The shocks that made me abandon the green movement

We used to be on the same side. What happened?

A couple of weeks ago the album Lay it to Rest by my old band Captor was re-released by the Chinese label Awakening Records. 31 years have passed since its initial release in 1993. I used the lyrics to express my concern about the development in the world, with the wars fought at the time, and how the big players profited and manipulated the game. I was worried about how Sweden’s possible membership in the European Union would undermine national sovereignty, concentrate power into fewer hands, and let the lobbyists of the transnational mega corporations run the show (McWorld). In our 1994 song “Virtual Reality”, I warned it could result in a future technocracy with a computerised humanity without any feelings.

Me and Captor’s album Lay it to Rest. Cover artwork by Hawk Alfredsson.

The anti-globalisation movement was strong at the time, with a broad support from the radical Left. I was more of a philosophical anarchist and did not agree with the black-and-white world view with predefined Socialist slogans which many in the radical Left chanted in the streets. It felt that they mostly were spoiled middle class kids that wanted to play revolutionaries with the required kit (slogans, dress code and ideology) purchased from the very same market place they disliked.

But still, we shared a critique against the concentration of power and Big Business. We fought against global power accompanied by Rage Against the Machine’s classic lines “Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me”. Some of the lyrics that I wrote clearly resonated with their beliefs. But all that was soon about to change.

Today the activists from the Left are the most likely to attack me, and brand me as a right wing extremist, climate denier, and conspiracy theorist for expressing essentially the same view as I had in 1993. How did this happen?

During my university studies in the late 1990s, I was drawn into the environmental movement. I was inspired by green anarchism and was critical of the modernist society that had transformed the urban landscapes and replaced traditional architecture with high rise buildings in international style, killed our city centers and bulldozed historical districts to give place to urban highways and shopping malls. I detested the ugliness and standardisation of modern culture.

After reading Jeremy Rifkin’s book Entropy: A New World View, with its dire projections for the future, I decided to join the Swedish Green Party to try and make a difference.

A couple of years later, I became even more committed as I stumbled upon the Peak Oil Theory and the predictions of an imminent oil crash. It was really scary and made me aware of our great dependence on oil to run the modern world. With Richard Heinbergs book The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies as my new bible, I became a preacher of the gospel of doom (I was at the time quite appropriately the singer and bassist of the doom metal band The Doomsday Cult).

I quit my job and returned to the university, trying to find someone who could give me the answers. But no one seemed to know. I had to do it myself. I followed the oil markets closely and investigated the feasibility of bioenergy as an alternative. Upon writing a thesis about global biofuel production I analysed the background to the climate alarms that had been highlighted in Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth and used as a reason by the European Union to develop alternative energy sources. During this process (in November and December 2006), I found an article by Christopher Monckton, “Climate Chaos? Don’t believe it”, which made me to start questioning the prevailing narrative.

As I studied the subject further, I was shocked by the lack of scientific evidence, the use of modeling to predict the future, and the harsh treatment of critical voices. This would change everything. By this time, I had applied to the position as a PhD student and wrote to the assistant professor who would become my co-supervisor expressing my concern about the inconsistencies in climate change research. It fell on deaf ears. The thesis was, however, despite a cautious skepticism towards the climate alarmism, later awarded by a think tank run by the Green Party.

The next revelation came the following semester as I wrote a geopolitical analysis about the European Union dependency on Russian oil (based on Halford Mackinder’s Heartland Theory and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book The Grand Chessboard). For this work I bought William Engdahl's book A Century of War, which really fascinated me. It was an amazing story on how the control of oil has been the motivating factor in all major global conflicts during the 20th century.

In one of the chapters Engdahl wrote about how a network established by Anglo-American finance and industry circles carefully had manipulated and crafted the green movement in the early seventies. I was horrified and at first did not want to believe what I had read. This could not be true! But when I thoroughly reviewed the sources, I gradually had to accept it.

This was another big step in my understanding on how the game was constructed. Within a year, I left my position as a member of the City Planning Board for the Green Party. They would soon rebrand themselves as the “climate party”, abandon their old demand to leave the European Union and start to support all the technocratic solutions I despised. Many of the voices that had viewed the party as a haven for free thought and alternative lifestyles would come to join other parties and forums.

