Orlov on US Collapse, the Great Reset, Klaus Schwab and the Apocalyptic Climate Cult

No Escape

Dmitry Orlov (2021)

Film Review

In this fascinating interview, Russian-American author and journalist Dmitry Orlov discusses the impending US collapse and the Russian view on what he refers to as “the apocalyptic climate cult,” Biden’s meeting with Putin, Klaus Schwab and the Great Reset, the impending cyber wars, geoengineering and the Russian closed cycle nuclear program.

10.00min The West’s “apocalyptic climate cult.”

According to some climate scientists, ice core records suggest the Earth is due for another Ice Age “any century now” (Orlov writes about this in more depth at https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/11/avoiding-coming-ice-age.html). He predicts humankind would have to triple their fossil fuel consumption to prevent it, which would burn up the Earth’s entire coal reserves.

While he’s not advocating this as a policy (one downside would be catastrophic mercury levels), he deplores the reluctance of climate scientists to study the impending Ice Age – to better understand the potential triggers and the possibility of preventing it.

He states that no one in Russia takes seriously what they refer to as the West’s “apocalyptic climate cult.”  While he acknowledges the reality of the greenhouse effect, he questions the reliability of Western climate scientists’ doomsday predictions. The latter are almost totally based on computer models, and it will take at least 1,000 years to gather sufficient evidence to test the models.

24.00min The Great Reset

Orlov doesn’t believe the Great Reset will happen, because it has no support whatsoever from either Russia or China. He describes Klaus Schwab as a “moneybag whisperer” for the super rich. It’s his job to “fluff up” their egos by publishing vanity fiction like The Great Reset. Owing to America’s weakening global position, the WEF was forced to invite Putin and Xi Jinping this past January. Both dismissed the Great Reset categorically – they have their own future development plans.

28.00min Putin/Biden Summit

Orlov quips that the purpose of the summit was to “negotiate the terms” of (US) surrender. He points to a dangerous hyperinflation the US is entering that will reduce living standards by 90% and lead to civil unrest. He predicts the US will be forced to abandon its global military bases in the near future and repatriate its troops.

Orlov believes Biden’s main goals for the summit were

1. For Putin to affirm that Biden (not Trump) is the legitimate president.
2. To persuade Putin to put the brakes on plans to sell its oil and gas in currency other than US dollars.

At present, Russia is the third largest supplier of oil to the US, which has no other source (due to US sanctions on Venezuela) for the heavy oil it needs for diesel, jet fuel and kerosene and can’t run its transport network without it.

1.20min Renewable Energy in Russia

Russia is focusing on solar and wind energy in Russia in remote areas where renewable technology is cheaper than the cost of transporting coal.

1.26min Russia’s Closed Cycle Nuclear Program

At present Russia’s main nuclear investment is in fast breeder reactors that reprocess depleted uranium by burning long half life isotopes and converting it to low level short half life waste (which can be safely buried). At present Russia is buying nuclear waste from other countries for reprocessing.

Will nuclear waste disposal challenges limit a significant expansion of global nuclear power?

How Renewable is Mega Dam Electricity?

Green, Green Water

Directed by Dawn Mikkelson and Jamie Lee (2007)

Film Review

This documentary is about the ongoing devastation northern Manitoba Cree communities are experiencing thanks to the flooding of their territory by Manitoba Hydro to sell cheap so-called “renewable” electricity* in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Unlike most mega dams, those constructed by Manitoba Hydro dams aren’t sited in preexisting gorges or canyons. Instead the provincial owned power company has transformed a vast swathe of North America’s boreal forest.** In the process they destroyed a delicate ecoystem that supported birds, water fowl and indigenous people for tens of thousands of years.

As water levels rose approximately 25 feet, the homes of many indigenous people were destroyed, along with the native fish and wildlife they relied on for food.

Manitoba Hydro “bought” the right to flood their homes and land through a series of multimillion dollar ($20 – 78 million) deals they signed with individual Cree communities. Only the Pimicikamak Cree Nation refused to sign.

Predictably the jobs and economic prosperity the provincial government promised never materialized. In 1967 average annual income in Northern Manitoba was $48,436 and in 2001 it was $24,200. As employment rates dropped from 90% to 10%, previously alcohol-free communities were plagued by an epidemic of alcohol and drug abuse – and suicide.

At the time of filming, indigenous communities were split over continuing pressure to agree to expansion of Manitoba Hydro’s river diversion and dam building projects. Some believe indigenous people will never enjoy the “modern conveniences” of urban life without pursuing this type of economic development. Others, calling themselves Justice Seekers, believe they have an obligation to protect the environment to justify their claim to indigenous rights. 

