Mark Carney has long been recognized as an authority on climate change. In 2015, as the governor of the Bank of England, he gave his famous “tragedy of the horizon” speech that introduced climate change to bankers as a threat to international financial stability. 

In an interview shortly after he was appointed UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance in 2019, Carney described climate change as “the world’s greatest existential threat.”

Read more: Is Mark Carney turning his back on climate action?

Carney’s efforts to deal with the American-driven upheaval of the international order are critically important: strengthening the domestic economy by building international trade and security relationships. But climate doesn’t seem to be a priority for the prime minister.

His first actions cast seeds of doubt, including repealing the consumer carbon tax, delaying the implementation of the electric vehicle mandate on auto producers and the possible removal of the federal government’s emissions cap on petroleum producers.

‘Decarbonized’ oilsands?

The Carney government’s first five “nation-building” projectsunder review by its Major Projects Office included the doubling of production of a liquified natural gas facility in Kitimat, B.C.

It also included building small modular reactors (SMRs) at the Darlington, Ont., nuclear power generating plant. Apart from risks associated with its construction, it can take many years before SMRs can become fully operational, meaning they’re unlikely to play a significant role in reducing carbon emissions.

Under consideration for a second round of projects is carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) proposal from Pathways Alliance, a consortium of oilsands companies. The industry claims the project will allow the continued expansion of so-called decarbonized oilsands bitumen and natural gas. 

But an Oxford University study concluded that regarding CCUS “as a way to compensate for ongoing fossil fuel burning is economically illiterate.” 

In fact, the very term “decarbonized oil and gas” has been denounced as a falsehood by the co-chair of the federal Net-Zero Advisory Body (NZAB), climate scientist Simon Donner. 

Canada’s GHG emissions reductions

Canada is the world’s 11th largest emitter of CO2 and the second largest emitter on a per capita basis.

Canada’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) represent its commitment under the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions by 45 to 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2035, building on its emissions’ reduction plan of 40 to 45 per cent by 2030. 

A report from Canada’s Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development found emissions have declined by just 7.1 per cent since 2005. 

The fossil fuel industry has essentially guaranteed that Canada’s 2030 reduction targets will not be met due mainly to continued increases in oilsands production, now accounting for 31 per cent of the total Canadian emissions. 

The 2025 climate change performance index ranks Canada among the worst — 62nd out of 67 countries — for its overall climate change performance, which involves a combination of emissions, renewable energy, energy use and policy.

 

https://theconversation.com/mark-carneys-climate-inaction-is-at-odds-with-his-awareness-of-climate-changes-existential-threat-266526

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

Joseph Camilleri

A declining empire – and how Australia should adapt

 

Trump’s volatility has exposed the fragility of the global order, but the deeper danger lies in Australia’s uncritical attachment to a declining US empire – and the refusal to rethink our place in a changing world.

Seldom since 1945 has the global landscape seemed so desolate, so stained by mindless violence. Seldom have we been exposed to such crassness in high places.

Seldom has Australian foreign policy been so mired in the orthodoxies of the past, detached from the realities of the present, unmindful of the dangers looming on the horizon.

The inability of Australian governments to change course is troubling enough. More troubling still is the steadfast refusal to undertake anything approaching a probing review of the seismic changes unfolding at frenetic pace across a globalising yet fractured world.

When it comes to Australia’s umbilical alignment with US strategic interests and priorities, many commentators across the political spectrum have jumped on to the inanities of Trumpism as providing the rationale for a loosening of the alliance.

There may well be some tactical value in taking advantage of Trump’s hastily improvised brainwaves when making the case that the United States is fast becoming a less dependable ally. But if it involves little more than pointing to the excesses of the Trump administration, the strategy may well prove to be a double edged sword.

True enough, the first year of the Trump presidency has seen a string of statements and initiatives which have troubled many faithful allies, including a wide cross-section of the Australian public.

The list is a long one: the erratic imposition of trade tariffs and the spurious arguments used to justify them, military intrusions in Iran, Syria, Yemen and Venezuela, the abduction of Maduro, threatened intervention in Greenland, wholesale support for the Israeli government’s genocidal policies in Gaza, a meandering diplomacy in the Ukraine conflict that has deeply unsettled the NATO alliance, not to mention the illiberal avalanche of executive orders that have brought democracy in the US to its knees.

Yes, Trump’s conduct on the world stage is little short of farcical, but farce aside there is remarkable continuity with what preceded it. According to a major study, between 1945 and 2023, the United States conducted more than 200 military interventions, the vast majority without UN Security Council authorisation. Since the mid-1990s, it has launched more military operations than it did during the Cold War years.

During the Biden years, the US operated some 750 overseas military facilities, mostly in Europe and East Asia, at an annual cost of $55 billion. US military spending stood at $84 billion in 1968. By 2023, it had risen to $916 billion.

It was not the Trump Administration but previous Democrat and Republican administrations which embarked on the disastrous military expeditions in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq at immense financial and human cost.

Two important conclusions emerge. Bluster aside, Trump’s interventionism is in keeping with America’s longstanding reliance on military force as the primary and indispensable instrument in its pursuit of imperial power.

There is nevertheless an element of discontinuity, or at least apparent discontinuity, that separates the Trump presidency from earlier administrations. US power is in visible decline. It is no longer able to exercise the hegemonic role it assumed at the conclusion of the Second World War and maintained for the best part of half a century.

