Earlier this week, Aviva Investors boss Mark Versey sent his annual letter to company ‘chairpersons’ claiming that the planet faces the “Sixth Great Extinction” and there has been an “alarming” 68% decrease in species in the 46 years to 2016. Extinctions on this scale would be truly alarming, except that the claim is untrue. Meanwhile, the so-called Sixth Great Extinction is a WWF green activist hobbyhorse, with little support among scientists – Versey linked his comments to a WWF report that in fact noted a “68% decrease in population” of various mammals, birds and fish between 1970-2016.
Easily done, mixing up population numbers and actual extinction, although warning bells should have sounded about a ridiculous suggestion that nearly seven in ten Earth species had disappeared in just over four decades. Needless to say, the BBC faithfully repeated the error. Even the alarmist UN 2019 report on biodiversity could only suggest that one million animal and plant species were “threated” with extinction at some undefined date in the future. Given that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived on Earth are extinct, this looks a more reasonable bet. On the actual extinction front, the report did find that 680 vertebrates had disappeared since the 16th century. One must hope that Mr. Versey’s due diligence is more sound when he comes to investing some of the £250 billion of investment funds under his company’s control.
It seemingly doesn’t matter what green inaccuracies are pumped into the public space since an enormous ‘green rush’ gathers pace by the day. A recent book by Dr. Susan Crockford called “Fallen Idol” revisits the notorious 2019 WWF/Netflix collaboration featuring the falling walruses episode of “Our Planet”. Filmed falling off a cliff, in slow motion for maximum effect, Sir David Attenborough attributed the horrific scenes to “climate change”, despite a pack of nearby polar bears providing a more obvious explanation.
Introducing his film, which Crockford describes as “animal tragedy porn”, to the rich and influential elites gathered at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos, Sir David commented: “If people can truly understand what is at stake, I believe they will give permission to businesses and governments to get on with practical solutions”.
In the U.K., the true Net Zero cost of such “practical solutions” are starting to be understood, with energy prices set to soar and general inflation starting to rise alarmingly. Green levies on electricity alone are set to rise from £11 billion this year to around £15 billion by 2026. Renewable subsidies support the 25% of energy provided by unreliable renewables, solar and wind. Since such electricity provides only 3% of total UK energy needs, phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them largely from these sources will, at current rates of subsidy, require a majority of the tax that is currently levied on the entire British economy.
That will never happen but in the meantime the wind is set fair and the sun is shining on the financial sector. Trillions of dollars, pounds and euros are up for grabs. A recent report from McKinsey put a figure on it: £204 trillion. The new ‘green rush’, funded by vast amounts of state, institutional and individual capital, is likely to dwarf the Dotcom mania of the late 1990s. Last year the NASDAQ clean edge, green energy index shot up by around 500%. Most investment managers now run large ”green” funds. BlackRock’s Sustainable Energy Fund has nearly $8 billion at its disposal, while a healthy management fee of 1.65% ensures revenues of $12 million a year, more than enough to cover George Osborne’s recent part time salary of £650,000.
Ben Steverman in Bloomberg notes that billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham is “making lots of money” while recruiting other super wealthy people to pursue similar strategies that mix philanthropy and investing. Mr. Grantham’s “philanthropy” extends to funding three university Grantham Institutes in Sheffield, Imperial and the LSE. All three operations play a role in promoting the Net Zero political agenda.
Steverman goes on to note: “For Grantham, the capital flowing into green investing over the past couple of years reflects his warnings for more than a decade: Floods, fires and extreme weather have made warming undeniable, creating momentum for carbon taxes and other climate friendly policies that will transform the world’s economy.”
There are one or two small problems with this rosy scenario of green investing and transforming the world economy. Much of the capital is being diverted from productive uses to fund research and subsidise wind power – a 1,000 year old technology – make better batteries – a 200 year old invention – and produce hydrogen. This latter substance, while ubiquitous, requires large amounts of fuel to separate it from other compounds and has a tendency to explode unless very carefully handled. In addition, and not to be mentioned under any circumstances, small amounts of green unfriendly oxides of nitrogen are produced during the burning process.
Few of these technologies would be funded and promoted at their current levels unless the state diverted taxes to the cause, in the process driving up the cost of living for the poorest in society. Stricter societal controls, as we have seen in the Covid pandemic, would be inevitable if it becomes necessary to restrict energy, general consumption, personal transport and diet. Drafty British homes will become much colder during the winter as inefficient and expensive heat pumps struggle to extract warmth from the frozen earth or icy air.
And of course the entire edifice rests on the suggestion that humans are solely responsible for the climate changing and this has been ‘settled’ by science. In reality, it is based on an unproven hypothesis, about which scientific doubts are constantly growing, and always-wrong warming guesses over 40 years from climate computer models. As Mr. Grantham as good as suggests, his money-making has been made easier by decades of climate scare stories involving fires, floods and bad weather.
