Tag Archives: Michael Bloomberg

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

The green movement exists almost only because of support from a small number of philanthropic foundations.

From The Daily Skeptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

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.

C40’s Dystopian Future

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

Ever heard of this outfit?

https://www.c40.org/

It was founded in 2005 as C20, and has since expanded to its current network of 96 cities, including London. Its objectives are made clear:

It won’t come as any reassurance to learn that its Chair since 2021 has been Sadiq Khan, and its President is the billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

Perhaps even more worryingly is the long list of funders, who turn out to be the usual bunch of far-left donors that fund most of the green blob, such as Bloomberg, CIFF, Climate Works, Hewlett Foundation, Oak Foundation, and, not least, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. C40 also receives taxpayer money, courtesy of the Foreign Office.

And don’t fall for claims that C40 is just a talking shop. In 2019 they published a report called  “The Future of Urban Consumption In A 1.5C World”.

It was largely written by ARUP and the University of Leeds, it goes into great detail about the sort of changes that must be made. ARUP introduced it thus:

New ways of measuring cities’ climate footprints show that C40 cities consumption-based emissions contribute to 10% of global greenhouse gases. 


This report explores how cities consumption-based emissions need to reduce to avoid a climate breakdown and focuses on six sectors – food, construction, clothing, vehicles, aviation and electronics – where leaders, businesses and the public can take action to change consumption habits, significantly cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The research sets out science-based targets for cities for GHG emissions reduction that are consistent with the 2015 Paris Agreement ambitions, and identifies key previously untapped opportunities for cities to address the impact of urban consumption whilst delivering multiple other benefits for their citizens. It also maps how urban stakeholders can work together to deliver these changes. 

The report recognises that emissions actually generated within C40 cities are small compared to those associated with goods and services consumed within cities, but generated outside. To get to their 1.5C will therefore require massive changes in consumption behaviour.

It offers some examples of how we should get there:

Their ultimate goal for 2030 included:

  • 0kg of meat and dairy
  • 3 new clothing items a year
  • 0 private vehicles
  • 1 short haul flight every three years per person
  • 7 year lifetime for all electronic devices.

Quite clearly the public are not going to change their lifestyles voluntarily, just to appease Mayor Khan and his chums.

Which leads us to the question of how these targets will be enforced. After all, C40 have gone to a lot of trouble producing this report and tell us that emissions reductions are essential. They surely will not just file the report away and forget about it?

And as the C40 Executive Director makes plain, it is time for action:

Maybe it is also time for Mayor Khan to come clean with the citizens of London, and tell them what he has got in store for them.

Bloomberg Finances and Coopts State Attorneys General

From Watts Up With That?

State AGs aid Bloomberg quest for ‘green’ energy that threatens planet, wildlife and people

Paul Driessen

When you’ve built a financial information and media empire and become the world’s seventh richest person, you get to say dumb things, like suggesting that farming is easy: “You dig a hole, put a seed in, put dirt on top, add water – and up comes the corn.”

Being ultra-wealthy also shields Michael Bloomberg from any fallout from the climate and energy policies he pursues so zealously. He will doubtless be able to afford electricity at any price for his multiple mansions, from any source, backed up by thousands of battery modules to cover the repeated blackouts his policies will unleash. The other 99.9% won’t be so fortunate.

Mr. Bloomberg bankrolls campaigns against coal and natural gas; supports efforts to populate the Biden Administration with rogue regulators equally intent on “transforming” America’s energy system, society and living standards; and champions ESG principles for financial firms, companies and investors. His company even has Sustainability and ESG & Climate divisions. Mr. Bloomberg serves as UN Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, enabling him to advance his agendas internationally.

ESG (Environmental Social Governance) helps unelected asset managers use their control over trillions of investment dollars to pressure companies, lenders and consumers to embrace far-left activist versions of public welfare and justice, even if it causes clients’ portfolio values to decline. ESG is a subversive way to bypass legislatures, voters and democratic processes, to impose unpopular political and ideological agendas, often in violation of fiduciary obligations.

ESG opposes fossil fuels, insisting they are causing climate cataclysms. Any company in that business, or offering to finance a drilling project, gets blackballed. But companies building or financing “clean, green” energy score in the ESG stratosphere – even though most such projects destroy vast swaths of wildlife habitats, involve slave and child labor, and leave widespread toxic pollution in their wake. ESG human rights, ecological and climate justice principles are duplicitous and hypocritical.

As New York City mayor, Mr. Bloomberg infamously advocated exorbitant taxes on large sugary drinks, claiming they lead to obesity and thus to diabetes, cancer, heart disease and premature death. He simply wanted to help poor people live longer, he asserted, by making Big Gulps less affordable.