Since the late 1990s, life for the hegemon has become progressively harder. This is the lesson Trump is learning, rather slowly so far. Making America great again is a much more challenging undertaking than he and his associates imagined.

One thing is now clear enough. After the initial shock of Trump’s bluster and belligerence, allies and adversaries alike have taken stock of the limits to US power.

This January we have seen a string of major trade agreements, all of them entailing a substantial reciprocal reduction in tariffs: between Canada and China, between the EU and four Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), and between the EU and India.

These agreements and others, in which the US is noticeably absent, carry a distinct geopolitical message: US allies are willing to resist US unilateralism.

European leaders have made it clear that they are totally opposed to America’s annexation of Greenland, while Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has stated in blunt language that the world is “in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” and that as a consequence Canada had no option but to “fundamentally shift its strategic posture”.

US power is ageing. In the first year of his administration Trump chose to stem the tide by putting on a tantrum, but to little effect. Far from forcing China into submission, Trump’s tariff blitz on Chinese goods invited Chinese retaliation, which has since led to a drastic reduction of US tariffs. And by year’s end, China could report a staggering trade surplus of US$1.2 trillion, the largest trade surplus ever recorded by any economy.

In the face of this rapidly changing international landscape, Australian governments have stood still. Their energies have largely gone into an unrewarding juggling act. This has meant maintaining the trade relationship with China as the largest importer by far of Australian goods and services and quasi-total subservience to US strategic interests and policy preferences.

Such a stance cannot but end in tears. A major rethink is called for, not because of Trump’s antics, but because of the dangers posed by a declining empire – still the world’s pre-eminent military power – that is not yet reconciled to its decline. All this at a time when American society is sharply polarised, gripped by grotesque inequalities of wealth and power, and morally rudderless.

A rethink involves much more than a few knowledgeable people designing a set of policy directions, and then somehow convincing government that this is the way to go. If it is the case that Australia together with the rest of the world is entering a period of profound transformation, then only a whole of society conversation can generate the will and capacity to rise to the challenge posed by such transformation.

If we are to extricate ourselves from our present alliance arrangements, we need to have a clear appreciation of the reasons why this is worth doing.

It is nowhere near enough to say that we wish to avoid involvement or complicity in future US military expeditions, or in some future Sino-American confrontation. To say just that is to leave too many questions unanswered.

What would a non-aligned, more independent Australia look like? What would be its new sense of place in the world? How would Australia exercise its independence? In pursuit of what objectives? What do we see as the prospects for a renewed, more democratic multilateralism, or for international law to be placed on more solid foundations? In all this, with whom would we consult and collaborate?

All of which raises yet another question. What are the moral, emotional and intellectual resources Australia can bring to the conversation? Two potential contributions loom large.

If Australia is a genuinely multicultural society, then we need to find ways to integrate the insights and experiences of the different cultures represented in this country. How, for example, could we arrive at a coherent and constructive view of our future relations with China, unless we do it with the full participation of our large and still growing Chinese community?

Importantly, how can Australia redefine its sense of place in the world without the active engagement of First Nations peoples? How can we reimagine the future of Country without the benefit of Indigenous wisdom? If we are to reassert Australian independence, it would be better done by finally recognising Indigenous sovereignty which derives from a unique spiritual and historical connection to the Land, and which has never been ceded.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/01/the-morass-of-australias-foreign-policy-a-way-out/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

GUS ASKS: WHO IS MARK CARNEY? THE ARTICLE BELOW MAKES SOME DEROGATORY REFERENCES TO VARIOUS PEOPLE, INCLUDING GRETA THUNBERG... WHILE ADVISING BORIS JOHNSON... THE AUTHOR HERE DOES NOT "BELIEVE IN" (UNDERSTAND) THE SCIENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING... BUT IS MARK CARNEY STILL ON SONG WITH GLOBAL WARMING? I MIGHT HAVE MISSED HIM MENTIONING IT IN HIS DAVOS SPEECH...

ANOTHER NASTY ARTICLE SHOWS A PHOTOGRAPH OF CARNEY AND HIS WIFE WITH GHISLAINE MAXWELL... 

 

========================

 

"It won't be pleasant" - Mark Carney unveils dystopian new world to combat climate 'crisis'

BY Peter Foster

05 Jun 2021

 

What Carney ultimately wants is a technocratic dictatorship justified by climate alarmism

In his book Value(s): Building a Better World for All, Mark Carney, former governor both of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, claims that western society is morally rotten, and that it has been corrupted by capitalism, which has brought about a "climate emergency" that threatens life on earth. This, he claims, requires rigid controls on personal freedom, industry and corporate funding.

Carney's views are important because he is UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance. He is also an adviser both to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the next big climate conference in Glasgow, and to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

 

Since the advent of the COVID pandemic, Carney has been front and centre in the promotion of a political agenda known as the "Great Reset," or the "Green New Deal," or "Building Back Better." All are predicated on the claim that COVID, and its disruption of the global economy, provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not just to regulate climate, but to frame a more fair, more diverse, more inclusive, more safe and more woke world.

Carney draws inspiration from, among others, Marx, Engels and Lenin, but the agenda he promotes differs from Marxism in two key respects. First, the private sector is not to be expropriated but made a "partner" in reshaping the economy and society. Second, it does not make a promise to make the lives of ordinary people better, but worse. Carney's Brave New World will be one of severely constrained choice, less flying, less meat, more inconvenience and more poverty: "Assets will be stranded, used gasoline powered cars will be unsaleable, inefficient properties will be unrentable," he promises.