The fear-and-nudge green agenda is played out every day. Last week, the U.K. Met Office issued a report warning of armed militias roaming a country ravaged by climate change. Also last week, an American studio presenter on CNN blamed the Tonga volcano eruption on climate change. This week, Justin Rowlatt of the BBC said we were at risk of losing archaeological treasures since peat bogs were drying out due to climate change. Back in the real world, rainfall across the U.K. has been remarkably constant for at least 150 years. Writing in her recent book about “Attenborough’s walrus deception”, Dr. Crockford suggested that it showed how “manipulation of science intersected politics in a way I’d never imagine was possible”. She concluded: “I now have to assume that the walrus deception is just one example of many.”
In the U.K. and most of Europe, we are turning off the gas and hoping the elite’s gigantic green bet will pay off. Decadent, seemingly bored middle class people rebel against non-existent extinctions. Friends of the Earth activists on £40,000 a year measure unmeasurable earthquakes in low income areas of the North to turn off the gas fracking taps. Meanwhile Boris the Bear masses troops on the Ukrainian border and derides Europe as a “shopping superpower” – shopping at the moment for Russian gas.
Further east, the obliging Chinese Communist Party overseas the manufacture of many of our industrial goods, at a price likely to rise in the future as it buys up all the sources of raw materials. And China Net Zero by 2060, you ask. Maybe, although the reported remarks by former Finance Minister Lou Jiwei in the South China Post last December don’t inspire a great deal of confidence. China has said it would “strive” to reach peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060, he noted, but there was a difference between this and “ensuring” those targets would be achieved.
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Something about the normalisation of these AI-generated images makes me nervous. We don’t need them as headline banners on Daily Sceptic. Let’s focus on the real, please.
Putin killed Navalny eventually then. Very sad to hear this.
P.S I like the picture above. Better than policemen in rainbow unitards. It’s eerie, atmospheric and has scary movie vibes about it.
”Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny has DIED in prison.
The 47 year old, who was reportedly subjected to torture whilst being imprisoned, 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle, was arguably Putin’s biggest critic.
In a video appearance last month he appeared gaunt and frail, with his head shaved.
The Russian prison where he died has claimed he “felt unwell after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness”.
Several media outlets have been speculating that his death could well be an ‘assassination’ and a move by Putin to silence his main opposition once and for all.
In 2020, Nalavny fell into a coma with suspected novichok poisoning- carried out by Russias FSB.
His death comes as Putin is running his re-election campaign in a month to remain President.”
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1758478532823461932
This is terrible news for the Russian people. Tall, blond, courageous, Ethnic Russian Nalavny, with his wonderful sense of humour and his tall, blond Russian wife and family, represented everything that Tiny Tatar Putin hates.
The whole Russian-Ukrainian Fake War was set up by Tiny Tatar Putin & his secret ally Tiny Zionist Zelensky with one objective: to kill off as many Ethnic Russians and Ethnic Ukrainian men as possible. Putin could easily have crushed Ukraine at once, but that was never the purpose of the little genocidal ruse cooked up between the two leaders, whose aim is to drag it out as long as possible, and kill as many Ethnic European men as possible. Now Tiny Tatar Putin is conscripting even 70-year-old Russians to be sent to their deaths, so the state doesn’t have to pay their pensions.
As others have said, Nalavny should have directed opposition from abroad, instead of going back to Russia and certain imprisonment by the Fiend Putin, who reportedly enjoyed watching videos of Nalavny being beaten, starved and tortured in prison. I hope Brazilian Patriot Jair Bolsonaro, the true President of Brazil, will not suffer a similar fate, after Evil Communist Lula’s previous attempts to assassinate him.
“Tiny Tatar”
I certainly agree regarding Bolsonaro.
I wonder where Daily Sceptic found 15 people to tick in defence of almost certain murder of the principal opposition leader.
Anybody who thinks the Nalvany affair is about a simple principled opposition leader doesn’t belong on DS. Nothing is that simple when you see daily to what lengths the West is willing to go to weaken Putin and Russia.
WHAT?????
Anyone who disagrees with you “doesn’t belong on DS”?????
Ever heard of FREEDOM OF SPEECH and the
FREE SPEECH UNION? Who the blazes do you think you are?
I would say that with an attitude like yours it’s you who doesn’t belong on DS. Normal, rational people have the ability to tolerate others with a different viewpoint without inferring they should sling their hook. Apparently that description doesn’t apply to you!
I am sorry you took my comment personally, it was meant figuratively. DS is normally a site where people are skeptical of the official narrative. That is all. I welcome all comments and opinions and do not wish to bar anybody.
Are MP’s living standards affected or will they continue to award themselves pay increases and use expenses to try and maintain their lifestyle, changing legislation if needs be to be benefit themselves?
Then there’s helping out their friends to make sure they also do well and perhaps provide some work if being an MP doesn’t work out.
I can’t imagine Rishi Sunak is too concerned about living standards except as a negative headline.
