This year’s climate summit in Glasgow has been an embarrassing flop for the green brigades, with one baleful exception.
World leaders can’t agree on costly binding CO2 emissions targets that they’d have to explain to taxpayers back home. So they’ve decided instead to dip into your pension savings on the sly.
That’s the real story of the $130 trillion (yes, with a “t”) in green finance that officials claim to have mobilized last week.
The sum comes via the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, an outfit run by former Bank of England chief Mark Carney that counts 450 financial firms from 45 countries with $130 trillion in assets under management.
The group’s members committed to investing their capital in greener ways—while the world’s leading financial regulators committed to making sure that they do.
Asset managers and banks pledge to expand investment and lending for carbon-reduction projects in developing countries, to the tune of $1 trillion or more a year, in collaboration with public bodies such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The green financial cartel also promises to press other companies to meet aggressive climate goals.
This might mean incorporating carbon neutrality into lending decisions, or imposing carbon targets on corporate managers via shareholder votes and the like. Service providers and data firms such as auditors and credit-rating firms will chip in as enforcers.
Naturally, they all want government help, and they’re going to get it. A global association of central banks and regulators, which includes the U.S. Federal Reserve, promised in Glasgow to include climate factors in bank stress tests and other coercive tools.
The biggest problem with all this? They’re doing it with your money.
Finance companies are eager to hype their participation for the sake of good publicity, but Mr. Carney’s organization is curiously quiet about where that $130 trillion is coming from.
A large proportion comes from household savings in banks, 401(k) pensions, or insurance premiums. So you might want to know that the strategies these green-finance cartel advocates will put your capital at risk.
Investing in developing economies even without political considerations is notoriously risky.
Asset managers and banks will also eschew fossil-fuel investments despite the potential returns from extracting resources the world will need and demand in the foreseeable future.
They also will use their financial sway to force many companies to undertake costly carbon-mitigation efforts that can reduce shareholder returns.
The tell here is that, although last week’s announcement neglects to mention it, a crucial part of this agenda will be to release financial firms from their regulatory obligation to mind the best interests of their clients.
The Biden Administration led the way this year, with a Labor Department proposal to coerce 401(k) providers to include climate change and other political factors in investment decisions.
Green returns are unlikely to be as high as those from conventional investment strategies.
Leaders last week failed to agree on the aggressive carbon-reduction targets greens want because they know the costs of the transition are unpopular.
Politicians and their corporate accomplices shouldn’t impose on savers in secret the costs they’re not willing to place on taxpayers in the open.
Read more at WSJ
It all leads down the path to a Global Government lead by the UN as well and the Eco-Nazis/Watermelons and enforced upon us by the Green Helmets