The ‘Materials and Consumption Taskforce’ is an attempt to micro-manage all aspects of your life: perspective
The Club of Rome and the Hot or Cool Institute launch the “Materials and Consumption Taskforce” that will give policy recommendations that if implemented, would restrict your ability to decide how you travel, what you eat, and how you live your life — all in the name of sustainability and the global economic system.
Launched on May 23, the taskforce will begin producing “guidelines that will serve as a critical resource for policymakers, businesses, and civil society, providing an in-depth analysis of materials and consumption and offering practical solutions for a more resource-secure future,” according to the Club of Rome press release.
“The taskforce recognizes that materials and consumption lie at the heart of many interconnected crises. From the escalating demand for critical minerals to the impact of supply chains on climate change and social inequalities, addressing these issues is essential to building a sustainable and resilient future”
Club of Rome, Materials and Consumption Taskforce Press Release, May 2025
The goal of the Materials and Consumption Taskforce are:
- Shifting the narrative: Moving beyond surface-level discussions to provide a nuanced understanding of the broader economic, environmental, and social impacts of material use.
- Setting science-based targets: Developing measurable, science-based material use targets to guide policy design and drive meaningful change.
- Strengthening governance: Advancing robust policy frameworks for sustainable material use, ensuring that policies are not only ambitious but also actionable. The objective will be – at last – to integrate the use of natural resources into the economic model guiding us.
- Mobilizing collaboration: Establishing a collaborative engagement and communications framework to mobilize partners and amplify impact.
The Club of Rome press release names three example reports from which the taskforce will draw inspiration and insights.
Those reports include:
- The United Nations: “Global Resources Outlook 2024“
- The Hot or Cool Institute: “1.5-Degree Lifestyles report“
- The European Environment Agency: “From Data to Decisions: Material Footprints in European Policy Making“
Combing through these lengthy reports, we see that the goal is to micro-manage nearly every aspect of our lives by restricting what we are allowed to consume — all under the guise of saving the planet.
All three reports say that society needs to move towards a circular economy in which you own nothing and rent everything.
All three reports say that society needs to move away from consuming meat and move towards a plant-based diet.
And all three reports agree that society needs to reduce private car ownership and move into 15-minute cities.
Restricting Ownership within the Circular Economy
With 181 pages, the “UN Global Resources Outlook 2024” starts off with a call for to transition to a circular economy, which is the inspiration for the infamous phrase, “You’ll Own Nothing. And You’ll Be Happy.”
In the forward to the report, UN Environment Program Executive Director Inger Andersen writes:
“It is important to note that the circular models we must follow are not just about recycling; they are about keeping materials in use for as long as possible, and rethinking how we design and deliver goods as well as services, thereby creating new business models.”
And what are these new business models?
The circular economy Product-as-a-Service business model turns all products into services, so you never actually own anything, and you become a renter for life.
“To increase energy and material efficiency, reduce waste generation and ensure that the products brought to market are safe and more circular, the regulatory framework needs to favor circular economy business models”
United Nations, “Global Resources Outlook,” March 2024
“Moving from ownership of products to usership of services as well as a slowing down their use are also among the sufficiency practices to consider”
Hot or Cool Institute, “1.5-Degree Lifestyles,” October 2021
Moving on to the next report on the list of inspiration for the new task force, the Hot or Cool Institute’s 164 page report also pushes for a circular economy.
In addition to calling for the end of “ownership of products” in favor of “usership of services,” the report says:
“Increasing the lifespan of products and goods by penalizing planned obsolescence as well as moving from a linear use of materials and products to a circular one by reducing, reusing, recycling, and producing locally will reduce emissions from goods.”
And with their proposed “carbon rationing,” there would be winners and losers — the losers being the countries whose people have been uplifted out of poverty over the past 100 years with the help of fossil fuels.
“Circular business models — although their scale is still rather limited — operate under this logic. These seek to replace ownership with sharing, thus replacing products with the service they provide”
European Environment Agency, “From Data to Decisions: Material Footprints in European Policy Making,” October 2024
And to round-off the circular economy trifecta in the inspirational reports, the European Environment Agency also wants you to own nothing and be happy by seeking “to replace ownership with sharing.”
The European Environment Agency’s vision for the future is one where you wouldn’t even own the shirt on your back.
For example, the report says, “To address the high environmental footprint of clothing and footwear production a behavioral change and policy support are crucial to making the shift towards circular business models.”
Now that you don’t have a choice in owning anything, let’s move on to the next area of your life that the new taskforce wants to control — food.
Restricting the Food You Eat for Your Safety and the Planet’s
“To move away from animal protein, synergies could be established with the human health agenda, since some of the most impactful commodities have also negative impacts on health (such as red meat, processed food and so on)”
United Nations, “Global Resources Outlook,” March 2024
With carbon as the ever-present boogeyman, the three reports say that eating meat is bad for the climate, and what’s bad for the climate is also bad for your health.
Therefore, in order to have an “environmentally optimal diet,” you must be vegetarian or at least pescatarian, and you must severely limit meat consumption or remove it entirely from your diet.
According to the United Nations report:
“An optimized diet that is considered healthy and minimal impact did not include meat, but did include fish (from a sustainable fishery) to meet nutrient needs, assuming no nutritional supplements are being consumed. Diet compositions are similar whether optimizing for climate change or biodiversity impacts, but climate-friendly diets include more legume consumption while biodiversity-friendly diets rely on more energy from fats, oils and eggs.”
Additionally, they say that “An environmentally optimal diet that meets all health requirements is nearly entirely plant based, while also including some dairy products and small amounts of (fatty, low impact) fish.”
Which diet would you choose when forced to comply, the “climate-friendly” or the “biodiversity-friendly?”
