Billionaire 'Good Club' Talks Overpopulation

[Gouda]

Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 350303.ece

America's richest people meet to discuss ways of tackling a 'disastrous' environmental, social and industrial threat

May 24, 2009

John Harlow, Los Angeles

SOME of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.

The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.

Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America’s wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey.

They gathered at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel prize biochemist and president of the private Rockefeller University, in Manhattan on May 5. The informal afternoon session was so discreet that some of the billionaires’ aides were told they were at “security briefings”.

Over dinner they discussed how they might settle on an “umbrella cause” that could harness their interests...Taking their cue from Gates they agreed that overpopulation was a priority.

Gates, 53, who is giving away most of his fortune, argued that healthier families, freed from malaria and extreme poverty, would change their habits and have fewer children within half a generation.

At a conference in Long Beach, California, last February, he had made similar points. “Official projections say the world’s population will peak at 9.3 billion [up from 6.6 billion today] but with charitable initiatives, such as better reproductive healthcare, we think we can cap that at 8.3 billion,” Gates said then.

Another guest said there was “nothing as crude as a vote” but a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.

“This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers,” said the guest. “They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming.”

Why all the secrecy? “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government,” he said.

subject heading punctuation edit - gouda

[RomanyX]

Why all the secrecy? “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government,” he said.

Oops.

[Gouda]

Interesting "guest".

Unfortunately we're stuck with anonymous insider guest sources on this one.

Thanks John Harlow, Los Angeles scoop reporter.

***

On edit:

"...without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government.”

Somehow I don't think they really worry about that too much. Perhaps that's exactly the impression they want to press.

[slomo]

The "Good Club" moniker stood out for me also when I read this article elsewhere.

This is why I totally reject good vs. evil dichotomies, in all their forms, even by people I consider to be well-meaning. "Good" (if that even means anything) is too easily hijacked by predatory, vicious, demented persons and organizations.

C.f. Christianity.

[Gouda]

Gates 'Helping' Africa with Hunger via Genetically Modified Solution

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/gates-gm-fo ... s-efforts/

October 17th, 2009

Bill Gates, speaking at a World Food Prize forum in Iowa on Thursday, told global food leaders that an "ideological wedge" threatens his global effort to help farmers.

Gates and his wife have focused in recent years on helping alleviate hunger and poverty by giving small farmers the tools to produce more. The Gates Foundation has given more than $1.4 billion to agricultural development, and on Thursday announced nine new grants worth $120 million aimed at raising yields and farming expertise in the developing world.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the most under-nourished region in the world, with almost 42% surviving on less than $1 per day. A combination of decades-long drought, regional conflict, and a burgeoning population contribute to the world's worst hunger situation.

The $120 million announced on Thursday is intended to help develop genetically modified crops that are more drought-resistant and productive in marginal conditions. Nitrogen-fixing legume crops, sorghum and millet, and sweet potatoes are all undergoing genetic experimentation sponsored by the Gates Foundation.

Genetically modified(GM) crops have been a topic of intense agricultural debate since their creation. GM crops undergo genetic manipulation in a laboratory, usually for the purpose of increasing crop yield or pest resistance. In many countries in Europe, vendors are legally required to clearly label GM foods; there is skepticism about the science behind genetic manipulation.

Many believe that GM crops will lead to even greater crop homogenization and threaten the stability of the global food supply. Wendell Berry, one of America's most prominent agricultural researchers, told the Washington Post, “The inevitable aim of industrial agri-investors is the big universal solution... And the kind of agriculture we’re talking about that leads to food security and land conservation is locally adapted agriculture.”

In his speech on Thursday, Gates rejected what he saw as a false dichotomy between sustainability and productivity, but avoided mentioning genetic modification.

“The technology and new approaches that are transforming agriculture in other parts of the world can be applied in new ways, and help Africa flourish too,” Gates said. “This global effort to help small farmers is endangered by an ideological wedge that threatens to split the movement in two. On one side is a technological approach that increases productivity. On the other side is an environmental approach that promotes sustainability. It's a false choice, and it's dangerous for the field.”

The World Food Prize honors people who have contributed to ending hunger worldwide. More about the forum and Gates' speech can be found here.

[Hammer of Los]

See?

I told you the NWO were the good guys.

[DoYouEverWonder]

Their biggest fear is that there's only a handful of them and billions of us.

Instead of worrying about controlling the population, they should try learning how to share, since they're the ones tying up most of the money and resources.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Instead of worrying about controlling the population, they should try learning how to share, since they're the ones tying up most of the money and resources.

Really. Really? You're going to take it there, huh...

Are you seriously implying that the lives of poor children are somehow more important than Oprah's shoe collection? That's just low. Those kids should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps like she did.

I think you should all read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Dynamite, and really think about how your own negativity is the REAL cause of your suffering. Then, when you're ready to own up to that and make a change, you should check out this DVD called "The Secret."

[norton ash]

Well, we can chipped and tagged and spayed and neutered, and if you wind up not tagged, without a proper home and owner, you'll be rounded up as a stray and given 96 hours to be claimed or adopted.

Your chances will be better if you're small, young and cute.

