Healing and counseling sessions
Global warming: what are we doing wrong?
September 2007, revised April 2008
"Unless the race, the society, the nation is moved towards the spiritualization of life, or moves forward led by the light of an ideal, the end must be littleness, weakness and stagnation."
~ Sri Aurobindo, "The Human Cycle"
Contents:
- Global warming is a fact - but what causes it?
- Solar activity - a more probable cause?
- Can Kyoto Protocol help?
- Spiritual perspective
- What is really wrong with economic growth? (inhuman working conditions, corrupt business practices, free trade, terminator seeds, biofuels, speculations on the financial markets etc)
- Pillaging Mother Earth
- The environmental movement
- Protecting the environment - and what else?
- The biggest problem: loss of God power
- Mass delusion: the belief that Earth has limited resources
- What does is take to connect to God's abundance?
- Global warming might not be as bad as we think
1. Global warming is a fact - but what causes it?
Look at the weather recently. Hurricanes, forest fires, tsunamis, floods. Extreme weather, extreme temperatures. Something is happening, something strange, with Earth. According to reports, there is more and more evidence that global warming is real and that humankind is causing it by emitting too much CO2. To briefly explain, CO2 is a gas emitted whenever fossil fuels are burnt, and it happens in industry, transport, power generation, in households for heating and cooking, practically in all segments of life.
The claim that global warming is caused primarily by anthropogenic (emitted by human activities) CO2 is taken as a fact and as a starting point of all climate change mitigation strategies and international treaties. However, there is a number of scientists who denounce that claim. Serious scientific papers have been written on the issue (e.g. Zbigniew Jaworowski, CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time, EIR Science, March 2007), packed with measurements and field data, written by people who have been studying the topic for 30-40 years. And they seem not to belong to any lobby (but one can never know).
2. Solar activity - a more probable cause?
Those scientists claim that global warming is actually caused by changes in solar activity, in particular by cosmic rays, and not by human activity. They say that (I paraphrase) "studies showed that the main mechanism by which cosmic factors regulate weather on Earth are cosmic rays which penetrate Earth's atmosphere. Their flux is determined by fluctuations of magnetic fields of the Sun and by the Solar System migration over the varying environments of the Milky Way, with different concentration of dust and activity of novas. Cosmic rays produce ionization of air molecules, which stimulates the formation of clouds in the troposphere. At low solar activity, i.e. in certain parts of the Milky Way, more cosmic rays penetrate the troposphere, and more clouds are formed, which acts like an umbrella that prevents penetration of the Sun rays."
So, at a lower solar activity, the Earth is warming up less, and the global temperature is lower. While at a higher solar activity, the global temperature rises. Observations show that we are now in the period of higher solar activity, which results in higher temperatures on Earth. That shows that a true reason behind global warming could be the Sun, and not the anthropogenic CO2. Note that they don't deny that global warming is happening, they are just saying that it is most likely not caused by human activity.
It left me thinking. I always had my suspicions about the efficiency of political efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, because according to scientific analyses, huge reductions, more than 50% of present emissions, would be needed to stop the rise of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. And we can never achieve that, not any time in the near future. Even if we would close down all industrial facilites, stop driving cars and travelling by airplanes, we'd still have to heat our homes and produce electricity.
The Kyoto Protocol - an international treaty to reduce CO2 emissions - is aiming at 5% emissions reduction with respect to year 1990, and that is practically nothing, it cannot stop the rise of CO2 concentration whatsoever. So what exactly are we trying to achieve with the Kyoto protocol? And more importantly - does it mean we are doomed?
I tried to look at the problem from the spiritual perspective, and to make sense of the idea that humanity could be wiped out because of what we could call industrialization, or in broader terms, economic growth. As a person who deeply trusts in the wisdom of the universe, I would say that that doesn't make much sense. Why would we suffer such fatal consequences for exploiting the resources that we found in the earth, for wanting to have more comfortable lives, to have machines do the hard physical work for us, to travel and explore new places, to grow, to strive for improvement. That's natural, there is nothing wrong about that.
