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How Green Billionaires Groom the Public into Accepting Unworkable Net Zero Policies

by Chris Morrison
18 November 2023 7:00 AM

In the 2019 U.K. General Election, the Green Party lost 465 seat deposits and secured a paltry 2.7% of the national vote. This was despite years of relentless climate apocalypse preaching across most media and political outlets. The latest report from the investigative journalist Ben Pile provides clear evidence as to why the green movement often fares badly in any meaningful democratic vote. “The green movement exists almost only because of support from a small number of philanthropic foundations,” he notes. Grants from fewer than 10 foundations account for well in excess of $1 billion of climate grant-making per year, he adds.

Activists often claim there is widespread support for their collectivist Net Zero fantasy, but this is because they ask questions such as: “Do you support Net Zero in order to save the planet?” Questions are rarely framed along the line: “Do you think we should remove 85% of our current energy within less than 30 years, and face widespread societal and economic breakdown, on the basis of an unproven hypothesis that humans control the climate?” Nevertheless, there are increasing signs that the public is starting to understand how an unworkable Net Zero policy is being foisted on them. Last year, an IPSOS survey sampling two-thirds of the world’s population found that four people in every 10 believed climate change is mainly due to natural causes. A recent poll conducted at Chicago University found that 70% of Americans were unwilling to spend much more than two dimes a week to combat climate change. Despite decades of green grooming, most Americans are unwilling to give the chump change from their back pockets to support Net Zero.

In his excellent report titled ‘“Clean” Air, Dirty Money, Filthy Politics‘, Pile gives an insight into the way green elites groom largely unsuspecting audiences. Air pollution policies such as London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) are “proxy battles” of the climate war. Organisations that are involved in air pollution policies “are wholly funded by climate change interests”, he observes. Seemingly localist civil society organisations such as C40 Cities, the Global Covenant of Mayors and UK100, which have lobbied for anti-car and air pollution policies, are funded through foundations distributing the cash of wealthy individuals such as Michael Bloomberg and Extinction Rebellion funder Sir Christopher Hohn. The Clean Air Fund, which supports a range of campaigning organisations and think tanks, was established by Hohn’s vehicle, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, with a $21.4 million grant. “There are no grassroots air pollution campaigns of consequence,” reports Pile.

Backing up their campaigns, Pile argues that the foundations shape academic research priorities. The universities stress their independence, but the amounts they receive are huge. Imperial College, which has been at the centre of Covid and air pollution policy controversies, received $320 million from the Gates Foundation. While the College claims that it doesn’t take funding from fossil fuel interests because that would seem to undermine its research, Pile observes that $60 million has been received from the billionaire green investor Jeremy Grantham to fund Grantham Institutes at Imperial and LSE, both of which are extremely involved in U.K. climate policy.

It can be argued that any money given to Imperial for Covid, clean air or climate research has not been entirely well spent. Few now doubt that society would have been better off without Professor Neil Ferguson’s imaginative model prediction of 500,000 U.K. deaths at the start of the Covid epidemic. Imperial modelling lies at the heart of London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s promotion of Ulez since he quoted commissioned research from the university that suggested a saving of 4,000 premature deaths. It turned out that the deaths were a “statistical construct” based on imagined days of life lost within the population. Referring to the introduction of ULEZ, Pile notes that “the best that can be said about this urgent policymaking is that it got ahead of the science, which was only thinly related to the facts”.

On the climate front, Imperial is to the fore in the pseudoscientific attribution of individual weather events to long-term changes in the climate. Cash from the Grantham Foundation helps fund World Weather Attribution that specialises in this (guess)work. Sadly any results fail the basic principle of science in that they cannot be falsified. The noted science writer Roger Pielke Jnr. is particularly scathing about attribution work: “I can think of no other area of research where the relaxing of rigour and standards has been encouraged by researchers in order to generate claims more friendly to headlines, political advocacy and even lawsuits,” he said.

During the Pile investigation, the same people crop up on a regular basis. What news of Mark Carney, the Canadian green activist parachuted into the Bank of England in 2013 to oversee British financial institutions? Having spent a large part of his time as Governor printing money to prop up the assets of the already rich, he has recently moved into the Green Blob. The relationship between Carney and Michael Bloomberg is described by Pile as “obviously cosy”. It seems to have started in 2015 when Bloomberg was appointed to chair the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure, an organisation recommending the disclosure of climate-related assets such as investments in vital energy companies deemed for political purposes to be ‘liabilities’. In essence, writes Pile, this is climate policymaking by the back door. It uses the financial system to increase the cost of Net Zero non-compliance, “without having to have those policies on the statute book”.

By increasing the cost of capital and forcing the misallocation of investment funds, continues Pile, “green lobbying has significantly contributed to the energy crisis, rising prices and the inflation seen since the end of the Covid lockdown – although the lockdowns themselves and the money printing are significant amplifiers of the problem”. Meanwhile Carney has collected a variety of jobs since leaving the Bank of England including a UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, Climate Finance Adviser for COP26 and Co-Chair, with Bloomberg, of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. This latter institution is said to manage $130 trillion of other people’s money, and is committed to accelerate the transition to a Net Zero global economy.

In August this year, Carney was appointed Chairman of the Bloomberg Board.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Tags: BillionairesC40 CitiesClimate AlarmismExtinction RebellionMark CarneyMichael BloombergNet ZeroPropaganda

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33 Comments
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Ron Smith
Ron Smith
8 months ago

Just wait until the pampered middle classes realise the true extent of the damage to the countryside and freedoms people like “Red Edd” are cooking up with Agenda 2030.