The agenda's objectives are in fact already being enforced, not primarily by legislation but by the application of non-governmental — that is, non-democratic — pressure on the corporate sector via the ever-expanding dictates of ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) and by "sustainable finance," which is designed to starve non-compliant companies of funds, thus rendering them, as Carney puts it, "climate roadkill." What ESG actually represents is corporate ideological compulsion. It is a key instrument of "stakeholder capitalism."

Carney's Agenda is promoted by the United Nations and other international bureaucracies and a vast and ever-growing array of non-governmental organizations and fora, especially the World Economic Forum (WEF), where Carney is a trustee. Also, perhaps most surprisingly, by its corporate victims. No one wants to become climate roadkill.

Carney clearly feels himself to be a man of destiny. "When I worked at the Bank of England," he writes in Value(s), "I would remind myself each morning of Marcus Aurelius' phrase 'arise to do the work of humankind'." One is reminded of French aristocrat and social reformer Henri de Saint-Simon, the "grand seigneur sans-culotte," who ordered his valet to wake him with similar words: "Remember, monsieur le comte, that you have great things to do."

That is not the only thing Carney has in common with Saint-Simon, who believed that society should be ruled by savants such as himself; an alliance of engineers and other technocratic intellectuals, along with bankers. Carney is very much a banker technocrat, not merely at ease gliding along the corridors of global bureaucratic power, but expert at framing arguments that support an ever-expanding role for his class.

His expansive pretensions first appeared at the Bank of Canada. If the economy is like a game of ice hockey, then central bankers should, ideally, be like Zamboni drivers, whose job is to keep the ice flat (Carney had in fact been a goalie during his academic years at both Harvard and Oxford). At the Bank of Canada, he often seemed like the Zamboni driver who thought he was Wayne Gretzky. He could never resist lecturing private businesses to stop sitting on "dead money," or telling them they were too timid in the international arena, or advising consumers that they were spending too little, or borrowing too much. He promoted "macroprudence," the idea that regulators, in their panoptic wisdom, would focus on the forest, not the trees. Now, he wants to establish himself as an intellectual.

Carney has a lot to put straight with the world. According to his new book, and the related BBC Reith Lectures that Carney delivered last year, the three great crises of credit (2008-09 version), COVID and climate are all rooted in a single problem: People in general, and markets in particular, are not as wise, moral or far-seeing as Mark Carney. He sums up this failing as the "Tragedy of the Horizon," a phrase he concocted for a speech ahead of the 2015 Paris climate conference.

However, Carney is sophistic when it comes to the alleged moral shortcomings of capitalism. It has been one of the most tedious tropes of the left since at least The Communist Manifesto that the rise of commerce would drive out all that is virtuous in society, leaving nothing but the "cash nexus" of trade. One of Carney's favourite philosophers is Harvard's Michael Sandel, who produces endless trivial examples suggesting that we have moved from a "market economy" to a "market society."

"Should sex be up for sale?" Carney thunders, following Sandel. "Should there be a market in the right to have children? Why not auction the right to opt out of military service? Why shouldn't universities sell admission to raise money for worthy causes?" But the very fact that people reflexively feel uneasy about — or outright reject — such notions entirely disproves his point. People do not believe that everything is, or should be, for sale.

Carney notes the long debate, going back to classical times, on the nature of commercial value. This was theoretically resolved by the "marginalist revolution," which put paid to the "paradox of value" that puzzled over the (usually) low price of useful water and the (usually) high price of useless diamonds. The marginalists pointed out that commercial value isn't determined by usefulness or labour input. It is inevitably subjective, based on personal preferences and available resources. There is no paradox. Someone dying of thirst in the middle of the desert might be more than willing to offer a bucket of diamonds for a bucket of water.

 

However, market valuations are essentially different from moral values, a distinction Carney continually muddles. He misrepresents the marginalist/subjectivist perspective, claiming that it implies that anything not commercially priced is not considered valuable. "Market value," he writes, "is taken to represent intrinsic value, and if a good or activity is not in the market, it is not valued." But who holds such an idiotic view? Nobody "prices" their family, children, friends, community spirit or the beauties of nature, although there is certainly lots of calculation going on in the background. Carney constantly berates "market fundamentalist" straw men who employ "standard economic reasoning" and who believe that people are rational and markets perfect.

He incorrectly claims that Adam Smith — in his first great book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments — said that a sense of morality was "not inherent." In fact, Smith believed that we are born with such a sense, which is then fine-tuned by the society in which we grow up. However, Carney — like all leftists — leans towards the blank slate, nurture-over-nature perspective because it suggests that human nature might be beneficially reformed under the right (that is, left) social arrangements.

Carney believes our moral sentiments started going astray around the time of the publication of Smith's better-known book, The Wealth of Nations, in 1776, when the Industrial Revolution was beginning to take off. He rightly suggests that one should read both books to gain a full appreciation of Smith's insights, but he seems to have missed the significance of Smith's putdown of "whining and melancholy moralists," his cynicism about "insidious and crafty" politicians, and his thoroughgoing skepticism about those who would "trade for the public good" (that is, the ESG crowd). Moreover, Smith noted that the greatest corrupter of moral sentiments was not commerce but "faction and fanaticism," that is, politics and religion, which come together in the toxic stew of climate alarmism and ESG.

ESG used to be called Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR. The Nobel economist Milton Friedman warned against its subversive nature 50 years ago. He noted that taking on externally dictated "social responsibilities" beyond those directly related to a company's business opened the floodgates to endless pressure and interference. The big questions are responsibility to whom? And for what?