And another thing: only one part of humanity - a much smaller part - is responsible for industrialization and the unsustainable use of resources. Why would we ALL have to suffer the consequences? In fact, those who are the poorest would be hit first - either due to the sea level rise or damages to agriculture caused by extreme weather events. Again, if this planet is a platform for spiritual growth, which I deeply believe it is, it doesn't make sense that all of humanity is affected by the abuses of the few.
5. What is really wrong with economic growth
So let's see what exactly is wrong about economic growth and how we as humankind could be wrong about managing our affairs. Well, economic growth in itself is not the problem, but the motives are important - why we want to grow, and the means - how we do it. If our goal is selfish - to get rich without consideration for the others, and through even exploiting the others, that's wrong. Similarly, if we want to grow through exploiting natural resources without any consideration for neither the environment nor future generations - that's wrong too. And also, if we put the material, economic growth before personal, spiritual growth and get caught in the rush for material possessions without asking ourselves what is the real meaning of life - that's not the way to go.
So let's explore those wrong motives and wrong means in a bit more detail.
1. Inhuman working conditions, corrupt business practices
As the history shows, economic growth in the last few centuries was almost always coupled with wrong motives and wrong means. The motive was always the same: personal gain, often at the expense of the others. We have heard stories about inhuman working conditions in the UK and US factories in the 19th century. We heard about long working hours, child labor, no medical care, no rights whatsoever for the workers. We heard about famine and disease and very short lifespan of those unfortunate people. While their employers were not too bothered. Until much later when they were forced to change their policy, through the demands of trade unions.
Unfortunately, similar conditions exist today too - in sweatshops in China, Thailand and elsewhere in East Asia, where people (including children) work for long hours for less than 5 dollars a day, without any rights whatsoever. While the owners of those sweatshops - for example Western fashion brands - make huge profits by selling their products at high prices on the Western markets. They save not just on labor costs but on environmental and other requirements, which in developing countries are much less stringent or non existent. 1
We see the same motive and even the same means as more than hundred years ago. The consciousness didn't really change. Only the workers in the West can not be treated like that any more - they won the battle for their rights - and so the exploitation has moved to where it is still possible.
Effect on the workers in the West
And now, more than one hundred years later, we have the same inordinant accumulation of wealth by the few, at the expense of the majority. This majority doesn't refer just to underpaid Asian workers, but to workers in the West too, whose value of labor diminishes when their employers move their production facilities abroad. A Western worker cannot compete with an Asian worker because he costs the employer much more, and so in the era of globalization the workers class in the West (those who live from physical labor) is much worse off than a few decades ago. Because their salaries didn't grow as much as the living expenses did. Specially not as much as the real estate prices. 2
Corrupt business lords in the developing countries
Not just the Western businesses are doing the harm. Many developing countries have corrupted political systems, in which illegal and environmentally harmful practices are possible. One example is Indonesia, where illegal logging, actually pillaging, of millions of hectars of the tropical forest for the pulp and paper industry, not abiding to any environmental standards, is taking place in front of the government's nose. Even those who are in the business legally, received their concessions through political connections, and not through credibility. Enforcing the laws and slowing down the rate of destruction seems to be a very slow process in Indonesia.
Another example is clearing of huge areas of the Amazon rainforest for the purposes of cattle ranching in Brazil. Even more appaling than cutting down the forest is the fact that local ranchers treat their work force practically as slaves, keeping them in permanent debt (their salaries are not enough even for food) and using force, even murder, to silence those who dare to protest. Due to such practices and not obeying to environmental standards (hygienic standards are questionable too), Brazilian beef comes at very low prices and is exported all over the world. Recently there was a scandal with McDonald's using Brazilian beef for their hamburgers.
Cheaper isn't always better
Consumers are not aware of those things when buying goods. Cheaper doesn't always mean better - we need to look beyond the price. What we also have today is Western markets being flooded with cheap Chinese goods (produced by Chinese-owned businesses, not the Western ones). Sometimes the product is so cheap that you wonder if even the transport costs were covered. This is called price dumping, where the strategy is to sell at prices lower that production costs, so that in a few years the competition would be wiped out, and they would take over the market. When that is achieved, the prices can start growing again.