“The options with large emission reduction potentials as revealed in this report are reducing car travel, air travel, meat consumption, and fossil-based energy usage”
Hot or Cool Institute, “1.5-Degree Lifestyles,” October 2021
The Hot or Cool Institute also says meat is a killer to humans and the planet.
“Regarding food, the adoption of sustainable diets with reduced consumption of meat not only reduces personal carbon footprints, it is also healthier and linked to lower mortality rates, higher life expectancy, and lower risks of developing heart diseases and diabetes,” the report reads.
The Hot or Cool Institute report goes on to say that “High impact options such as fossil-fueled private jets and mega yachts, excessive meat consumption, and customer loyalty programs that encourage unnecessary frequent flying and stays in wasteful hotels need to be edited out, for example, while innovation for more sustainable alternatives would need to be edited in.”
So, basically you can’t enjoy the food you want to eat, the places you’ve been saving up to visit, or the hotels you wish to stay in.
“Attempts to reduce the overall material footprint need to address the resource efficiency and consumption patterns within housing and food”
European Environment Agency, “From Data to Decisions: Material Footprints in European Policy Making,” October 2024
The European Environment Agency report cited by the Club of Rome’s new taskforce doesn’t mention meat specifically, but it does say that “dietary shifts and the management of food waste can contribute to reducing the food sector’s material footprint.”
If unelected globalists had their way, you’d never leave your pod, you wouldn’t be able to go on vacation, you wouldn’t be able choose what to eat, you’d be confined to a 15-minute neighborhood, and you wouldn’t own anything.
Restricting Travel & Mobility To Keep You in 15-Minute Cities
“The 15 min city, which claims that urban citizens should have access to essential services within a 15-minute walk or bike ride, is being applied to cities such as Paris, Barcelona, and Portland”
United Nations, “Global Resources Outlook,” March 2024
The United Nations report envisions a future where you aren’t allowed to own a vehicle, you aren’t allowed to fly, and you don’t leave your 15 minute ghetto.
According to the spin doctors at the UN, “Turning away from private car use can be perceived as limiting, yet it can also boost market demand for new business models and sustainable options (alternative transport modes and new ways to power them), fostering new consumer choices.”
The UN report goes on to say, “Sustainable consumer choices should avoid overconsumption and replace high-impact consumption with low-impact consumption.
“This includes avoiding flights and car travel and instead using more public transport and switching to electric mobility and, for shorter distances, bikes.”
They say they give consumers new choices, and indeed they do, by eliminating all other choices and replacing them with “new business models” that are circular in nature, so you own nothing and rent everything through ride shares and electrified public transport that, by design, won’t travel very far.
“Sufficiency practices to reduce emissions from mobility include living car-free, ride sharing, reducing the travelled-distances, the weight of private cars, and speed limits”
Hot or Cool Institute, “1.5-Degree Lifestyles,” October 2021
The Hot or Cool Institute report also calls for reducing private vehicle ownership and reducing the distances you are allowed to travel.
They call this sufficiency:
“Applying sufficiency principles to mobility requires framing mobility as a service to be provided within the limited per-capita carbon budget to avoid the overshoot of the 1.5°C temperature target.”
They want to “frame mobility as a service” — something beyond your control — because you won’t be able to own a vehicle.
“More recently, there has been an increasing focus on avoiding air travel with the flying shame movement”
Hot or Cool Institute, “1.5-Degree Lifestyles,” October 2021
“The sustainable and smart mobility strategy adopted in EU in 2020 aims at promoting the use of more sustainable transport modes. It calls for increasing the number of passengers travelling by rail and commuting by public transport and active modes, and transporting more goods by rail, inland waterways and short sea shipping instead of by road”
European Environment Agency, “From Data to Decisions: Material Footprints in European Policy Making,” October 2024
The European Environment Agency report also promotes the idea of more public transport.
According to the report, “The personal mobility of Europeans is responsible for 8% of the total material footprint. More than half of it results from the use of fossil energy materials and around a quarter from non-metallic minerals. Personal mobility accounted for 9% of the total consumption expenditure in 2021.
“Considering the 8% increase in the total consumption expenditure between 2010 and 2021 and a 14% drop in material footprint over that period, the material intensity of personal mobility improved the most among consumption domains.“
The Materials and Consumption Taskforce Is an Attempt to Micro-Manage Your Life
“In response to the urgent need for a more sustainable approach to resource use, The Club of Rome and the Hot or Cool Institute have launched a Materials and Consumption Taskforce. The taskforce aims to highlight the critical importance of materials and consumption in the context of the global economic system”
Club of Rome, Materials and Consumption Taskforce Press Release, May 2025
When you see that the goal of the Materials and Consumption Taskforce is “to highlight the critical importance of materials and consumption in the context of the global economic system,” then you see there is an overlap with the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) great reset agenda, which aims to reset all societal contracts and the global economy while using a lot of the same buzzwords about resilience, sustainability, ESG, and social justice.
In the end, the taskforce objective is “to integrate the use of natural resources into the economic model guiding us.”
They say that part of their plan is to control the temperature, but their policies would actually be aimed at controlling you.
The circular economy would ensure that you would own nothing.
The restrictions on food consumption would have you eating fake meat and insects in addition to plant-based foods that may be lacking in sufficient vitamins, minerals, and proteins for certain individuals.
The restrictions on energy consumption and mobility all but guarantee that you would never be able to travel far from your smart-meter controlled apartment.
If the three reports mentioned in the Club of Rome press release are anything to go by, then this bright new future that the Materials and Consumption Taskforce wishes to create will be one in which nearly every aspect of your life will be micro-managed.
Image Source: AI generated by Grok