15
0
varmint
varmint
7 months ago
Reply to  Ron Smith

I suspect reality may come along sometime between now and 2030 and hit Miliband with an almighty uppercut. ——Reality is a very hard enemy to defeat, and I predict as Muhammad Alli used to do that Miliband and the phony planet savers in the Labour Party will fall in the third round

article-3096314-29089D9E00000578-569_636x581
2
0
Jack the dog
Jack the dog
8 months ago

There is no point in calling these wankers hypocrites.

The hypocrisy is part of the process, of rubbing our noses in it.

It is like the delicious steak dinners and private jets at Davos.

I can think of a solution but don’t want to seem to incite murderous violence on this wonderful site.

13
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
8 months ago

They aren’t completly lacking in self-consciousness so the will be aware of the hypocrisy. Some will justify it based on dubious utilitarian calculations. The greater good will be served. A problematic way of thinking but most are worse than that. They see themselves as a cut above. Subject to different rules and regulations and beyond good and evil. It’s a nice racket if you can get it. With the caveat that in order to be able to behave like this you have to be venal or stupid or both. The internal life of a hopelessly addicted masturbator.

6
0
Q
Q
8 months ago
Reply to  Jabby Mcstiff

Yes, the old ‘Greater Good’ theorem. Now a popular BA DisHons degree available at Cambridge, and other leading red-bricks.

2
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
8 months ago

“There is a level of hypocrisy: academics know that flying is bad for the environment,” said Professor Jonas De Vos of UCL, the lead author of the study. “But still, we often fly to international conferences, often to [make the argument] that society should be more sustainable.” “

Translation:

Even though we know we are all a set of hypocritical and lying Next Tuesdays we are still going to carry on with our jaunts. F. the plebs.

7
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BS Whitworth
BS Whitworth
8 months ago

flying around “necessary to win promotions and funding” It’s all a scam.

9
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psychedelia smith
psychedelia smith
8 months ago

Of course they do. They’re the new aristocracy and what they do and where they travel is of paramount importance. It’s the rioty little people in their stinky blue and yellow planes that need to be stopped.

5
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
8 months ago
Reply to  psychedelia smith

Yes the dirty people with tattoos that go to Spain and watch Football. We can’t have that!

4
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
8 months ago

I wouldn’t stress too much about this agenda. If you live in England then you can be rightly worried as the Brits are the prgenitors but if you look at the money it is being pulled out very quickly because those people know how to respond rapidly to changes in public sentiment. Look at the major car manufacturers. You will not see much new investment in ‘renewables’ because they know that people rightfully hate them in their current form. I garantee you that within 2 years the green agenda will be utterly destroyed. It won’t be a pleasant time and the insects won’t come back but at least we will be more concerned with serious issues. Unravelling the Great Poisoning will take several decades.

5
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Ron Smith
Ron Smith
8 months ago
Reply to  Jabby Mcstiff

And the Reset!

3
0
Q
Q
8 months ago

“Four legs good, two legs bad.
Four legs good, two legs not such a bad idea.
Four legs best for you kafir, two legs for us.
Get back in your pen!”

  • Anon
4
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
8 months ago

Ideas of self-poisoning are very common at the end of empire. You can call them crisis cults. Any lapse in self-discipline can leave you open to ideas of self-abjection. We didn’t do anything bad to ourselves in the post-war era. In fact in terms of anti-imperialism we gave up our empire very quickly and civally. Regardless of your point of view the behaviouor the British after 1945 was exemplary and civil. And for a short while we had an independent system of science. Graham Greene was asked in 1962, what is wrong with the world. And he gave a one word answer – America.

3
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
8 months ago

The most important question arises when you ask yourself, what can I do to stop this hypocrisy or these flights? Very little because they have spent every year since 2008 in reinforcing their bunker. Acknowledgment of our current status is an important first step.

2
0
Finbar
Finbar
8 months ago

I am utterly shocked by this revelation….

4
0
anbak
anbak
8 months ago

As Jarvis Cocker once said, ‘Everyone hates a tourist’…. except when that tourist happens to be them!

3
0
soundofreason
soundofreason
8 months ago

On the website NoFlyClimateSci.org, several climate scientists explain why they have decided to cut down on flying for work. They include Dr. Lennart de Nooijer of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research…

Who?

2
0
Richard Austin
Richard Austin
8 months ago

Global Warming was debunked years ago yet it still tips up now and again. Why do so many fools lie to themselves and others about all this stuff? Half an hour of research tells you all you need to know about this crap.
Climate Change certainly exists; there wouldn’t be a planet if it didn’t but man made is conceited and incredibly ignorant. Hopefully the bubble will burst before it is too late but I fear it will not.

5
0
varmint
varmint
7 months ago

Most of the politicians bureaucrats media pop stars and actors will not have the slightest clue about this issue. —–If we ask that plonker Lammy eg how much CO2 is in the atmosphere and how much is emitted by humans he likely won’t know. ——-“Climate Change” to all of these people (or most of them) is simply a concept. It is to them, without realising it, something that has been decided as fact elsewhere, and they don’t have to know about it. All they need to know is “Climate Change is real and happening now”. The details are not necessary. ———–Well actually the opposite is true. The details are absolutely necessary, and on closer inspection there are no details, or science that supports the idea of a “climate crisis”——Yet nearly every politician we see on TV and most media commentators brainwashed by the groupthink and supporting it for political purposes speak of “climate change” as if it were all ultimate truth —-IT ISN’T.

3
0
Kornea112
Kornea112
7 months ago

97% of climate scientists would be unemployed if there was no climate crisis. Their behavior is far worse than just hypocrisy. They are members participating in a cult like movement actively and knowingly destroying millions of people’s lives.

0
0
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
7 months ago

Flying Hypocrites Fly to Climate Events 

1
0

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