[Sounder]

Slomo wrote…

The "Good Club" moniker stood out for me also when I read this article elsewhere.

This is why I totally reject good vs. evil dichotomies, in all their forms, even by people I consider to be well-meaning. "Good" (if that even means anything) is too easily hijacked by predatory, vicious, demented persons and organizations.

C.f. Christianity.

It is hard to market evil unless it can be packaged as being good. So, what is it within our mentality that allows evil to be presented as being good? To me, the answer is not found by denying that there is ‘good’ and ‘evil’, but rather by identifying how it is that so many can mistake one for the other.
For ‘good’ to flourish, the facts on the ground must be considered, conversely ‘evil’ gets it’s juice by ignoring and repressing relevant facts. The question for me is; how are the relevant facts repressed? Both the right and left seem to contain certain imperatives that swamp out subtlety and in turn rationality. In this case ’free enterprise’ from the right and dreams of a technological utopia from the left. As Kant would say; these imperatives do not deserve to be universalized. Not ‘free enterprise’ because dishonest operators must be made subordinate to regulations and not utopia because human designs always contains the seeds of further problems.

[smiths]

lets get real about this topic

they are almost certainly lying nasty duplicitous scums with a warped evil agenda but ...

over-population is the biggest problem there is,

not one of the major environmental and energy issues we face doesnt have its roots in over-population,
if you cut the worlds population by a third tomorrow the most pressing dangers with regard to food and water security, deforestation and fossil fuel burning would be ameliorated

we need to be able to disentangle sane ideas from their evil sources

another one is global institutions, yes we can all agree that a rockefeller inspired world government is a nightmare,

but many of the environmental and institutional issues we face can only be resolved with global frameworks administered by global bodies of some sort

i think some of the knee jerk reactions are dumbing us to the realities of how you actually try and organise 6 billion people on a struggling planet

[smiths]

no thoughts or responses to my challenge on population and global institutions?

[barracuda]

I dunno, I'll take a stab at it...

lets get real about this topic

they are almost certainly lying nasty duplicitous scums with a warped evil agenda but ...

over-population is the biggest problem there is,

Why? It seems that by referring to the issue as "over-population" you have framed the issue completely before there has been any discussion whatsoever. The issue is, baldly, "population". The question of "How many humans can the planet sustain?" has a variety of possible answers dependant upon what variables one allows and what is considered adequate in terms of your definition of sustenance. I have seen a huge range of takes on the answer to this. For example, the World Wide Fund for Nature considers authoritatively in it's Living Planet Report that the human "ecological footprint" had exceeded production by about 25 percent by 2006. Yet it is also apparent to me that the WWF is a quasi-colonial armof the fascist British crown seeking to hoard prime real estate and militarily strategic resources for the purpose of empire. It's almost as if the U.S. Army reported that the world population needs to be cut by two thirds, and provided a handy plan for doing so.

not one of the major environmental and energy issues we face doesnt have its roots in over-population,

I'd say these issues have root in exploitation and waste. Capitalism? Maybe. Too many poor people? I doubt it.

if you cut the worlds population by a third tomorrow the most pressing dangers with regard to food and water security, deforestation and fossil fuel burning would be ameliorated

If food and water and forests and fuels were properly produced and used, not wasted in the indulgence of the shabby luxury considered by the west to be the "standard of living", the population "problem" would be equally amerliorated. Blithe commentary on some fantasy of the seamless, painless rapture of two billion people is just that.

we need to be able to disentangle sane ideas from their evil sources

Of which de-population and ideas like pan-global autonomous individual motor vehicular travel are in the latter category.

another one is global institutions, yes we can all agree that a rockefeller inspired world government is a nightmare,

but many of the environmental and institutional issues we face can only be resolved with global frameworks administered by global bodies of some sort

i think some of the knee jerk reactions are dumbing us to the realities of how you actually try and organise 6 billion people on a struggling planet

On this we are in complete agreement. The predicament is the "how". Somehow these schemes always have an undecurrent of "we" form global administrative bodies, while "they" need to depopulate.

[Nordic]

I dunno, I'll take a stab at it...

lets get real about this topic

they are almost certainly lying nasty duplicitous scums with a warped evil agenda but ...

over-population is the biggest problem there is,

Why? It seems that by referring to the issue as "over-population" you have framed the issue completely before there has been any discussion whatsoever. The issue is, baldly, "population". The question of "How many humans can the planet sustain?" has a variety of possible answers dependant upon what variables one allows and what is considered adequate in terms of your definition of sustenance. I have seen a huge range of takes on the answer to this. For example, the World Wide Fund for Nature considers authoritatively in it's Living Planet Report that the human "ecological footprint" had exceeded production by about 25 percent by 2006. Yet it is also apparent to me that the WWF is a quasi-colonial armof the fascist British crown seeking to hoard prime real estate and militarily strategic resources for the purpose of empire. It's almost as if the U.S. Army reported that the world population needs to be cut by two thirds, and provided a handy plan for doing so.

not one of the major environmental and energy issues we face doesnt have its roots in over-population,