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*Many climate advocates question mega dams as a “renewable” power source, owing to their negative impact on numerous animal and fish species, as well as human displacement and methane emissions plants and animals killed by flooding. See Damnation: The Problem with Hydropower

**Canadian boreal forests are commonly referred to as North America’s lungs.

The film can be viewed free on Beamafilm

 

 

Denial: An Unlikely Path to Sexual Transition

 

Denial: The First Step to Acceptance

Directed by Derek Hallquist (2016)

Film Review

This is a very unusual documentary. I assumed it would profile the climate denial movement, but it does so only very indirectly. The film is actually a very touching profile of the filmmaker’s father, the obsessive compulsive CEO of a Vermont electrical utility who makes the difficult decision at age 50 to transition to female.

David Hallquist, whose Vermont Electricity Cooperative runs on hydropower, has been an industry pioneer in promoting the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. In the film, his wife and adult children struggle with his decision to become female. It features clips from the therapist they work with. The latter helps other family members fully understand and work through their feelings of denial.

For me, the most intriguing segment of the film concerns Hallquist senior’s diagnosis of state 3 prostate cancer. When his oncologist recommends castrations (which has a 90% success rate), he’s almost gleeful to be relieved of the difficult decision whether to move from occasional cross dressing to full hormonal transition.

 

 

 

 

Is the Emphasis on “Green Technology” Misplaced?

Surviving Earth

Directed by Peter Charles Downey (2014)

Film Review

This Australian documentary on climate change, like Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans places heavy emphasis on “stabilizing” global population. The methods it advocates include free contraception for all women who need it and increased education about the benefits of family planning.

The film also dispels the myth that renewable energy (ie a well-integrated combination of concentrated solar thermal, wind, PV solar, and bioenergy) is too intermittent to cover periods of peak energy demand. Now that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, this is also the main argument fossil fuel lobbyists use against 100% conversion to renewables.

Downey also calls for a significant reduction in energy consumption by the industrial North – for two main reasons. The first relates to the extreme resource intensity required for some green technologies, such as electric vehicles (EVs). As of 2014, there were one billions cars globally. There isn’t enough lithium on the planet for one billion EV batteries, to say nothing of the massive fossil fuel expenditure involved in the manufacture of EVs.

His second argument relates to the declining energy return on investment (EROI) with renewables (and unconventional fossil fuel sources such as fracked gas and oil and tar sands). EROI is defined as the amount of energy you produce for each unit of energy you expending in mining and production. Modern EROIs have steadily declined since a high in 1900 of 100 units per each unit expended (for oil).

Current EROIs summarized below

• Wind 1:25
• Saudi oil 1:12
• Fracked gas 1:10
• Fracked oil 1:5
• PV solar 1:5
• Coal 1:5
• Tar sands 1:2
• Biofuel 1:1

According to Downey, a more realistic approach to reducing carbon emissions combines 1) intelligent urban design that moves services closer to residents homes, enabling them to meet most of their needs by bicycle or on foot and 2) free and convenient public transport for long trips.

He blames the steady decline in EROI for the failure of global growth to recover after the 2008 economic collapse. The Club of Rome’s 1973 Limits to Growth predicted economic growth would totally collapse around 2019-2020. A totally new phenomenon in civilized society, economic growth began around 1800 with intensive fossil fuel use. Growth will continue to decline as the EROI of available fuels declines. Eventually it will reach 1:1, and we will resume our reliance on human and animal muscle power.

Downey predicts the growing cost of energy (resulting from declining EROI) will drastically increase the cost of food – to the point local communities will again be forced to be food self-sufficient

 

De-Urbanization: The Future is Rural

The Future is Rural: Food System Adaptation to the Great Simplification

By Jason Bradford

Book Review

Free PDF: The Future is Rural

This recent publication by the Post Carbon Institute disputes the common mainstream assertion that migration towards urban areas will continue to increase in coming decades. Instead it offers compelling arguments (based on substantive research) that the transition away from fossil fuels will reverse the current demographic flow, resulting in major “de-urbanization.”

Bradford’s prediction of a major migration from urban to rural areas is based mainly on the inability (owing to higher costs) of renewable energy to fully substitute for cheap fossil fuels. He asserts there will be less energy available to move food into cities from the countryside, as well as less energy to move wastes in the opposite direction. Thus he predicts a growing number of city dwellers will be forced to relocate to ensure continuing access to food.

