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.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
There is no green party in the UK to speak of because the Conservative and Laboir Party both promote all the extreme climate policies. So what’s the point of a green party?
You took the words out of my mouth. The establishment parties latched on the green scam ages ago. It was Labour that gave us the “Climate Change Act” in 2008 to reduce emissions of CO2 by 80%of 1990 levels and the Tories with Teresa May that gave us the Net Zero amendment in 2019 that increased that to 100% by 2050. So quite what GREENS do apart from sidle up and vote with anybody that will say they will keep fossil fuels in the ground, like what happens with the SNP who need the GRRENS to get their policies through, so give concessions to the brainwashed dreamers in the GREEN party.
The same opaque law making away from proper public scrutiny that has straightjacketed us and the rest of Europe into NetZero policies that are now difficult to unwind is what they are doing with the WHO Treaty.
It gets passed quietly, without media scrutiny so only a few people actually know what’s going on. Then a few years down the line, the next “pandemic” hits and all of a sudden the public begins to discover that the government’s hands a re tied by international treaty obligations and we all have to do wha the WHO says or face massive lawsuits, etc..
This is how the farce that is our democracy works.
A Commons majority of 1 can abrogate any treaty. It can also. all in a day’s work, take over the business of the Commons, sack the Prime Minister, abolish the Monarchy, and do anything else it likes. A Commons majority is unconstrained in our system. HMG may consider its hands are tied by fealty to the WHO, but if a determined Commons majority disagrees, it is goodbye WHO.
“....here at TNC we couldn’t give two shits about the niceties of international law.”
Frank Haviland at Thenewconservative.co.uk
I have made the same point repeatedly here on DS.
Most Western countries only follow International law when it suits. France for example cannot even follow EU law and they are responsible for big chunks of it.
I do think the MPs do manipulate the dumb public when they give speeches in Parliament lambasting anyone who argues against following some international regulation.
And we UK taxpayers are commanded by the HoC/Whitehall filth to pay them oodles to continue aping Nelson….
A country can do anything it likes. Plenty of countries demonstrate it all the time.
The issue is the implications, the consequences.
There ar3 consequences to breaking international treaties. And there can be legal and cost implications. And there are.political and career consequences for lawmakers. Last but not least undoing things takes energy and time, which is why laws, rules and regulations are hard to get rid of once they are put in place.
All of those things make it so much harder to row back from international treaties. To say, a simple majority in parliament can do it ignores all the difficulties.
It would be easy for people to claim….I don’t remember voting on this!
True a point that ‘Red Hot Scott’ said….If any government ignore the WHO or IHR what are they going to do invade? we can just do what Trump did and cut off funding. Problem is, too many MPs would be happy to enact these fascist laws claiming the ‘Greater Good’ (Film, Hot Fuzz).
BBC Fear Porn climate lies
leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
You’ve opened the door a bit more. Perhaps the so-called philanthropists are actually just looking after their investments. However, it’s also possible that they are trying to redefine philanthropy to gain popular support.
In the IPSOS survey quoted, if 40% were sceptical enough to disapprove of the scam, what did the other lot say? Was it a yes/no question? If there was an election under first past the post, 40% could be a useful majority, after all, if the opposition was split.
Ching ching ching jackpot Mr Carney
Well done Ben Pile and Chris Morrison.
It’s a scam; it’s obvious it’s a scam …. and it will stop when people refuse to be scammed.
But how many read the Daily Sceptic. ——It is fine you and I and all the other readers here being aware, but what we really need is another mainstream TV Documentary like “The Great Global Warming Swindle” by Martin Durkin that first appeared on Channel 4 in 2007. It needs to be extensive and speak to all of the people who understand this issue and it’s uncertainties, which are LARGE, and how it is highly politicised, and is infact more eco socialism than science.
And ideally via a company that isn’t scared of their advertisers running away, or of Ofcom leaning on them.
