Last week the Energy Department dropped a sweeping proposal for “efficiency” mandates on dishwashers. Did you enjoy last night’s spaghetti, still crusted on the plate? Now you can taste it twice.
The proposal requires manufacturers to slash water use by a third, limiting machines to 3.2 gallons per cycle, down from the current federal limit of five gallons. New appliances must simultaneously cut estimated annual energy usage by nearly 30%.
Machines can only meet much higher efficiency standards by recirculating water in longer cycles, meaning run times of two or three hours. Yet if the dishes aren’t clean, owners run them again, undermining the argument about conservation.
Last week it was President Macron who was rowing back on green measures. In a speech he asserted that Europe has, for now, gone far enough – if it introduces any more regulations without the rest of the world following suit then it will put investment at risk and harm the economy. This week, the European People’s Party – a centre right grouping which includes the German Christian Democrats, the party of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – seems to be joining in.
The party is reported to be considering withdrawing its support for the European Commission’s Green Deal. That is the set of proposals which includes, for example, an EU-wide target for eliminating net carbon emissions by 2050. Whilst 11 EU countries have already set themselves legally-binding targets to reach net zero by 2050 (or 2045 in the case of Germany and Sweden), if the Green Deal were to go there would be no obligation on the other member states to follow suit.
Germany now seems to be taking over from France as the seedbed of opposition towards zero carbon policies, not least because it has more severe policies – and because its self-imposed, earlier target of reaching net zero by 2045 is increasingly looking out of kilter with reality.
last week a new party, ‘Burger in Wut’ (Citizens in Anger or BiW) took 9.6 per cent of the vote in state elections in Bremen. As with the Dutch Farmers-Citizen’s Movement (BoerburgerBeweging, or BBB) which came top of the country’s regional elections in March in protest at the government’s efforts to close down farms in order to meet nitrate targets, it was the speed of BiW’s rise which caught many unawares.
An Excellent Green Energy Proposal From France, President Biden Should Pay Attention
Last week the Energy Department dropped a sweeping proposal for “efficiency” mandates on dishwashers. Did you enjoy last night’s spaghetti, still crusted on the plate? Now you can taste it twice.
The proposal requires manufacturers to slash water use by a third, limiting machines to 3.2 gallons per cycle, down from the current federal limit of five gallons. New appliances must simultaneously cut estimated annual energy usage by nearly 30%.
Machines can only meet much higher efficiency standards by recirculating water in longer cycles, meaning run times of two or three hours. Yet if the dishes aren’t clean, owners run them again, undermining the argument about conservation.
The Energy Department plan gives manufacturers only until 2027 to produce the miracle of costlier washers that do a worse job. There are also new regulations for electric motors used in manufacturing, as well as beverage vending machines.
In recent months the Energy Department has proposed or finalized punishing new standards for ovens, microwaves, refrigerators and laundry machines (get ready for even moldier clothing). These come on top of rules for furnaces, air conditioners, and lightbulbs.
One of the most frustrating things about being a libertarian is how consistently the state gets away with ripping off the people, and the people don’t even realize it.
The public has been trained to think of the people who run the state as “public servants” who “work for us.”
Let’s get one thing straight: they do not work for us. We work for them.
Their salaries come from taxing the salaries of you and me. Running afoul of their zillion and one rules and regulations can get you and me put in prison.
Imagine trying to persuade an alien from another planet that in this relationship those people work for us!
And since most people lack the necessary economic knowledge, they are easily duped into blaming forces other than the state for problems caused by the state.
So of course it’s not difficult to persuade people that rising prices are caused by greedy businessmen or whoever the current villain is.
In fact, rising prices economy-wide are caused by the fiat money system. Before we had this system, we did not have economy-wide price increases. To the contrary, prices fell over time.
So the cause of the rising prices is the regime’s crappy money, and the solution is restraining its money creation or even adopting a hard-money standard.
But they’ll never admit that.
So instead, rising prices are caused by bad guys in the private sector. Or, more recently, they’re caused by you and your wicked desire to consume.
How about that: the state causes a problem, blames you for it, and the solution is for you to suffer.
Our friend Saifedean Ammous puts it this way: a fiat system’s way of putting a lid on inflation “is for you to live like a 12th-century peasant.”
Exhibits A, B, and C:
“Climate change,” incidentally, is the ideal elite fixation. Almost any state power can be justified in its name, and the victims of the various alleged mitigation policies are the kind of poor and helpless people the elites pretend to love but actually despise.
There was a time when climate-change propaganda was just a background annoyance, but now that the people who rule us have seen what they can get away with, it’s turning into a lot more than that these days.
If you can believe it, there is actually a sliver of the libertarian world that considers AOC and “The Squad” to be the most libertarian members of Congress.
The Squad is all in on the civilization-destroying Green New Deal, but we’re evidently supposed to overlook that small matter because of their opinions on…ICE? Who even knows or cares?
