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Photo
Credits:-
Happy Ent
(jetstar101, Pixabay)
Cartoon
of the evaluation
of the
2015/2016
Paris Agreement
on climate change at the Eiffel Tower, Paris
(The
Brussels Times,
posted 4 April 2019, accessed 10 October 2020; fair use, educational)
Investigation
of Climate Change Hysteria at the US
Capitol Building (Cagle
Cartoons;
fair use, educational)
The
Wrath of the Ents
(Ted Nasmith,
from The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien; fair use, educational)
Shareholders!
(The
New Yorker Magazine; fair use, educational)
"Most of the media..." George Monbiot quote (Design: Sophie Gabrielle; fair use, educational)
Profitable Destruction
(PlanetCents;
fair use, educational)
Dinosaur Economy
(unknown source; fair use, educational) |
Save the World with Money?
In Money, we briefly
looked at whether we can save the world with money.
For
decades we have known that this is possible.
We saw that only a tiny fraction of annual global military spending
would suffice:-
- "The
money required to
provide adequate food, water, education, health, and housing for
everyone in
the world has been estimated to be around $20 billion a year. It is a
huge sum
of money... about as much as the world spends on arms every two weeks."
(Unknown)
- 30%
of world military
spending (30% of $810 billion) is all that is needed to solve major
global
problems. (Share
International 2007?
document citing www.wagingpeace.org)
- In 2012,
global military spending was $1.75
trillion. In 2020,
it was nearly $2 trillion.
We saw
that corporate
tax avoidance is robbing the health and well-being of all:-
- In 2017 Apple
had $252 billion untaxed cash offshore.
- Corporations do not pay their fair share of tax,
avoiding $600 billion annually. (Britain's Offshore
Secrets Exposed, Panorama, 6 November 2017)
- All corporations have $2 trillion untaxed cash offshore. (BBC1
News 10pm, 6 November 2017)
- ...the sums lost to exchequers around the world
from profit-shifting have risen
as high as $427bn (£311bn) annually. (The
Guardian, posted 8, accessed 9 April 2021)
We can add nature exploitation
and fossil fuel
favouritism, despite this destroying Life:-
- Worldwide
subsidies to fossil fuels (annually): in 2013
= $1.9 trillion; in 2017
= $5.2 trillion.
- Worldwide
subsidies to activities that damage nature = at least $4-6tn
[£2.9-4.4tn] annually (The
Guardian, posted/accessed 2 February 2021).
So we have more
than enough money to save the world.
We are just spending all this money on the wrong things.
We are hoarding it and not redistributing it for the well-being of all
life.
Why is this?
In my view, it is the refusal of the superrich to allow a Culture of Love. They
would rather create a Culture of Power. As a result, there is no
political will to save the world:
“Human
beings have all the elements necessary for the kingdom of God to come
to earth.
The only obstacle to this happening is their own unwillingness: they do
not
want to participate in this work for the good of humanity. They are too
preoccupied with their own interests. How can the kingdom of God be
realized in
such circumstances? If we were all willing to make the few necessary
efforts,
progress would be very quick. But the crux of the matter is consent.
Take
someone like Hitler, for example: do you think he had such exceptional
qualities? Not at all, but due to the prevailing circumstances, he was
able to
unite and gain the consent of millions of Germans, and this is why he
became so
powerful. And if we now gave our consent to the ideas of universal
brotherhood,
instead of to racism and discrimination, the kingdom of God, the Golden
Age,
would come.” (O.M. Aïvanhov)
'Greta
Thunberg has blasted
politicians as hypocrites and international climate summits as empty
words and
greenwash. Until humanity admits it has failed to tackle the climate
crisis and
begins treating it as an emergency like the coronavirus pandemic,
society will
be unable to stop global heating, she said. In an interview with the
Guardian,
Thunberg said leaders were happy to set targets for decades into the
future,
but flinched when immediate action to cut emissions was needed.'
(The Guardian,
posted/accessed 9 November 2020)
Let us now look at the same question in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020.
Here is the monetary cost of this pandemic at various
dates, and
other statistics:-
- 27
April 2020 = $3
trillion in the USA.
- 22
October 2020 = $485 billion (£372 billion) in the UK.
- 7
April 2020 = $4.5
trillion in the World.
- 15
October 2020 = more than $12
trillion in the World.
These figures
even dwarf those of military spending and corporate tax avoidance, etc.
This is even more proof that we save the world with money!!