When I started my PhD studies in the beginning of 2008, I had started to question everything that I had taken for granted. It was a confusing time and I was in for a rough ride down the rabbit hole. It deeply affected me on a personal level and resulted in a couple of major life changes the following years.

One year later, I began a background study on how the anthropogenic global warming theory had been anchored scientifically and politically. The story was full of oil men and confirmed William Engdahl's findings. I concluded that it had been run like a military operation by a network of think tanks, philanthropic organisations and NGOs with the Rockefeller dynasty in a key position with the goal to create a more efficient global governance system. I thought it was a scoop of great proportions but failed to convince my supervisors that it was worth spending more time and effort on (a year later they were replaced by more supportive tutors). It soon became clear that I had entered a path that would put my career at risk.

I published it as a working paper and managed to get the study mentioned at the rather alarmist blog “Ställ om”, which was run by the public Swedish broadcasting company SVT.

The climate sceptic community did of course welcome my perspective. I found that most of them were honest people who wanted to rely on scientific evidence rather than dogma. The common opinion that these people were bought by oil companies like ExxonMobile was simply not true. It was— shockingly—rather the other way around! As exemplified by this quote from Rockefeller Brothers Fund (a tax-exempt foundation founded by the grandsons of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller):

The RBF has supported “allied voices for climate action” that include businesses, investors, evangelicals, farmers, sportsmen, labor, military leaders, national security hawks, veterans, youth, and governors and mayors. Each of these constituencies has an important role to play.¹

But presenting these facts was dismissed as conspiracy theory, whereas labeling skeptic scientists as “lackeys of the oil industry” resulted in awards and generous government grants.

A revised version of the working paper Thoughts leading to action ended up as a chapter in my doctoral thesis, and the story became the foundation for my extended analysis in the book Rockefeller: Controlling the game.

But I failed to change the opinions of my colleagues and former friends in the environmental movement. It didn’t matter how much evidence I presented about the involvement of unscrupulous oil men in setting up the global environmental agenda. Instead, I was treated like a pariah and half of my department was outraged by the publication of my thesis in 2012. According to their black-and-white logic I had switched team to the enemy.

I have since studied the strategies and tactics of those that have set up the playing field. The minds of the radicals have slowly been adjusted and upgraded. They willingly go a long with the program. The movement which started with the student protests in 1968 is based on collectivist thinking rooted in internationalism. They were set up as the antithesis to the neoliberal economic globalisation that was unleashed with the help of policies originating from David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission.

It became evidently clear the leading organisations of the counter-movement have always been heavily funded and influenced by the racketeers from the world of finance that they are supposed to be opposing. After the dramatic culmination with the street fights in Seattle during the 1999 WTO meeting, the anti-globalisation movement has transformed into the global justice and citizens movement. They have slowly become integrated in the same supranational framework as their alleged enemy.² As expressed in the Rockefeller-funded scenario report The Great Transition: The promise and lure of the times ahead from 2002.

The Movement was critical at two key moments in the transition. First it provided a base for the new political leadership that was able to fashion the Global Reform response to the Crisis. Later, throughout the 2020s, it carried forward the spirit of 2015, expressing the new values and activism of civil society, culminating in the landmark changes of 2025, and the consolidation of the Great Transition.³

The marriage in 2019 between the UN and the World Economic Forum marked the ultimate fusion of humanitarian internationalism and economic globalisation with the goal of implementing a technocratic control system. A group of NGOs rightfully criticised this.

But most of them went along with the authoritarian measures during the pandemic that followed, with demands for “vaccine justice” for the world’s poor.⁴ You can't really make a change if you are unable to detect the technocratic high tech surveillance system that hides behind the rhetoric about catastrophic climate change and impending peak oil. Well… on the other hand, it took me a while to find out.

I discuss some of these themes in my latest interview (by Carlos Sánches from Grupo De Control).

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My new book Temple of Solomon (released 14 December) can be pre-ordered from Pharos Media Production. Order here. My other books in English can be ordered from Skyhorse.

1. rbf.org/sites/default/files/sustainabledevelopmentprogramreview.pdf

2. greenpeace.org/international/story/65710/wellbeing-same-remedy-for-gender-inequality-and-the-climate-crisis/

3. greattransition.org/documents/Great_Transition.pdf

4. greenpeace.org/international/press-release/49353/greenpeace-cop26-postponement-uk-fails-safe-equitable-access/