{"id":1819,"date":"2024-04-04T12:35:04","date_gmt":"2024-04-04T12:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02da0aa1f0002626"},"modified":"2025-10-02T09:40:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T14:40:06","slug":"debt-from-above-the-carbon-credit-coup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/markets\/debt-from-above-the-carbon-credit-coup","title":{"rendered":"Debt From Above: The Carbon Credit Coup"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sweeping across the shores of Latin America comes a scheme from some of the most predatory figures in the venture capital ecosystem of the United States. It is a brazen attempt to assert foreign influence across Latin America and threatens to reshape the very fabric of the region and the day to day lives of its people. At its core is a serpentine set of contractual obligations, held at the municipal level, cast throughout Central and South America, upheld by an intelligence-linked satellite company, and controlled by a private se\u00adctor consortium of green-washed financiers aiming to turn the region\u2019s forests into equity and carbon credits. At the same time, it obliges local governments to spend \u201cconservation\u201d funds on projects that further financialize nature and aid the construction of an inter-continental \u201csmart\u201d grid. One of its key ambitions appears to be further entrenching the debt load of the region through the multi-lateral development banks and the dollarization of the continent from the subnational level up through carbon markets upheld by a digital ledger. What seems like a technological marvel aimed at progress and connectivity harbors a darker agenda \u2014 one that intertwines planetary surveillance, financial predation, geopolitical maneuvering, and the domination of a resource-rich continent buried in debt.<\/p>\n

This grand design, known by the acronym GREEN+ and conceived by stalwarts of the digital dollar and debt schemes of the private sector, has quietly taken root through a web of political entanglements at the local level. Even a key figure in the Drexel Burnham Lambert junk bond scandal plays a role. Astonishingly, every capital city of Latin America has eagerly signed on, apparently unaware of the strings attached to these seemingly benign partnerships, while a majority of municipalities in the region have also made commitments with these same groups that will push them to join GREEN+, potentially in a matter of weeks. The (hopefully) well-meaning regional governments have unwittingly paved the way for a sweeping surveillance apparatus tied to American intelligence that threatens to erode privacy and civil liberties under the guise of progress and combating the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

Upon further observation, GREEN+’s connections reveal a disturbing narrative of financial interests melding with geopolitical ambitions. The backers of the satellite company share ties with former members of the highest offices of US financial policy and regulation alongside the key architects and profiteers of private capital creation, aiming to consolidate control over monetary flows in Latin America within the redistribution of distressed government debt from the public to the private sector. As this two-part series will show, this concerted effort is not merely about surveillance \u2013 it’s a calculated move towards further dollarization, tightening the grip of corporate and technological monopolies over the economic landscape of the Americas. <\/p>\n

The scheme’s proponents also speak of how it will significantly advance the “economic” and “regional” integration of the Americas, invoking visions of unity while obscuring the true nature of their agenda for economic domination and stronger regional governance. Their model, eerily reminiscent of the EU’s transition from a free trade union to a bureaucratic behemoth yoked to the US through the Eurodollar, sets the stage for unelected entities to enforce policies through programmable money, enabled by smart contracts on blockchains and designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many. What materializes before us is not just a technological evolution but a quiet banker coup \u2014 one that lays the groundwork for land grabs and invasive surveillance under the guise of progress and conservation. It’s a narrative that echoes throughout history, where intelligence-linked figures and predatory financial interests converge to prey upon the Global South, leaving a trail of economic exploitation and geopolitical manipulation in their wake. What masquerades as progress for individuals and the environment at large may very well be the harbinger of a new era of subjugation and control. <\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

The GREEN+ Program<\/h2>\n

In 2022, several groups came together to launch<\/a> the GREEN+ (Government Reduction of Emissions for Environmental Net + Gain) Jurisdictional Programme, the \u201cfirst program that will monitor by satellite all subnational protected areas of the planet\u201d and \u2013 through contracts with numerous local and state governments \u2013 propel and deepen the economic integration of the Americas through the quiet imposition of a continent-wide, blockchain-based carbon market. <\/p>\n