At any rate, I guess one silver lining of the Covid episode is that thinking people are now far less likely to accept impositions on them in the name of some expert consensus.
One more thing: I know some of my readers are interested in homesteading, so let me point out that our friend and repeat Tom Woods Show guest John Bush, whom I’ve known since the Ron Paul days, is running a virtual summit on homesteading on a budget. He’ll cover growing food, buying inexpensive but high-quality groceries, prepping, and even buying land on a budget. If that floats your boat, check it out: http://www.tomwoods.com/budgethomestead Tom Woods
the greenies need to identify the replacement or clone for crude oil, to keep the world’s population of 8 billion fed and healthy, and economies running with the more than6,000 productsnow made with manufactured derivatives from crude oil,
America is in a fast pursuit toward achieving President Biden’s stated goal that “we are going to get rid of fossil fuels” to achieve the Green New Deal’s (GND) pursuit of wind turbines and solar panels to provide electricity to run the world, but WAIT, everything in our materialistic lives and economies cannot exist without crude oil, coal, and natural gas.
Everything that needs electricity, from lights, vehicles, iPhones, defibrillators, computers, telecommunications, etc., are all made with the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
The need for electricity will decrease over time without crude oil. With no new things to power, and the deterioration of current things made with oil derivatives over the next few decades and centuries, the existing items that need electricity will not have replacement parts and will ultimately become obsolete in the future and the need for electricity will diminish accordingly.
The Green New Deal proposal calls on the federal government to wean the United States from fossil fuels and focus on electricity from wind and solar, but why? What will there be to power in the future without fossil fuels?
Rather than list the more than 6,000 products made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, I will let the readers list what is NOT dependent on oil derivatives that will need electricity. They can begin listing them here ______ ________ _______.
And by the way, crude oil came before electricity. The electricity that came AFTER the discovery of oil, is comprised of components made with those same oil derivatives from crude oil. Thus, getting rid of crude oil, also eliminates our ability to make wind turbines, solar panels, as well as those vehicles intended to be powered by an EV battery.
Today, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) divesting in fossil fuels are all the rage with big banks, Wall Street firms, and financial institutions, to divest in all 3 fossil fuels of coal, natural gas, and crude oil. Both President Biden and the United Nations support allowing banks and investment giants to collude to reshape economies and our energy infrastructure toward JUST electricity from wind and solar.
A reduction in the usage of coal, natural gas, and crude oil would lead us to life as it was without the crude oil infrastructure and those products manufactured from oil that did not exist before 1900, i.e., the decarbonized world that existed in the 1800’s and before when life was hard, and life expectancy was short.
Ridding the world of crude oil would result in less manufactured oil derivatives and lead to a reduction in each of the following:
The 50,000 heavy-weight and long-range merchant ships that are moving products throughout the world.
The 50,000 heavy-weight and long-range jets used by commercial airlines, private usage, and the military.
The number of wind turbines and solar panels as they are made with oil derivatives from crude oil.
The pesticides to control locusts and other pests.
The tires for the billions of vehicles.
The asphalt for the millions of miles of roadways.
The medications and medical equipment.
The vaccines.
The water filtration systems.
The sanitation systems.
The communications systems, including cell phones, computers, iPhones, and iPads.
The number of cruise ships that now move twenty-five million passengers around the world.
The space program.
Before we rid the world of all three fossil fuels of coal, natural gas, and crude oil, the greenies need to identify the replacement or clone for crude oil, to keep the world’s population of 8 billion fed and healthy, and economies running with the more than6,000 productsnow made with manufactured derivatives from crude oil, along with the fuels manufactured from crude oil to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of more than 50,000 jets and more than 50,000 merchant ships, and the military and space programs.
If this administration and like-minded officials in state capitols have their way, the disruptions and empty shelves that we hope now to be temporary would be anything but. Instead, they would be a new way of life. Furthermore, we still would have tornadoes in Oklahoma and Alabama, wildfires in California, and hurricanes on the East Coast. Nothing would change but our ability to deal with the elements, and that would mean people freezing in their homes in winter and unable to cool their homes in hot summers. (And none of Biden’s climate initiatives will make summers in the Deep South any more bearable.)
One of the saddest quotes from the Vietnam War came from journalist Peter Arnett, who wrote in a dispatch in 1968 about an American attack on a Vietcong-held village: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” As often happens with such quotes, they take on a second and even third life. Today, the Biden administration seeks to destroy the American economy ostensibly to save America from the dreaded climate change.
No one advocating the so-called Green New Deal (GND) has put it quite like that. In fact, its advocates claim that not only will the GND give us better weather, but it will raise the standard of living in the USA by “creating millions of new, high-paying jobs.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren claims on her website that the GND under her leadership (if she ever were elected president) would “create 10.6 million green jobs,” adding:
While climate change presents an urgent threat, it also presents the greatest opportunity of our time: the chance to rebuild our economy with 100% clean energy, to address the racial and economic inequality embedded in our fossil fuel economy, and to create millions of good, union jobs in the process.
