"We require a central organizing principle - one agreed to voluntarily.
Minor shifts in policy, moderate improvement in laws and regulations,
rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change - these are all forms of
appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that
sacrifice, struggle and a wrenching transformation
of society will not be necessary."
- Al Gore,
Earth in the Balance


The Great Shift

Environmental activists often claim that modern human civilisation is ‘destroying the earth’ and our harmful activities are overwhelming Gaia’s ability to regenerate ‘herself.’ As discussed in my article about the Club of Rome (CoR) the concepts of sustainability and ‘ecological overshoot’ were brought to widespread public attention by the CoR in their 1972 report Limits to Growth. According to their predictions by now we should have run out of many vital resources, including zinc, aluminium and uranium, and be experiencing extreme food and oil shortages.

Despite the obvious failure of their dire warnings to eventuate the CoR, and a plethora of other environmental organisations, have continued to proclaim that the planet is rapidly approaching critical tipping points that will plunge the earth into an ecological collapse and result in the dieoff of thousands of species (including us). Of course the most successful tool they have found to promote this concept is Global Warming. Most other environmental problems are of a local or regional nature, are clearly visible, and can be addressed with appropriate regulations. Global Warming, however, is caused by an invisible trace gas, an essential nutrient for life, and a by-product of almost every human activity (even breathing) but, they claim, it will doom us all!

For more than thirty years the CoR has proclaimed that our modern society is unsustainable and must be replaced by an “interdependent sustainable global society, based on respect and reverence for the Earth.” This theme has become rooted deeply within the environmental movement. There is now a constant and increasingly loud drumbeat for CHANGE. This has coincided with a dramatic escalation in the rhetoric of those eager to pronounce our doom. According to a recent report the use of the word ‘crisis’ in the mainstream media has been increasing by more than 10% per year since 1995.

This psychological warfare has been very successful. Many people now feel afraid and uncertain. They tell us that soon there will be no more oil, the economy is about to collapse and our children are going to burn. No wonder people are beginning to embrace the ‘green solutions’ that they promise will lead us away from the abyss. Of course this has been the plan all along. The CoR state clearly in their own words:

“Man possesses, for a small moment in his
history, the most powerful combination of knowledge,
tools, and resources the world has ever known. He has
all that is physically necessary to create a totally new form
of human society - one that would be built to last for
generations. The two missing ingredients are a realistic,
long-term goal that can guide mankind to the equilibrium
society and the Human Will to achieve that goal.”
- Club of Rome,
Limits to Growth (1972)

“The common enemy of humanity is man.
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."
- Club of Rome,
The First Global Revolution (1992)

Fortunately, those pushing the Green Agenda have already developed a range of alternative world systems which, they say, will solve the problems that humanity has caused. These proposals go by various names: The Great Shift, The Great Transition, A New Green Deal, The Planetary Phase, The Power Down, The Great Descent etc. However, they all seem to several elements in common: a global management system for world resources, a global currency, replacing nation states with regional unions, population control/reduction, and a return to localised rural lifestyles.

I don’t have time here to analyse all the various proposals so I have decided just to take a look at one concept being promoted by the Club of Budapest (CoB). If you have read my previous article The First Global Revolution then you will recall that the CoB is an organisation formed by the Club of Rome to promote the cultural and spiritual aspects of its agenda. Likewise the CoR formed the Club of Madrid to promote its political agenda.

The Club of Budapest convenes itself under the rather ostentatious title ‘The World Wisdom Council.’ Members include the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Mikhail Gorbachev, Arthur C. Clarke, Mary Robinson, Jane Goodall, Karan Singh etc. The CoB has established the World Shift Network which has the stated aim of helping to transform the planet earth:

“Indisputably the world is undergoing a fundamental transformational process, a global change. Which trend the change will follow is in the hands of those, who have the decisive power to direct and design the change. Maybe the last minute has come where it is possible to stop the downward trend and transform planet Earth into the world, for which the most noble emotional, intellectual and spiritual abilities of humans are meant. Thus the WorldShift Network is ready to help giving birth to a new global culture, deeply imbued with spirit, fully aware of and supporting the evolution of global consciousness, inspired by love, and preserving and fostering life.”
http://www.worldshiftnetwork.org/action/index.html