Carney also typically misrepresents Friedman, suggesting that he claimed that shareholders should rank "uber alles," and to the exclusion of other legitimate stakeholders such as employees and local communities. Carney claims that "At times, large positive gains could accrue to society if small sacrifices were made on behalf of shareholders." But by what right would management "sacrifice" shareholders, and who would decide which sacrifices should be made?

Carney admits that the "integrated reporting" required by ESG is a morass: "ESG ratings consider hundreds of metrics, with many of them qualitative in nature... Putting values to work is hard work, but as with virtue, it should become easier with sustained practice." No need to ask whose version of values and virtue is to prevail.

* * *

Despite his thorough castigation of market society, Carney somehow also believes this "corroded" society is clamouring to make great personal sacrifices for draconian climate actions and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

Carney has been a prime pusher of "net-zero," the notion that climate-related human emissions must be entirely eradicated, buried or offset by 2050 if the world is to avoid climate Armageddon. He claims that net-zero is "highly valued by society." In reality, the vast mass of people have no clue what it entails; when Carney talks about this version of "society," he is talking about a small, radical element of it.

Carney peddles the non-sequitur that because the world wasn't ready for COVID, this confirms that the world is being short-sighted about climate catastrophe. But COVID is an obvious reality; an existential climate catastrophe is a hypothesis (frequently promoted — admittedly with great success — by those with agendas). He claims that "A good introduction to this subject can be found in journalist David Wallace-Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth," a work heavily criticized even by prominent climate-change scientists for its factual errors and exaggerations. Indeed, even its author admitted its tendentious purpose.

Carney also commends the knowledge and wisdom of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg: "The power of Greta Thunberg's message lies in the way she drives home both the cold logic of climate physics and the fundamental unfairness of the climate crisis."

Anybody who cites an anxious 17-year-old as an authority on climate science and moral philosophy should be an object of deep suspicion, but then, according to Carney, climate science is easy. Greta's "basic calculations" are ones that she could "easily master and powerfully project." (Carney says he once gave Greta a tour of the Bank of England's gold vaults. One wonders if she also offered up tips on monetary policy.) But then, in early 2020, Greta demonstrated her complete disconnect from reality when, at the WEF in Davos, she called for an immediate cessation of emissions, which would tank the world economy and potentially kill millions. Even Carney admits deviating from her wisdom on that point.

Far from demonstrating a firm knowledge of the climate system himself, Carney cites scary but misleading statistics. "Since the 1980s," he writes, "the number of registered weather-related loss events has tripled, and the inflation-adjusted losses have increased fivefold. Consistent with the accelerated pace of climate change, the cost of weather-related insurance losses has increased eightfold in real terms over the past decade to an annual average of $60 billion."

I asked Professor Roger Pielke, Jr., an expert on climate and economics at the University of Colorado, to comment. He replied 

"(Carney) has confused economics with weather. The increase in losses he describes is well understood to occur for two main reasons: more wealth and property exposed to loss and better accounting of those losses. To assess trends in extreme weather one should look at weather data, not economic loss data."

Carney's confusion is hardly innocent since his Agenda depends on incessantly claiming that "What had been biblical is becoming commonplace."

Fortunately, Carney has been making claims about worsening weather for long enough that we can assess some of his predictions. In his recent book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, Steven Koonin, former undersecretary for science at the Obama-era U.S. Energy Department, cites the speech Carney made to Lloyd's of London before the Paris climate conference in 2015. The speech was designed to frighten the insurance industry into divestment from fossil fuels, on the basis that many oil and gas reserves would be "stranded" as we exhaust our allowable carbon "budget." Carney pointed out that the previous U.K. winter had been the "wettest since the time of King George III." He went on to say, "forecasts suggest we can expect at least a further 10% increase in rainfall during future winters." For support he cited the U.K. Met Office's forecast for the next five years. It turned out to be dead wrong. The six winters after 2014 averaged 39-per-cent less rainfall than the 2014 record. Meanwhile a Met Office report in 2018 acknowledged that the "largest source of variability in U.K. extreme rainfalls during the winter months was the North Atlantic Oscillation mode of natural variability, not a changing climate."

"(I)t's surprising," notes Koonin, "that someone with a PhD in economics and experience with the unpredictability of financial markets and economies as a whole doesn't show a greater respect for the perils of prediction — and more caution in depending upon models."

During his BBC Reith Lectures last year, on the topic of "How We Get What We Value," Carney received few challenges from his handpicked questioners, but a couple came from eminent historian Niall Ferguson. Ferguson asked Carney why, in his discussion of the climate issue, he made no reference to Bjorn Lomborg (a much more knowledgeable Scandinavian than Greta), and in particular to Lomborg's book, False Alarm, in which Lomborg establishes — using "official" science — that there is no existential climate crisis, that adapting to climate change is manageable, and that the kinds of policies promoted by Carney are likely to be far more costly than any impact from extreme weather.

Carney of course hadn't read that book, but he dismissed Lomborg by saying that "it's 15 or 20 years ago when he first came out with his 'Don't worry about the climate.' How's that working out for us?" But Lomborg never said "Don't worry about the climate," he just suggested that we had to put risks into perspective. Meanwhile Lomborg's non-alarmist thesis is working out much better than that of doomsayers such as Carney.

