COVID-19 Emergency Powers, Green New Deal Paving Way for ‘Great Reset’ Tyranny: Climate Journalist

COVID-19 restrictions and measures to tackle climate change are pillars of the Great Reset initiative aimed to remake global capitalism, leading ultimately to tyrannical control over societies, according to journalist and former political aide Marc Morano.

Morano is the founder of ClimateDepot.com, a clearinghouse of information challenging the global climate change narrative and following developments in the green agenda.

Measures implemented by governments around the world to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus have not followed the rules to deal with a pandemic that are normally in place, Morano said in a recent interview for EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.

Morano, who also wrote the book “The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown,” said the response to the COVID-19 pandemic “started by turning the entire pandemic rulebook on its head.”

While renowned epidemiologists recommended keeping the public calm and relaxed and introducing clear measures in order to prevent a panic, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other health officials, with the support of some scientists, have created “absolute hysteria” and pandemonium in response to the pandemic, and ended up forcing vaccines, mask wearing, and getting the public to accept lockdowns, he said.

“Fear for COVID-19 cut across party lines, ideologies, age groups,” Morano said. “It pretty much scared everyone at first.”

COVID-19 and the Green New Deal

The author called COVID-19 measures “the Green New Deal on steroids, imposed overnight with the lockdowns.”

The COVID-19 response imposed limits on travel, which is also part of the Green New Deal, Morano pointed out.

Each situation entailed planned economic recessions, he said. “Degrowth movement” (pdf) to combat climate change, advocated by the United Nations, leads to economic decline, while lockdowns create economic losses.

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), degrowth means “shrinking rather than growing economies” and putting well-being ahead of profit. As a result, less of the world’s energy and resources are used.

“If economic growth continues to be the default goal, it will lead to climate catastrophe,” the WEF claims.

Fear and intimidation tactics are used to suppress dissent and convince people to give up their national sovereignty in favor of globalism to fight both climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, Morano explained.

He said that former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry explicitly drew the parallels between COVID-19 and climate change.

Kerry, now the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in the Biden administration, said in April 2020 in his opinion piece for The Boston Globe: “You could just as easily replace the words ‘climate change’ with ‘COVID-19’; it is truly the tale of two pandemics deferred, denied, and distorted.”

The Great Reset

The Great Reset—a global initiative to restructure the world’s economy and eliminate the use of fossil fuels—is tied to both climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, Morano said, adding that the WEF considers the pandemic as “a rare but narrow window of opportunity” to reset global capitalism.

The concept of the Great Reset has been pioneered and championed by Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the WEF, who said in June 2020: “One silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles. Almost instantly, the crisis forced businesses and individuals to abandon practices long claimed to be essential, from frequent air travel to working in an office.”

The large-scale spending programs that many governments implemented to recover their economies from the coronavirus pandemic restrictions, as well as private investments and pension funds, should not be used “to fill cracks in the old system,” Schwab pointed out.

Instead, Schwab recommended using the funds—such as the European Union recovery fund and United States economic stimulus funds—for the creation of a new system that would include building “green” urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.

Collapsing Energy System

The advocates of the Great Reset want to collapse the current system in order to effect an “extreme change,” Morano said.

The idea of collapsing the existing system and creating chaos and calamity to make a revolutionary change was openly talked about by Vladimir Lenin during the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Morano added.

Trending in the news today is the deterioration of energy production, food production, and transportation, Morano said.

The Great Reset is tied to the climate change and the green new deal policies pushed in the United States, Europe, and some other countries as well as the United Nations’ climate agenda and net-zero initiative.

The net-zero commitment is to cut greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible.

The United States, after being a net energy importer for a few decades, became a net exporter of energy in 2019 under the Trump administration. Although the country still imported energy, it produced more energy than it used, according to the Institute for Energy Research.

However, under the Biden administration, the energy system started collapsing, Morano pointed out.

President Joe Biden halted the issuance of new government land leases at the start of his administration as part of a comprehensive effort to restrict oil and gas production on a federal territory to implement his Green New Deal agenda.

Although the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in August, provides for some new drilling opportunities, it also increases the costs of oil and gas drilling.

The WEF recommendation to “build back better” was adopted by the Biden administration as a climate change policy.

Part of the “build back better” strategy in the United States is the collapse of the current energy system in order to lower carbon dioxide emissions, Morano said.

In 2021, the United States became a net oil importer and is poised to remain as such in 2022, thus losing its energy independence, according to the February 2022 Energy Information Administration report.

Car Shortages

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced a sweeping package of 40 bills which he called the country’s “most aggressive” climate measures to “accelerate the state’s transition” to unconventional energy sources.

Newsom has enacted a regulation to phase out sales of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

Morano said that this regulation would create car shortages.

“California has just followed Cuba’s example. [In] Cuba, you can’t generally get new cars because people are too economically depressed, so they’re driving around a lot of old 1950s cars,” he said.

Under the new California law, after 2035, consumers will have to either buy and drive an electric vehicle or take the bus.

“All it means, it’s going to hammer the poor, the middle class, anyone on a fixed income, who aren’t going to be able to afford cars, which are now going to be rationed by the government in order to save the planet.”

Collapsing Food System

Net-zero carbon emission policies are also going to collapse the food system, which is already happening in the Netherlands, Morano said. The Dutch government is going to shut down almost 12,000 farms, chiefly small independently run family farms that have been owned for generations, he noted.

In 2021, the Dutch government proposed slashing livestock numbers in the country by 30 percent to meet climate goals by reducing nitrogen gas emissions.

A similar policy to reduce nitrogen emission is being implemented in Canada and being taken into consideration in Australia, Morano added.

Once these farms go bankrupt, it will create opportunities for big agricultural corporations and equity asset firms owned by billionaires, or even China, to buy up all these farms after they collapse, Morano said, adding that billionaire Bill Gates has been buying up American farmland.

Heading Toward Tyranny

Collapsing components of the socioeconomic system like energy, food, and transportation are meant to soften up the public to accept a permanent crisis, Morano said. “They want us to accept temporary emergency powers by the government.”

“It’s giving politicians the ultimate power,” Morano continued. “That’s really what the essence of politics is. They’ve just figured out a way in our new era to make this less bloody.”

“Tyrannies of old required barbed wire fences, prisons. It required secret police and standing armies. But today, if you want to be a tyrant, you can deplatform, defund, unperson someone.”

Václav Klaus, former prime minister and president of the post-communist Czech Republic, who witnessed communism in his country, called this approach “masterminding from above” in an interview with Morano.

Biden said in July that he is set to declare a national climate emergency which will give him 140 presidential powers and will equip mayors and governors with similar powers, Morano said. They could shut down highways, make cities car-free, and control individual thermostats in the United States, which is already being done in Spain and other European countries, he added.

“This is where we’re headed,” he said.

Morano said the ultimate goal is for the administrative state to become so powerful that it won’t matter who is elected as a local supervisor, mayor, governor, or even president.

“You vote for someone. You think they’re going to do something, but the real power lies with the unelected bureaucrats.”

Bryan Jung, Andrew Moran, and Caden Pearson contributed to this report.

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Ella Kietlinska is a reporter for The Epoch Times focusing on U.S. and world politics.

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Joshua Philipp is an award-winning investigative reporter with The Epoch Times and host of EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program. He is a recognized expert on unrestricted warfare, asymmetrical hybrid warfare, subversion, and historical perspectives on today’s issues. His 10-plus years of research and investigations on the Chinese Communist Party, subversion, and related topics give him unique insight into the global threat and political landscape.