One needs to ask how she came up with such numbers and such an optimistic outlook, but one gets the picture. The web is full of apocalyptic claims about climate change, many coming from the US government and the assorted groups. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the sponsors of the proposed Green New Deal, has openly claimed that the world literally will end in twelve years if we don’t stop carbon dioxide emissions now.
As Michael Shellenberger has pointed out in many publications, including Forbes, the claims of the coming apocalypse are a bit premature. Addressing the claim made by environmentalists that billions of people will perish in the coming disasters, he writes:
In 1931, 3.7 million people died from natural disasters. In 2018, just 11,000 did. And that decline occurred over a period when the global population quadrupled.
What about sea level rise? IPCC estimates sea level could rise two feet (0.6 meters) by 2100. Does that sound apocalyptic or even “unmanageable”?
Consider that one-third of the Netherlands is below sea level, and some areas areseven meters below sea level. You might object that Netherlands is rich while Bangladesh is poor. But the Netherlands adapted to living below sea level 400 years ago. Technology has improved a bit since then.
What about claims of crop failure, famine, and mass death? That’s science fiction, not science. Humans today produce enough food for 10 billion people, or 25% more than we need, and scientific bodies predict increases in that share, not declines. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) forecasts crop yields increasing 30% by 2050. And the poorest parts of the world, like sub-Saharan Africa, are expected to see increases of 80 to 90%.
Not surprisingly, President Joe Biden has sided with the most radical alarmists and has taken action from day 1 in his presidency to curtail and ultimately destroy the oil and gas industries in the USA. Last year, I wrote that this administration was attacking these industries on every front, but Biden now claims that his government is doing nothing of the sort. He repeated the claim at a recent press conference: “It’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production.”
A vast sweeping change towards a “green economy” is now being pushed by forces that may make an educated citizen rather uncomfortable.
Of course, news reports flash daily showcasing the brave young movement of “eco-warriors” led by Sweden’s “forever 15 year old” Greta Thunberg or America’s 17 year old Jamie Margolin who have become a force across Europe and America leading such movements as the Extinction Rebellion, This is Zero Hour, the Sunrise Movement and Children’s eco-crusade.
The young face of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez daily sells the idea that the only way for outdated capitalist forces that have plagued the world for decades to be replaced is by imposing a sweeping Green New Deal that priorities de-carbonization as a goal for humanity rather than continuing to allow the mindless forces of the markets to determine our destiny.
When EU President Ursula von der Leyen had stepped into her office, she lost no time attacking China’s Belt and Road Initiative (which is ironically representing a true 21st century New Deal) by saying:
…some are buying their influence by investing in dependencies on ports and roads [but] we go the European way.”
What is the “European way”? Not the development plans of Charles De Gaulle or Konrad Adenauer who envisioned industrial growth and increasing population as positives, but rather a Green New Deal.
Von der Leyen then announced that:
I want Europe to become the first CO2 neutral continent in the world by 2050! I will put forward a Green New Deal for Europe in my first 100 days in office…”
Attacking the “mindless forces of the market” and vested power structures of capitalism are not bad things to do…but why must we de-carbonize? Re-regulating the too-big-to-fail banks is long overdue, but why do so many assume that a “Green New Deal” won’t just empower those same forces that have run havoc upon the world for the past half-century and just cause more death and starvation than has already been suffered under Globalization?
One might only think to even ask such questions by first confronting the uncomfortable fact that behind such young cardboard cutouts as Thunberg, Margolin, Cortez or the Green New Deal are figures whom one would not associate with humanitarianism by any measure.
Green Bonds and Oligarchs
When we begin to pull back the curtain we quickly run into figures like Prince Charles, who recently met with the heads of 18 Commonwealth countries to consolidate climate emergency legislation which was promptly passed in the UK and Canadian Parliaments.
At the end of the meeting Charles said that we “have 18 months to save the world from climate change” and called for “increasing the amount of private sector finance flowing towards the supporting of sustainable development throughout the commonwealth”.
Following the royal decree, the Bank of England and some of the dirtiest banks in the Rothschild-City of London web of finance have promoted “green financial instruments” led by Green Bonds to redirect pension plans and mutual funds towards green projects that no one in their right minds would ever invest in willfully.
The Ecological, Social, Governance Index (ESGI) has now been set up across 51% of Germany’s banks including the derivatives-bomb waiting to blow named Deutschebank. Leading bankers supporting the ESGI like Mark Carney of the Bank of England have said that over 6.5 trillion Euros could be mobilized under this new index (which currently accounts for about $160 billion).
The creation of these “green bonds” run hand-in-hand with the Bail-in mechanisms which have now been implemented across the trans-Atlantic nations in order to steal trillions of dollars of from pension funds, RRSPs and Mutual funds the next time a bailout is needed to prop up the “too big to fails” which currently sit atop a $1.2 trillion derivatives bubble waiting to blow.