This offhand rejection of someone as widely respected as Lomborg exposes the hypocrisy of Carney's statement in Value(s) that "experts need to listen to all sides...All of us as individuals have a responsibility to be more open and to engage respectfully with different views if we want constructive political debates and to make progress on important issues." Except, climate-catastrophe dissenters don't make it into the debate. There can be zero diversity of views on net-zero.

Ferguson put another thorny question to Carney at that Reith lecture: He pointed out that since the 2015 Paris agreement, China had been responsible for almost half the increase in global carbon emissions, and it was building more coal capacity in the current year than existed in the entire United States. What did China's promises of net-zero by 2060 mean, Ferguson asked, if it was "actually leading the pollution charge"? Carney's non response was that China is the largest manufacturer of zero-emission cars, and the leading producer of renewable energy.

Koonin notes in his book that Carney "is probably the single most influential figure in driving investors and financial institutions around the world to focus on changes in climate and human influences upon it.... So it's important to pay close attention to what he says."

* * *

Mark Carney cries crocodile tears at the possible viability of the Marxist perspective in today's political environment. But if there is one sure sign of a Marxist, it's a belief that capitalism is — or is about to be - in "crisis." His new book has an appendix on Marx's theory of surplus value: that all profits are wrung from the hides of labour. He also cites Marx's collaborator, Friedrich Engels. In particular he notes "Engels' pause," the one period in capitalist history, early in the 19th century, when workers may not have shared the increases in productivity brought about by industrialization.

Carney projects that the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" (a phenomenon much invoked by the WEF) might bring about a similar period, thus providing a source of political unrest. "(I)t could be generations before the gains of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are widely shared," he writes. "In the interim, there could be a long period of technological unemployment, sharply rising inequalities and intensifying social unrest... If this world of surplus labour comes to pass, Marx and Engels could again become relevant."

He rather seems to hope so.

Carney claims powerful parallels between Marx's time and our own. "Substitute platforms for textile mills, machine learning for the steam engine, and Twitter for the telegraph, and current dynamics echo those of that era. Then, Karl Marx was scribbling the Communist Manifesto in the reading room of the British Library. Today, radical viral blogs and tweets voice similar outrage."

In fact, Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto, based on a tract by Engels, in Brussels, not at the British Library, but it's more important to remember where Marx's misguided and immutable outrage led: to a disastrous economic and political model that generated poverty and mass murder on an unprecedented scale. Meanwhile "outrage" is surely a dubious basis for policy. The outraged are certainly a useful constituency for those seeking power, however, which brings us to the influence on Carney of the man who first tried to put Marxism into practice.

When it comes to the COVID crisis, writes Carney, "We are living Lenin's observation that there are 'decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen'." Strange that Carney would cite one of the most ruthless murderers in history for this rather bland insight, but then Carney's Agenda is not without its own parallels to Lenin (minus, one presumes, the precondition of rampant bloodshed).

Although Vladimir Lenin didn't know much about business or economics, he declared that "'Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country." Carney's plan is global. "We need," he claims, "to electrify everything and turn electricity generation green." The problem is that wind- and solar-powered electricity needs both hefty government subsidies and fossil-fuel backup for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Green electricity is inflexible, expensive and disruptive to grids.

Carney cites Joseph Schumpeter's concept of "creative destruction," but his own version involves not the metaphorical and benign process of market innovation making old technologies redundant, but a deliberate suppression of viable technologies to make way for less reliable and less economic alternatives.

When Lenin wrecked the Russian economy after brutally seizing power in 1917, he was forced to backtrack and allow some private enterprise to prevent people starving. However, he assured his radical comrades that he would retain control of "the commanding heights" of heavy industry. Carney's plan is to control the global economy by seizing the commanding heights of finance, not by nationalization but by exerting non-democratic pressure to divest from, and stop funding, fossil fuels. The private sector is to become a partner in imposing its own bondage. This will be do-it-yourself totalitarianism. Indeed, companies in our one-party ESG state are already pleading like show-trial defendants, making suicidal net-zero commitments, lest banks cut them off.

To further that end, Carney has helped to start a key organization, the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a collection of central banks and regulators. He has also signed up an ever-growing constituency of activist policy wonks who peddle emissions measurement and certification, eco audits and ESG rankings. This agenda is inevitably appealing to transnational organizations such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD, whose empires are all lucratively intertwined with the global governance thrust. In May, the IEA issued a report calling for an immediate end to fossil fuel investment to get to net-zero.

Part of Carney's strategy is to force "voluntary" standards on banking and industry, then have governments make those standards compulsory. The major accounting firms appear keen to promote the possibility of endless auditing extensions, under which the relatively straightforward metric of money is to be replaced by the infinitely malleable concepts of "purpose" and "impact."

Carney has also helped turn the accounting screw though "carbon disclosure." Companies are pressured to make explicit the kind of damage they might suffer if the alarmists' worst nightmares are realized. Such disclosure is a variant on that famous loaded question "When did you stop beating your spouse?" Instead, carbon disclosure asks the climate equivalent of "If you were to beat your spouse, what sort of injuries might he/she suffer?" Companies must also disclose their plans to deal with the presumed crisis. No company dares to say "We do not believe your apocalyptic forecasts." They meekly regurgitate the required climate porn about floods and droughts and hurricanes, and make elaborate fingers-crossed emissions-reductions commitments. This in turn leads them into arrangements such as buying emissions offsets, a complex scheme analogous to the medieval Catholic Church's sale of indulgences. Carbon markets have inevitably led to a surge in work for offset generators, certifiers and auditors. Carney projects this market could be worth $100 billion.

