Greenwashing – Club of Rome – Limits to Growth – Astroturfing Fossil Fuels – The Guardian

The Guardian in article following, is a victim of astroturfing again on the environment, presenting the Club of Rome and MIT’s ‘Limits to Growth’ model as science, and resurrected by media as contemporary, along with obsessions about Malthusian ‘population growth’ (and ‘immigration’) by non-scientists i.e. ZPG and other related ‘theories’ such as Lovelock’s ‘Gaia’.

Following is an article written by presumably a non science journalist Edward Helmore highlighting KPMG’s Gaya Herrington (econometrics and sustainability studies, again not science) who is a researcher and advisor for the Club of Rome predicting catastrophe. 

The Club of Rome in the early ‘70s was sponsored by Fiat and VW, hosted on the Rockefeller (Exxon/Chevron) Estate outside Rome promoting seemingly liberal and environmental theories which are merely sciency sounding PR constructs i.e. ‘greenwashing’ which was then used to inform eco-fascists, white nationalists, far and alt right e.g. ‘great replacement theory’.

Neurath in ‘From Malthus to the Club of Rome and Back: Problems of Limits to Growth, Population Control and Migrations’ (2017) debunked the models presented, as did the University of Sussex Science Policy Research Unit in Cole et al. ‘The Models of Doom: a critique of ’The Limits of Growth’ (1973)’ in addition to other constructs masquerading as theory i.e. Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich of ZPG Zero Population Growth, and Daly’s ‘Steady-State Economy’.

While Ehrlich attended the Club of Rome, his partner at ZPG Zero Population Growth (sponsored by Rockefeller Bros., Ford and Carnegie Foundations) did not i.e. deceased white nationalist, anti-semite and according to SPLC ‘racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement’ John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton. 

Both have informed ZPG Australia, now SPA Sustainable Population Australia and in the UK, Population Matters and Migration Watch.  Tanton’s network also informed Trump White House immigration policy including restrictions and hostile environment via lobby groups FAIR Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, CIS Center for Immigration Studies and Numbers USA. 

All the above constructs have been used to influence and nobble the environmental movement by blaming all humanity, fertility, immigration and population growth to deflect from fossil fuels role in environmental degradation, precluding both need for environmental regulations, reduction in carbon emissions, while dog whistling (undefined) immigration and population growth (expected to peak by mid century).

Not only do we observe greenwashing of racism or eugenics to introduce restrictions, we have junk science PR constructs, radical right libertarian socio-economic ideology (promoted by Koch Networks of thin tanks), longstanding influence of fossil fuels with auto, and transnational networks promoting to media (or by media e.g. Fox), politicians and ‘grass roots’ e.g. alt and far right.

Yep, it’s bleak, says expert who tested 1970s end-of-the-world prediction

Edward Helmore

A controversial MIT study from 1972 forecast the collapse of civilization – and Gaya Herrington is here to deliver the bad news

Sun 25 Jul 2021 07.00 BST

At a UN sustainability meeting several years ago, an economic policy officer came up to Gaya Herrington and introduced himself. Taking her name for a riff on James Lovelock’s earth-as-an-organism Gaia hypothesis, he remarked: “Gaya – that’s not a name, it’s responsibility.”

Herrington, a Dutch sustainability researcher and adviser to the Club of Rome, a Swiss thinktank, has made headlines in recent days (in Vice by Nafeez Ahmed who does not appear to have science expertise but has promoted similar before) after she authored a report that appeared to show a controversial 1970s study predicting the collapse of civilization was – apparently – right on time.

Coming amid a cascade of alarming environmental events, from western US and Siberian wildfires to German floods and a report that suggests the Amazon rainforest may no longer be able to perform as a carbon sink, Herrington’s work predicted the collapse could come around 2040 if current trends held.

Research by Herrington, a rising star in efforts to place data analysis at the center of efforts to curb climate breakdown, affirmed the bleaker scenarios put forward in a landmark 1972 MIT study, The Limits to Growth, that presented various outcomes for what could happen when the growth of industrial civilization collided with finite resources.

Now, with the climate crisis increasing the frequency of extreme weather events, and many single events shown to have been made worse by global heating, the Club of Rome, publisher of original MIT paper, has returned to the study.

“From a research perspective, I felt a data check of a decades-old model against empirical observations would be an interesting exercise,” said Herrington, a sustainability analyst at the accounting giant KPMG that recently described greenhouse gas emissions as a “shared, existential challenge.”….

……Since its publication, The Limits to Growth has sold upwards of 30m copies. It was published just four years after Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb that forewarned of an imminent population collapse* (blog note: no, he predicted that population growth would bring about catastrophic environmental collapse). With MIT offering analysis and the other full of doom-laden predictions, both helped to fuel the era’s environmental movements, from Greenpeace to Earth First!.

Herrington, 39, says she undertook the update (available on the KPMG website and credited to its publisher, the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology) independently “out of pure curiosity about data accuracy”. Her findings were bleak: current data aligns well with the 1970s analysis that showed economic growth could end at the end of the current decade and collapse come about 10 years later (in worst case scenarios)….’

For more related blogs and articles about climate change, environment, fossil fuel, limits to growth, population growth, UNPD and white nationalism.