Although buying cheap can seem like a good deal, Western consumers should know that by doing that, they are diminishing the value of their own labor even further and putting the local products - which do comply with social and environmental standards - out of competition. Plus, they are supporting the exploitation of both people and nature in the developing countries, thereby helping - albeit unwittingly - to uphold the corrupted business practices there.
2. "Free" trade
Another problematic issue is free trade. Countries are not allowed to protect their own industrial and agricultural products through import taxes, which means that the imported goods get the same treatment as domestic. In theory that should be the most economically efficient (i.e. cheapest) solution, however the problem is that those goods are not produced under the same conditions. We have a competition between cheap goods produced in let's say China (and they are cheap because of illegitimate savings on labor costs and environment protection costs) and domestic goods, produced at much higher costs. And of course, the ones produced in China win. So free trade is by no means fair trade, and again it is a loss-loss solution for humanity - both the exploited Chinese/Brazilian/Asian workers and the workers in the West are at loss. Only the elite wins.
Free trade usually comes as a pre-condition for receiving loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Country receiving the loan is required to remove tariff protection for domestic products and open up its markets.
Haiti is an example of what happens to domestic food production when free trade is introduced, i.e. when import taxes are lifted.
"Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened?
In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million in desperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out). But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some industries, to open up the country's markets to competition from outside countries. The US has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF.
Within less than two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called 'Miami rice.' The whole local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, US subsidized rice, some of it in the form of 'food aid,' flooded the market. There was violence . . . 'rice wars,' and lives were lost.
The Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, a Haitian priest who has been the pastor at St. Claire and an outspoken human rights advocate, summarizes: "In the 1980s, imported rice poured into Haiti, below the cost of what our farmers could produce it. Farmers lost their businesses. People from the countryside started losing their jobs and moving to the cities. After a few years of cheap imported rice, local production went way down." (source)
At the same time, agricultural products are often subsidized in the export countries, and protected by import taxes:
"Rice is a heavily subsidized business in the US. Rice subsidies in the US totaled $11 billion from 1995 to 2006. One producer alone, Riceland Foods of Stuttgart, Arkansas, received over $500 million in rice subsidies between 1995 and 2006."
"In addition to three different subsidies for rice farmers in the US, there are also direct tariff barriers of three to 24 percent, reports Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute - the exact same type of protections, though much higher, that the US and the IMF required Haiti to eliminate in the 1980s and 1990s." (source)
We see that free trade is free only on the side of the IMF and its proteges, but not on the side of the loan receiving country. There is no freedom in such arrangement. And again, everybody loses except the large players involved.
3. Food crisis - the consequence of greed
At the time of writing this, April 2008, a large food crisis is shaking the world, with food prices sky-rocketing and people in poor contries on the brink of starvation. Analysts are offering possible reasons for what is going on, one of them being the fact that substantial amounts of crops are now being diverted towards production of biofuels, instead of being used for food. 3
But those who follow the market trends, say that the crisis was looming for a while already, because the world per-capita output of grains of all kinds (rice, wheat, corn, and others) has been falling for the last twenty years. Whereas in 1986 it was 338 kilograms per person, by 2006 it went down to 303.
"Further, an increasing proportion of food crops is being produced by large multinational corporations whose power and reach has ballooned under the World Trade Organization and spin-offs like NAFTA even as small family-run farms have lost the protection of parity pricing and been priced out of business.
The loss of agricultural self-sufficiency has been exacerbated in much of the developing world by International Monetary Fund lending policies. Under the “Washington consensus,” entire nations have been forced to give up agricultural self-sufficiency and convert farmland to export commodities while displaced rural populations migrate to the slums of large cities such as Lagos, Nigeria. Today those populations are the ones most grievously threatened with starvation." (source)
Those who benefit from high food prices are large agribusiness corporations involved in food production and handling (who by the way have one more ace up sleeve: terminator seeds 4) and financial institutions who finance agricultural operations, i.e. various phases of the production/consumption cycle, from giving morgages on the land to retail space renting. In other words, it’s the financial elite of the world who benefits the most from rising food prices.
