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Economy

Globalist Club of Rome urges massive ‘behavioral changes’ to address ‘climate change,’ poverty

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18 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

The globalist Club of Rome, under its Earth4All agenda, has urged nations worldwide to reduce meat consumption, redistribute wealth, and adopt a circular economy in the name of tackling climate change and poverty.

As part of its Earth4All agenda, the Club of Rome is calling on nations to eat less meat, redistribute wealth, adopt a circular economy, raise taxes, restructure education, and charge high prices for fossil fuels. 

For over 50 years the Club of Rome has been operating under the belief that there are “limits to growth” on a finite planet. 

In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill […] All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself. — The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of the Club Of Rome, 1991

Without a traditional, militaristic enemy to enact their great reset-like agendas in 1991 the Club of Rome chose humanity itself as the greatest threat to planetary health, and that’s when the whole global warming and climate change narratives really began taking off – their solutions had finally found a problem. 

All of the Club of Rome’s proposals are aimed at controlling humanity, such as telling people what they should eat, how their land should be used, what types of energy they should be allowed to consume, what they should do with their money, what type of economic system they should have, how schools should be run, and so on and so on. 

They call this the Wellbeing Economy. 

Now, the Club of Rome is focusing its efforts on influencing individual nation states with its Earth4All National Program. 

Austria is the latest pilot country for this program. 

In the Austrian modelling context, the lever ‘reduction of meat consumption’ was implemented as ‘behavioral change of consumers.’ — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

“People also consume almost twice as much meat per year as the global average. Reducing the consumption of animal proteins is essential in order to achieve a turnaround in nutrition,” the report reads. 

And because animals in Austria are fed with grains that imported from tropical forests, the report says that raising livestock in Europe is killing the rain forests in places like South America. 

According to the report, “Food consumption in Austria can also have an impact on land use in tropical forests. This applies in particular to meat, for which animal feed such as soya is imported, and all food products that use palm oil as an ingredient. Tropical forests are often cleared for this purpose, destroying important carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots.” 

State regulations that contradict familiar consumer behavior are often met with resistance. For example, many people resist ‘dietary regulations’ as soon as the importance of reducing meat consumption is emphasized. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

Telling people what to do rarely goes over well, and the Club of Rome acknowledges this in the report while simultaneously telling governments what to do about changing their citizens’ behavior, so that they eat less meat. 

In order “to change consumer behavior, reduce meat consumption or optimize and expand protein plant breeding,” the Club of Rome suggest that governments use coercive taxation measures and implement a “supply chain law for agricultural products” to make life difficult for those who do not comply. 

Some of the tax measures include: 

  • Reduction of the reduced VAT rate for meat and sausage products and dairy products with socially acceptable compensation payments. 
  • Higher taxation of processed (fatty, sugary and animal-based) foods. 
  • Taxation of foods and food ingredients that are harmful to health, the environment and the climate. 

While the proposals to limit meat consumption are geared toward Austria, they also reflect the overall strategy to incentivize, coerce, or otherwise manipulate human behavior into serving an unelected globalist agenda. 

The same goes for the Club of Rome’s socialist vision for the redistribution of wealth. 

Permanent wealth monitoring by the state and the public database on wealth and income based on this are an essential prerequisite for redistribution measures. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

For the Club of Rome, the problem of wealth is that it “often goes hand in hand with influence,” so their solution is to abolish excess wealth and to redistribute it – the promise of every communist dictator. 

According to the Austria report, “Increases in wealth therefore also lead to more influence – visible in politics, in institutions, even at universities.” 

“It is therefore less about general redistribution than about reducing the extreme concentration of wealth among the top 0.1 percent of the population: it is about abolishing excess wealth.” 

Redistribution will undoubtedly provoke resistance. But inequality and affluence also generate resistance among excluded and marginalized groups. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

The unelected globalists at the Club of Rome are fully aware that their agendas are extremely unpopular. 

For example, the Earth4All: Austria report says: 

A particularly important point is the acceptance and perception of measures by citizens, farmers and entrepreneurs.

