophet Greta Thunberg).
In the next step, the EU, the US and other countries in the Western world will agree (regardless of the position of China, Russia and others) on a very costly (perhaps even pointless from a nature conservation point of view) package of measures called the green economy, carbon and climate neutral action, which the leading political scientists of the Western world will swear that only by implementing this nonsense will it be possible to save the world from a climate catastrophe.
In the third step, those countries that do not want to implement equally costly, pointless and irrational reforms in their economies will be denied access to the markets and technologies of developed countries. It was this nuance that French President Emmanuel Macron emphasized in his speech in Glasgow: demanding that these agreements must in future reflect climate commitments. Less developed countries, which will not agree to tax their economies with "green" and climate-neutral reforms, will at best be able to remain suppliers of resources or more primitive products to a more developed world. In the worst case, countries that ignore or sabotage climate neutrality, carbon neutrality and green economy initiatives will be sanctioned by denying them access to international trade with green and climate-neutral economies, denying them technology transfer and possibly even denying them access to the interbank payment system (SWIFT).
Let me remind you that in the 16th century, the largest countries in Europe achieved much higher technological development than any American civilization or the countries of Africa and Asia. Technological excellence allowed European countries to complete the territorial division of the world by the end of the 19th century. The colonial empires reached their apogee shortly before World War II. After World War II, the general collapse of the colonial system began. In the second half of the twentieth century, almost all the colonies of European powers in Africa and Asia gained independence. But colonialism did not disappear anywhere. It took on new forms - in the form of economic enslavement. Late 20th-century neocolonialism was based on the so-called free market doctrine. International trade had to be based on the "free market". This meant that no country was allowed to restrict the flow of goods from other countries and protect its domestic market with customs or other barriers. At first, the new approach worked brilliantly. The less developed countries, which were part of the "free market" system, could no longer compete with the more developed countries (the so-called golden billion, which includes European countries, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.). The most developed countries had a higher level of technology, their goods were of better quality, and the free transfer of technology was protected by patent rights and copyright. Less developed countries, which opened their markets to the expansion of goods from more developed countries, gradually lost domestic production. Their producers could not compete with the giants of more developed countries and again became the suppliers of resources to the former colonial powers. This process was called neocolonialism. However, a number of countries (Japan, South Korea, China, etc.) first undertook significant economic reforms and modernized production with state resources before opening their markets to products from developed countries. It is the countries that delayed the integration of their economies into the so-called free market system, that have shown remarkable economic growth for decades, outpacing the most developed countries in both Europe and North America.
It was these changes that changed the balance of global economic power. In 1975, when the international organization G-7 was founded, the world's seven most industrialized countries (in terms of total GDP at current prices) were the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada. China, the world's largest country by population, ranked only 8th in 1975 in terms of total GDP. Forty-five years later, in 2019, the G-7 was no longer the seven most developed countries in the world.
In 2019, China ranked 2nd in the world and India ranked 5th in terms of total GDP at current prices. The ninth most developed country in the world was Brazil., Canada had dropped to tenth place in the world in 2019. It is clear that if these trends continue, the economic and consequent political influence of China, India, Brazil and other countries in the world will increase, outpacing the influence of the former G-7 powers.
What should the Western world do to stop this process?
There are several options. The easiest way would be to come to terms with current trends and let things go their own way. This would mean that already after one generation, the centers of global power would have to move from the North Atlantic to Asia, that India and China would gain much, much more influence than they do now.
The second option would be to halt peacetime growth trends by military force. That was the economic cause of World War I. Britain could not compete with the German economy and the speed of technological progress in peacetime. It sought to halt Germany's growth by denying Germany access to the resources of British-controlled colonies, and then a world war ensued, which restored the British empire's ability to compete in the world for thirty years. One of the biggest spoils of the winners of World War I was the confiscation of all German patents in favor of the winners' private companies. After World War I, the United States began producing drugs developed in Germany (such as aspirin) without buying patents from German companies. At present, the possibility of a military solution is being tested, at least for the time being, only in the context of the US-China trade conflict.
There is a third possibility. A more humane way is to create an ideological and legal framework that prevents the least developed countries, as well as Russia, China and India, from competing with the United States and the EU. This is the purpose of the currently designed green economy, carbon and climate neutral policies. As such a scenario of regaining power in developed countries is much more humane than military methods, even rational-minded people, who are very concerned about predictions of Western decline, the disappearance of Western values, etc., do not criticize or question the new approach, as it sees some salvation from the current global trends.
The new ideological framework will be called something - a climate-neutral economy, a carbon-neutral economy, a green economy, or even a global warming prevention policy. The name has no fundamental meaning. The established reform plan will be defined as internationally binding. Countries that will not join this policy, such as China and Russia, which have already sabotaged the 2020 G20 climate agreement and are likely to sabotage the Glasgow summit, are set to be declared enemies of civilization, climate terrorists, and isolated from the international community. China and Russia, as well as any other non-acceding country, are to be neutralized through export restrictions, technology transfer bans, banking restrictions (disconnection from the SWIFT system) and other forms of sanctions.
There is only one problem so far. It seems that people who had fanatically rushed to construct the framework for a green economy and climate neutrality have tried too hard and the new rules will be impossible not only for underdeveloped economies but also for most EU Member States. The EU's energy crisis in the second half of 2021 was a small signal of what could happen if the new green economy framework is not matched by the possibilities of the real economy.
*****
Be the first to read interesting news from Latvia and the world by joining our Telegram and Signal channels.