Standard of living is directly tied to price and availability of energy. NET ZERO puts up the price and makes energy less available. ——Net Zero is therefore the opposite of prosperity and it lowers standard of living. —–It has been obvious for a very long time that our own politicians pander to the Marxist ideology of the UN and WEF. who freely admit that the lifestyles of the affluent middle classes in western society are “unsustainable”. —-They will never tell you that their plan is to remove prosperity because let’s face it, who is ever going to vote for that, so they give you weasel words instead, like “fairness, climate justice, living wage for all (even those who choose not to work), gender and racial equality, and every other Marxist goal all packed as “Sustainable Development”
Yes but I definitely think that a white man masquerading as a woman whilst trying to look official talking about how climate change is racist will likely change your mind;
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1758487108073685344
Whilst buying my last two houses I always sort the advice a trans admiral to avoid the old poverty/climate trap! Who doesn’t?
Makes me think of Aristotle’s claim that democracy would be a futile way of government because the multitude would sooner or later always fall for a demagogue.
And wasn’t it Plato who said true democracy only works in a small, ethnically homogenous society?
Exactly.
Unfortunately Noah Carl appears to still believe in our electoral system when the reality is that it is a complete sham. Fishy was moved in to place in order to bring about precisely the collapse in living standards that are discussed in this article. It does not require the brightest brains to explain that massive hikes in fuel prices are going to impoverish the country. This means of course that even foppish Fishy knows what he is doing and therefore the conclusion must be that he is acting deliberately. In fact he is simply carrying out orders. So when Noah warns that matters will get worse under Labour he is absolutely correct but for the wrong reasons because Kneel has all but admitted he is a WEF stooge.
The Davos Deviants are wholly committed to the destruction of this country and they have people in place to ensure this happens – Fishy and Chunt, Kneel guided by Bliar and Davey who is so away with the faeries he can be safely left alone as a vaguely supporting actor and anyway he is so far away from power that hell really will freeze over before he gets sight of any keys to Downing St.
The degree of naivety displayed by some DS writers is at times awe inspiring.
Yep you got it in one. ——-I like the DS because we can all say what we are thinking pretty much unlike eg on Mailonline and other places, but I am mystified how you received 3 red thumbs down ——–I don’t expect everyone to agree with me but I get a lot of people doing a red thumbs down but they never seem to say why they disagree. They just do the thumbs down and vanish. —-What are they so scared of? ——-Hey you guys c’mon no one is going to bite your head off …Speak Freely.
varmint, I reckon I have about three regular trolls who always down vote. I couldn’t care less.
Yep. —–Often on the comments I make on climate there will be thumbs up and maybe one thumbs down. ——-I have no problem with any amount of thumbs down, but those people should say why they do the thumbs down. Or is it that they have no confidence in their argument?
It’s deliberate, they blew coal fired power stations and replaced with windmills. Who thought that would improve living standards?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GGdprwXXMAAkYDm?format=jpg&name=small
In a very short few decades we went from Thatcher being crucified for wanting to shut down mines to the entire political class wanting to do so and being praised from the rooftops for it.
Noah Carl’s article on the lowering of British living standards reminds me that this lowering has been going on since 1952, according to two eye-opening articles.
“From a historical point of view the idea that ‘diversity built Britain’, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, is bizarre. Until 1952 Britain was the richest country in Europe, after which we massively fell behind our continental rivals – so if diversity did ‘build’ the country, it didn’t do a great job.”
—from “The Windrush Myth” by Ed West
The Windrush myth | The Spectator
“1952 was the start of Elizabeth II’s reign. The Windrush Illegal Human Trafficking Operation was in 1948. The Commonwealth was created in 1949. From the original 8 members, it now has 56, mostly Third World countries receiving foreign aid from UK taxpayers.” [Bizarrely, former French African colonies Gabon & Togo were allowed to join the Commonwealth in 2022, and more Francophone African countries are expected to join later, all then demanding cash from UK Taxpayers]
—See “Elizabeth II’s Devotion to the Commonwealth” by Robert Hardman here:
Elizabeth II’s devotion to the Commonwealth | The Spectator
I think he’s placing that seriously too late. Until the first world war, Britain was the foremost money lender on the planet and everybody else was indebted to it, especially the mostly rural backwater country called USA. Then came Lloyd George’s mad rush to destroy Germany and Austria-Hungary (and Russia and Turkey in the process) at any cost which turned the USA, where plenty of workers were available as the country wasn’t actively participating in the war before 1917/18, into a huge ammunitions factory to enable Britain and France to buy the absolutely insane numbers of artillery shells spent during the futile mass slaughter & destruction happenings on the western front. And this, they did with money borrowed from American bankers, leading to a reverse of the original situation.
“British Living Standards Are Going Down”
Britain is going down! fast
It is not the Conservatives who should blame themselves. It is the British people who should blame the political class.
So who do I vote for?
My political leaning is slightly right of centre, and I am a firm believer of personal freedom and self determination.
The Conservative Party has been appalling, and Labour will likely be worse (if that is possible).
Unless there is some unison of disgruntled voters like me, Labour will be in power.
Is it possible to unite for change?
After the last 14 years, and particularly the last 4, you’d think the Not-a-Conservative-Party had deliberately set out to self-destruct.
Labour will take up the baton and run with it. ——–If there were an Impoverishment Olympics the UK would be well featured on the winners podium