Environmental Activism as a Capitalist Trojan Horse, and ‘The Bill Gates Factor’

For more than half a century, Earth Day is the time in April when all thoughts turn to love…of the planet.

Actions dedicated to conservation and reforestation of the planet, ending plastic pollution, limiting climate change and restorative agriculture are a few of the movements reflected in this giant engine of hope for all the masses on the globe. [1]

The initiative these days is supported by dozens of Non Governmental Organizations, including the Rockefeller backed Club of Rome. So, activism sanctioned by the major players world-wide. [2][3]

The problem one can run into, of course, is that as we saw with the COVID-19 “pandemic,” the Rockefellers, the Gateses, and the other higher entities are not exactly on the same page as the rest of us and are arguably using the crisis we are facing as an opportunity for some other objective.

It is true that simple corporations have jumped on the climate bandwagon each Earth Day. For example, Nestlé has pledged to cut their CO2 emissions in half by 2030. Though given their track record of child labor, pollution, price fixing and mislabeling, it is tempting to think of such commitments as old fashioned “greenwashing.”[4][5]

But the more urgent question facing all of us determined to do our part for the living world is the far more significant attempts to mislead. When the powerful players decide to use modern environmentalism for reasons other than maintaining a strong, vibrant Earth, we the people could end up feeling more than just profoundly screwed. Our sacrifices for our natural home and hearth could ultimately be in service to their profits, and at the end of the day, it would not alter the planet one iota!

Is our Earth Day and our environmental actions as subscribed by the billionaire masters leading us to our collective desperation or some place even worse? That is a question posed in this Earth Day episode of the Global Research News Hour.

In our first half hour, Australian Michael Swifte joins us to talk about the way the American and Australian philanthropists with their bought and paid for climate NGOs have suckered us into a form of de-carbonization that will not actually reduce emissions, but help the fossil fuel industry get even MORE oil and gas out of the ground. Then in our second half hour, the legendary  Indian scholar, environmental activist, and ecofeminist Vandana Shiva appears to address the role of the so-called philanthrocapitalists, and particularly of Bill Gates, in undermining food security and diversity in the supposed name of saving it.

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Transcript of Vandana Shiva, April 17, 2023

Part one

Global Research: You opened your book “Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy: a Global Citizens Report on the Corporate Control of Technology, Health, and Agriculture,” but talk about the land and how Indigenous communities worldwide have evolved the most ingenious farming systems over time. And then, about a century ago, traditions began to collapse due to the chemically intensive agricultural model which originated under the IG Farben companies, the “poison cartel” as you put it, that started making chemical weapons in World War I and World War II. And then, in an attempt to keep making profits, turned to use in agriculture. They saw a big opportunity in the Green Revolution to make money. This began a new area of conquest, and not just of land but of the food on which we all feed. Talk about how this system transformed the quality of diets in the world, particularly the Global South where the Green Revolution was practised.

Vandana Shiva: Yeah. Michael, actually before the industrialization of agriculture, including its Green Revolution phase when it was imposed on the Third World, is the privatization of land and the creation of private property. People think private property has always been around. In my country, land was never owned as private property. Land was a commons, and allocations were done by the community for its use. Exactly like territories were, you know, assigned to Indigenous cultures, people knew which group has which land.

For India, its as recent as ‘83 or ‘87 when Lord Cornwallis wrote with one sentence, that “All the land of India belongs to England.” All the continent of Australia belonged to England. All of Canada belonged to England. All of the United States belonged to England. So all of Africa started to belong to England. And the alienation of land is really the story of colonialism. And that’s why the Land Back movement of Indigenous people is so significant as de-colonisation and re-establishing our relationship with the Earth in a rightful way.

The next step of alienation is IG Farben and Standard Oil as the origin of “Oneness Vs. the 1%.” The German companies have the technology, the chemical technology, but the fossil fuels from which the chemical industry made its fertilizers,…