German FAZ: Schellnhuber’s WBGU Has Strange Ideas When It Comes To Democracy – Compares Proposed Great Transformation To Bolshevik Revolution

Hans Schellnhuber and WGBU want to revolutionize society in 2 decades. Source: http://nachhaltigkeit2009.commerzbank.de

Awhile back Hans Schellnhuber, director of the ultra-alarmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), released his master plan for the Great Transformation of global society – from one fuelled by carbon to a Utopian one powered by fuzzy-warm renewable energy.

This he claims would rescue the planet from imminent climate catastrophe. To help guide world leaders through the transformation, Schellnhuber and group of wisemen authored a guide called: World In Transition – A Social Contract For Sustainability.

Economist Carl Christian von Weizsäcker wrote a commentary in Germany’s flagship online political daily Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Schellnhuber’s 420-page master plan. The WBGU’s plan calls for the transformation to be done in 10 – 20 years, where “not only must the production and consumption habits fundamentally change, but also the incentive systems, institutions, normative maxims and scientific disciplines (foremost the economic science disciplines).”

Sounds pretty damn radical.

Weizsäcker sees the whole thing as naive and worrisome, and reminds us that the Neolithic Revolution took thousands of years to complete and that the Industrial Revolution took 150 years, and is actually still in progress in many poorer countries. So how can anyone expect a revolution of the scale Schellnhuber proposes to be accomplished in 20 years? By having a total lack of knowledge of how societies work is the answer.

Of course this Great Transformation would be led by a powerful guiding global state, Schellnhuber proposes. Weizsäcker goes on to compare the WBGU’s proposed endeavour to Vladimir Lenin’s “proletarian Russian Revolution of 1917, under leadership of the Bolshevist wing of the communist party”, which also promised to “lead humanity to a new age, into a global-wide economic and societal system that would end the exploitation of men by men and create a world that could not be better”.

Weizsäcker adds:

We know what history teaches us with respect to this announcement of a Fundamental Revolution. After the citizens said good bye to the most brutal of methods of the guiding Stalin-State, the empire ended up in a hopeless dead-end stagnation which finally ended, and had to end, in the total collapse of a historical lesson”.

I’d say Schellnhuber and the WBGU are well beyond naive.  What Schellnhuber proposes is nothing less than a reckless and adventurous social engineering experiment, tantamount to a half-baked plan that calls for taking apart a jumbo jet full of passengers and putting it back together again as a glider – all in midflight.

Schellnhuber and his WBGU of course would like to have the audience believe that this Revolution would be carried out “democratically, freely and successfully.” Deomcracy itself would have to undergo a transformation. Just how democratic would the WBGU’s proposed new society be? Weizsäcker translates the WBGU’s text as follows:

More democracy yes, but only if it serves to achieve our aims.”

and comments:

We are actually not speaking about democracy when the wisemen (modern: the scientists) of the country prescribe the result up front and inform the people: ‘you may decide – but only as long as you decide correctly. Otherwise we will have to take away your co-determination on behalf of the collective good.”

Now allow me to translate: That’s tyranny, and not democracy. Weizsäcker sums it up:

Karl Popper and Friedrich August von Hayek would turn in their graves if they heard this highly offical recipe as a new form of democracy.”

Of course not everyone is wary of the WBGU’s proposed societal coup d’etat. There are many leaders out there who, all doped up with green ideology, think these adventurous, poorly thought out schemes are going to save humanity. Like German President Christian Wulff.

Sigh – those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.

30 responses to “German FAZ: Schellnhuber’s WBGU Has Strange Ideas When It Comes To Democracy – Compares Proposed Great Transformation To Bolshevik Revolution”

  1. Edward

    Only a short step to a, totalitarian dystopian ‘low carbon’ nightmare.

    Another geneticist [getting in over his head] by the name of John Sulston [‘People and the Planet’] has a very similar view PG.
    He wrote in ‘The Times’, yesterday [no link]:

    “We need socio economic structures that distribute goods more fairly, reducing the damaging effects of excessive consumption in the rich countries and lifting the least developed out of poverty.”

