Sweden’s “Circular Economy” has created mountains of trash in trip “Back to the Past”

In Sweden the once “Jolly” Green Giant has been replaced with one sad, sad, sad mountain of trash after another, spewing toxic fumes and sporting hordes of furry creatures to thrive in garbage and decay. Nearby residents are fleeing, and those who can’t, are taping up windows, hoping the fumes will not cause permanent illness or death.

A fire started at the dump in a southern Stockholm municipality on Dec. 23 and continued for months, covering an area about 10,000 square meters, that included 100,000 tons of debris.

At first it seemed impossible to put out the Botkyrka blaze, because of the potential risk from landslides when covering the fire with sand or water, according to the local fire brigade. After months heavy equipment was finally used to begin to control the conflagration.

The flames will probably erupt again in this flammable mixture with warmer and dryer weather.

You might assume this trash tragedy is a result of some evil corporation, seeking greedy profits.

It’s not.

Proponents of the New Green Deal and the Club of Rome have united to change Sweden’s future into a “circular economy.” Goals include limiting GDP growth, recycling/reusing, promoting small economies of trades-persons and independent contractors, as well as limiting population growth, so allegedly the earth’s resources won’t be depleted.

One focus is to eliminate employer/employee relationships and replace them with contracted workers, who work a few hours for each of many small operations. The plan also promotes using foreign workers by moving populations globally, wherever cheap labor is needed.

Until this year Sweden boasted a flagship energy/recycling program that extracted electricity from waste, solving the problems of disposal and power shortage simultaneously. When new politicians took power this year, they decided to reduce energy production, as well as its use.

To begin this shutdown the government instituted an energy tax in January on the waste conversion to energy industry. That levy was steep enough to curtail production (the goal), but so onerous that it quickly put the processors out of business. That’s why the trash and garbage mountains are climbing in Sweden, instead of being recycled.

Under their strange new economy, Swedes now get circular spirit tax deductions for screwing together furniture, leaving clothes at dry cleaning and installing solar cells, according to author Henrik Nilsson

At the same time, a fully functional nuclear reactor is being shut down. The justification is that it is no longer profitable. This is because the government has introduced an energy effect tax, which is fully in line with the Green Party’s philosophy of either taxing or closing down.

To be effective over time, the circular economy needs the Internet of Things, with constant connection where all material flows and are followed in real time throughout the life cycle.

According to the philosophy, this should lead to a world without waste, since clothing, furniture, lighting, appliances and means of transport are not owned, but rented, which is giving producers incentives to make products more sustainable.

This would end most private property, and the big question becomes: who will own what we rent?

Under the circular system the source of goods must be either the government or an arm of the state. Since the goal is to minimize use of resources, that means rationing either by need or to satisfy Green New Deal objectives.

The Circular Economy goals are originally from Barbara Ward’s book Spaceship Earth (1966), where this planet is described as a closed system – a spaceship – with limited resources.

“Spaceship Earth – The Life Support System” is also the title of a chapter in the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s 1977 publication “The Unfinished Agenda“, a book advertised by the Club of Rome. This fund currently promotes more cordial relations with China, and advocates BDS activities against Israel, supporting “J Street” and its efforts to almost solely promote Arab interests in Mideast negotiations.

A reviewer in 1977, Carol Lerner, argued that the “unfinished agenda” was destructive:

The document calls for a “new type of energy economy,” a “Conserver Society,” where a “centralized high technology future is unsuitable.” Electricity generation is not “thermodynamically justified,” the agenda states.

Fission energy should be phased out while fusion re­search should be virtually eliminated. In fact, all invest­ments in energy or technology in general should be halted.

Instead we should move to “soft energy sources”, based on converting “sun, wind, organic materials – even geothermal heat – to useful forms” over the coming years

Lerner said then that even human excrement would be part of the energy production cycle.

In particular the so-called environmentalists stress the conversion of wood into liquid-fuel (methanol) and the recycling of sludge (human excrement) into fer­tilizer and fuel.

The development of “soft energy sour­ces” should be paid for by taxing existing fossil fuel consumption – taxes which would drive the cost of a barrel of oil to $100 (in 1977 dollars) and natural gas to $16 per thousand cubic feet – more than a 10-fold increase.

The Rockefeller document lists 70 “public policy proposals” earmarked for legislation, applies “zero growth solutions” for population control, pollution abatement, natural resources, and the ecology.

The report proposes that food shipments be eliminated and all as­sistance – food or development – be tied to mass population control. Domestically, it argues that income tax deductions should be eliminated for the third – and after – child. The report calls for the substitution of “hand tractors” and other “hand tools” for mechanized farm machinery both at home and abroad.

This could best be described as “Back to the Past” – which has many elements of the modern New Green Deal that is rapidly being implemented – especially this year – by the European Union and the United States.

In 1972, the Club of Rome also published the “The Limits of Growth”, based on Malthus’s philosophy that the population tends to grow faster than the means of supply. The working classes, the poor, are therefore condemned to a life on the brink of starvation if they do not exercise severe sexual abstinence, Lerner noted.

In 2016 former EU parliamentarian Anders Wijkman, who is linked to Club of Rome and the World Future Council (WFC), carried out a “study” for the Club of Rome, based on models that predicted positive effects on the climate, environment and economy, because of commitments by the European Commission, which later resulted in the Circular Economy Package.

In 2017, the World Economic Forum (WEF) launched the public/private initiative “Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy” (PACE). Philips CEO Frans van Houten was chairman and Dame Ellen MacArthur was the front-person of the effort. In 2009 she had founded the Ellen MacArthur Foundation together with Cisco, BT Group, B&Q, Renault and National Grid. In 2013 she became a member of the Club of Rome.

A look in detail at the Club of Rome