High oil prices at the moment - again caused by geopolitical games - only exacerbate the problem. Heavy subsidies on biofuels in Europe and USA further reduce the available amount of crops for food. And as salt on the wound come speculations on the food market, where food is being treated like any other commodity, e.g. oil or precious metals.
"It has become a haven for financial investors fleeing from paper assets tainted by subprime mortgages and other toxic credit products. The influx of buyers drives prices and makes food unaffordable for the world’s poor.
“It’s fashionable. This is the year of agricultural commodities.”
"Speculation in food as a commodity has been sharply accelerated by the decline in the value of the dollar, soaring oil prices and the promotion of biofuel production in the US and elsewhere." (source)
This all shows how the lack of higher vision, the Christ vision, leads to false priorities (profit above all) and false practices (e.g. biofuels more important than food) that in the name of helping the planet, are in fact pushing it deeper into crisis.
If we put the above mentioned wrongdoings in the group of "crimes aganst humanity", the other group of malpractices could be called "crimes against nature". One of the most severe side-effects of economic growth is indeed inconsiderate use of natural resources and environmetal pollution. In the examples above we saw that some business owners, both those in the West and in the developing countries, have absolutely no respect and no sensitivity to Mother Earth. They behave like nomadic hordes who, after having exhausted what was available in one place, will easily move to another place (another planet if necessary) and continue their savagery there.
In fact, there are people, among them the respected scientist Stephen Hawking, who believe that because our oil and gas reserves will not last for more than 100 years from now, we shoud be actively searching for alternative locations in space, to resettle there. And that's why we need to invest even more in space research.
What those people are saying, albeit indirectly, is that it is OK to keep doing what we have been doing so far - we just need to find another platform and the problem is solved. But what if Mother Earth is just one, at least for us. Like mother is just one. We cannot simply leave it behind after we have used it up. That's not the point of us being here. Planet Earth serves as a schoolroom and we need to learn how to live responsibly and consciously. So we surely won't be given another platform to continue our malpractices.
Mother Earth is our only platform and we need to learn the lessons. God said "multiply and have dominion over Earth". But this dominion doesn't mean material dominion - that we are allowed to use our technology to subdue the nature and exploit it for our selfish goals. No, it means spiritual dominion - that we realize our true role as co-creators with God and start bringing nature into alignment with God's vision. Nature was created as a pristine system which we as co-creators were supposed to bring even higher, through our light and creativity. It doesn't mean subduing, or fighting against nature, but working together with nature.
The field of environmental protection and related legislation didn't develop until as late as 1970s. Before that the stress was mostly on protecting public health, but since 1970s the health of the environment was also brought into the picture. 5
Industrialization of the 18th and 19th century brought with it the feeling that we can - finally - overpower nature, and with machines and technology do things which were earlier unimaginable. Technological progress became the Alpha and Omega. Before that we feared nature, or felt weaker than nature, but since we got ourselves the technology, we became the masters. Since long ago mankind was in the consciousness of "man against nature", but technological progress finally tipped the scales in our favour. Man thought he can now do whatever he wants without reaping the consequences of his actions. That was in the 19th century.
One century later we started to notice the consequences of our irresponsible behavior. We have realized that man is a part of nature and cannot survive without it. It was a good realization, a necessary awakening. And so we introduced environmental standards and regulations, charted even more wilderness areas as nature parks, and introduced the concept of "limits to growth". This concept advocated that there are too many people on Earth and not enough resources for everybody. We need to slow down, reduce our appetites, and reduce population growth. Most of these reductions referred to the developing countries.
Myriad of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) sprang up, with the agenda of protecting the environment and conserving nature. People with genuine love and sensitivity for nature joined in, and their voice became ever stronger. Sustainable development became the new buzzword and even a source of good living for some NGOs. But some of the nature lovers went into the extreme of claiming that sustainable development should practically mean no development, because whatever we do in the natural environment is bad and harming Mother Nature.