For example, price increases for products, the discontinuation of subsidies for fossil fuels or potentially higher energy prices – which could continue to rise due to higher infrastructure costs such as the expansion of the grid, storage facilities, etc. – may not be perceived well by people in the lower income bracket in particular based on their particular viewpoint.

In order to dupe the public into giving up their rights, their properties, their way of living, and their freedoms, the Club of Rome says that “communication of the cushioning measures will be needed,” especially with their whole Marxist approach to everything. 

Redistributions are not yet considered appropriate. In future, much better, comprehensible communication of the cushioning measures will be needed here. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

To give you an idea of the Club of Rome’s communication strategy, the Earth4All: Austria authors paint their communist views in such a way as to make them sound almost too good to be true: 

By reducing structural inequality, income and wealth are distributed so fairly that there is hardly any monetary poverty anymore.

All people have a secure existence. They have access to work and a basic income so that they can afford to live well within planetary and social boundaries, which also has a positive impact on the regional economy, climate and nature.

Did you see that? 

The benevolent regime will redistribute wealth so fairly that monetary poverty will be a thing of the past! 

As your taxes skyrocket and your ability to drive a car or eat what you want to eat is stolen from you, they say that you’ll at least have a “basic income,” but not for buying goods of lasting value, no; not at all! 

They don’t want that. They want you to rent everything from your corporate overlords, thanks to the circular economy. 

More and more people are looking at new concepts for organizing the economy and measuring social wellbeing. Examples include the circular economy, the sharing economy, the ecological economy, the feminist economy, green growth, the steady state, degrowth and post-growth. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

The Club of Rome sees the circular economy, with its Product as a Service business model, as being one of its most important agendas. 

But the circular economy agenda is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. 

Young people are not so crazy about owning things any longer; they want to share things; they want to benefit from services. — Dr. Anders Wijkman, Club of Rome Co-President, 2015 

In the name of saving the planet for all humanity, proponents of the circular economy claim it will lead to more durable and sustainable materials, increased recycling, and lowered carbon emissions. 

Sounds great, right? 

However, the circular economy is the inspiration behind the infamous phrase: “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy,” from the World Economic Forum. 

As Royal Philips Electronics CEO Frans Van Houten explained to the WEF in 2016: 

In circular economy business models, I would like products to come back to me as the original designer and manufacturer, and once you get your head around that notion, why would I actually sell you the product if you are primarily interested in the benefit of the product? Maybe I can stay the owner of the product and just sell you the benefit as a service.

The most urgent step for sustainable growth in low-income countries is to increase funding for transformative research in the area of the circular economy in low-income countries. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

The Club of Rome Earth4All: Austria report mentions circularity over 20 times, mostly in the context driving economic growth, reducing carbon emissions, and recycling. 

The Austria report also cites the “Circularity Gap” report, which we’ve quoted here on The Sociable, which says the circular economy is about “moving away from ownership and accumulation” towards more service-based models. 

And going back to 2015, Club of Rome co-president Dr. Anders Wijkman said of the circular economy: 

I think this is probably the most important agenda that we have. New business models are going to happen, and we’re not going to buy a lot of stuff.

We are going to benefit from high quality services. That’s an aspect that I think will interest many, many people – not least young people who are not so crazy about owning things any longer; they want to share things; they want to benefit from services.

On a personal note, shortly after I wrote that the circular economy was “a top-down agenda coming from unelected globalists looking to reshape the world in their image” in March 2022, the WEF’s former managing director Adrian Monck referred to me as a “bad faith actor” for my criticism of “the Forum’s coverage of the circular economy.” 

Then, last year the WEF published a joint report with Accenture that outright admitted that the circular economy was indeed a top-down agenda! 

In fact they emphasized this top-down approach several times, for example: 

  • “Circular economy leadership needs to come from the top and extend company-wide.” 
  • “Since the circular economy demands significant strategic transformation, the call to action must be sponsored at the top of the organization.” 
  • “This systemic transition requires companies to embed circularity at all levels and functions throughout the organization. Starting from the top, there should be clear governance, leadership and accountability.” 

