Tag: manufactured consent

.......The Paris Agreement is still officially framed around “keeping 1.5°C alive,” but the UN’s own emissions gap reports now place the world on a 2.3–2.9°C path even if current pledges are met. This article argues that Paris has quietly shifted from a climate-saving project to a global management system for finance, land, and risk: Article 2.1(c) is used to align money with modelled pathways while missed targets are papered over with overshoot, nature-based solutions, and 30×30-style conservation. In places like Newfoundland, that doesn’t look like high diplomacy; it looks like offshore zoning, wind-to-hydrogen schemes, and consultation theatre sold as “development” and “resilience,” even as local people lose control over land, water, and decisions. The world is off target, but Paris is still on script—and that script increasingly serves the system, not the communities written into it. Read More...

Bill Gates has shifted the tone of the global climate conversation—from fear and urgency to compassion and human welfare. In a recent memo, he argues that climate change will not destroy civilization but will disproportionately harm the world’s poorest, and that the solution lies in development, not panic. This article unpacks how that shift, while sounding sensible, actually leaves the global power structures, funding flows, and SDG machinery fully intact. The fear-based messaging is being replaced by a softer appeal to pity—where questioning the policy script is framed as being anti-poor. In places like Newfoundland, this pivot shows up as resilience grants, performative community projects, and a locked-in consulting class that uses moral cover to maintain narrative control. What’s marketed as kindness is often compliance in disguise. While the story has softened, the underlying governance strategy—centralized, selective, and exclusionary—remains untouched. This article makes the case that the compassion pivot is not a retreat from global planning, but a rebranding of it. Read More...

This article examines how the Port au Port wind-to-hydrogen project exemplifies manufactured consent in Newfoundland and Labrador. Drawing on the Local Paradox framework, municipal dependency research, and the legacy of the cod collapse, Churchill Falls, Muskrat Falls, and offshore oil, it shows how structural weakness, historical trauma, and consultation rituals combine to greenwash global agendas as local opportunity. Port au Port is framed not as a community-led vision, but as an echo of elsewhere’s priorities — Berlin’s hydrogen demand, Ottawa’s climate branding, and corporate strategies — imposed on fragile institutions and vulnerable populations. Read More...

This editorial critiques how academic work can turn silence into proof of consent. Using Jessica Hogan’s 2025 study on wind energy acceptance in Newfoundland and the 2022 Local Paradox paper, it shows how survey numbers and governance theory are combined to manufacture legitimacy for development projects. Hogan’s “recognition justice” framework interprets resignation as support, while Local Paradox explains weak governance as incapacity. Together, they provide governments and industry with a toolkit for pushing projects through without genuine community consent. The Bayman’s Paradox counters that silence is not acceptance, but the product of structural dependency and disempowerment. Read More...