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Fager 132's avatar

There's a Dean Koontz novel in which a rich character is involved in "save Gaia" scams. I really wish I could remember which book it was or even what the plot had to do with, but here's the excerpt I kept from it:

“He held binding commitments from three tribes in remote parts of Africa, which required them to plant huge numbers of trees and to continue living without running water, electricity, and oil-powered vehicles. The environmental damage they didn’t do could then be sold to movie stars, rock musicians, and others who were committed to reducing pollution but who were required, by the nature of their professions, to have humongous carbon footprints. He also sold carbon offsets to himself through an elaborate structure of LLPs, LLCs, and trusts that afforded him tremendous tax advantages. Best of all, he didn’t have to share any of the carbon-offset income with the African tribes because they didn’t exist.”

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Fager 132's avatar

I love that Blair quote. To that I will add this one:

"They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself... [They] seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man."

I hadn't heard of "cacotopia" before, but I was familiar with "kakistocracy": Rule by the worst a society has to offer. Turns out that both terms have their root in the Greek "kakós," meaning "bad."

Thank you for sorting through that toxic sludge of climate scams. I don't know how you do it. Just reading it makes me want to stab people with a fork.

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