Bradford argues that despite its current low cost, a total transition to renewable energy will result in higher costs because

1) most renewable sources are intermittent and energy storage tends to be expensive.

2) there is no cheap renewable replacement for liquid fossil fuels. While there are renewable replacements for gasoline and jet fuel (eg biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells), getting all cars, trucks, ships, and airplanes to run on renewable fuel alternatives will require costly retrofitting.

3) renewable energy has a much larger geographic footprint (ie requires a larger land areas) than fossil fuels. While renewables have a much lower environmental impact, capturing renewable energy on a massive scale will require careful planning so as not to interfere with food production.

The good news is that increasing automation will also shift job availability from cities to rural areas, as the loss of cheap energy leads farmers to once again rely more on human and animal labor.

The book is mainly a compilation of research related to fossil-fuel free localized food production. It seems to cover all the basis, including permaculture; biointensive farming; no-till soil management; perennial polycultures and natural systems agriculture; and fermentation and other ancient food preservation techniques.

Bradford also devotes a chapter to exploring what the food system transition will look like.

The Crumbling of America

Crumbling America

Directed by Henry Schipper (2009)

Film Review

This is a compelling, though somewhat melodramatic, documentary about crumbling US infrastructure – especially its bridges, roads, levees, dams, water delivery systems, sewage systems, and power grid. The US presently spends less on infrastructure (2% of GDP) than the developing countries China (9%) and India (8%). The percentage of GDP Americans spend on infrastructure has declined from 12% in 1960.

Most bridges, superhighways and water and sewage pipes are designed to last 50 years, and many are approaching or have exceeded their expected lifespan. There are no programs to repair vital levees along the Mississippi River and in California. A 6.9 earthquake would totally destroy San Francisco’s earthwork levees, contaminating all southern California’s drinking water, as well as destroying acres of prime agricultural land.

Shoddy maintenance of urban water and sewage systems leads to hundreds of thousands of leaks per year, especially in eastern rust belt cities. While parts of the national electrical grid are subject to ever more frequent and lengthy power failures due to poor maintenance and obsolete switches, sensors, data systems and transformers and rotting utility poles.

Reaching the Wrong Conclusion

Despite the wealth of data they present, I strongly disagree with the filmmakers’ conclusion: that taxpayers need to front up with trillions of dollars to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure. I strongly believe this massive decay presents a unique opportunity to replace 100-year-old technologies with cheaper, more efficient, people-friendly 21st century technology.

For example, I totally disagree with their assertion that the electrical grid was “the greatest infrastructure achievement of the 20th century.”  Besides being one of the most inefficient infrastructure projects ever invented (according to the EPA the US power system loses approximately 67% of the power it creates), the grid was never intended to serve the public – it was intended to increase the sale of electricity and electrical products, as well as consolidating the control of production and distribution in the hands of Wall Street corporations (see Reclain the Commons: Take Back the Grid). The renewable energy revolution, which enables households and neighborhood to produce their own solar energy, also allows ordinary people to control its destruction.

Likewise our totally gridlocked super highways don’t need to be rebuilt – they need to be replaced with cheaper and more efficient and climate-friendly high speed and computer trains and buses.

While inefficient and unhealthy (adding chlorine to our water creates a variety of dangerous chlorinated organic compounds) water delivery and sewage systems need to be replaced with more modern technologies that allow us to recycle our water instead of pouring it down the drain.

The EU and the Colonization of Europe

The Forbidden Colony

Al Jazeera (2017)

Film Review

This Al Jazeera documentary examines the undemocratic nature of the European Union and it’s role in allowing banks and multinational corporations to colonize Europe. It begins by focusing on the EU Parliament, which meets in secret and bans public observation of its proceedings. Elected members of the EU Parliament lack the authority to initiate legislation. They can only rubber stamp laws proposed by the non-elected European Commission.

Croatian philosopher Srecko Horbat examines the right and left wing movements that have arisen in reaction in response to the massive economic dislocation (job loss, low wages, high housing costs) people have experienced following the creation of the EU.

The far right tends to campaign against the massive influx of migrants, which they blame for their declining standard of living. The left, in contrast, is more focused on rebuilding European democracy from the ground up.

For me, the most interesting part of the film was its examination of various European experiments in direct democracy. Examples include

• The grassroots movements in Hamburg and 170 other German cities and towns that have bought back electric power companies from private companies to hasten their transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
• Ada Colau, the radical mayor of Barcelona,* who is working to transform squats into cooperatives and forcing banks to make vacant buildings available for social housing.
• Greece’s parallel economy, which operatives massive “no middlemen” food markets in reaction to price gouging by corporate supermarket chains.