They remained in the same "man against nature" consciousness, like the industrialists were one hundred years ago, only the environmentalists went into the opposite extreme. Instead of subduing nature, they advocated subduing man by denying him his right to be here on this planet, to build himself a home, to have a good life. They started to see man as an alien on Earth, a force that can bring only damage to the planet. That's why they supported the anti-population movement and limits to growth philosophy. By doing that, they unwittingly made themselves an instrument of the elite, working for the agenda of the elite. Which is "all growth for us, no growth for the others".
8. Protecting the environment - and what else?
Let's not forget that the environmental movement started at the time when the biggest industrial growth in the West already took place, and developing countries started to wake up, wanting their piece of the prosperity cake. But limits to growth said no. You cannot. It is not sustainable. Or if you do it, it has to be through us in the West who will provide you with expertise and technology to do it correctly. In other words, we will control your development and we will charge a price for it.
So with rising environmental awareness of the general population, the power elite swifly switched from being the largest polluters to being the nature's biggest "defenders". But what they did is they used environmental reasons, specially the anti-nuclear propaganda 6, to prevent the poor countries from growth. Poor countries have large populations and some of them have a lot of natural resources too, so if they become strong and independent, the Western elite might lose their control over the world, and over the resources of course. That was not to be allowed. The poor need to remain poor. And so they did. In fact, corrupt and militant regimes in the developing countries serve this purpose quite well. So the West is not really interested to change it and bring true democracy to those nations. Despite all the talk, they in fact support it.
These are the two faces of the environmental movement today. There is a positive side, with people genuinely wanting to preserve the environment and stop the pillaging. But this sincere and legitimate wish is often used by the elite to stop all growth, even a positive one, even the necessary one. Or to acquire concessions for managing protected areas (nature reserves) where they are the only ones in charge - no competition from small entrepreneurs, because those are not allowed there. Environmental activists are usually not aware of that tactics. They fight for the cause, but whose cause is it?
People sensitive to nature and all spiritually aware people should understand that sustainable development doesn't mean that we should suppress our growth - if it is growth with a higher vision, with spiritual vision. There are no limits to such growth, if we are one with our Higher Being and creating from that consciousness. We don't need to sacrifice our growth so that nature could be preserved, because through our balanced growth we will be raising nature too, towards God's perfection. What we need to sacrifice, or rather give up, is selfish goals and selfish means of growth. But not the desire to Be More, to be our True Selves and raise up all life.
9. The biggest problem: loss of God power
So now we know. Economic growth itself is not the problem - the problem is how it is done and with what motives. Globalization wouldn't be a problem either if everybody had the same conditions to begin with, and then they would trade freely. But with present inequalities in the world, it only becomes a means of exploitation, serving the benefit of the few and depriving the rest.
There is something very wrong with that setup. And maybe that's why we have global warming and weather extremes - because we are allowing a very distorted consciousness to rule the planet. And not because we emit too much CO2. 7
Because of the free trade demands, domestic food production in many poor countries was destroyed over the last 20 years, and now, when the food is missing, they cannot help themselves. They depend on another loan from the World Bank in order to survive. Someone put themselves between us and the basic necessity - food. Between us and the land. Between us and the seed. Between us and living space (just think how much you have to pay for a home!).
In fact, someone put themselves between us and the Mother, and we are becoming orphans on our own planet. We are denying our own God-given power and giving it over to false gods.
That has to stop if we want to enter the Age of Aquarius without a major crisis. People need to wake up. Both those in the West and in the poor countries. But specially we in the West because we can still influence our governments, our voice still has some power.
Majority of people in the West are so blinded by material growth that they lost all spiritual perspective and all sensitivity to what is going on in the rest of the world. While people in poor countries feel helpless and don't want to stand in their power. They are in the victim mentality. They don't want to take responsibility for their lives, and that's why totalitarian regimes and dictatorships (often coupled with narcomafia and similar armed gangs, like for example in South America) can survive in those countries.
