Following Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s recent green foreign policy lecture, the Government appointed a new “climate envoy”, Rachel Kyte. Kyte has occupied a number of positions in the climate wonkosphere: Professor of Politics at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University; Special Representative on Sustainable Energy to UN Secretary-General António Guterres; and a Vice-President of the World Bank. But controversy emerged when it was revealed that Kyte also sits on the advisory board of the Quadrature Climate Foundation (QCF) – the philanthropic arm of the AI-powered Quadrature hedge fund. Quadrature had investments in fossil fuels, the Guardian had revealed. And the London-based but Cayman Islands-tax sheltered firm made a whopping £4 million donation to the Labour party, the Telegraph later revealed.
The conspiracy theory doing the rounds, then, is that fossil fuel interests have lobbied Labour to get their woman into a position to influence the Government’s climate policy. On X, buttonhole reporter Michael Crick explained that Kyte is “linked to Quadrature hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands which invests in fossil fuel firms”. Quoting Crick, like some wide game of Chinese Whispers, Owen Jones told his followers that, “Labour got a £4m donations from a hedge fund linked to fossil fuels in the Cayman Islands.” The Soros-funded OpenDemocracy outfit also complained about the party’s new donor: “Labour given £4m from tax haven-based hedge fund with shares in oil and arms.” Socialist Worker’s headline was: “Fossil fuel investors in tax
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Net Zero is too big to fail. But it will.
… because they are lunatics, mentally unstable, dangerous and need to be put away in an asylum and kept there.
I guess there are plenty of useful idiots who truly believe that “big oil” is controlling things, but for those pushing the green agenda it’s just a useful smear to distract people away from arguing on the facts (because they know their case is weak).
“What do you think of that Kyte chappy?”
“He’s an absolute shocker. Sort of chap who sleeps in his vest”.
Thanks TT.
One day environmentalists will wake up and realise that renewable energy is neither clean, cheap nor good for the environment or the third world that exploits child labour to mine the rare earth minerals needed for lithium batteries.
They will never realise it or admit it. Their tsunami of lies will continue till we are all back living in unheated caves while they swan around the world in luxury lecturing us on the unsustainability of our increasingly impoverished lifestyles.
Will that be the same day Muslims wake up and realise Allah doesn’t exist, or the Pope wakes up and realises Jesus didn’t exist?
Sorry, what’s the problem with investing in fossil fuel companies?
The author seems to agree that investing in fossil fuels is a bad look.
And right there is the problem for fighting against Net Zero.
If you give in to their erroneous premises (in this case that carbon in the atmosphere is killing us and fossil fuels are evil) then you’ve lost the entire argument. You’ve got nowhere left to stand.
This was the very same problem that we had fighting against draconian covid measures. The fundamental premises were accepted: deadly pandemic, high mortality, need to protect people at all costs. After everyone accepted that, there was no way the rest could be stopped.
Come on Ben Pile you can do better.
The author seems to agree that investing in fossil fuels is a bad look.
That’s not said anywhere in the article which – on this subject – just states that about 97.2% of Quadature investments are not in “fossil fuel companies” and that spending about $200 million/ year (from 2019 – 2024) on lobbying to protect assets worth only $170 million would make no sense, ie, that the claim that Quadature would be part of some “big oil conspiracy” doesn’t, either.
Why mount a defence that someone isn’t actually being funded or supported by oil companies?
Either lobbying and donations are fine. In which case no need to excuse oneself that it’s an oil company.
Or lobbying and donations are wrong in which case, who cares who is doing it? Politicians shouldn’t be influenced by anyone’s money, oil or otherwise.
The mistake is even getting into whether it’s an oil company or not. It validates the idea that fossil fuels are bad and oil and gas companies evil for selling fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are great. I love them. They power my car. They heat my home. They allow us to live in the modern world. And they don’t change the climate. The sun does.
The author just demonstrates why a certain claim made by the Guardian &c is wrong. There’s no point in mounting a Nothing wrong with that! defense against a claim when this claim isn’t true to begin with, especially when this crosses over into the territory of other issues. Eg, I’m convinced that hedge fonds shouldn’t “invest” in politics regardless of what they’re making money from. Hence, I cannot claim that there’s nothing wrong with “Big Oil funding” of politicians because this is, in my opinion, exactly as wrong as “Big Windmill funding” of politicians.
I wonder what happened to the article about Microsoft getting it’s own nuclear power station?
Any more info please?
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/26/1104516/three-mile-island-microsoft/
Indeed – it was on the DS website this morning and then it disappeared.
It’s very jarring reading “it’s” (short for “it is” or “it has”) when the adjectival “its” is intended.