Ironically, earlier this year Carney found himself tangled in the murky metrics of offsets. In 2020, he was appointed a vice chairman with Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management, where he is in charge of "impact investing." As historian Tammy Nemeth points out in her critical study of the "Transnational Progressive Movement," of which Carney is a leading light: "(I)t is perhaps ethically murky for someone who is actively working within the UN and advising two different governments on how to change national and global financial rules to be working for a company that will be a direct beneficiary of those rule changes." Still, who better to lead your company through a minefield than the person who planted the mines?

Except that Carney was hoist with his own petard when he claimed that Brookfield, which has major investments in fossil fuels and pipelines, was already "net-zero" due to emissions "avoided" as a result of its investing in renewable energy. Carney's claim produced instant refutation and accusations of greenwashing. The Financial Times called it a "major stumble." A representative of CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) castigated those who attempt to hide "dirty coal issues." Carney subsequently issued a qualified mea culpa on Twitter: "I have always been — and will continue to be — a strong advocate for net zero science-based targets, and I also recognize that avoided emissions do not count towards them."

* * *

H. L. Mencken observed that "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule." So, just how big a threat is the agenda of Mark Carney and his fellow "transnational progressives"?

In his book, Value(s), Carney lays out rationalizations and autocratic pretensions, although he is less forthcoming about his motivations. He writes that "Leaders need to renounce power for its own sake and discern the power of service." Mencken would be amused.

The shambolic response to COVID of many governments, not least in Canada, and the distinctly unsettled nature of pandemic "science," have not done much for the credibility of either governments or experts. The Carney-backed agenda is not predicated on working through democratic institutions but on circumventing them. Still, he is also reported to have more conventional political aspirations, namely to join the federal Liberal party and rise within it, very possibly to prime minister. (Carney recently gave a speech at the Liberal national convention, where he pledged his full support.)

He thus has a rather ill-fitting section in Value(s) on "How Canada Can Build Value for All." It reads like a Liberal party stump speech. According to Carney "We (in Canada) routinely transcend the limitations of our size to model values and policies for other countries." It's the old chestnut that no progressive Canadian leader ever seems to tire of: The world needs more Canada.

Carney is a classic example of what Friedrich Hayek called the "fatal conceit" of constructivist rationalism: the belief that the largely spontaneous institutions of the market order should be rejected in favour of more deliberately planned arrangements. Carney is undoubtedly an intelligent man, but Hayek stressed that the thing that intelligent people tend most to overestimate is the power of intelligence — particularly if they happen to be socialists.

Carney is also of the class that philosopher Karl Popper described as "enemies" of an "open society." Popper noted that social upheavals tend to bring forth prophets who claim to understand the forces shaping the future, and promise salvation if they are given absolute power. Such was Plato's model — in response to the upheavals of the Peloponnesian War and the first wave of democracy — of a necessary dictatorship in which the rulers lived as communists, using a specially bred military to control a cattle-like populace. Similarly, Marx's communism was a response to the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution.

Considering the squalor of Manchester in the 1840s, one might forgive Marx and Engels for thinking a radical response was in order. But given the success of capitalism and the horrors of autocratic systems in the intervening period, it takes considerable chutzpah to be promoting net-zero totalitarianism.

Still, Carney claims that great crises demand great plans. He cites Timothy Geithner, secretary of the U.S. Treasury under president Obama, saying "plan beats no plan." But Geithner was talking about the very real and immediate 2008-09 financial crisis. Carney's climate plan is much closer to the notion of Soviet central long-term planning. Clearly, when it came to the subsequent welfare of the Russian people, "no plan" would certainly have beaten "plan."

What Carney ultimately wants, like Saint-Simon, is a technocratic dictatorship justified by climate alarmism. He suggests that "governments can delegate certain aspects of the calibration of specific instruments... to Carbon Councils in order to improve the predictability, credibility and impact of climate policies." These carbon councils will be able to demand that national governments "comply or explain" when they inevitably fall short of targets. How these commissars will bring governments into line is unclear, although Nobel economist William Nordhaus has suggested "Climate Clubs" that will punish recalcitrants with punitive tariffs.

The threat of punishment will clearly be necessary because governments are doing little more than hypocritical tinkering on climate policy. China and India are hardly even playing lip service to the "climate emergency." Nevertheless, according to Carney "political technology" is needed to "build a broad consensus around the right goals." No question of debating the goals, or the science, just building a consensus to support them.

Carney is a man on a mission to change global society. "Business as usual" — the most hated phrase in the socialist lexicon — is "ultimately catastrophic," he writes. There is too much "misplaced acceptance of the status quo." But somehow the new socialism will not be socialism as usual. This time it's different. We can because we must. The threat is too great to permit any argument. It's surprising that as he was picking out choice quotes from Lenin for his book, Carney missed this one: "No more opposition now, comrades! The time has come to put an end to opposition, to put the lid on it. We have had enough opposition!"

https://www.sott.net/article/454646-It-wont-be-pleasant-Mark-Carney-unveils-dystopian-new-world-to-combat-climate-crisis

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

WATCH OUT....

 

Michael Keating

Mark Carney – Values: an economist's guide to everything that matters

 

Mark Carney argues that treating price as a proxy for value has driven crises in finance, health and climate. His book offers a roadmap for rebuilding trust, fairness and resilience.