Now this might all sound very nice – ‘inspired by love and fostering life’, but what exactly would this planetary transformation entail? Exactly what sort of world have they planned for you and me? Before we delve into the details of their ‘new global culture’ I would first like to remind the reader that they are trying to sell these ideas and hence they try to make them sound as appealing and idyllic as possible. But I encourage you look behind the words and try to get a sense of the real intention. So let’s have a look at the various aspects of this World Shift:


The Economy:

“We support the shift of our economic focus from translational corporate “fusionism” to regional subsistence. Subsistence economy focuses on a “natural” way of living. This is not “back to stone age”. It rather means a spiral, wavelike progress out of the life-destroying habits of today’s so-called civilization and accepting and welcoming the complexity of life.

We support the development of sustainable, decentralized, that is local, high-tech production, combined with local use of local resources. and the redesign of our monetary system according to a fourfold model: 1) economy of gifting (a basic matriarchal feature), 2) counter-trade (barter) economy, 3) complementary local monetary systems for regional trade, and 4) unified currency (for example called “terra”) for interregional and global trade. In our eyes compound interest has to be abolished. Also the concept of “owning” land must be reconsidered.”
http://www.worldshiftnetwork.org/action/subsistence.html

Hmmm ... so they want us to live in a ‘subsistence economy’ based on gifting, bartering and ‘natural living’. It won’t be the Stone Age they happily report – probably more like the Dark Ages. Compound interest and owning land would be banned. Capitalism dead at last! No doubt we would all be living in communes. There would be regional currencies and a single global currency for inter-regional and global trade. This implies the absence of nation states in favour of regional unions, probably under some sort of global government.

Health:

“In many cultures which have survived "civilization" and industrialization, now threatened by globalization, healers and educators (shamans) are looking for the origins of health instead. Coherence again is the basic idea. This goes parallel with the postulation of the World Health Organization (WHO), which states that an essential ingredient to health is a highly developed spirituality.”
http://www.worldshiftnetwork.org/action/salutogenesis.html

Riiiight ... so healthcare would revert back to healers and shamans from cultures that have ‘survived industrialisation.’ Instead of a prescription we will be told to work on our ‘spirituality.’

Society:

“We support the transition from today’s parliamentary democratic systems to participative democratic civil societies all over the world, which are no longer ruled by politicians, but wisely administered by wisdom-educated professionals, based on the fundaments of egalitarian consensus principles. In a participative civil society the common guidelines are maintained by parliaments of prudent delegates, who don’t possess political power, but present and negotiate the will of their mandating regions instead.

Participation means to encourage and to empower everyone who wants to contribute to the welfare of civil society. We want to reframe the word “citizen” so that we don’t always have to put “planetary” in front of it to signify that we speak of citizens of the earth, a privilege we all share by birth. Civil society in this respect equals the super-organism humankind.”
http://www.worldshiftnetwork.org/action/society.html

OK … so instead of elected officials that we can toss out, we will now be ruled by “wisdom-educated professionals.” No doubt the CoB members consider themselves to be very wise and would be more than happy to accept the job. Of course their decisions would be based on ‘consensus’ (hmm … where have I heard that before?). Notice the ‘mandating regions’ instead of countries or states and the super-organism humankind (Gaia anyone?)

The Environment:

“Nature is an immanent quality of this planet, it is the intrinsic way Gaia expresses herself. Nature is not outside of us. We humans are inside of nature, and nature is inside of us. There is nothing else but nature wherever we look. If we accept that something like spirit and soul resides in us and if it is true that we don't consist of anything else than nature, then of course something like spirit and soul must reside in the tiniest bit and in the whole of nature too.

In the light of contemporary field concepts and of an understanding of the whole as an eternal ocean of information, concepts of segregation and separation appear direly wrong. The idea from where we start is coherence, taking into account that we are neural beings who are only capable to think what our embodied mind permits.”
http://www.worldshiftnetwork.org/action/unity.html

Here we go … the basic premise behind many of these green transformation groups is that ‘modern humans’ has rebelled and become separated from Nature, and we must return and once again become part of the ‘great commonwealth of Gaia’ (to use Lovelock’s words). To many promoting the green agenda this is their religion. It is not about science or environmental protection – it is about implementing their form of New Age religion.