On top of heading the Bank of England, former Goldman Sachs-man Carney has also endorsed the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures which was created in 2015 and was used as a guideline for the UK government’s July 2019 White Paper “Green Finance Strategy: Transforming Finance for a Greener Future”.
The White Paper proposed to:
consolidate the UK’s position as a global hub for green finance and positioning the UK at the head of green financial innovation and data and analytics…endorsed by institutions representing $118 trillion of assets globally.”
The Carney-led Task Force also spawned the Green Finance Initiative in 2016 which is now a primary vehicle designed to divert international capital flows into green tech.
Following the royal decree, the Bank of England and some of the dirtiest banks in the Rothschild-City of London web of finance have promoted “green financial instruments” led by Green Bonds to redirect pension plans and mutual funds towards green projects that no one in their right minds would ever invest in willfully.
A vast sweeping change towards a “green economy” is now being pushed by forces that may make an educated citizen rather uncomfortable.
Of course, news reports flash daily showcasing the brave young movement of “eco-warriors” led by Sweden’s “forever 15 year old” Greta Thunberg or America’s 17 year old Jamie Margolin who have become a force across Europe and America leading such movements as the Extinction Rebellion, This is Zero Hour, the Sunrise Movement and Children’s eco-crusade. The young face of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez daily sells the idea that the only way for outdated capitalist forces that have plagued the world for decades to be replaced is by imposing a sweeping Green New Deal that priorities de-carbonization as a goal for humanity rather than continuing to allow the mindless forces of the markets to determine our destiny.
When EU President Ursula von der Leyen had stepped into her office, she lost no time attacking China’s Belt and Road Initiative (which is ironically representing a true 21st century New Deal) by saying “some are buying their influence by investing in dependence from ports and roads”… but “we go the European way”. What is the “European way”? Not the development plans of Charles De Gaulle or Konrad Adenauer who envisioned industrial growth and increasing population as positives, but rather a Green New Deal. Von der Leyen then announced that “I want Europe to become the first CO2 neutral continent in the world by 2050! I will put forward a Green New Deal for Europe in my first 100 days in office…”
Attacking the “mindless forces of the market” and vested power structures of capitalism are not bad things to do… but why must we de-carbonize? Re-regulating the too-big-to-fail banks is long overdue, but why do so many assume that a “Green New Deal” won’t just empower those same forces that have run havoc upon the world for the past half century and just cause more death and starvation than has already been suffered under Globalization?
One might only think to even ask such questions by first confronting the uncomfortable fact that behind such young cardboard cut outs as Thunberg, Margolin, Cortez or the Green New Deal are figures whom one would not associate with humanitarianism by any measure.
Green Bonds and Oligarchs
When we begin to pull back the curtain we quickly run into figures like Prince Charles, who recently met with the heads of 18 Commonwealth countries to consolidate climate emergency legislation which was promptly passed in the UK and Canadian Parliaments. At the end of the meeting Charles said that we “have 18 months to save the world from climate change” and called for “increasing the amount of private sector finance flowing towards the supporting sustainable development throughout the commonwealth”.
There is a larger issue at work that we should not forget. The notion that government programs somehow are going to result in better weather should give anyone pause.
It is summer in the United States, which means temperatures are hot and western forests and grasslands are burning—as has been the case as long as people have lived here. In our current age, however, in which there is alleged to be a political “solution” to nearly every problem, politicians believe they can use governmental policies to give us better weather and change the nature of wildfires.
So far, Congress, state legislators, and the Biden administration have launched a blizzard of new programs and initiatives that sponsors claim will reverse what they call the “climate crisis” and return our country, and even the whole world, to “normal” weather patterns. There are the Green New Deal, state mandates for utilities to purchase electricity from “renewable” sources such as solar panels and wind power, and the Biden “Build Back Better” campaign, in which the president has promised “millions of new jobs that help us recover from the pandemic and tackle climate change.”
Advocates of these initiatives claim that because current methods of producing energy ostensibly release gases that change the earth’s climate for the worse, governmental authorities should be redirecting resources to ensure results that will guide worldwide temperatures downward. Elites in government, the media, and academe have accepted these utopian notions as being self-explanatory and believe that once a progressive politician has announced certain “goals” commensurate with progressive thinking, the goals always are worthy and within reach—if governments allocate and spend enough money.
One of the conservative criticisms of climate change policies is that they follow the historically failed patterns of central economic planning, with resources directed politically without regard to their relative scarcity and paying no attention to the negative secondary effects that always follow. To counter the command-and-control measures environmentalists and their political allies impose, many conservatives have urged that the government, instead, pursue “market-based” solutions.
For example, to reduce automobile air pollution, the US government in 1975 required automakers to install catalytic converters on cars made in the USA, as well as on imported vehicles. While these devices are effective, a market-based mechanism would permit automakers to find their own solutions and likely would result in lower emissions (and lower pollution abatement costs) than what we see.