Mark Carney has received international acclaim for his speech calling out the rupture of the rules-based international order. But we shouldn’t have been surprised. In this outstanding book, _Values: An economist's guide to everything that matters_, Carney demonstrates how the marketisation of our values has provoked major crises, and he then provides a road map to a fairer, more responsible and resilient world.

Mark Carney is uniquely experienced. First, he was the Governor of two central banks – the Bank of Canada (2008 to 2013) and then the Bank of England (2013 to 2020). Carney was the first foreigner to hold this position, demonstrating the high regard in which Carney was held. After the Bank of England Governorship, Carney was the UN Special Envoy for Climate Change and Finance, along with some other Board appointments. It was during that period with the UN that Carney in 2021 wrote this book.

Since then, in March 2025, Carney became Prime Minister of Canada and after winning the subsequent election he has continued in that position.

As far as I know Carney is the first and only senior public servant to ever become Prime Minister of his country. But in addition, Carney has written an extraordinarily erudite book about values. Something that none of his contemporaries in government could ever have achieved. And it is a great shame that Carney’s book has not achieved wider circulation and received more attention in Australia.

What are our values

In many respects our values are what define us, both as individuals and as a society. For Carney our values are central to determining the future of our society, our economy and the planet.

The first part of Carney’s book is therefore a discussion of what are values our and why they matter.

Critical to Carney’s analysis is the distinction between value as measured by the price of something and values. Or as Oscar Wilde famously put it, “he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”.

As Carney says: “Values and value are related but distinct”. Values represent the standards of behaviour that we expect, such as integrity, fairness, kindness, excellence, sustainability, passion and reason. “Value is the regard that something is held to deserve – its importance, worth or usefulness”. But the economic value of a good or service is generally relative – how much will be given up in exchange for it, and that depends upon circumstances.

In Part 1 of his book Carney provides a most erudite history of the concept of economic value and how that has evolved over time, eventually giving rise to today’s marketised society.

This discussion starts with Aristotle, followed by analysis of values in the Middle Ages and the Reformation before turning to discuss the intellectual giants of the Industrial Revolution – Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx – who focused on the value of the factors of production, and especially labour. Subsequently in the 1870s a new school of thought – the neo-classicists – explained the value of a product through differences in the utility to the consumer. Finally, this discussion concludes with Alfred Marshall, who at the beginning of the last century brought it all together explaining value in terms of the interaction of both supply and demand.

Carney’s conclusion from this discussion is that economic theories of value originally tied value to factors of production and how production takes place, followed by value being in the eye of the beholder and determined by their preferences. But “today it is widely assumed that there is no underlying, intrinsic or fundamental value that isn’t already reflected in the price”.

Carney then turns to the role of money. “Money is used to measure value”. Without money the markets’ decentralised exchange of goods and services could not operate.

But what determines the value of money? For a long time, the price of gold determined the value of money, but this broke down when the supply of gold failed to keep pace with the growth of the economy. Today, the key role of a central bank is to control the demand and supply of money and therefore its price.

To do this successfully, Carney argues that the central bank must have the belief and confidence of the people, and that is best achieved by an independent central bank charged to pursue both monetary stability and financial stability. But people will only support “the tough decisions that are necessary to maintain the value of money provided the authorities deliver monetary and financial stability. They must do so transparently and fairly.” In short, “The value of money and the legitimacy of the Bank come from the people’s trust and their belief in the fairness and integrity of the system.”

Right now, however, the problem is that “Today this economic approach to value has spread widely. Market value is taken to represent intrinsic value.”

In the final chapter of this first part of his book, Carney explores the negative impact of moving from a market economy to a market society. where “Increasingly the value of something, of some act or of someone is equated with their monetary value.”

According to Carney this emphasis on market value ignores the following flaws:

1. Many markets are imperfect driving a wedge between private and social value.
2. Humans are not always rational and forward-looking in their decisions.
3. Social capital and natural capital are generally not priced, and well-being includes other factors that are not bought and sold, while the distribution of well-being also matters.
4. What is not bought and sold on the market risks being ignored or at least under-valued.

Consequently, as Carney sees it: “The view that market outcomes always equal value creation gives rise to three sorts of risks”, which are:

• market failure where externalities such as the common good are ignored;
• a tendency to under-value the future relative to the present, and over-rely on past information; and
• a flattening of our values with insufficient consideration of that which isn’t priced, such as distribution, nature, community and diversity.

This marketisation of our society, “is now undermining our basic social contract of relative equality of outcomes, equality of opportunity and fairness across generations.”

Three crises of value(s)

These changes in our values have led to “a series of crises of finance, health, climate and identity that are not merely the product of shortcomings in the ability of markets to value, they are also the result of how the encroachment of markets has changed our values.” Carney’s basic thesis is that how we measure value is a common cause of the three crises of credit, climate and Covid explored in part two of his book.

First, the failures of the financial system as exposed during the Global Financial Crisis were caused by the authorities and market participants falling for the lies that “markets are always right and that markets are moral”. This led to light touch regulation that encouraged the growth of credit by increasingly risky institutions as “bad behaviour went unchecked, proliferated and eventually became the norm.”

Carney then discusses how to create a simpler, safer and fairer financial system. The key will be to rebuild the social fabric of trust on which finance depends.

Covid is the health crisis, which is discussed next, but it also brought on an economic crisis. Carney argues that the severity of the Covid crisis was magnified by the way we discount the future and thus under-value resilience by not taking the necessary preparations to mitigate such risks.

On the other hand, Carney says that the Covid “crisis could help reverse the causality between value and values”, as “societies have prioritised health first and foremost, and then looked to address the economics. Public reaction to the threat of the virus revealed the values of solidarity and community”.