It is always those who shout the loudest that get their own way.———-Eco protesters, Anti Israel people, Social justice, Race and Gender Ideology people etc etc etc. ——–Ordinary people with no axe to grind mostly don’t rampage all over streets and chuck paint on stuff or crawl over war memorials, so their views are not pandered to.
“Plants will absorb more carbon dioxide than predicted, meaning models could be overestimating the speed which the planet will heat up, writes Sarah Knapton in the Telegraph.”
Amazing this got past editor Evans.
Mr Morrison – please add it to your review list for those who don’t subscribe. It is a pretty dumb study with all the usual caveats:
“So yes, that would give us a bit more time to reach net zero. But it is important to note that we predict a lot of this drawdown will happen towards the end of the century, while we need to cut emissions now, or possibly yesterday.”
And it cites the RCP 8.5 scenario which predicts a temperature increase of about 4.3C by 2100, relative to pre-industrial temperatures – even the IPCC admits thats not going to happen.
But it is a chink in the green blackout of any discussion about the lack of any need for net zero.
An IPCC “scenario” is not a “prediction”. It is a projection. It is based entirely, as with all of their “scenario’s on the output from speculative models full of assumptions and guesses. All of which have been totally wrong so far. Yet more models and projections keep getting wheeled out as the basis for public policy around energy use and the impoverishment of millions forced into fuel poverty because affordable energy is being removed. ——And yes, you are correct, worst case scenario’s from the IPCC are implausible and the IPCC have admitted that.
“Amazing this got past editor Evans”
Chris Evans isn’t stupid. His readers like to think the DT’s “opinions” are well-researched, derived using critical thinking and, most importantly, factually sound – rather than simply the pushing of narratives or propaganda. Articles such as this are used to bolster that impression.
Am I bothered about the worldwide temperatures in 2100?
No Catherine Tate or Lorrine!
“Ah yes Science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture from such a trifling investment of fact” —Mark Twain. If Mr Twain was around today he would most certainly have a field day poking fun at the ludicrous climate change junk science being used to transform the global economy away from capitalism and pretending to be all about the planet. ———-“Ah yes Climate Change Science. On gets such remarkable advances in social justice and eco marxism from such a trifling claim about a minor trace gas that no empirical science or observations support”
And the clouds never get a mention, or the thing in the sky!
Whoever that is in the picture they seem to be in a very contorted position.
I’ve just read an article saying the previous boss of sky news has apologised for not doing enough to make the public aware of the dangers of climate change! What f-ing planet do these idiots live on?
Shouldn’t that be the dangers of climate propaganda that seems to be masked in Communism.
If you currently heat your home with an oil boiler and have an ICE car doing 10,000 miles and then switch to a heat pump and an EV car charged at home your total electric consumption will increase by three to four times your consumption at present. If everyone in the UK made such a switch could the UK supply that much electricity? could the National Grid distribute that much electricity? ……… do pigs fly south for the winter!
This net zero pipe dream depends of electrifying everything, if, as and when we find that we cannot electrify everything it will be a hard lesson in reality but we will suffer much in the meantime whilst the net-zero Canutes try and insist they can get a quart of electric out of a pint pot generator.
I ripped out my Gas fire last year and replaced it with a wood burner, but now I have that I also use the storage heater less now too, so people are probably saving the grid when there was the wood stove rush last year.
Mark Carney has long been touted as the replacement for Trudeau. Carney’s wife is an even more extreme than he is and is with the UN. Trudeau has such an extremely poor fiscal record that has nearly bankrupted Canada, his Liberal Party is so low in the polls they will disappear completely in next election. So The WEF Carney may not have the opportunity for power.
How they going to survive the hunting season…?
Trudeau will do anything to cling onto power, he is gaining alliances with the separatists to hold his majority. I do feel for the once free Canada.
” 70% of Americans were unwilling to spend much more than two dimes a week to combat climate change”
They are already spending more that on green taxes, and here in the UK we have the green levy on fuel.