The idea behind market-based pollution abatement programs is that regulated parties use market mechanisms like prices and property rights to reduce toxic emissions or some other form of environmental harm. Such initiatives set pollution reduction goals and then provide incentives for regulated entities to best determine the overall strategies of abatement. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 permitted and organized market-based policies that were relatively successful.
Now four US senators, Mike Braun (R-IN), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) have reintroduced the bipartisan Growing Climate Solutions Act, which has won praise from conservative groups, because it allows for some market-based activity in reducing “greenhouse” gases blamed for climate change. The conservative-leaning advocacy group Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions has praised the proposed law, declaring:
When our farmers, ranchers, and foresters go the extra mile to help reduce America’s carbon footprint, they should be rewarded, not penalized. The Growing Climate Solutions Act is exciting because it would allow valuable carbon credits to be harvested along with any crops farmed using climate-friendly practices. By normalizing how those credits can be sold on voluntary carbon credit markets, the GCSA also makes it easy for farms of all shapes and sizes to connect with and sell these credits to the scores of American companies and utilities that have committed to going carbon neutral but can’t do it alone.
The GCSA is a free-market win for agriculture producers, businesses, and the climate; it is a solution that helps restore the environment without heavy-handed government mandates or driving up the cost of food and energy production.
But intentions are one thing. Reality is quite another.
First, while there is no doubt that using a market price system to move resources will be more economically efficient than a command-and-control system, nonetheless government still is determining the direction resources move. There is little doubt that a carbon-credit trading system will result in less release of carbon dioxide and methane gases than would be the case with a typical government regulatory regime.
But that farmers will be using some free market devices does not mean that the entire system suddenly has turned into free enterprise. While farmers may be able to be more cost efficient in carrying out government emissions mandates, nonetheless their actions will still be mandated and there is no reason to believe government regulators and their green allies who are imposing the mandates know what the optimum levels of emissions should be. For all of the talk about science, the only thing we truly know is that whatever the emissions reductions might be from the farm belt, they will have zero effect on the world’s climate.
The second problem is that while the Growing Climate Solutions Act of 2021 might try to arrange market-based abatement systems, what actually happens ultimately is up to the regulators, who always are given wide berths to set policy. No matter what the original legislation might declare, regulators are going to govern in a way that reduces their own costs while enhancing their own authority. Perhaps the best analogy is that of Lucy, the character from the cartoon strip Peanuts, who is famous for pulling up the football after inviting Charlie Brown to kick it.
One more point to remember is that while market-based emissions reduction programs will be more effective than traditional bureaucratic command and control, these still are contrived markets in which the value of tradable permits and other mechanisms is set by government agents. Thus, that value in trade will always be arbitrary, as opposed to the value being set by the interaction of real consumers and producers.
There is a larger issue at work that we should not forget. The notion that government programs somehow are going to result in better weather should give anyone pause. As H. Sterling Burnett recently wrote, government regulators in pursuit of abating climate change are slowly destroying the capacity of US electric power production by requiring so-called renewable production such as wind power and solar panels while forcibly phasing out production using coal, oil, natural gas, and zero-emissions nuclear power.
No doubt, environmental advocates will claim that the deterioration of the American electric grid is temporary and that whatever up-front costs electricity users incur using “renewables” are still less than the “real” costs that accompany conventional fuels. Don’t count on it. If we know anything about economic central planning from American political authorities, it is that there always are huge hidden costs that come with policy initiatives. That they put a free market happy face on the latest policy prescription does not change the fact that the original policies regarding climate change are terribly flawed.
Despite the raging debate over the impact of man-made climate change, left-leaning politicians, lobbyists, and most significantly, billionaires, have declared it settled science, using the issue as a means of gaining control over the energy arena.
Notably, the Rockefellers bankrolled the Columbia Journalism School’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Fellowship Project’s demonization of the oil company.3 However, both Schneiderman’s investigation and Columbia Journalism School’s publications were years in the making.
First published in December 2016, this article is of relevance to an understanding of the ongoing debate on Climate Change as well the Green New Deal, largely controlled by the financial establishment. The Rockefellers also play a key role in World Economic Forum’s Great Reset Proposal.
***
“Beginning in the 1980s, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund became leading advocates of the global warming agenda. … In their Sustainable Development Program Review, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund boasts of being one of the first major global warming activists, citing its strong advocacy for both the 1988 formation of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the 1992 establishment of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.” (excerpt from Report)
The following text is the Executive Summary of a full length report by The Energy & Environmental Legal Institute published in 2016.
This informative report is brought to the attention of Global Research readers. The CRG does not necessarily endorse the title nor the contents of this report.
What is important, however, is to acknowledge the role of the Rockefeller family –which historically was the architect of “Big Oil”– in supporting the Climate Change debate as well as the funding of scientists, environmentalists and NGOs involved in grassroots activism against “Big Oil” and the fossil fuel industry.