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*The capitol of Catalonia, which is organizing a popular referendum to declare independence from Spain – see Showdown in Spain

The End of Oil

The End of Oil

by Paul Roberts

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (20014)

Book Review

Although fourteen years old, The End of Oil offers an invaluable historical analysis about the absolute link between cheap fossil fuels and the development of industrial capitalism. Roberts starts his analysis with the first century Persians who first distilled surface petroleum for use as lamp fuel. According to Roberts, widespread use of oil as a fuel was impossible until drill technology became available in the 19^th century to drill for it at deep levels.

Roberts identifies coal mining as the first really capital intensive industry requiring extensive external funding. Building the infrastructure to mine and process all three fossil fuels is always extremely capital intensive. The fact that a coal or gas-fired power plant takes three or four decades to pay off is one of the main reasons fossil fuel companies, and the banks and governments that subsidize them, are so reluctant to replace them with renewable energy infrastructure. The End of Oil also emphasizes the absolute importance of cheap fossil fuel to the economic health of industrialized countries, Between1945 and 2004 (when the book was published), there were six big spikes in the price of oil – each was accompanies by a major economic recession.

Roberts maintains the cheap, easily accessible oil is all used up, explaining its steady price increase since the late 70s. Russian oil, which is fairly costly to mine, only became economically viable when the price of oil hit $35 a barrel in 1980.

Prior to the final chapters, which review the economics of various forms of renewal energy, the book also discusses the geopolitics of oil. Roberts leaves absolutely no doubt that the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was an effort by neoconservatives Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz et al to control the volatile price of oil and the devastating effects of this lability on the US economy. Although the US wars in Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen occurred after the book’s publication, Roberts’s analysis left me with no doubt whatsoever they were driven by similar geopolitical objectives.

Roberts also discusses the geopolitical threats posed by China, India and Southeast Asian countries as their growing middle classes put pressure on a finite supply of oil. He also explores the threat the growing political/military alliance between Russian and Iran creates. Between them, the two countries control half the world supply of natural gas. He leaves no doubt, in other words, that the current US military threats against China, Russia and Iran are also about fossil fuel security, just like the war on Iraq.

Four States Investigating Exxon for Fraud Over Climate Denial

The following is a presentation by climate activist Bill McKibben about the global Break Free from Fossil Fuels movement. This is a global civil disobedience campaign directed at fossil fuel companies rather than government policy. Its aim is to pressure these companies to leave untapped coal, oil and gas reserves in the ground.

It’s a bad news/good news presentation. First McKibben gives us the bad news: despite all the hype, the outcome of the Paris climate change conference in 2015 was pure rhetoric. The treaty signed at the conference won’t lower carbon emissions sufficiently to prevent catastrophic climate change. See Global Civil Disobedience

However there is good news on two fronts: the speed at which many countries are transitioning to renewable energy and the remarkable success of the global Break Free campaign.

Among the successful actions McKibben describes: the 2015 Keystone civil disobedience at the White House that persuaded Obama to cancel the pipeline; the Australian campaign that blocked construction of the largest coal mine in the world; the Washington State campaign blocking construction of coal terminals in Longview and Cherry Point; the Seattle blockade of Shell’s Arctic drilling rig; and the global anti-fracking movement, which has led to a ban on fracking in New York, Quebec, Wales, Scotland and France.

The best part of the presentation concerns the recent Columbia School of Journalism expose revealing Exxon knew about climate change in 1977 and funded a massive public relations scam to convince the public it was a hoax. According to McKibben, the attorney generals of New York, California, Massachusetts and the Virgin Islands are investigating Exxon for fraud over their role in the climate denial movement.

Q&A’s start at 46:00.

Falling Oil Prices: a Saudi Viewpoint

Inside Story – What’s Behind the Falling Oil Prices

Al Jazeera (2015)

Film Review

A most revealing documentary. Unlike western pundits who speculate about conspiracies to wipe out shale oil producers (ie fracking) and the oil  economies of Russia and Venezuela, these Middle East analysts stick to economic fundamentals.

The three analysts identify three main factors behind the present oil glut: shale gas production, a big increase in renewable energy production and dropping demand by emerging economies such as China.

They maintain Saudi Arabia’s primary motivation for current output levels is fear of losing “market share” if they unilaterally cut oil production.

There’s also an interesting discussion about the Saudi plan to introduce taxation to help reduce their $98 billion deficit.