Hypocrites, the lot! 

In the end, circular economy business models risk creating a neofeudalistic, technocratic serfdom out of the ashes of the middle class, who like peasants and serfs, wouldn’t be able to buy things like houses, cars, and appliances, but rather rent them from their futuristic lords and vassals who would digitally track and trace every product they provided as a service. 

The Club of Rome and the WEF are the main drivers of this agenda to eliminate ownership. 

Socially acceptable climate protection measures can also include free access to nature, which may require the communitisation of private property. — Club of Rome, Earth4All: Austria, July 2024

The Club of Rome has been pushing degrowth agendas since its inception over 50 years ago, and many of its policy recommendations are based on Marxist ideologies. 

They advocate for the redistribution of wealth, communitizing private property, reducing ownership, revamping education systems, embracing critical “feminist economics,” artificially inflating fossil fuel prices, and controlling what people eat. 

Some Earth4All: Austria policy levers include: 

  • Redistribution of wealth and progressive taxation. 
  • Improving participation and equal opportunities in terms of workers’ rights and citizen’s assemblies. 
  • Changing diets, reducing overconsumption and waste and transitioning to sustainable food. 
  • Restructuring the education system. 
  • Significantly higher prices for fossil fuels. 

The WEF’s great reset agenda is almost identical to the Club of Rome’s Earth4All agenda, but they differ in approach. 

Whereas the Club of Rome is overtly Marxist in its march towards neo-feudalism, the WEF prefers a more techno-totalitarian approach to enact its version of neo-feudalism – with a heavy emphasis on leveraging emerging technologies of the so-called fourth industrial revolution to drive its great reset. 

The WEF and the Club of Rome have a shared history going back over 50 years (as described in the video below by HelioWave). 

The Club of Rome’s Earth4All: Austria report is a guide for all developed nations. 

However, it is not the only pilot country in the Club of Rome’s nation program. 

To see what the Club of Rome has in store for developing nations, check out the “Earth4All: Kenya” report and see what different means they want to use to achieve the same ends. 

Business

Bill Gates Gets Mugged By Reality

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Stephen Moore

You’ve probably heard by now the blockbuster news that Microsoft founder Bill Gates, one of the richest people to ever walk the planet, has had a change of heart on climate change.

For several decades Gates poured billions of dollars into the climate industrial complex.

Some conservatives have sniffed that Bill Gates has shifted his position on climate change because he and Microsoft have invested heavily in energy intensive data centers.

AI and robotics will triple our electric power needs over the next 15 years. And you can’t get that from windmills.

What Bill Gates has done is courageous and praiseworthy. It’s not many people of his stature that will admit that they were wrong. Al Gore certainly hasn’t. My wife says I never do.

Although I’ve only once met Bill Gates, I’ve read his latest statements on global warming. He still endorses the need for communal action (which won’t work), but he has sensibly disassociated himself from the increasingly radical and economically destructive dictates from the green movement. For that, the left has tossed him out of their tent as a “traitor.”

I wish to highlight several critical insights that should be the starting point for constructive debate that every clear-minded thinker on either side of the issue should embrace.

(1) It’s time to put human welfare at the center of our climate policies. This includes improving agriculture and health in poor countries.

(2) Countries should be encouraged to grow their economies even if that means a reliance on fossil fuels like natural gas. Economic growth is essential to human progress.

(3) Although climate change will hurt poor people, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease.

I would add to these wise declarations two inconvenient truths: First: the solution to changing temperatures and weather patterns is technological progress. A far fewer percentage of people die of severe weather events today than 50 or 100 or 1,000 years ago.

Second, energy is the master resource and to deny people reliable and affordable energy is to keep them poor and vulnerable – and this is inhumane.

If Bill Gates were to start directing even a small fraction of his foundation funds to ensuring everyone on the planet has access to electric power and safe drinking water, it would do more for humanity than all of the hundreds of billions that governments and foundations have devoted to climate programs that have failed to change the globe’s temperature.

Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a former Trump senior economic advisor.

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Carney budget doubles down on Trudeau-era policies

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From the Fraser Institute

By Kenneth P. Green and Elmira Aliakbari

The Carney government tabled its first budget, which includes major new spending initiatives to promote a so-called “green economy,” and maintains greenhouse gas (GHG)-emission extinction as a central operating principle of Canadian governance.

The budget leaves untouched most of the legislative dampers on Canada’s fossil fuel sector (oil, gas, coal) of the last 10 years, while pouring still more money into theoretically “green” projects such as additional (and speculative new types) of nuclear power, electrical transmission to service “green” energy production, continued tax credits for alternative fuels such as hydrogen, and more. Adding insult to injury, the budget discusses “enhancing” (read: likely increasing) the carbon tax on industrial emitters across Canada, and tightening controls over provinces to ensure they meet new federal tax targets.

Over the past decade, Ottawa introduced numerous regulations to restrict oil and gas development and again accelerate the growth of the green sector. Key initiatives include Ottawa’s arbitrary cap on GHG emissions for the oil and gas sector, which will restrict production; stricter regulations for methane emissions in the oil and gas industry, which will also likely restrict production; “clean electricity” regulations that aim to decarbonize Canada’s electricity generation; Bill C-69 (which introduced subjective ill-defined criteria into the evaluation of energy projects); and Bill C-48, known as the oil tanker ban on the west coast, which limits Canadian exports to Asian and other non-U.S. markets.

At the same time, governments launched a wide range of spending initiatives, tax credits and regulations to promote the green economy, which basically includes industries and technologies that aim to reduce pollution and use cleaner energy sources. Between 2014/15 and 2024/25, federal spending on green initiatives (such as subsidizing renewable power, providing incentives for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, funding for building retrofits, and support for alternative fuels such as hydrogen, etc.) went from $0.6 billion to $23 billion—a 38-fold increase. Altogether, since 2014, Ottawa and provincial governments in the country’s four largest provinces (Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec and Alberta) have spent and foregone revenues of at least $158 billion to promote the green sector.

Yet, despite the government’s massive spending and heavy regulation to constrain the fossil fuel industry and promote the green sector, the outcomes have been extremely disappointing. In 2014, the green sector accounted for 3.1 per cent of Canada’s economic output, and by 2023, that share had only slightly grown to 3.6 per cent. Put simply, despite massive spending, the sector’s contribution to Canada’s economy has barely changed. In addition, between 2014 and 2023, despite billions in government spending to promote the green sector, only 68,000 new jobs were added in this sector, many of them in already established fields such as waste management and hydroelectric power. The sector’s contribution to national employment remains small, representing only 2 per cent of total jobs in the country.

Not surprisingly, this combination of massive government spending and heavy-handed regulation have contributed to Canada’s economic stagnation in recent years. As documented by our colleagues, Canadian living standards—measured by per-person GDP—were lower in the second quarter of 2025 than six years earlier, suggesting we are poorer today than we were six years ago.

But for Prime Minister Carney, apparently, past failures do not temper future plans, as the budget either reaffirms or expands upon the failed plans of the past decade. No lessons appear to have even been considered, much less learned from past failures.

There had been some hope that Carney’s first budget would include some reflection of how badly the natural resource and energy policies of the Trudeau government have hurt Canada’s economy.

But other than some language obfuscation—“investment” vs. “spending,” “competitiveness” of GHG controls (not economy), and the “green” energy economy vs. the “conventional” energy economy—this is a Trudeau-continuance business-as-usual agenda on steroids. Yes, they will allow some slight deceptive rollbacks to proceed (such as rolling the consumer carbon tax into the industrial carbon tax rather than eliminating it), and may allow still more carbon taxes to render at least one onerous Trudeau-era regulation (the oil and gas cap) to be rendered moot, but that’s stunningly weak tea on policy reform.

The first Carney budget could and likely will, if passed, continue the economic stagnation plaguing Canada. That does not bode well for the future prosperity of Canadians.

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