Debate on the world’s climate is of crucial importance. But who controls that debate?
There is an obvious contradictory relationship: Whereas “Big Oil” is the target of Global Warming activism, “Big Oil” through the Rockefeller Family and Rockefeller Brothers Trusts generously finance the Worldwide climate protest movement. Ask yourself Why?
Michel Chossudovsky, November 24, 2019, March 6, 2021
The Rockefellers are arguably the wealthiest and most powerful family in the history of the United States. For more than 100 years, they have shaped and directed America’s economic, financial, political, and public policy while simultaneously amassing one of the largest family empires in the modern era.
Most Americans hold the billionaire philanthropists in high esteem, associating the Rockefeller name with “oil” and “capitalism.” In reality, the Rockefellers are intent on controlling nearly every major institution in America, using philanthropy as a means of increasing their influence on the world stage under the guise of advancing various social causes. Their avid opposition to the very fossil fuel industry that made John D. Rockefeller America’s first billionaire shows that the Rockefellers are not political ideologues. Instead, they are mere opportunists who support political agendas convenient to enhancing their leverage in the global arena.
Through the Rockefellers’ web of family foundations, universities, and institutions, as well as huge grants to other charities, they have gained unprecedented influence in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, energy, and the environment. Their highly complex integration of hedge funds, interlocking boards positions, and non-profit organizations has steered public policy on these issues and provided them with foreknowledge of emerging markets and access to the developing worlds’ natural resources.
Since the beginning of their philanthropic endeavors, the Rockefellers have used social causes to amass influence in policy areas of their choosing. Since the 1980s, their cause of choice has been the climate change agenda (originally called global warming). Their crusade to collapse the fossil fuel industry in favor of renewable energy in well-documented, from their involvement in major global climate treaties and organizations – the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1992 to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol – to spending hundreds of millions to advance the renewable energy industry. Through their Sustainable Development Program, the Rockefellers continue to promote their self-serving “clean energy” policies throughout both the federal government and general public.
As the most prolific benefactors of the climate activist movement, the Rockefellers’ impact on the energy industry sees no bounds, as the family’s objectives permeate throughout federal and state energy policy, as well as international social engineering globalist compacts such as Agenda 21. With the immeasurable influence that accompanies mass wealth and power, the Rockefeller empire has proven an effective puppeteer of advancing its main objective: the destruction of the fossil fuel industry to increase its clout over the energy sector.
On November 5, 2015, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (image on the right) launched an unprecedented investigation into ExxonMobil to determine if the company had defrauded investors by not disclosing the risks that climate change could have on its business.1 This occurred only weeks after the Columbia Journalism School’s (CJS) Energy and Environment Reporting Fellowship accused Exxon of misleading the public through its Los Angeles Times article, “How Exxon went from leader to skeptic on climate change.”2
Despite the raging debate over the impact of man-made climate change, left-leaning politicians, lobbyists, and most significantly, billionaires, have declared it settled science, using the issue as a means of gaining control over the energy arena. Research shows that Eric Schneiderman’s legal investigation, as well as Columbia Journalism’s negative portrayal of ExxonMobil were neither objective nor independent. In fact, substantial evidence leads to the premise that both Columbia Journalism School’s accusations against ExxonMobil and Eric Schneiderman’s legal investigation into the oil giant were not only financed, but orchestrated by the Rockefeller family.
Notably, the Rockefellers bankrolled the Columbia Journalism School’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Fellowship Project’s demonization of the oil company.3 However, both Schneiderman’s investigation and Columbia Journalism School’s publications were years in the making.
The Rockefeller Family Fund hosted and led two closed door meetings with prominent climate activists – one in 2012 and one in January 2016. Uncovered emails show that the main issue at both gatherings was how to best take down the fossil fuel industry.4 Aside from key leaders of the Rockefellers’ many foundations, both summits included the major players in the climate movement such as: Matt Pawa (attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law), Sharon Eubanks (director of the Department of Justice’s tobacco litigation effort in the 1990’s and known anti Exxon activist), representatives of Greenpeace, and Carroll Moffit of the Climate Accountability Institute.5 During both summits, Eric Schneiderman was considered the possible catalyst to spearhead the legal investigation, while ExxonMobil was repeatedly mentioned as the possible target.
Schneiderman’s fervent outspokenness against “climate deniers,” and public call to enact policies conducive to increasing renewable energy use made him a perfect and willing candidate.6 When announcing his crusade against Exxon, Schneiderman cited studies from the Rockefeller funded outlets Inside Climate News and Columbia Journalism School’s Exxon reports.7 Revealingly, numerous members of the Rockefeller family had long urged Schneiderman to investigate the oil company.