GREEN+ has been piloted<\/a> in a handful of Latin American cities since its founding and is due to launch globally in just a few weeks time. Most of the GREEN+ agreements with \u201csubnational\u201d governments have remained focused on Latin America. Per the program<\/a>, the subnational agreements have established the \u201crules and requirements to enable accounting and crediting with GREEN+ policies and measures and\/or nested projects, implemented as GHG mitigation activities,\u201d with GREEN+ being described as \u201cthe planet’s new subnational government advisory mechanism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Key to the program are the services provided by GREEN+ founding member Satellogic<\/a>, an Argentina-founded company closely aligned with<\/a> Peter Thiel\u2019s Palantir and Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX<\/a> that specializes in sub-meter resolution satellite surveillance. Satellogic, a contractor<\/a> to the US government and whose founders were also previously contactors<\/a> for the US\u2019 DHS, NSA and DARPA, will provide surveillance data of the entire world\u2019s \u201cprotected areas\u201d to GREEN+\u2019s governing coalition, composed of the NGOs CC35, the Global Footprint Network, The Energy Coalition and other \u201crespected stakeholders.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the press release<\/a> that details Satellogic\u2019s alliance with GREEN+, the satellite surveillance data \u201cwill enable individuals, organizations, and global markets to accurately monitor the compliance of signatory jurisdictions to avoid deforestation.\u201d However, other information in the press release reveals that forests will actually be monitored for the purpose of generating \u201ccredible\u201d carbon credits to be traded on exchanges by GREEN+ on behalf of subnational governments. The press release also states that the GREEN+ alliance with Satellogic will \u201cadvance the future measurement of energy emissions in the most populated areas of the planet,\u201d i.e. the surveillance of carbon emissions from space. Satellogic launched some GREEN+-affiliated satellites in 2022 as part of its pilot and is due to launch the remainder this April during Miami Climate Week. Satellogic\u2019s past and upcoming launches of GREEN+ satellites were\/will be conducted in collaboration with<\/a> Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX, also a contractor to the US military and US intelligence agencies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Though framed as a way to develop economic incentives to mitigate climate change, the program is based on California\u2019s controversial<\/a> and grift-prone<\/a> cap and trade program and has been created (and is being implemented by) individuals and companies that are seeking to covertly dollarize Latin America and\/or have deep ties to US intelligence. Its ultimate ambitions go far beyond carbon markets and seek to use satellite surveillance to enforce carbon emission levels in both urban and rural areas. It also seeks to impose a new financial system centered around energy, commodity, and natural resource \u201ccredits\u201d that are underpinned by extensive and invasive surveillance, underscored by the motto: \u201cEarth observation is preservation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The alliance that created GREEN+ includes<\/a> the NGOs CC35, the Global Footprint Network (GFN), Arnold Schwarzenegger\u2019s Catalytic Finance Foundation (CFF, formerly R20) and The Energy Coalition (TEC); the Gibraltar-based law firm Isolas; the global insurance giant Lockton; the satellite company Satellogic; the \u201cgreen\u201d blockchain company EcoRegistry; the dominant carbon credit certifier in Latin America, Cercarbono; and Rootstock (RSK), the bitcoin side-chain protocol responsible for \u201csmart BTC.\u201d Several members of the alliance, though how many is unclear, now <\/a>operate as part of a consortium<\/a> linked to a company called Global Carbon Parks, which is discussed in greater detail later in this article and now manages major aspects of GREEN+<\/a>. The NGOs (i.e. CC35, GFN, CFF and TEC) involved in founding GREEN+ are those who actually govern the GREEN+ program from California. <\/p>\n

As previously mentioned, the program takes carbon in \u201ceffectively conserved protected areas of a sub-national jurisdiction\u201d, i.e. a city, county, province, or state\/region, and converts them into carbon credits. Per the program<\/a>, \u201cthese credits are traded on the [carbon] offset market, and income is deposited in a trust fund\u201d that is controlled by GREEN+ and is known as the GREEN+ Trust. That trust is run by<\/a> unspecified individuals who work for Lockton, Isolas and Rootstock. Alejandro Guerrero<\/a>, head of Lockton\u2019s Argentina & Uruguay branch, is the only publicly acknowledged member of the trust. <\/p>\n

