I can agree that there are no direct economic-technological forces pushing the elites to lie, implement destructive austerity, wage this class war fully. We could indeed have had social democratic societies, Keynessian economics, merry growth... for another 20-50 years perhaps!

Imagine this: Some captivated Elites take the Club of Rome Report seriously, and decide that global consumption of resources has to be reduced, even the global population perhaps. They literally see no alternative. Why would they have to discuss this thorny topic with masses in all countries? So they tell governments intimately: all ideologies, welfare aspirations,  social values, human rights are nothing compared to having an inhabitable planet. And so the TINA reversal towards a Hobbessian struggle begins. The USSR block is quickly dismantled, the Western politics is slowly but consistently pushed by transparently mean conservative governments and charismatic Third Way moles. How it come that TINA forces emerged (and strengthened unopposed) since 1970-80s while the social, democratic post-WWII values were totally betrayed?

Surely, destruction of the environment is seemingly only accelerating in these last decades. Contrary to perceptible evidence and parsimonious logic, I have to assume here uncanny planning, obfuscation. Some people like to do whatever it takes, if the goal is inescapable. Ain't economic depressions more human than world wars? The disregard towards the long term sustainability is too comprehensive to be true, no? Would we here know limits of misdirection for that purpose?

Whatever the timeline for real results, social-economic policies have clearly shifted, and Tverberg's graphs depict that energy consumption is decreasing in UK, Spain, Japan, etc.