However, as evidenced in the Rockefeller-hosted La Jolla 2012 meeting report, the family and climate activists needed a well-known, respected, and objectively perceived media outlet to push the public narrative. Although not disclosed in the summit’s documentation, it appears they found one in the Columbia Journalism School. While arguably the most prestigious journalism school in the country, the Columbia Journalism School is not only a beneficiary of millions in Rockefeller donations, it is composed, almost entirely, of professors closely affiliated with the green movement.
In 2013, a year after the plan was crafted, climate alarmist and author of a well-known book condemning ExxonMobil, Steve Coll, was appointed Dean of the Columbia Journalism School.
Not surprisingly, Coll spearheaded the school’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Fellowship’s project that smeared Exxon. Coll is closely tied to the Rockefellers, as he previously chaired the climate change proponent New America Foundation, which received significant funding from the family. These revelations suggest that the Rockefellers used their influence over both the Columbia Journalism School and Steve Coll to put Coll in place as Dean, providing him the platform to do what he had done voluntarily and enthusiastically once before: publically and thoroughly castigate ExxonMobil.
Along with Coll, as a bastion of climate activists, the Columbia Journalism School was likely an eager participant in the plot to smear Exxon. At least seven CJS professors are directly connected to green activist billionaire George Soros, receiving either awards or significant amounts of money from the socialist philanthropist. Moreover, several CJS alumni board members are prominent climate change advocates, including Scott Dodd, and Thomas Watkins.
This report proposes that the assault on ExxonMobil was neither the idea of Eric Schneiderman, nor the Columbia Journalism School. Instead, the Rockefellers, with the help of other billionaires and prominent climate activists, carefully orchestrated both the legal and media investigations into ExxonMobil in an effort to achieve their goal of collapsing the fossil fuel industry to gain control over the energy sector.
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Notes
1 Chris Mooney, “New York is investigating Exxon Mobil for allegedly misleading the public about climate change,” The Washington Post, Nov. 5, 2015, Accessed April 16, 2016.
2 Katie Jennings, Dino Grandoni and Susanne Rust, “How Exxon Went from leader to skeptic on climate change,”Los Angeles Times, Oct. 23, 2015, Accessed April 16, 2016.
3 Susanne Rust, “The Energy and Environment Reporting Fellowship,” Columbia Journalism School website,Columbia Journalism School, Accessed April 16, 2016.
4 Alana Goodman, “Memo Shows Secret Coordination Effort Against ExxonMobil by Climate Activists, Rockefeller Fund,” The Washington Free Beacon, April 14, 2016, Accessed April 28, 2016.
5 Katie Brown, “Wait Till You See These Secret Memos Laying Out Activists’ Plans to Target Exxon,” Energy InDepth, April 15, 2016, Accessed April 29, 2016.
6 “Schneiderman Delivers Speech on #Climate2014: “It’s Time for Action on Climate Change,” YouTube, Sep. 22,2014, Accessed April 20 2016.
7 Jon Entine, “How the Columbia Journalism School Smeared Exxon,” New York Post, March 1, 2016, Accessed April 21, 2016.
This leads to the most important reason why this petty SNL controversy matters. It highlights the most important issue in history. Are we meant to solve problems or to complain? Do we strive upward or accept decline? Elon Musk stands for the former; progressives stand for the latter.
The purpose of life is to build something greater than ourselves. A Christian might lead a life of service, but for the glory of God. A patriot dies for his country and people. Parents sacrifice for children. Artists feed the soul. Even athletes encourage us to be stronger and better. The true Right is the pursuit of greatness.
Why do they hate Elon Musk? The head of Tesla and SpaceX should be a progressive hero.
Leftists lecture us about “climate change” and why we need a Green New Deal. One group, Extinction Rebellion, warns of “mass extinction” unless there is revolution. The Guardian says some parents regret having children because of “climate change.”
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla should thrill progressives who worry about the planet. President Obama toured SpaceX HQ with Mr. Musk, and he’s hardly a conservative. Mr. Musk endorsed Democrat Andrew Yang in the 2020 presidential campaign and supports a Universal Basic Income. Republicans don’t hate him, either. Democrats and Republicans support him at about equal rates, which is rare in a partisan age.
Elon Musk appeared in the movies Iron Man 2 and Machete Kills as a smart, socially conscious CEO who was saving the world. He represented the ascendant “creative class” — the pragmatic, progressive, environmentally friendly elite who think globally and aren’t held back by old-fashioned nationalism. Elon Musk is even an immigrant. He’s the most successful African-American in the world. It’s especially impressive because he doesn’t get affirmative action (he’s from South Africa).
However, many were outraged learn that he is going to host Saturday Night Live.
Elon Musk hosting SNL is the most reckless casting decision they’ve made since Donald Trump.
Of course Lorne Michaels is letting dangerous loon Elon Musk host SNL. TV networks pay no price when they do harmful things for ratings. SNL paid no price for letting Trump host. Cable news paid no price for lying about Hillary’s emails. We all pay a price – but not the TV folks.