It’s thus puzzling that he now wants to banish reliable, affordable gas heat and coal- and gas-generated electricity for heating and air conditioning – in favor of pricey, weather-dependent wind and solar power, backed up by outrageously expensive batteries. Those policies shorten lives.

Even if manmade or natural climate change causes average global temperatures to climb 2-3 degrees, modern technologies would keep us safely comfortable. But if laws, policies and ESG pressures make heating and AC inaccessible or unaffordable, indoor temperatures can soar 15-25 degrees in summertime and drop as precipitously in wintertime. People die – and cold is far deadlier than heat.

When people, especially the elderly, cannot heat their homes properly, they can perish from hypothermia or illnesses they would likely survive if they weren’t so cold. The Economist calculated that expensive energy may have killed 68,000 more Europeans than Covid did last winter.

LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) will help the poorest families – until the subsidy money runs out – but not middle/working classes, and not small businesses.

Even worse, three billion people worldwide still do not have access to reliable, affordable electricity. Message to climate zealots like Mr. Bloomberg: Access to intermittent, unpredictable wind/solar electricity doesn’t count, especially if it’s only enough to charge a cell phone or power a lightbulb or one-cubic-foot refrigerator. Lack of access to sustained, affordable energy kills.

The billionaire’s legal power grab is even more insidious and dangerous to democracy.

In 2017 he began covertly funding New York University Law School’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, which provides grants to progressive (Democrat) state attorneys general, enabling them to hire “special assistant” AGs or “fellows.”

The Center’s mission is to provide “direct legal assistance” to interested AGs “on specific administrative, judicial or legislative matters involving clean energy, climate change and environmental interests of regional and national significance,” when AGs say they lack sufficient public funds to hire such help.

NYU now says “the fellows’ sole duty of loyalty is to the attorney general in whose office they serve.” However, these partisan Bloomberg grants pay salaries and “generous benefits packages” to “special assistants” whose functions are dictated by the Center; address specified “regional and national” issues normally beyond the purview of state AGs; are routinely coordinated with energy and climate activists and donors to those causes; and often launch “public nuisance” or RICO litigation against oil companies, to the detriment of targeted industries and the consumers and ratepayers who depend on their products, within the AGs’ home states and in distant states and communities.

It is the Bloomberg agenda that is being served, by grants that effectively conscript and coopt the public authority and power of the attorney general’s offices.

As a 2022 report by the American Tort Reform Foundation notes, “These SAAGs are private attorneys placed in public positions to exercise government authority. Yet, they are not independent or impartial because their mandate is to carry out an overtly political agenda funded by wealthy private donors.”

This “unique” arrangement, the Foundation continues, “allows well-heeled individuals and organizations to commandeer state and local police powers to target opponents with whom they disagree, raising the specter of corruption and fundamental unfairness in what should be public enforcement of the law.”

Those same considerations also appear to raise fundamental ethical, legal and constitutional issues. They certainly raise questions about laws governing gifts, campaign contributions and bribes – and where Bloomberg-funded lawyers are involved in prosecutions, serious due-process concerns.

And yet the NYU Center has already placed at least 11 special assistants in eight state attorney general offices, which have filed at least 20 lawsuits against a few selected oil companies, charging them with “climate denial” or causing planetary warming, rising seas, more frequent and intense hurricanes and tornadoes, and other “offenses.”

This litigation ignores the actions of hundreds of other oil and gas companies across the globe; steadily rising emissions from China, India and other rapidly developing nations; the role of natural forces and emissions from wind turbine, solar panel and battery mining, processing and manufacturing; the lack of evidence to support claims of a climate “crisis” or more frequent and violent storms; and the fact that these issues should be litigated in federal courts or relegated to a democratic political process.

The US Supreme Court recently had an opportunity to quash this rampant litigation, but it chose not to review the state and local cases and send them to federal courts. The seemingly endless lawsuits and acrimony are creating a legal, constitutional, scientific and public policy nightmare for businesses, consumers, courts, states and the nation.

Rest assured, billionaires like Bloomberg, Gates, Kerry, Zuckerberg and Soros – who demand that we commoners give up our cars, gas stoves and furnaces, steaks, air travel and suburban homes – don’t intend to give up anything.

Let’s hope the pro-America governors, AGs, legislators, judges and business groups battling ESG and other woke campaigns tackle this NYU Impact Center hornets nest as well..

Paul Driessen is a senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environmental, and human rights issues.