It long has been the goal of
transnational corporations to gather up as much money and power to
themselves, to the extent that there would be no resistance to their
depredations anywhere in the world, regardless of the condition of
the people left in their wake.
Until
the modern era, most of what the rich predators and their
corporations wanted was the resources of nations: oil, gas, timber,
palm oil, precious minerals of every description, and possibly the
most important of all, very cheap labor. They got it all and are
still at it.
Ironically,
they left in their wake a nation, the U.S.A., that has been headed to
a Third World state of affairs, at least for a sizable proportion of
its citizens. While it’s true that there are many who are
living the life of luxury, like developing countries everywhere, the
homeless and jobless wander among them. However, they have the police
and their own private guards to make sure the poor keep their
distance. Gated communities also are useful for the rich to ensure
that they don’t come within smelling distance of the great
unwashed.
When
David C. Korten published his “When Corporations Rule the
World” in 1995, he was warning Americans and the rest of the
world what he had seen first-hand in the so-called developing
countries, over several decades. His own awakening came after he had
been educated in the traditional American way of dealing with
economic issues. Ultimately, he came to the realization that what he
had been taught to bring to the developing world would not work for
them. It was not working for them, because the thing that was
forgotten was that these were people, human beings, who had their own
traditions and ways of living in their own places. The economics he
had been taught was mechanical and the spiritual aspects of their
human lives were ignored or worse, stamped out.
Corporate
America has run rampant over the people, especially the working
class, for the past half-century, and the transnational corporations
have done the same around the world. Year by year, they have
consolidated their power over cultures and political systems, with
the crowning achievement being the U.S. Supreme Court’s
decision in Citizens
United, which gave their
money the same rights, and weight as the free speech of an American
citizen. Since then, it has become nearly impossible to overcome the
overwhelming power of their money. It has perverted the electoral
system and even the body politic, itself.
Having
pretty much gained control over industrial production, distribution,
and even retail aspects of a consumer society, the rich and their
corporations looked for other things to buy. They started to buy
land. Who owns the most land in the U.S.? It’s not farmers.
It’s Bill Gates of Microsoft. There are others who are in
competition with him as the biggest landowners, but they are not
farmers. A few generations ago, the advice to investors with money to
burn was, “Buy land, because God is not making any more.”
They took it to heart. Who can forget Ted Turner, founder of CNN,
declaring years ago as he was buying up land in the west, that he
wanted to ride his horse from Canada to Mexico on his own land. The
rich have developed hubris into fine art.
Now
that globalization has given the rich of the world much of what they
were after, such as owning the means of production of just about
every item that is sold in a consumer society, and since they own
much of the land (or at least, control much of the land), they had to
find something else to spend their money on, and Wall Street has come
up with something that at first sounds ridiculous, but somehow, they
will find a way to make it work. It’s called a “natural
asset company (NAC).”
And
yes, it involves nature, controlling nature itself. Of course, it’s
all for the benefit of all mankind. The New York Stock Exchange will
attest to that. Economist, Ellen Brown, wrote this month that, “The
vehicle (NAC) is allegedly designed to preserve and restore Nature’s
assets; but when Wall Street gets involved, profit and exploitation
are not far behind.”
The
idea of a “natural asset company” apparently has come
from the proposal embodied in a draft agreement called the “Post-2020
Global Biodiversity Framework.” The proposal involves the 186
governments that are signatories to the Convention for Biological
Diversity, COP 15, the aim of which is to “protect at least 30
percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030...” The
new NAC apparently is expected to gain the support of those gravely
concerned about the destruction of the environment worldwide that is
underway. But critics see it as a land grab that is potentially
bigger than the land grabs of the imperial powers during the colonial
period. Today, governments may not be allowed to take over land and
water from private hands, but that doesn’t mean that private
companies would not be allowed to accomplish that. They can make
offers that landowners cannot refuse.
An
example of private entities that would be involved in such an
endeavor would be BlackRock, the world’s largest “asset
manager,” which has some $9.5 trillion under “management.”
To give some perspective, the U.S. gross domestic product is $20.94
trillion and China’s GDP is $14.72 trillion in U.S. dollars.
That is almost insurmountable power, when the company “makes an
offer” to a small landowner. These money managers already have
begun to buy up U.S. homes that are in mortgage trouble or have been
foreclosed. They are well on their way to becoming the baronial
class. “Adding ‘natural asset companies’ to their
portfolios,” said Brown, “could make them owners of the
foundations of all life.”
For
now, the proposal is just that, a proposal, but be assured that the
investing world is approaching this with serious intent, especially
since there are few things on the planet that they don’t
already own or control. The beings who inhabit Earth all wish to have
clean air, clean water, forests, lakes and rivers, good and wholesome
food that comes out of healthy soil, oceans that are clean and filled
with wildlife. These are among the things that most everyone wants
and the investing class would offer to bring them to fruition.
“Not
just private property but those public lands and infrastructure once
known as ‘the commons’ are now under threat,” Brown
writes. “We face an existential moment in our economic history,
in which accumulated private wealth is acquiring carte
blanche control of the essentials of life. Whether that
juggernaut can be stopped remains to be seen, but the first step in
any defensive action is to be aware of the threat at our doorsteps.”
For
the moment, what NACs are offering might sound like a good idea, but
remember that the animals in a good zoo are kept in clean cages or
enclosures, are fed well, get the best veterinary care and, once in a
while, get to lie in the sunshine for a bit. The need for vital
biodiversity rails against keeping 30 percent of humanity and the
planet in such a state. Forewarned is forearmed.
