From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

h/t rhs; Greens are waking up that many of their corporate and political friends are greedy unscrupulous profiteers, who have no intention of genuinely attempting to reduce CO2 emissions.

We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

Apocalypse investors are pushing fake climate solutions on us that are making climate change worse.

Vijay Kolinjivadi
Vijay Kolinjivadi is a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Development Policy at the University of Antwerp.

Published On 29 Jan 202329 Jan 2023

More than a decade ago, investment experts James Altucher and Douglas Sease wrote a book for the Wall Street Journal called Investing in the Apocalypse. They argued that the end of the world is a profitable opportunity for those who know how to “fade the fear”, as everyone else panics. They maintained that when disaster strikes, investors should approach it with the rationale that “no matter how bad things seem, they really aren’t that bad”.

Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, they advised investing in big pharmaceutical companies as a strategy to reap dividends from global pandemics. They also encouraged putting money into renewable energy systems while ramping up oil production.

…

What is worse, governments and corporations have teamed up to turn the apocalypse into a money-making opportunity. They have rushed to put forward false solutions to the climate crisis: from the push to replace fuel-engine vehicles with electric ones, to so-called climate-smart agriculture, to protected areas for nature conservation and massive tree planting projects for carbon offsets.

All this trickery is called “greening” and it is designed to profit off of climate fears, not stop climate change. While guaranteeing high returns, this deception is tantamount to the genocide of the hundreds of millions of people who will perish from the effects of climate change within the next century because things are that bad.

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In the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, the guards of a national park funded by the US and German governments have also engaged in violent attacks on the Indigenous Batwa people living in its territory. A 2022 report by Minority Rights has produced evidence that at least 20 members of the community have been killed and at least 15 women raped during forced eviction campaigns.

…Read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2023/1/29/greening-ourselves-to-extinction

In the full article above the Al Jazeera author cites some of the horrible carbon credit schemes in Africa, claims of armed militias are allegedly being sent into forests to commit atrocities, to drive off the locals, and help prepare forests to qualify as an uninhabited woodlands suitable for producing carbon credits.

Trump hating film producer Michael Moore also suggested corporations and politicians have betrayed the green movement in 2020. From memory his documentary “Planet of the Humans” apparently started out as an attempt to expose fossil fuel suppression of green technology, but ended up accusing a number of green leaders of being dishonest and unscrupulously greedy profiteers.

The question is, will the few remaining green true believers be able to do anything to stop the planetary exploitation being committed in their name?

History suggests the answer is no.

Take biofuel. Even Greenpeace openly hates current generation biofuel these days, but they seem helpless to stop it.

Why we oppose the government’s biofuels mandate | GUEST POST

Jake Roos
3 August 2022

Jake Roos from Don’t Burn Our Future explains the damage caused by growing crops for fuel and what the Government should be doing instead. 

If the government’s plans come to fruition, from 1 April 2023, our future could go up in flames. Unless we change course, a new law will require domestic fuel suppliers to add a percentage of biofuel to petrol and diesel.

Mandating biofuels might sound like great news. It sounds like our government is doing something to reduce New Zealand’s dependence on fossil fuels and reduce CO2 emissions. But sadly not: just because something has ‘bio’ in its name, doesn’t mean it’s green.

The ‘sustainable biofuels mandate’ is not green. However well intentioned, the mandate will worsen climate impacts and further increase our food and fuel costs.

…Read more: https://www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/story/why-we-oppose-the-governments-biofuels-mandate-guest-post/

Of course, many greens once supported biofuel, but thanks to some vigorous website edits you would struggle to find evidence of that these days.

What went wrong? In 2008 biofuel caused a major global starvation crisis. If you didn’t notice, that is because you live in a rich country. But the problem was very real indeed, for people who live in poor countries.

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis

Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive

Aditya Chakrabortty
@chakrabortty
Fri 4 Jul 2008 04.35 AEST

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

“It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House,” said one yesterday.

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableenergy

Despite the hideous and ongoing problems caused by biofuel, the pressure on food prices, you can still buy E10 or E15 or whatever at your local gas station – in my opinion because big money got involved, and because politicians are wary of upsetting those voters and donors who are profiting from biofuel mandates.

If greens cannot stop the biofuel juggernaut many of them once supported, they are not going to stop any of the other in my opinion fake green schemes which they helped launch. Only time and public outrage has any chance of limiting or stopping the ugly money making schemes climate activists and green idealists helped to inflict on the world, but are now powerless to stop.