STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Gore Cranks Up Pressure on Water Promotion
By Staff News & Analysis - April 19, 2010

Gore takes cash for water campaign from chemical firm … Al Gore, the self-styled squeakiest-clean and deepest-green politician in American history, has some explaining to do this weekend. His environmental organisation has taken money to raise awareness about the need for clean water from a controversial chemicals company involved in the aftermath of one of the world's worst pollution disasters. Dow Chemical, the US firm which now owns the leaking pesticides factory responsible for thousands of deaths in Bhopal, India, is sponsoring Life Earth events in 150 cities today. The event aims to raise money for clean water programmes. … Dow has branched into water purification technologies in recent years. Campaigners claim the sponsorship deal is part of its wider strategy to exploit business opportunities in water scarcity. Tim Edwards from the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal said: "This is categorically a green-washing exercise. It is one plank of Dow's Human Element campaign which started in 2006 to clean up their image by marketing themselves as a sustainable, environmental, caring company and repair the damage caused by scandals such as Bhopal." Dow is the sole sponsor for 24 hours of fun-runs and concerts organised by Live Earth, which hopes to create a global movement to tackle water shortages affecting one in eight of the world's population. Greenpeace, which for years has been highly critical of Dow's environmental record, refused to comment because it supports Live Earth. Live Earth also refused to comment. – UK Independent

Dominant Social Theme: So much water, so little to drink.

Free-Market Analysis: We're keeping an eye out for this water-promotion thingy. We think it is ramping up, just the way the global warming promotion started small and then became an out-of-control hydra-headed monster that threatened to swallow Western civilization whole. Only the power elite could come up with the idea that carbon dioxide, a necessary gas, was poisoning the planet. Only the power elite could come up with the idea that water is a scarce commodity on a planet that has some 70 percent of its surface covered with water.

But over the next months and years we may indeed be subject to a great deal of information about the scarcity of potable water, the draining of underground aquifers and, generally, the idea that water is a precious commodity that is about to run out entirely. And once this fear-based promotion has been properly placed, we will doubtless hear about the solutions as well.

We are sure we will learn that the UN has plans in place to properly ration water. We will be subject to vast interventionist proposals for a water tax. The new monitoring systems now being put into place to measure individual power consumption may be reconfigured to measure the details of individual water consumption as well. And if that's not possible, some other form of monitoring will be proposed.

Yes, the drumbeat of the approaching water promotion is sounding more loudly. Because we are attuned to these promotions, we notice them. Water is definitely a favored dominant social theme. Yes, it is indeed a major meme and tied to the global warming theme that has so significantly and unfortunately (from the power elite's point of view) unraveled. We wrote about the coming water-scarcity promotion in a previous Bell, in fact, as follows:

For us, the bottled water mania was a good deal more deceptive than it seemed, and fraught with intimations of more serious consequences yet to play out. We suspected the beginnings of an elite promotion, a dominant social theme that would end up – in an indeterminate numbers of years hence – in a generally accepted proclamation of a global water scarcity.

We still suspect this is one of the very next promotions of the elite. We think we hear it coming closer. There are signs, here and there. Log on to at least one top US financial site and you will likely confront an ad for a heavily promoted book on how water is soon to be in short supply. And we have been seeing more and more articles popping up (such as the one excerpted above) in the mainstream press reporting on how water is becoming an increasingly scarce and valuable resource.

This is how we have been taught the elite works, unfortunately. The Anglo-American power elite attempts to consolidate power and wealth through fear-based promotions. Global warming and peak oil would be two increasingly failed promotions that have been at the forefront of elite efforts in the past few years. But almost everything that the power elite has proposed to the general society over the past few decades has been aimed at amassing further control of the very basics of survival.

We are fairly certain that food and water are among the next dominant social themes that the elite will try to focus on, as weather and warming have dominated the past few years. While the idea that global warming is caused by manmade carbon dioxide is among the most ludicrous promotions ever presented, it nonetheless has retained some traction simply because of elite dominance. Energy and food scarcity-promotions are likely intended to build on this still-in-play global warming meme, along with water, thus providing a triumvirate of control of humanity's most basic resources.