Another website<\/a> tied to the GREEN+ initiative describes the initial process as follows: <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Public and private agreements between [a subnational] government and custodians are signed with zero upfront cost.<\/li>\n
  2. Custodians trade the carbon units that are produced by the subnational governments (the public sector) signing contracts with the private sector in voluntary carbon markets.<\/li>\n
  3. Those contracts signed by the subnational governments become smart contracts and carbon credits are then tokenized for traceability.<\/li>\n
  4. The GREEN+ Trust holds government funds in escrow.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Subsequently, \u201ca<\/a> partial release<\/a> of trust funds is made periodically during the crediting period of the jurisdictional initiative.\u201d From this \u201cpartial release,\u201d \u201ca percentage operational fee\u201d is deducted (the percentage is undisclosed in the program\u2019s documents) and paid to the GREEN+ program while a separate (and also undisclosed) fee is also deducted \u201cfor the operation of the GREEN+ Trust.\u201d Disbursements of what remains are made annually over a ten year period and, per graphs<\/a> produced by GREEN+, those payments remain the same, fixed value even if the value of the carbon credits of the protected areas grows. <\/p>\n

    <\/figure>\n

    Between 40% and 60% of the funds actually received by subnational governments can be used<\/a> to \u201cdesign and execute projects\u201d aimed at conservation, while the rest \u201cis allocated for new jurisdictional decarbonisation initiatives\u201d that can produce additional or \u201cconsequential\u201d carbon credits. These \u201cconsequential\u201d credits are then \u201coffered as a preferred option to the investors who initially purchased the conservation credits at a 50% discounted price calculated at the current market price.\u201d However, later in the same document<\/a>, the program says that \u201cthe amount required for the initial implementation\u201d of conservation projects \u201cmay not exceed 20% of the funds allocated [from the GREEN+ Trust] to the jurisdictional initiative.\u201d Clearly, the amount of funds actually being generated for conservation-related projects is minimal and, even in the best case scenario, is less than half of the capital generated by the carbon credits themselves. However, as we shall see, these \u201cconservation\u201d projects must be done in conjunction with approved partners of Global Carbon Parks, which \u2013 like the organization itself \u2013 are tied to predatory financial interests and oligarchs with questionable motives.<\/p>\n

    Of the funds that governments actually receive as part of GREEN+, half are officially meant to go toward conservation-related projects while the other half are meant to go toward decarbonization-related projects. However, on the Global Carbon Parks-<\/a>GREEN+ website<\/a>, it notes that the decarbonization projects must be conducted alongside Community Electricity, which forms part of Global Carbon Parks and is closely connected to the GREEN+ alliance member The Energy Coalition (TEC). As will be discussed later, TEC and Community Electricity are together attempting to build an inter-continental \u201csmart\u201d grid in the Americas and are also involved in efforts to develop \u201csmart\u201d cities and suburbs. <\/p>\n

    As for GREEN+\u2019s conservation projects, the website states that \u201c50% of the resources received by the capital [city as part of GREEN+] must be used for social and environmental impact in protected urban areas with partners such as Cities4Forests.\u201d Cities4Forests was founded by the World Resources Institute (WRI), a World Economic Forum affiliate and contractor<\/a> to suspected CIA front<\/a> USAID that is focused on resource \u201csustainability.\u201d WRI is funded by<\/a> the US and several European governments, billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mike Bloomberg as well as Google, Meta\/Facebook, the Soros family\u2019s Open Societies Foundations, the UN, Walmart, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, among others. WRI\u2019s Cities4Forests shares many of the same<\/a> funding <\/a>sources<\/a>, such as the governments of the UK, Germany, Denmark and the US as well as the World Bank and the Caterpillar Foundation. Other funders include the Wall Street giant Citi Group, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Notably, the Rockefeller Foundation and the IDB recently teamed up<\/a> to create the Intrinsic Exchange Group, which has spearheaded the financialization of nature via the creation of Natural Asset Corporations (NACs). As Unlimited Hangout <\/em>previously reported<\/a>, NACs create corporations that take control of natural assets that were previously part of the \u201ccommons,” such as forests, rivers and lakes, and then sell shares of those assets to Wall Street asset managers, sovereign wealth funds and other financial institutions in order to generate profit under the guise of \u201cconserving\u201d the asset they target. <\/p>\n

