From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

The Daily Telegraph has published a comment piece by Alan Smith, titled “Fossil fuel backers are becoming the real anti-capitalists”

As the title suggests, it is an anti-fossil fuel rant, full of misinformation worthy of Extinction Rebellion.

He begins by attacking those opposed to woke ESG nonsense, which attempts to block investment in fossil fuels. In Smith’s topsy-turvy world, those opposed to ESG are assaulting “investors’ rights”. In reality the opposite is true.

The Church of England is welcome to invest in whatever it wants. But when I put my savings into a pension fund, I want it to be invested with a view to maximising returns, not forced by ESG regulations and dogma to put it into green energy.

But the main thrust of the article is an attack on fossil fuels themselves. According to him, climate change will bring “catastrophic costs”, and we will leave our children with “a world beset by famine, natural disasters and social upheaval”

I’ll ignore the fact that he is talking through his hat.

What really concerns me is his apparent and total ignorance of the immeasurable benefits brought to humanity by fossil fuels in the last couple of hundred years. Or the fact that the poorer countries of the world need greater access to cheap fossil fuel energy, if they are to improve the lives of their people. Does he really want to put all of this at risk?

Worse than that, he shows no appreciation that hundreds of millions will inevitably die if chemical fertilisers are banned and mechanisation phased out, both of which will be inevitable when fossil fuels are taken away.

Putting political ideology above the interest of people is utterly inexcusable for a Churchman.

If the COE wants to divest in fossil fuels, that’s up to them. But calling for them to be phased out without a practical alternative is not only wrong, it is wicked.

Read the full article here.

UPDATE

Alan Smith’s formal title is “Senior Advisor – ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) Risk and Inclusion”

The DT did not think it was appropriate to tell its readers this fact.