Here
are some related quotes/stats:-
- "If
the [UK] government can
suddenly decide to spend another £100bn on containing
Covid-19, it shows that
state failures to address our climate and ecological emergencies have
nothing
to do with a lack of money and everything to do with a lack of will."
(George
Monbiot, 10 September 2020 tweet)
- "The
worldwide response to Covid-19 has
demonstrated that there can be collective global action if the threat
is big
enough, and that humans are capable of changing our lives and
lifestyles
quickly, when the moment demands it." (Katharine Viner, The
Guardian, posted/accessed 5 October 2020)
- "This
[Climate & Ecological Emergency] is
a crisis completely based on scientific
consensus, but they try to focus on something else. It’s as
if there was a fire
and the alarm starts and they try to argue about the fire alarm instead
of the
actual fire... We are stuck in a loop where everyone just blames each
other,
and as long as we keep on doing that we won’t be able to
achieve anything." (Greta Thunberg, The
Guardian, posted/accessed 11 October 2020)
- We
only need about $1.4 trillion per year of
green investment from 2020 to 2024 to keep global warming to only 1.5
°C (see Marina
Andrijevic and Dr Joeri Rogelj, CarbonBrief,
posted 15 October 2020, accessed 16 October 2020)
- "If
a government needs to act, and Covid has
shown this, my God can a government act. All of a sudden, no
regulation, no
amount of money is a problem. When we need to act, we can." (John Sauven,
executive
director of Greenpeace UK, cited at The
Guardian, posted/accessed 12 October 2020)
- Governments
like the UK can never “max out” their
credit card because they can always create new money to help fund
public
spending. This is not the time for austerity. Interest rates are so
low, so borrow and really support public services and a green
recovery. Remember that the UK public actually owns this money! (Adapted
from Positive Money, 27 November 2020 tweet)
- The
global economy is
already big enough to meet the basic needs of the entire planet. We
don't need growth – we need fair distribution. (XR Money
Rebellion, 22 December 2021 tweet)
- "If
you can mobilise $26tn [in response to Covid-19], it beggars belief
that you can’t mobilise $100bn [for climate finance].
That’s what’s causing a huge trust deficit." (Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, WTO head, cited at The
Guardian, posted/accessed 24 December 2021)
- To
preserve life on the planet, cost is irrelevant. We didn’t
decide
to fight WWII because the financial cost was less than the benefits. We
fought for our freedom and survival. (Herb Simmens,
adapted 25 January 2022 tweet)
- “Rich
countries are committing arson on a planetary scale and refusing to
stop pouring more oil and gas on the fire they started. But when faced
with the bill for the damage they have caused they claim to have empty
pockets. It’s a deadly response shaped by a colonial
mentality
that for 500 years inflicted injustice and inequity, with the lives of
those with black or brown skins in poorer countries deemed less
valuable to those of western citizens.” (Asad Rehman,
War on Want director, quoted in The
Guardian, posted and accessed 7 June 2022)
- If
you don’t think our society can afford to respond rapidly to
the
climate & ecological emergency remember we spend
$1,800,000,000,000
every year subsidizing industries which are rendering our planet
uninhabitable. (Climate Dad, 11 July 2022 tweet)
[That's $1.8 trillion]
Yet we still
have no political will to enact the needed changes.
We urgently need to transform or oust current political systems and
install those that serve Earth and its creatures. So-called 'democracy'
is a sham. The people are not being served. Organisations are
trying so
hard to change the system like Burning
Pink. The Green
Party (England & Wales)
and Extinction
Rebellion consider Citizens
Assemblies
as essential.
But the global elite are heavily entrenched and many in the Rich World
are still too comfy.
For
me, it seems that only the wrath of Nature will be
enough to topple the current entrenched political systems.
Just as the Ents routed Saruman in the Lord of the Rings. They were
slow to act, but when they did, it was decisive.
In our world, Nature's wrath has been slowly but surely -
and entirely - aroused by human ignorance and
arrogance and greed.
It is manifesting in the form of the current Climate
& Ecological Emergency.
We must continue
our activism but it seems only Nature's wrath is
enough to dislodge the superrich elite from their apparently
unassailable dark towers - and secure victory!
Finally, I'd just like to add two warnings:-
- We must beware of reducing
everything to numbers, stats and amounts of money. There is a real
danger of missing the human side to our crisis (e.g. here).
We can lose empathy
and compassion, when of course the purpose of this article is
to
evoke the Love that resides in all of us...
- The longer we do nothing, the less useful money
becomes in saving the world. The Climate
and Ecological Emergency will ensure this. As the Cree Indian
prophecy makes clear, we cannot eat money. Beware!