    And the RS + Sulstonare here: http://royalsociety.org/Does-population-matter/

    “We will be examining the extent to which population is a significant factor in the momentous international challenge of securing global sustainable development, considering not just the scientific elements, but encompassing the wider issues including culture, gender, economics and law.”

    Scientists [Good Grief!] ‘getting above their station’??

    A Global Socialist Utopia? But then, that’s what the UN/EU/agenda 21 et al…………… is all about.

  2. DirkH

    Seems to be the only sane amongst the Weizsäckers. His father was a Nazi bomb dabbler who became a denazified far east mythology philosopher and pacifist; his brother is one of the strongest proponents of the Great Transformation.
    http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Ulrich_von_Weizs%C3%A4cker
    One of the books of his brother:
    “Faktor Vier: doppelter Wohlstand – halbierter Naturverbrauch; der neue Bericht an den Club of Rome ”
    Factor four: Doubled wealth, halfed consumption of Nature: The new report to the Club Of Rome.

  3. Ulrich Elkmann

    And of course it would not work without destroying all other players in the Global Carbon Game. “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.” And seeing the goal Schellhuber aims for, his political idol does not seem to be Comrade Stalin, but rather Pol Pot. (On the other hand: if he managed to transform the world according to his will, you WOULD be able to run the remaining mess on 80 % renewable energy: firewood, peat, draft animals and raw human muscle.)

  4. DirkH

    Let us here the words of Schellnhuber himself; from May 2011:
    http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wissen/natur/generationenvertrag-vorwaerts-zur-natur-1626516.html
    “Onwards To Nature!”
    “When in 1875 for the first time a steam engine was married to a spinning mill, a technological powder keg exploded.”
    “In the shower of sparks of the following innovations the metabolism of the modern civilization was created; driven ever faster by a black mineral wrested from the abdomen of the Earth.”
    “And so, in undeterring ignorance, we head towards the firewalls of the planetary system.”
    And on and on it goes. The man is insane, a German Ehrlich. He is in fact much more a Malthusian than a warmist. I am a little surprised – he doesn’t seem to be a member of the Greens. Maybe he needs to keep up the appearance of political neutrality.

    Finally, a funny one:
    “A Berlin architect, Julian Breinersdorfer, has shown me designs for “wind high rise buildings” whose thermal convection should surpass the power of nuclear reactor cores.”

    If you like wind turbines, you’ll just LOVE this one:
    http://julianbreinersdorfer.com/content/airtower?slide=5

    1. DirkH

      a mistranslation: Replace “spinning mill” with “weaving loom”; sorry.

    2. Edward

      Insane is correct – can’t argue with you there Dirk;>

  5. DirkH

    And a big thank you for posting the link. Weizsäcker’s critique is eminently important and of the highest standard; the Weizsäcker’s have extremely good political connections. One of the brothers became federal president a decade ago. It looks like our next government might become a grand coalition between SPD and CDU again; that would keep the Greens outside and maybe all the madness can at least be slowed down. His word counts.

  6. mindert eiting

    Reminds me of David Suzuki, who is weeping the whole night in his bed (with his wife) about the fate of our planet. Sentimental old guys, who want to do something really big at the end of their lives. They have invested in complete nonsense, but that may make them dangerous. Should stay away from politics as far as possible.

  7. Bruce of Newcastle

    Only 21 years. They forget so quickly.

    Why does Dr Schellnhuber not understand that human beings are just not built to be communal in this way?

    And that is ignoring the fact that no warming is evident for over a decade – for very good scientifically explained reasons. Sigh.

  8. R. de Haan

    They are too late
    Britain’s major independent television broadcaster today joins major national newspapers in finally accepting that man-made global warming is history.

    http://climaterealists.com/?id=8473

    1. Bruce of Newcastle

      Interesting that they have embraced the UV angle so strongly. I suspect they couldn’t mention GCR’s because that would get them too close to Prof Svensmark’s hypothesis, which the consensus has been rubbishing consistently. And they can’t mention solar cycle length correlation with temperature because that invoke Drs Friis-Christensen and Lassen, who likewise have been rubbished for decades.

      I suspect this is what writers call a macguffin.

      But I am encouraged on an otherwise day of sadness (the carbon tax passed the Aussie lower house).