Culture:

“We support the shift from brain-focused knowledge, which is based on the metaphor of problems, to heart-cantered wisdom, which connects us with values, vision, and knowing. 300 years ago in the western world Enlightenment discovered individuality and reason and addressed the magical and irrational beliefs of the crowd, but it didn’t deal with the no less irrational beliefs of the accepted religion. Instead Enlightenment has put itself in the place of religion and created new superstitions like positivism, materialism, capitalism and atheism.

Now Enlightenment has to make a second step and open up for ”the physics of the non-material world“. Also it must integrate the perspectives of non-western cultures which have been left out by the first step of Enlightenment or suffered from its colonialist and technocratic misinterpretation. Different from the world’s teachings about wisdom throughout time, wisdom itself cannot be taught. But we can provide the cultural environment in which wisdom will prosper. This very process is in itself an act of wisdom.”
http://www.worldshiftnetwork.org/action/globalwisdom.html

So … here we can see that they aren’t anti-religion, atheism is a superstition. But to them the only true religion is earth-wisdom (which apparently can’t be taught, only experienced). We have to shift from using our brains they say, and are apparently leading by example.

Alright, to summarise this brief analysis of the ‘World Shift’ being proposed by the Clubs of Rome and Budapest:

·        We will live in a global subsistence economy based on local bartering

·        Owning land will be forbidden

·        Healthcare will be provided by shamans and natural healers

·        We will be ruled by non-elected ‘wisdom professionals’

·        Nation states will be replaced by ‘mandating regions’

·        Our collective salvation depends on us returning to Gaia

·        We need to stop using our brains

·        We must ‘open up to the physics of the non-material world’

 If you didn’t know who exactly was behind this it would be easy to dismiss it as the ravings of delusion New Age greenies. But this is the agenda of prominent world leaders stated clearly in their own words. Scarily, there are literally thousands of smaller organisations springing up to help implement this vision. A simple google search for ‘the great shift’ will result in some very interesting reading. Here are a few examples:

Awakening Mind
Great Transition Initiative
The Shift in Action
The Great Shift Has Begun
Preparing for the Great Shift
Join the Great Shift
The Great Transition
The Global Marshall Plan
Planetization

Interestingly, the Club of Budapest has recently declared a State of Global Emergency. They have now decided that we only have four or five years left to make the Great Shift. I have no idea what science they base them claims on. It seems they prefer to rely on ancient Mayan prophecies. I’ll provide a snippet from their 24-page ‘declaration. You can read the whole document here.

“If we continue on our present unsustainable path, by mid-century the Earth may become largely uninhabitable for human and most other forms of life. Such a total systems collapse could occur much sooner, however, due to runaway global warming or other ecocatastrophes, and/or by nuclear wars triggered by religious, ethnic or geopolitical conflicts or access to diminishing natural resources. The macro-trends driving these global threats and challenges have been apparent for decades and are now building toward a threshold of irreversibility. The scientific modelling of complex systems shows that when systems reach a state of critical instability, they either break down to their components or break through to a higher order of integral functioning. At these “points of no return” maintaining the status quo, or returning to a previous mode of organization and functioning, are not a feasible option.

The acceleration of critical trends and cross-impacts among them indicates that the ‘window of opportunity’ for pulling out of the present global crisis and breaking through to a more peaceful and sustainable world is likely to be no more than four to five years from the end of 2008. This is close in time to the Mayan 2012 prophecy for the end of the current world. The period around the end of 2012 is likely to be a turbulent one for this and other reasons. Predictions coming from the physical sciences foresee disturbances in the geomagnetic, electromagnetic and related fields that embed the planet causing significant damage to telecommunications and impacting many aspects of human activity and health. For the esoteric traditions the end of 2012 will be the end of the known world, although the more optimistic interpretations speak of a new world taking the place of the old.”

One of the most deceptive and frustrating aspects of the whole global warming/energy independence agenda is the implication that we can retain even a semblance of our modern lifestyles if we eliminate the use of fossil fuels. At least the Club of Budapest is honest enough to admit that we would have to revert to a subsistence economy, as currently experienced in many third-world countries. A very good article analysing how much energy solar panels and wind turbine can actually provide is The Great Energy Delusion written by an engineering professor. You can read more on the ‘green economy’ here.