    <\/figure>\n

    Unsurprisingly, most of Cities4Forests\u2019 projects, such as those that would be built with GREEN+ funds, are similar to NACs in that they focus on using natural assets and \u201cnatural capital\u201d to produce new financial and insurance products. Examples of Cities4Forests \u201cconservation\u201d projects include the development of a Forest Resilience Bond<\/a> and the India Forum for Nature-based Solutions<\/a>. One of the India-based forum\u2019s \u201ccore partners\u201d is the Nature Conservancy, which has been run by Wall Street bankers for years and has pioneered<\/a> the modern iteration of the controversial \u201cdebt for conservation\u201d swap among other \u201cnature-based solutions.\u201d The funders of Cities4Forest and its creator the WRI are also deeply affiliated with groups like the Glasgow Alliance for Net Zero<\/a> (GFANZ) and UN-backed climate finance initiatives that openly <\/a>seek<\/a> to use debt imperialism to herd the global economy, with a focus on emerging markets, into a new system of global financial governance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Thus, the \u201cconservation\u201d and \u201cdecarbonization\u201d efforts that subnational governments must enact as part of their contractual agreements with GREEN+ will go towards projects tied to either the smart grid\/smart city developer Community Electricity or a \u201cconservation\u201d organization backed by Western oligarchs, multi-national corporations and banks that seeks to financialize and monetize nature under the guise of conserving it.<\/p>\n

    CC35 and the Subnational Pivot<\/h2>\n

    CC35, or Ciudades Capitales de las Americas frente al Cambio Clim\u00e1tico (American Capital Cities Facing Climate Change), is the most visible organization behind the GREEN+ program and one of the members of its governance committee. CC35\u2019s goal is the economic integration of the Americas (North, South and Central) through coordinated climate change policies, specifically the creation of an Inter-American carbon market, with GREEN+ being the means of implementing that market. The group focuses on \u201csubnational\u201d governments, namely capital cities of the Americas, thereby circumventing national governments with respect to Climate Change-related policy. <\/p>\n

    Regarding GREEN+, Sebasti\u00e1n Navarro, the secretary general of CC35, stated of the program<\/a> that: \u201cWe will be relentless from the governance of the GREEN+ program with those who want to continue playing with the future of humanity,\u201d adding that their \u201crelentless\u201d approach would be greatly aided by Satellogic\u2019s satellite surveillance capabilities, which would also \u201cgenerate unprecedented credibility among investors of the carbon credits produced by conservation.\u201d Navarro\u2019s promise to be \u201crelentless\u201d in governing a satellite surveillance regime of American forests for the purpose of producing \u201chigh-credibility\u201d carbon markets.<\/p>\n

    <\/figure>\n

    While framed as an initiative \u201cborn out of Latin America,\u201d CC35 is registered in Miami<\/a>; Florida (Coral Gables, specifically) and has long been funded and partnered with US-based interests. For instance, CC35\u2019s first partners<\/a> were R20 (Regions of Climate Action, now the Catalytic Finance Foundation), a group created by former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in partnership with the UN, and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. From there, CC35 partnered with<\/a> UN and UN-linked organizations as well as Pegasus Capital Advisors, which also finances<\/a> CC35 and Schwarzenegger\u2019s R20\/Catalytic Finance Foundation. R20\/Catalytic Finance, like CC35, focuses its attention on \u201csubnational\u201d governments.<\/p>\n