And then we see the US government, a bit of a self-proclaimed savior, coming in and trying to bring down those regimes, fighting against "evil dictators". That's what they say to the American people who then agree to finance war and send their boys to the battle. But as we saw, that's just a smoke screen, because often it even suits the elite to have someone to fight. Because other interests are involved. So the war continues, the promised democracy and prosperity are as far as they could be, and the status quo in those countries (even deterioration of conditions) continues.
Home in the USA, the saviors are currently the democrats who fight the "evil republicans" and promise big changes, the long-awaited revolution. But until someone takes a good look in the mirror and sees what our problem really is, and what the current global crisis is all about, there won't be any true change. Because the only thing that can liberate this planet from the eternal struggle is spiritual change - change of consciousness.
10. Mass delusion: the belief that Earth has limited resources
Everybody, all of us, are wrong in one thing: thinking that Earth has limited resources, in the sence that what we have now is the maximum we can get. That there is no higher source from which we can draw. We know that Jesus fed the crowd with just five loaves and two fishes. He asked help from the Father, and the Father multiplied it. And there was enough for everyone, and even some food remained. What does that mean?
That means that this planet is not cut off from God and that God didn't forget about us once he created Earth. True, on the 7th day he rested, leaving the task to create to us. However, we are co-creators, which means that we are creating with God's help, that is if we are connected with our higher selves. We are not left alone, and it is not true that what is currenly available is the end of our possibilities.
Maybe we are looking in the wrong places - digging in the ground instead looking up to the sky. Not to utilize the wind but to ask God for help, for solutions. What to do, dear God? How do we feed the hungry, how do we fuel our economies, how to proceed? Why does no one remember to ask God? Jesus always turned to God when he was in doubt.
But the problem is that we ask in the wrong way, usually from the victim consciousness We pray to God to lift our burdens, to do a miracle for us, but that's not how co-creation works. We need to take responsibility for our lives and stand in our God-given power, and then God will help us. There is a saying, "Help yourself and God will help you along the way". This means accept your spiritual identity and then you will have access to God's unlimited abundance.
And second, our intention is important too: do we only pray for our personal goals and when that is taken care of, we forget about our fellow men? If we had the money, would we be like the elite too? Because without the Christ vision, people tend to sway between two extremes: either they are inferior or superior, either the victims or the controllers.
That's why there are many cases where people who come into positions of power become similar tyrants as those against whom they were fighting. Money spoils people, they say. That's because there is a lack of Christ balance, lack of balance of the True Self. So again, the world won't be saved until we find that inner balance, until we pull out the beam from our own eye, before judging others.
11. What does it take to connect to God's abundance?
We have cut ourselves off from God's abundance, we removed God from our lives, we put Jesus on the pedestal as an unreachable idol, and now we are crying how difficult life is. Of course it is difficult with all those false concepts of God and worshipping false gods. Where is true God? We believe he abandoned us, while he is here all the time, within us. Only he cannot help us until we decide to let him. Can we let God in our lives? Can we live up to our true task - to be the Christ?
It is true, God does expect us to be the Christ, because that's who we are, that's what we are created for. But we are afraid to take that responsibility. Because we fear it's too big a cross to bear, too big a sacrifice. While in reality, it is only the sacrifice of the ego. Not of our True Self.
So you see, we could be saved tomorrow. If we would want to. But we would need to do it under God's terms, which includes accepting our true identity and becoming the Christ. Many will say that it is too much. But you who are reading this will know that it is not too much, but that it is the only possible way. And as much as it is a sacrifice (of the ego), it is also the greatest blessing, the greatest joy, the greatest victory.
We are NOT helpless, the world is not helpless, we can change things in a very short time if we acknowledge our divine birthright. We need to step into the reality of Christ, so that in 2012 we can participate in the victory of Light, victory of our Being. So that God's light doesn't burn us but bless us.
12. Global warming might not be as bad as we think
Global warming is happening, that's a fact. But it doesn't need to have only negative consequences. There are good sides too, for example huge land surfaces in the North that are now unusable, will become arable. For example in Siberia and Canada. And it doesn't mean that the South will become a desert. If we fullfil our spiritual purpose, the changes in climate will be very gradual, and there will be enough time to adapt. There won't be natural disasters and weather extremes, because they reflect extremes and distortions in mass consciousness. Maybe some of those "natural" disasters are not even natural but caused by weather manipulation, through a secret technology known to the military for several decades already. Maybe such abuses will come out into the open as well.
