Given the risk posed by the closed-door lobbying group more commonly known as the World Economic Forum, this year The Spectator Australia will be keeping a close eye on their latest projects and what they could mean for Australia if our politicians and large corporate CEOs decide to adopt their ideas.

Just as the Australian government’s hated Digital Identity legislation was the creation of this loosely defined international group, there are other dangerous ideas on the horizon that could severely impact the liberty and prosperity of Western citizens. Either that, or their ideas are so crazy we may simply issue them with a Darwin Award.

Carbon accounting:

Readers may be aware of the emergence of carbon counting against various meals and food groups. It is a movement popularised by the COP26 festival, which partnered with Levy to create a carbon footprint for their menu. Their initiative, carried over to COP27, is designed to promote the idea of replacing calorie counting with carbon counting.

‘Today, an average meal has a carbon footprint of 1.7 kg CO2e in the UK. According to the WWF, we need to get this number down below 0.5 kg CO2e to reach the goals defined in the Paris Agreement. By including climate labels on our menus, we aim to make it easier to achieve this goal – together.’

Put simply, it is a form of ethical starvation where the state-sanctioned reduction of calories is justified by a moral responsibility to the planet. Normally, socialist regimes starve their people through incompetence. This time they’re making sure the peasants feel good about their shrinking waistlines.

As Levy says of this ‘food revolution’:

‘The climate emergency is the biggest challenge of our lifetime and food has a key role to play in global emissions. Our target is to reach Net Zero in our Levy UK business by 2027 in the right way. COP26 will be a catalyst for learning and change across our business.’

All I can say is good luck getting the ‘health at any size’ movement to give up their calorie-rich diets.

Given the lack of public pushback to these developments (probably because most people are too worried about paying their energy bills to notice gimmicks at a climate festival), the World Economic Forum has upped its game on the climate front, publishing an article by managing director of DevelopMinded, Lennaert Jonkers, on the rather ominous-sounding ‘carbon accounting’.

DevelopMinded is a company ‘accelerating the sustainability transformation’ and promotes ‘advisory, capability, development, and insights’. Like everything in the suspiciously fascist-like eco-movement, it provides a deliberate philosophical unification between government and corporate.

‘Time is running out!’ they begin, hoping to panic potential clients, before encouraging a ‘leap towards Net Zero’. Realistically, after Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ it’s an unusual PR move to encourage ideological leaps. ‘Adapt or perish … it doesn’t matter if you are ready or not. Act now!’

With that in mind, the article insists that ‘taking care of your carbon footprint and showing your dedication to sustainability now makes sense from a business perspective’.

While this verges on cultist rhetoric (which is guaranteed to become a requirement, not a choice as governments close in), the piece begins to detail a complex carbon prison ripe for exploitation that boasts (rather than cautions) about ‘mounting regulatory pressures’.

‘The amount of carbon-related regulation is increasing and, with it, a growing demand for reporting on emissions. The European Union has set targets and measures for reducing carbon emissions, the most notable being the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which has recently been adopted. CSRD means that large companies are also expected to report on their carbon emissions and SMEs are likely to be included.

‘The plans of the EU go behind GHG reporting, as auditing and validation of the results by an auditor are expected. In the US, reporting on GHG is mandatory for large GHG emitters and several states have their own more demanding legislation in place, such as California’s and Massachusetts’ Global Warming Solutions Acts. With more countries following suit globally, staying ahead of the curve on GHG reporting, particularly carbon accounting, has become critical to any company.’

Upon reading what has already been implemented and where the industry desperately wants to go, we are presented with a coercive, restrictive, ill-defined yet highly regulated nightmare where the essential building blocks of life have become a weapon for parasitic companies that create nothing except mechanisms of control.

Outside of the nodding ‘yes-man’ ideological slum of corporate marketing groups, this future for humanity sounds horrific.

One might expect Australian politicians to fight against this international quasi-socialist bureaucratic ecosystem and defend Australian businesses. Unfortunately, we have a lack of citizen education when it comes to Green Economics and ‘net zero’ pushback from the press, who are either too afraid to question the eco-fascist movement or are hoping for nice kickbacks from corporations profiting by making everyone else poorer.

When you strip away all the alarmist nonsense about the apocalypse that never comes from the front of their articles and banners of their websites, carbon accounting reveals itself as a means of creating a parallel economy to manipulate markets.

It gives politicians the power to control the direction of private industry while their mates in excessively large corporations have a perfectly legal way to kill off the small and medium businesses that compete with them. Big business can say, ‘we are the ones investing in saving the planet while these evil mum-and-dad companies are causing tsunamis’.

The demonisation of private business is already so complete among younger generations that they spend all day TikTok-ing about how much they love socialism from their iPhones.

Carbon accounting is the next evolution of Net Zero, a more tyrannical sibling of the carbon taxes, that attempts to socially manipulate markets. The public are subjected to extensive campaigns to brainwash them into feeling guilty about eating and breathing before offering salvation in the form of expensive advisory groups. These businesses want customers to consume their products at a price inflated 50 per cent by ‘virtue’. This is reinforced by endless surveys and polls to create the illusion that public opinion supports these otherwise tasteless and cynical projects.

‘Taking care of your carbon footprint and showing your dedication to sustainability makes sense from a business perspective. For example, a survey conducted last year found that for 83 per cent of consumers, it is very important to by from a company that operates sustainably.’

Agreeing that you’d like a ‘sustainably company’ is unlikely to translate in the minds of those asked to a carbon counting economy. The 83 per cent realistically represents the 10,015 people who replied to an online survey in UK, America, Italy, Germany, France, and China. All except the UK and America have an uncomfortable history with totalitarian collectivist movements: fascism, National Socialism, socialism, and communism respectively.

Despite this, the detail of the survey is a little more interesting, with ‘quality and reliability of products or service’ still receiving 77 per cent of the vote, followed by ‘convenience and customer experience’ at 59 per cent, ‘offering low prices’ at 51 per cent’ and then – a fair way behind – ‘operating sustainably’ at 39 per cent.

When you consider what is being demanded of businesses these days, it is absurd. Ten years ago, if you were making shoes, it was your business to ensure they were made with quality material, put together with the best craftsmanship affordable, and sold to the people who wanted to buy them. This created skilled jobs, employment, and taxation for the government. Competition between shoe companies from customer purchasing power in turn created better shoes. Now, companies are faced with nonsense demands on their time like:

‘Reducing carbon emissions. Investing in the communities they operate in. Using more renewable or recycled materials. Using less water. Philanthropy and giving back. Ensuring their products are recycled. Advocating for environmental causes publicly. Supporting LGBTQ+ equality. Achieving carbon neutrality. Creating products/services tailored to underserved populations. Advocating for political causes that align with customer values. Practising diverse and equitable hiring. Promoting work/life balance for employees. etc’

In order to implement a system like carbon accounting, it first requires customers to be conditioned into wanting companies to become arms of political movements. Any company, regardless of the quality of their product, can then be destroyed if it refuses to conform to political demands.

This leaves the capitalist economy as a political, rather than financial, entity that aligns entirely and unquestioningly with the policy initiatives of the government. It is fascism by stealth.