    Pegasus Capital is the firm created by<\/a> Craig Cogut, a key figure<\/a> in the \u201cjunk bond\u201d financial scandal at the now defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert. Drexel\u2019s junk bond department, led by Michael Milken, engaged in blatantly illegal activity and used junk bonds to help fuel the takeovers of major corporations by the era\u2019s infamous \u201ccorporate raiders\u201d before the bank\u2019s collapse. Specifically, Cogut was the lawyer who advised<\/a> the Milken-run and scandal-ridden<\/a> junk bond department on the legality of transactions, including those that saw Milken become a convicted felon. Following Drexel\u2019s collapse, Cogut teamed up with a group of Drexel alumni led by Leon Black \u2013 now best known for<\/a> his <\/a>close <\/a>association<\/a> with <\/a>the deceased sex trafficker and “financial adviser” <\/a>Jeffre<\/a>y<\/a> Epstein<\/a> \u2013 to co-found Apollo Advisers (now Apollo Global Management) in 1990. Cogut left Apollo to found Pegasus in 1996 and Pegasus has since became a key player<\/a> in several UN-supported \u201cgreen\u201d finance initiatives. Cogut is also financially entangled with Satellogic\u2019s co-founder, Emiliano Kargieman, as will be discussed later.<\/p>\n

    Cogut subsequently became a board member<\/a> of Arizona State University\u2019s Global Institute of Sustainability, which was created by Michael Crow (and who served on the board alongside Cogut). Crow is chairman of the board<\/a> of trustees In-Q-tel, the CIA\u2019s venture capital arm. Cogut also served on the board of ASU\u2019S McCain Institute, named for the late Senator John McCain, which has links to Ashton Kutcher\u2019s CIA-linked charity<\/a> Thorn. Current board members<\/a> of the McCain Institute include both Crow and former CIA director David Petraeus on its board, as well as Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who co-created the Council for Inclusive Capital with the Vatican. Cogut was also on the board<\/a> of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), part of the Clinton family philanthropies, and CHAI was largely shaped and influenced by notorious sex trafficker and \u201cfinancial advisor for billionaires\u201d Jeffrey Epstein, having been the chief reason for former president Bill Clinton\u2019s flights on Epstein\u2019s plane in the early 2000s. <\/p>\n

    Notably, Cogut is not the only Drexel alum to be involved in \u201cgreen finance.\u201d The field of \u201cgreen finance\u201d itself was essentially invented<\/a> by Richard Sandor, who made millions at Drexel during the 1980s, pioneering \u201cinnovative\u201d products like the collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO), which would later contribute to the 2008 financial crisis. Sandor had previously been deemed the \u201cfather of financial futures\u201d and is also credited with helping create derivatives. After Drexel\u2019s collapse, Sandor moved on<\/a> to pioneering carbon emissions trading and carbon markets with the vision of creating \u201can all-electronic exchange for carbon trading,\u201d a vision that has since taken shape.<\/p>\n

    <\/figure>\n

    CC35 has long been led by Sebasti\u00e1n Navarro. Under his leadership, CC35 helped broker the creation of the Subnational Climate Fund, which is backed by<\/a> Cogut\u2019s Pegasus Capital along with BNP Paribas, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bloomberg Philanthropies and the governments of Germany, the UK, Australia and the Netherlands. That fund focuses on financing infrastructure projects in the Global South at the subnational (e.g. city, state) level, again bypassing national governments. Indeed, the main modus o<\/em>perandi<\/em> of <\/em>CC35 is brokering contracts between small, subnational governments and \u201cgreen\u201d finance entities that are tied to centers of US\/European political or financial power.<\/p>\n

    Navarro is listed as a director of CC35<\/a> as are two prominent, right-leaning Latin American politicians: Felipe Alessandri Vergara, mayor of the Chilean capital Santiago from 2016 to 2021, and Nasry Asfura Zablah, former mayor of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa and former Honduran presidential candidate. Alessandri is a well-known figure in Chilean center-right politics and an ally of the recently deceased former Chilean president Sebasti\u00e1n Pi\u00f1era. Alessandri is controversial within the Chilean right for his covert support of initiatives generally favored by the left and publicly shunned by his party while serving as Santiago\u2019s mayor, such as climate finance\/regional economic integration (via CC35<\/a>) and his financing of <\/a>initiatives related to<\/a> illegal immigra<\/a>tion<\/a>. Alessandri\u2019s successor and supposed <\/a>political<\/a> nemesis<\/a>, Irac\u00ed Hassler of Chile\u2019s Communist Party, has since taken over for Alessandri as CC35\u2019s Vice President for South America. As for Nasry Asfura, he was the subject of a Honduran political scandal due to his appearance in the Pandora Papers and his alleged involvement in suspicious offshore finance<\/a> activities. He was also indicted on money laundering and fund embezzlement, but charges were dropped under Asfura\u2019s successor Jorge Aldana, who is now president of CC35. <\/p>\n