Read more here: Water Scarcity Promotion Begins?

We are not surprised, either, to find Al Gore right in the middle of this upcoming promotion. As we have pointed out, these promotions are supposed to be inter-related. They stem from a perspective that human beings are blight, a ravenous horde of bipedal locusts eating and drinking their way through the meager resources of a lonely, green planet. This vision is so powerfully ignorant, so disgustingly smug, so bereft of any grace or hope, so banal in its application that there are hardly any descriptions that do it justice.

Such a vision, as well, denies the insights of marginal utility and celebrates the ignorant and incorrect analyses of Thomas Malthus that were debunked hundreds of years ago. Nonetheless, they have been repurposed for modern-day consumption by millions who follow the hair-styles of Lady Gaga but could not tell you one of the most significant of all human achievements – the dividing line between classical and neo-classical economics.

It is marginal utility, of course. One of the most significant and resonant concepts of all time. The Babe Ruth of economic insights. Along with "human action," these two profound perspectives stand at the beating heart of the Austrian economic movement. They explain, in fact, how the world really works. Marginal utility tells us that only the market itself can determine the infinite variability of pricing "at the margin." Human action tells us that whenever there is a challenge to human survival, or generally a challenge, even one deemed insurmountable, certain human beings will take action to solve the problem. Not government. Not bureaucracy. Not agents of the empire.

These two concepts are profoundly threatening to the powers-that-be. Marginal utility inevitably informs us that every law, every regulation, is actually an economic distortion, a price fix leading to scarcity, queues or both. Human action informs us that no matter the challenge, the difficulty, the scarcity, human beings themselves will move to fix it – will ameliorate the difficulty as best they can without waiting for government to propose a solution.

Marginal utility explains why laws never work the way they are supposed to. Human action explains why government predictions about scarcity and looming disasters are always wrong as well. Human beings themselves anticipate government prognostications. Faced with a looming famine, people plant gardens. Faced with an energy shortage, people chop wood. Faced with a water shortage, people will doubtless dig wells.

Unfortunately, this won't stop the hysteria – or it would not have pre-Internet anyway. No, the drums beating for this scarcity or that danger will beat more loudly than ever. Fortunately, modern communication technology gives us a way to combat these endless attacks on human dignity and freedom. We anticipate that over time the Internet will debunk the onrushing water-scarcity promotion just as it has the global warming meme, the peak-oil scam and many others.

It's hard to be a promoter of dominant social themes these days. The mainstream media, which carries the power-elite's metaphorical water, is not the only communication channel anymore. The Internet has made more and more people aware of what's going on and how manipulated they've been in the past.

We often get pushback on this point, though we think it's a good one. We recently carried the news that libertarian congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex) was tied with president Barack Obama in terms of approval ratings. And now we read this in the Washington Post:

Majority of Americans distrust the government: survey … Nearly 80 percent of Americans say they do not trust the U.S. government to do what is right, expressing the highest level of distrust in Washington in half a century, according to a public opinion survey. Only 22 percent of Americans say they trust the government "just about always" or "most of the time," according to the Pew Research Center survey released on Sunday.

Americans' trust in the federal government has been on a steady decline from a high of 73 percent during the Eisenhower administration in 1958, when the "trust" question was first posed in a national survey, the research center said. Economic uncertainty, a highly partisan environment and overwhelming discontent with Congress and elected officials were all factors contributing to the current wave of public distrust, the report said.

After Thoughts

Times are changing. Power elite promotions are failing. Perhaps it's time for a war. We don't know what the future holds, but we do know that more and more people are waking up to how manipulated they've been. People need to make up their minds that they don't have to live in fear. That's the box that they're supposed to inhabit. But they don't have to go there. Try a little human action instead. It will make you feel better, less frightened and more in control. And that's a start.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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