Resources
- Redirect
military expenditure to ensure a
sustainable future (Kumi Naidoo, The Guardian,
2013).
- Protecting
30% of planet could bolster economy, study says (The
Guardian, 8 July 2020)
[only requires $140bn (£110bn) yearly till 2030].
- Cost of preventing next pandemic 'equal to just
2% of Covid-19 economic damage'
(The Guardian, 23 July 2020).
- How
philanthropy benefits the super-rich (The
Guardian, 8 September 2020) [A
lot of elite philanthropy is about elite causes.
Rather than making the world a better place, it largely reinforces the
world as
it is. Philanthropy very often favours the rich
– and no one holds philanthropists
to account for it].
- The
countries painting their pandemic recoveries green (Axios,
19 September
2020) [Green investments account for only 1% of the
overall $12 trillion currently
pledged by major economies recovering from pandemic-induced recessions].
- World's
richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%, says Oxfam
(The
Guardian, 21 September 2020).
- Climate
Week:
World split on urgency of tackling rising temperatures, poll suggests
(BBC,
21 September 2020) [Poor World wants action, Rich World
not really].
- Revealed:
Covid recovery plans threaten global
climate hopes (The Guardian, 9 November 2020)
[Countries pouring money into fossil fuels
to fight recession].
- If
you think Covid is bad, wait until you hear about the climate crisis
(First Dog on the Moon, The
Guardian, 9 November 2020) [Insightful cartoon].
- UN
issues $100m emergency funding and calls for global effort to avert
famine
(The Guardian, 18 November 2020) [They only
need $20 billion this year. This is
tiny next to the sums in PWP's article. What will we do, world? And the
$200bn of Bezos?...].
- World
is ‘doubling down’ on fossil fuels despite climate
crisis – UN report (The
Guardian, 2 December 2020).
- Economics'
failure over destruction of nature presents ‘extreme
risks’ (The Guardian, 2 February 2021)
[Review by Prof Dasgupta, commissioned by the UK Treasury].
- Climate
Change: How much did it cost US economy in 2020? (BBC,
19 February 2021).
- Governments
failing to fulfil talk of green Covid recovery, UN warns (The
Guardian, 10 March 2021) [Only 18% of rescue spending is
green].
- Investing
0.1% of global GDP could avoid breakdown of ecosystems, says UN report
(The Guardian, 27 May 2021)
[Nature’s financial value must be considered to avoid
‘irreversible’ degradation to biodiversity and
land].
- Trillions
of dollars spent on Covid recovery in ways that harm environment
(The Guardian, 15 July 2021) [Only 10% of
$17tn global bailout directed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions and
restoring nature, report finds].
- Once
you understand the terrible cost of doing nothing, climate action is a
bargain (Damian Carrington, The Guardian, 11
August 2021).
- World
spends $1.8tn a year on subsidies that harm environment, study finds
(The Guardian, 17 February 2022) [We are
financing our own extinction. Also see: Harmful
subsidies: why is the world still funding the destruction of nature?].
- No
miracle tech needed: How to switch to renewables now and lower costs
doing it (Mark Z. Jacobson, The Hill, 28 June
2022) [Total global cost $62 trillion, repaid due to
energy savings within six years].
- Revealed:
oil sector’s ‘staggering’ $3bn-a-day
profits for last 50 years (The Guardian, 2022)
[Destroy the world with money? Vast sums provide power to
‘buy
every politician’ and delay action on climate crisis. Also
receives $16bn
subsidies a
day.].
- Switching
to renewable energy could save trillions - study (BBC, 2022).
- Enormous emissions gap between top 1% and poorest, study highlights (The Guardian, 2022) [Wealth tax needed to help poor, e.g. for home insulation].
- ‘Climate carnage’: UN demands funding surge to save millions of lives (The Guardian, 2022).
- US and UK fall billions short of ‘fair share’ of climate funding (The Guardian, 2022)
[This 'fair share' is actually not fair. It is far too little. Also,
rich countries must give grants, not loans. PWP's prediction is the
same as Covid-19 = complete failure to act cooperatively, for the good of all.].
- How Much Will Climate Change Drag Down the Economy? (Impakter, 2024)
[Many studies have found that preventing future climate change is far
cheaper than trying to cope with its costly damages. Then there is the
impact of non-economic losses, suffering, and trauma.].
Videos
(Unknown source; fair use, educational)
|
Also see:-
Money
articles
|