  9. R. de Haan

    In the UK even the Greens no longer believe their own religion
    http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/10/even-greens-dont-believe-it.html

    That said I must say that totalitarian concepts remain a threat under all circumstances.

    Especially in Germany.

    Hope I didn’t insult anaybody, just speaking the truth.

  10. R. de Haan

    In the mean time the EU is almost on target.
    They just announced the Eurozone will face a state of permanent austerity (read increasing poverty) and encouraged by the Australian Lower House passing the long battled Carbon Tax conveniently lined up for Kyoto II.

    http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/10/permanent-austerity.html

    1. DirkH

      Austerity means “self-imposed thrift”; there’s nothing wrong with that.

      Australia impresses nobody. EU wants to continue Kyoto under the condition that USA and China collaborate; in other words: It’s dead.
      Climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard says it makes no sense without them.
      (Which has always been obvious but it’s the first time the Eurocrats admit it.)
      http://orf.at/stories/2083657/

  11. DirkH

    After the wife of Kinnock took over power in Denmark and introduced the fat tax, she now wants Denmark to be the leading light in Climate protection by reducing CO2 by 40% til 2020. She wants to achieve this by stopping the use of Coal and Oil til 2030 and Gas til 2035. Collective traffic will be subsidized and individual traffic taxed more heavily. Electric cars will be subsidized.
    http://www.klimaretter.info/politik/hintergrund/9582-daenemark-klimalicht-im-dunkeln

    We should not forget that Denmark draws a lot of income from North Sea and Arctic Oil and Gas resources.
    5.5 Mill people; 310bn USD GDP; 90,000 barrel net Oil exports/day; 3.5 bn cu m/year Gas exports (no significant imports).

    So what we have is a self-righteous, hypocritical nation that refuses to use its own resources (but sell them to other nations nevertheless); the same syndrom we see in Norway or Australia. We don’t have to expect them to go broke; in spite of their hare-brained economic madness they simply earn too much money by exporting oil and gas.

    Connie Hedgaard is Danish. They seem to be very bad thinkers.

  12. Ulrich Elkmann

    “Dänemark: Klimalicht im Dunkeln”: a small , tiny flickering light in a vast sea of darkness… Prophetic words.

  13. RCS

    Does anybody in government take this man seriously? I’m afraid they do.

    He strikes me as a most toxic combination Erlich [-snip] and Dr Strangelove.

    When does he retire?

  14. Ulrich Elkmann

    RCS: the short answer is: Never. “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” As a full professor at the University of Potsdam, he will become a Professor Emeritus in 2015, at 65 (he will still be able to give lectures, examine students and partake in University functions – he just will be no longer on their payroll). His main function however, is as Director of the Potsdam Instute, which means that he can set his own deadline (no pun intended) or until fate intervenes. And being a Pundit and professional Cassandra, he does not even need that post (though without it, he might be restricted to writing just the introductions to alarmist reports, instead of authoring/authorizing them; i.e. he could no longer lead and direct the attack himself.) Paul Ehrlich, as far as I am aware, does no longer hold any academic or administrative posts – it has not kept him out of the limelight (the same might be said, inter alia, of Noam Chomsky).

  15. Ulrich Elkmann

    Sometimes they DO fade, though, even from memory. Chomsky, these days, is making the lecture round hectoring the few last die-hard Trokyites/Maoists/ Luminous Path acolytes. And there was was that American polemicist who won an Oscar for a risible and hysterical “documentary”… No, not Al Gore… Michael?… Moore…? …or something.

    1. DirkH

      Milton Friedman Puts A Young Michael Moore In His Place
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0dmRJ0oWg&feature=related

  16. R. de Haan

    DirkH
    12. Oktober 2011 at 12:01 | Permalink | Reply
    “Austerity means “self-imposed thrift”; there’s nothing wrong with that”.

    Not in this case.

    The EU kind of “Austerity” is nothing less but a form of suppression and enslavement.

    Austerity replaces “bankruptcy” and the bankruptcy is replaced by funneling immense amounts of tax payer money into deep dark pits.

    Bankruptcy is an integral part of a capitalist system.

    If you perform badly and loose your money you bankrupt.
    The system is painful for those involved but it’s quick and honest.