I'd say these issues have root in exploitation and waste. Capitalism? Maybe. Too many poor people? I doubt it.

if you cut the worlds population by a third tomorrow the most pressing dangers with regard to food and water security, deforestation and fossil fuel burning would be ameliorated

If food and water and forests and fuels were properly produced and used, not wasted in the indulgence of the shabby luxury considered by the west to be the "standard of living", the population "problem" would be equally amerliorated. Blithe commentary on some fantasy of the seamless, painless rapture of two billion people is just that.

we need to be able to disentangle sane ideas from their evil sources

Of which de-population and ideas like pan-global autonomous individual motor vehicular travel are in the latter category.

another one is global institutions, yes we can all agree that a rockefeller inspired world government is a nightmare,

but many of the environmental and institutional issues we face can only be resolved with global frameworks administered by global bodies of some sort

i think some of the knee jerk reactions are dumbing us to the realities of how you actually try and organise 6 billion people on a struggling planet

On this we are in complete agreement. The predicament is the "how". Somehow these schemes always have an undecurrent of "we" form global administrative bodies, while "they" need to depopulate.

Love ya, Barracuda, but that seems simplistic, which is a bit odd, since the truth is actually far more simple than that.

We are in the midst of a mass extinction. Caused by humans. We are destroying the rain forests of the planet, which can only lead to pure misery for billions of people.

So it doesn't really MATTER who's rich, who's not, who's wasting the resources ..... ALL ARE GUILTY. In Haiti, the poor people cut down whatever trees they can find and burn them, in order to turn them into charcoal, because charcoal is one of the only things they can sell.

As one tiny example.

Then you've got businessmen bulldozing huge tracts and planting palm oil plantations.

Then you've got Monsanto .....

I mean, really, the only way to really look at it is TOO MANY PEOPLE.

The world could absorb a great deal of what we might call the "evils" of humanity if there weren't so damn many of us, rich and poor.

But it can't any more, and it hasn't been able to do so for a generation or more, and it's going into a positive feedback cycle, only to grow exponentially worse.

Easter Island comes to mind, a completely denuded wasteland with a few dazed skinny souls who can't remember how their grand culture disappeared.

The earth is just another Easter Island.

While we're pointing fingers and talking about "hey, maybe you should destroy the rainforest more EFFICIENTLY, the planet is dying, and even the billionaires pretty soon won't have much to live for unless they start living under artificial bubbles.

Options? How about an international body, with enforcement powers, to stop environmental crimes when they occur? Something like the UN, but with teeth, and why the hell not, I mean, isn't the preservation of our ability to BREATHE and DRINK and EAT kind of vital? There is absolutely no international body that, as far as I know, even monitors the destruction of our planet, which, last I checked, we all had to share.

We're spending $5.5 millions buck an HOUR in Afghanistan, $133 million a day and that's before whatever "surge" is coming, and for what? $400 bucks a gallon for gasoline in the tanks over there, and for what?

Meanwhile, we're doing absoultely nothing as six billion humans eat and shit and pollute and destroy stuff all around the planet.

We're all guilty.

We need to quit reproducing, we need to fucking abolish the catholic church, we need to just fucking hand out free condoms to every goddamn woman on the planet (how much could that possibly cost?) and we need to quit letting species disappear forever.

I mean, all this bullshit about "carbon emissions" when we're destroying the lungs of the earth. WTF? It's like telling someone who already has lung cancer they should avoid second hand smoke.

[barracuda]

A few comments.

Love ya, Barracuda, but that seems simplistic, which is a bit odd, since the truth is actually far more simple than that.

We are in the midst of a mass extinction. Caused by humans. We are destroying the rain forests of the planet, which can only lead to pure misery for billions of people.

The planet has gone through numerous mass extinction events. It's part of the life cycle whether we cause it or not. We are part of nature.

So it doesn't really MATTER who's rich, who's not, who's wasting the resources ..... ALL ARE GUILTY. In Haiti, the poor people cut down whatever trees they can find and burn them, in order to turn them into charcoal, because charcoal is one of the only things they can sell.

As one tiny example.

Overpopulation in Haiti has discernable causes, the root of which can be rather easily traced to colonialism and the oppression that has accompanied it for the entirety of Haiti's existence as a place known by westerners. The economic activities of the Haitians are a poor example for your argument, as they have none.

Then you've got businessmen bulldozing huge tracts and planting palm oil plantations.

Then you've got Monsanto .....

Now you're getting closer.

I mean, really, the only way to really look at it is TOO MANY PEOPLE.

I believe the world could sustain 1,000 billion people. I think it may be inevitable that it will.

The world could absorb a great deal of what we might call the "evils" of humanity if there weren't so damn many of us, rich and poor.

But it can't any more, and it hasn't been able to do so for a generation or more, and it's going into a positive feedback cycle, only to grow exponentially worse.

Easter Island comes to mind, a completely denuded wasteland with a few dazed skinny souls who can't remember how their grand culture disappeared.

The earth is just another Easter Island.

The Easter Islanders could easily have prevented the catastrophe which overcame them. They were destroyed by their religious practises and by effects of climate change uncaused by man.

I love you too, man.