People who are mad about Elon Musk hosting SNL need to understand that hosting SNL is *not* an endorsement, for example Adolf Hitler hosted SNL in 1938
— pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (@pixelatedboat) April 24, 2021
Perhaps they were among the people who shorted the stock and lost $38 billion in 2020. Why is this worth writing about?
First, it reflects what progressives think about the 2016 election and what they think must be done to make sure nothing like it happens again. They think without strict media gatekeeping, dangerous forces could emerge.
Price signals! Government does need no stinkin’ price signals.
States like Texas, however, have failed to heed considerations of both net energy and supply and demand in installing massive wind farms at great taxpayer expense where fossil fuels would be far cheaper and more reliable. Lacking price signals, the central planner is blind to the economic consequences of his grand designs.
One of President Biden’s first executive actions was to declare January 27 “Climate Day.” This ad hoc holiday provided an opportunity for his administration to celebrate the latest rationale for economic central planning. The day’s festivities began with three executive orders on climate change, science, and technology.
In his remarks, Biden bundled his environmental agenda with a jobs program, along with a broader policy to address social inequality and environmental injustice. Among the ambitious goals of Biden’s $2 trillion Green New Deal are 1 million new high-paying union jobs in the automobile industry, half a million electric car charging stations, and a 100 percent carbon pollution–free electric sector by 2035.
The goal of transitioning the electrical grid to zero carbon emissions in the next fifteen years stands out as a singularly misguided effort. Even granting the nonobvious assumption that we must immediately transition away from fossil fuels, overhauling the American energy infrastructure is a vast and complex calculation problem. To be truly sustainable, individuals and firms would need to act on local knowledge, assessing where and what kinds of renewables might meet their energy needs.
The concept of “net energy” illustrates why replacing fossil fuels with large-scale renewable energy is often counterproductive. In Carbon Shift, a 2009 book discussing peak oil and climate change, David Hughes summarizes it like this:
A two-megawatt windmill contains 260 tonnes of steel requiring 170 tonnes of coking coal and 300 tonnes of iron ore, all mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons. The question is: how long must a windmill generate energy before it creates more energy than it took to build it? At a good wind site, the energy payback day could be in three years or less; in a poor location, energy payback may be never. That is, a windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it.
This life-cycle accounting of “energy return on energy invested” (EROEI) succinctly describes multiple stages of intermediate capital within a hydrocarbon-based structure of production. Hughes also hints at the basic questions facing all entrepreneurs—namely, where they should place their investments and how they should configure heterogeneous capital to recoup up-front costs plus some profit or “windfall.”
Wind turbines and solar panels do enjoy a wide market in off-grid applications, such as remote farm properties and on oceangoing sailboats, where the abundance of wind and scarcity of petroleum products makes the investment a no-brainer. In sunny parts of the country, solar has reached “grid parity.” States like Texas, however, have failed to heed considerations of both net energy and supply and demand in installing massive wind farms at great taxpayer expense where fossil fuels would be far cheaper and more reliable. Lacking price signals, the central planner is blind to the economic consequences of his grand designs.
The president revealed his ignorance of the technological and economic problem at hand when he stated matter of factly, “We know what to do, we’ve just got to do it.” On the contrary, we have no idea how to create a nonpolluting electrical grid without emitting much more carbon in the process than we otherwise would have.
If the government invests trillions of dollars in energy-intensive capital investments—whether wind farms, solar charging stations, or transformer stations—it will have two primary effects.
Second, and relatedly, a Green New Deal funded by debt will distort the capital structure, skewing investment toward long-term fixed capital assets at the expense of the intermediate capital maintenance of the overall structure of production. Theoretically we could burn more coal, petroleum, and natural gas today to build a zero-pollution electrical infrastructure for tomorrow. But when it comes time to service offshore wind turbines, will the helicopters and boats used for maintenance be powered by electricity as well? And what kind of energy will power the factories that manufacture the solar panels and wind turbines? Claiming that they will run on renewables is eerily similar to the circular reasoning and magical thinking used by proponents of modern monetary theory to promote the illusion of spending without taxation.
The Green New Deal is, if anything, a formula for a new dark age. Texas’s recent power outages show the difficulty of the task facing grid managers. There, an attempt to prematurely transition to unreliable wind energy exacerbated the strain on the grid when turbines froze at the crucial moment when they were most needed. The grid managers failed to keep a maintain a sufficient buffer, even without the additional mandate of ensuring the creation of new green jobs and mitigating the discriminatory effects of climate change. It is ironic that a state and nation so rich in natural energy resources would be leading the charge to cancel fossil fuels in favor of technology that has never been proven effective, or even environmentally friendly, at a large scale.
The stock of fossil fuels is large but not infinite. Geological surveys indicate that there is plentiful energy in the ground to advance civilization and develop new sources of abundant and nonpolluting energy. However, we must be careful not to squander our petroleum patrimony on unused charging stations, unreliable wind farms, and half-finished trains to nowhere. Author:
MCViewPoint 