    Banks that overplayed their cards should go bankrupt.

    The EU’s austerity concept is nothing more but a poverty machine serving the elite.

    The time has come to wake up and stop this madness.

    1. DirkH

      I agree with you that freedom is not a value that is promoted by the EU. Well, it’s not even mentioned in their Great Transformation plans.

      But I think in the end it will all collapse like the Soviet Union. For a historic perspective:
      Oleg Atbashian speaking in Colorado
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd3waSb9g7g&feature=player_embedded
      He’s the guy behind
      http://www.thepeoplescube.com

  17. R. de Haan

    DirkH,

    I think you severly underestimate the current process that’s going on.

    The EU and it’s leadership are poised to reduce consumerism and destroy the capitalist system along with our liberties and freedom.

    They see the EU as a temporary cluster of dissolving states to become part of the new Global Empire.

    The President of the EU said so in his first public speech.

    The process is described in detail at http://green-agenda.com and it’s described as the First Global Revolution.

    Economic collapse of the West is part of the big plan.

    And as it looks now they are ahead of schedule.

    1. DirkH

      Well, you’re assuming that their plan will work. If I learned anything, it’s that the Eurocracy and the Law Of Unintended Consequences are very good friends indeed. It’s a bit of a one-sided friendship, though – wherever the Eurocracy goes the Law follows them.

      In other news: Old friend Dana – who now runs a lot of SkepticalScience – doesn’t know how to digitize data.
      http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/skeptical-science-digitization-problems/

  18. R. de Haan

    “Well, you’re assuming that their plan will work. If I learned anything, it’s that the Eurocracy and the Law Of Unintended Consequences are very good friends indeed. It’s a bit of a one-sided friendship, though – wherever the Eurocracy goes the Law follows them”.

    It works all right:
    EU debt has skyrocket debt to BNP rates of EU member states to approx. 100%
    without solving the crises.
    This percentage of BNP will further rise in the near future as BNP goes down and debt goes up making permanent austerity a fact.

    In the mean time EU and local policies will continue to hike the prices of energy, food, water and taxes.

    Protests will be confronted with a strong arm of the riot police or even the military and the internet will become subject to control turning our free nations into police states.

    The political elite will do anything to keep it’s position and advance their including violence and even war.

    Europe won’t be the place to be for the next decade.

    1. Edward

      The horsemen ride, the black shadow moves once more, creeping across Europe, sovereign debt, fiscal debt, banking black holes – it’s all madness and will result in widespread unrest and violence.

      The ideal, of a western Socialist federal European superstate [a political fantasy realised by the European elites in, ‘the Treaty of Rome’] was supposed to prevent war – the political elites; “do not, did not trust us and our petty nationalisms.”

      Well, they started the ball rolling in 1914 [whose repercussions and lunatic reparations caused 39/45] and we have not advanced much up to the present, now we are on the brink of their [new improved!] totalitarian Utopia – it is imploding before our very eyes – so, back to 1918 and all that.

      And, whose damn fault is that?………………..The European political hegemony still clinging on to wealth and power and doubly stupid, after all those years…………………. and if people ignore history, then, history repeats itself.

  19. R. de Haan

    Lord Monckton on EU, Democracy and Climate
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdb5YT8RPDA

    I have posted part 1 of the video
    Also look part 2 and part 3

    “UK has become a fascist tyranny”

  20. R. de Haan
  21. mwhite

    “Yet the Mail’s recent coverage of climate change and energy issues offers a clear demonstration of how an unaccountable newspaper editor can simply ignore the PCC’s rules when he chooses to promote its own ideological views over the best interest of his readers.”

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/17/paul-dacre-daily-mail-climate-change

    “Paul Dacre’s climate coverage undermines his case for self-regulation of the press
    The Daily Mail’s editor ignores the rules when he chooses to promote his own ideological views over the best interest of his readers”

    It would appear that the Guardian believes that laws should be made to prevent the media from displaying views skeptical of AGW.

    1. DirkH

      Bob Ward is one of the guys preparing the ground for Jeremy Grantham.
      http://seekingalpha.com/article/270577-jeremy-grantham-s-buy-ideas-may-again-double-the-s-p-500-s-return

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