    The current vice president of CC35 for Central America is Mario Dur\u00e1n, the mayor of San Salvador and a close ally of El Salvador\u2019s president Nayib Bukele as well as a member of Bukele\u2019s Nuevas Ideas party. Dur\u00e1n is poised to take over the leadership of CC35 per a recent announcement<\/a> from the group. In 2021, Dur\u00e1n signed a contract with CC35 regarding education about the use of Bitcoin in all metropolitan region municipalities in El Salvador, and is the only mention of CC35 promoting the use of Bitcoin. As will be noted again later on, the CC35-led GREEN+ initiative is partnered with Rootstock, which created and develops a Bitcoin sidechain that enables smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain. Presumably, the goal is to run GREEN+\u2019s digital carbon market on the same blockchain.<\/p>\n

    While it may seem odd to an American audience that \u201cregional integration\u201d efforts under the guise of climate change would be led largely by right-leaning politicians, it is important to point out that such integration efforts have historically been led by both left and right factions in Latin America, who compete for dominance over the region. For instance, right-leaning efforts at economically and\/or politically integrating the Americas include Mercosur (the Southern Common Market, now championed<\/a> by the \u201canti-globalist\u201d Javier Milei) and Prosur (Forum for the Progress and Integration of South America, launched by Chile\u2019s center-right Pi\u00f1era). Left-leaning efforts include ALADI (Latin American Integration Association) and UNASUR (Union of South American Nations). All of these efforts have failed due to geopolitical disagreements mainly centered around whether to grant membership to countries like Venezuela, Cuba and others with governments estranged from the so-called \u201cWashington consensus\u201d or, more recently, efforts to forge closer ties to Russia and\/or China. Given that several important Latin American countries can suddenly change what side of the \u201cconsensus\u201d they are on depending on presidential election results, such as recently happened in Brazil and <\/a>Argentina<\/a>, these regional integration efforts have failed to gain significant traction over the last several decades. Nevertheless, the end goal of economic integration begetting political integration remains the same<\/a>. Thus, as CC35 shows, the push to regionally integrate Latin America has now, very quietly, pivoted away from engagement at the national level to the subnational level. <\/p>\n

    <\/figure>\n

    The Club of Rome\u2019s Global Footprint<\/h2>\n

    While CC35 is the most visible face of GREEN+\u2019s governing body, it is actually chaired by a group called the Global Footprint Network (GFN). The GFN exists to promote \u201cthe Ecological Footprint<\/a>, which tracks how much nature we use and how much we have, as an accounting tool\u201d for green finance initiatives and originated the concept of \u201cecological debt\u201d based on that metric. Elsewhere, the GFN calls for \u201cone-planet prosperity\u201d and emphasizes climate finance, a field dominated by predatory Wall Street banks and billionaires, as an economic imperative. They work with governments at both the national and subnational level and establish the carbon emissions limits for localities, states and countries that programs like GREEN+ seek to enforce with satellite surveillance and binding contractual obligations.<\/p>\n

    The GFN is intimately connected to the Club of Rome. For instance, GFN\u2019s founder and a member of its board, Mathis Wackernagel, who also co-created the Ecological Footprint concept, is a member<\/a> of the Club of Rome. Wackernagel\u2019s former mentor and the other developer<\/a> of the Ecological Footprint, William Rees, was a member<\/a> of the Club of Rome until 2018. Heiko Specking, a GFN board member<\/a>, is also affiliated with the Club of Rome as is another GFN board member, Lewis Akenji<\/a>. <\/p>\n