So again, there is a smooth way, and there is a bumpy way. If we focus on what is really important - awakening to our spiritual reality and taking responsibilty for our lives and our planet - we will have a smooth transition to the Age of Aquarius. If we remain where we are now in consciousness, the transition will be bumpy, maybe even very bumpy. The choice is ours, as always.
Ultimately, we need to choose whether we want to be the slaves of our false identity and of those who imposed themselves as false gods on Earth, or we want to break free from the illusion and step into our only reality - the reality of God.
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1 In fact, the main cost for the Western businesses seems to be advertising. I found that famous American golf player Tiger Woods in year 2000 signed a 5-year sponsorship agreement with Nike worth $100 million. Which means that he gets $55,000 a day. While workers in Nike sweatshops in Thailand get 4 dollars a day. In Indonesia, they get as little as 2 dollars per day.
2 The trend of rising real estate prices can be noticed in the last decade or so, since there is a growing number of rich buyers who have pushed the prices up. Rich private buyers are often those who earned money through financial speculations on the stock market. That is what we could call easy money, earned without investing neither physical labor nor creative ideas nor seed money for new business ventures. It is based on speculation. For those people it is in fact free lunch, the costs of which have to be borne by the rest of the society.
3 A relatively recent trend that contributes to increase in food prices is using crops to produce biofuels, as a way of reducing CO2 emissions from transport. Because biofuels are heavily subsidised in Europe and USA, substantial amounts of crops are diverted towards biofuels production. Also, large portions of arable land are turned into "energy crops" plantations instead of being used for growing wheat, rice and corn. Energy crops plantations are specially popular in Asia and South America, where oil palm and soybean plantations (used for biofuel production) are obtained by clearing the native rainforest.
4 Farmers all over the world buy genetically modified seeds (hybrids), as they give higher yields and are more resistant to diseases. Large seed producers like Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont and others came up with a way to increase their sales: they invented the so-called terminator seeds, kind of seeds which are good for one season only because the crop they produce is sterile, i.e. cannot reproduce itself. So farmers are forced to buy new seeds every year, instead of collecting them from the previous harvest.
Half of the world's farmers are poor and cannot afford to buy seeds every season. And yet they grow 15-20 percent of the world's food and directly feed at least 1.4 billion people - 100 million in Latin America, 300 million in Africa, and one billion in Asia (source). It is not difficult to conclude what such policy means for poor countries - less crops and more expensive food.
5 Nature conservation policy was until 1970s practiced only in natural parks - the first national park in the USA, Yellowstone, was proclaimed in 1872.
6 It is funny that Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace and once sworn opponent of nuclear power plants, is now talking in favour of nuclear energy. He realized some things in the meanwhile, but back then Greenpeace did a very good job to completely disable nuclear energy.
I personally don't think that nuclear energy can prevent climate change, as Mr. Moore now believes, because climate change has primarily spiritual reasons (in fact in the Golden Age we will have free energy, for which no physical resources will be needed, and not nuclear energy). But this example shows the power of the propaganda. Propaganda usually serves either the elite or the counter-elite because they are the only two groups who can afford it.
7 In fact, an even higher truth is that if there weren't for the lower consciousness of mankind and hardness of heart which makes us insensitive to suffering of our fellow men and Mother Earth, excessive CO2 emissions could be cleansed from the atmosphere through its natural cleansing mechanisms. However, because of our lower consciousness, which causes emotional and mental pollution of the Earth's energy field, the physical cleansing processes don't work properly (similar is true for our body - it is more susceptible to illness when we are under stress). That is the reason why excessive CO2 emissions cannot be washed away, and are causing global warming. But physical pollution, in form of CO2 emissions, is not the main problem - the main problem is mental and emotional pollution, i.e. impurities and false beliefs in the collective consciousness.
Additional reading:
Cause and core of pollution and Earth changes: "There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear."