This is part of an interesting discussion of the responsibilities of the state and how these have evolved through time. Carney writes that “Decisions around Covid policy represent arguably the most difficult, and undeniably the most significant weighing of sacred and secular values ever performed”, where sacred refers to the value of human lives.

The third crisis discussed is climate change where “Measuring the consequences of climate change goes to the heart of the challenges of value and valuation.” Not least there are “fundamental questions of value(s), particularly since much of what climate change destroys, such as biodiversity and communities, is not explicitly (financially) valued. And our assessments of the relative value of policies to address climate change depend critically on how much we value the future.”

At present, however, “Climate change is the ultimate betrayal of intergenerational equity.” Indeed, we face a “tragedy on the horizon in which the catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional perspectives of most businesses, investors, politicians and central bankers.”

Carney has an interesting discussion of how we can bring the war against climate change into the heart of policy-making by turning urgency into opportunity. “The transition to a green economy can be the greatest commercial opportunity of our time.”

“Meaningful carbon prices are a cornerstone of any effective policy framework. … But the scale of the challenge means that carbon prices alone are not enough. The policies for achieving our climate goals should be designed to encourage the economic adjustments and technological innovations at the least possible cost, while sharing the burden of adjustment within countries and across nations.”

In addition, changes in climate policies, new technologies and growing physical risks will prompt a reassessment of virtually every financial asset. The financial system must be retooled to make the markets a key part of the solution. Climate change must be “as much a determinant of value as credit worthiness, interest rates or technology, where the impact of an activity on climate change is a new vector, a new determinant, of value.” This will also involve changes to financial reporting and risk management.

Reclaiming our values

In part three of his book, Carney draws on the experience of the three crises to create action plans for leaders, companies, investors and countries, before finishing with a new platform-based approach to managing the global commons in the wake of the demise of the rules-based international order.

The first chapter in this part discusses the future role of leaders and emphasises the importance of “values-based leadership…because such leadership across society is at the heart of how we can refind our values.”

After a discussion of different leadership models, Carney examines the traits and behaviours necessary for leaders to catalyse change, help their colleagues realise their potential, and encourage their organisations to fulfil their mission. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the essential attributes of values-based leadership and what is required in the present disruptive age.

“Companies are the engine of value creation in a modern economy,” and how purposeful companies create value is the focus of this chapter on companies. A key theme is that “purpose is fundamentally a question of value and values”, where a company with true corporate purpose is responsible and responsive to more than its shareholders, by building honest, fair and lasting relationships with its employees, suppliers and customers, and by being a good corporate citizen making full contributions to society.

Furthermore, Carney argues that “By uniting broader interests behind a common purpose, purposeful companies can be more impactful, dynamic and profitable”, not least by generating competitive advantage, reducing risks and inspiring employees.

The message from the next chapter on Investing for Value(s) is that the key to the rebalancing of value and values required for sustainable investing “will be developing and embedding comprehensive and transparent approaches to measuring stakeholder value creation by companies.”

One approach is to develop and embed measures of a wide range of sustainability outcomes, commonly referred to as environmental, social and governance (ESG). Investment that incorporates ESG measures can mitigate risks and enhance long-term economic value.

Beyond simply incorporating ESG considerations, “Impact [investment] strategies make investments with the intention of generating positive, measurable social and environmental impact, alongside a financial return.”

The core challenge is to value activities that are not priced in markets. A comprehensive understanding of relevant research and evidence is required, but in many cases it is better to tailor analysis based on monetarisation to specific investments or how best to achieve a specific impact, such as reducing child poverty or addressing climate change.

Finally, the last two chapters bring together the many policy strands already discussed to develop a policy framework to build value for all.

A critical problem is that despite the benefits of technological innovation for many people “globalisation and technological advance are associated with low wages, insecure employment and striking inequalities.” And too often this is resulting in right wing populism and a loss of trust in government.

But as Carney says, “It isn’t globalisation and technology that have led to increased inequality but our response to them.”

Carney agrees that “the dynamism of markets is essential to our prosperity and wellbeing.” So “Country strategies must make existing markets work better and build new markets. But markets alone will not solve our most intractable problems.” In addition, “the marketisation of our society has created some of our problems.”

Carney’s solution is to ensure that markets, too, have a purpose. “We need political processes to define our goals and objectives – to set our values.” Then “through shared understanding and values, we can channel the dynamism of markets to create value for all.”

To do this Carney says we need to reinforce the core values of solidarity, fairness, responsibility, resilience, sustainability, dynamism and humility which are emphasised throughout his book, and in the remaining pages he provides extensive examples of how to put these principles into action.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/02/mark-carney-values/

 

FROM THE TOP, WE MIGHT HAVE GOT IT WRONG ABOUT CARNEY.... AND WE HOPE SO, BUT WE STILL BELIEVE WE GOT IT RIGHT.... CARNEY IS A CLEVER TRICKSTER. HE GIVES US THE FEELING OF GOODNESS WHILE COUNTING THE CASH LIKE SCROOGE... SOCIAL VALUE NEXT TO GREED? IT'S LIKE HAVING A BUCKET OF WATER TO STOP A 10,000 ACRES BUSHFIRE... WE COULD BE WRONG. ONE OF MY FRIEND IS A FULL-BLOWN SOCIALIST AFTER HAVING WORKED FOR AMERICAN BANKS...

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bc-0UbFcNM