    The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 by the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei and Scottish chemist Alexander King. Its earliest success was the 1972 report and later book \u201cThe <\/a>Limits to Growth<\/a>,” which was based on an MIT study and claimed that \u201cif the world\u2019s consumption patterns and population growth continued at the same high rates of the time, the earth would strike its limits within a century.\u201d The book was heavily promoted by the earliest annual meetings of the World Economic Forum, particularly in 1973. <\/p>\n

    Peccei, who spent a large part of his life living in Argentina, had previously been a member of ADELA, the Atlantic Community Development Group for Latin America. ADELA was composed of powerful Western companies that pooled money to invest in Latin American companies of their choosing, essentially \u201cking-making\u201d the titans of the Latin American corporate world. <\/a>ADELA\u2019s backers<\/a> included<\/a> Bank of America, IBM, Fiat (where Peccei was an executive), and the Rockefeller family\u2019s Standard Oil. The group was part of the Rockefeller-dominated <\/a>network<\/a> in Latin America<\/a>, which also included the International Basic Economy Corporation<\/a> (IBEC), which has been linked to<\/a> the 1973 CIA-backed military coup in Chile through the Chilean Rockefeller associate Agust\u00edn Edwards, and Deltec, best known today as a main bank<\/a> for the failed crypto exchange FTX and its close relationship <\/a>with the stablecoin Tether. Modern iterations of this network include Endeavor and the Council of the Americas (CoA), which will be discussed in the second part of this series. Notably, it was Peccei\u2019s speech at an ADELA conference that spurred his partnership<\/a> with Alexander King and led to the Club of Rome\u2019s formation. <\/p>\n

    https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=g0OleMPLmn0<\/a><\/p>\n

    At the time he got involved with Peccei and made the Club of Rome, King was head of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD was originally established as the OEEC to help administer the post-WWII, US-developed Marshall Plan and was later expanded to become a global organization in 1961. The US remains the OECD\u2019s main funder<\/a> by a significant margin. The group has long claimed<\/a> to promote \u201csustainable economic growth\u201d and \u201cconsistently improving standard of living in its member countries,\u201d but \u2013 in practice \u2013 it routinely favors neoliberal policies that enrich Western-based multi-national corporations. It is closely partnered<\/a> with entities like the IMF, the World Bank and the broader multi-lateral development banking system that has used debt slavery <\/a>sold as \u201ceconomic development\u201d to privatize state-owned assets and sell them off to privileged corporate interests. That system has also been considered by the US military to be part of its arsenal of \u201cfinancial weapons<\/a>\u201d used to protect US interests abroad.<\/p>\n

    The Club of Rome was criticized for many decades for embracing neo-Malthusian thought<\/a> (i.e. eugenics and specifically population control measures in the developing world) as well as for promoting greater <\/a>global governance<\/a>. Some of its members have championed the imposition of a \u201cbenevolent\u201d global dictatorship<\/a>. Criticisms of the Club of Rome have been voiced by academia<\/a> as well as independent <\/a>and mainstream media<\/a>. The group\u2019s attempt to rebrand as an environmental group in order to gain popular support for those same policies was discussed in their 1991 book \u201cThe First Global Revolution<\/a>,\u201d which states:<\/p>\n

    \n

    \u201cIn searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    The Global Footprint Network\u2019s methods, products and ideology are very much aligned with the neo-Malthusian \u201cLimits to Growth\u201d view of the Club of Rome as well as the efforts to incorporate nature into financial markets via so-called \u201cnature-based solutions.\u201d Indeed, the GFN\u2019s ecological footprint metric is promoted by groups like the World Economic Forum and the World Wildlife Fund (where Peccei served on the board and which has long been tied to European oligarch<\/a> and corporate<\/a> interests). GFN also provides the statistical means of imposing Limits to Growth-style models that control both population levels and industrialization levels on governments by developing \u201cecological budgets\u201d that, as evidenced by GREEN+, are now interfacing directly with carbon markets.<\/p>\n