The number big investors ignoring climate change risk increased last year despite a stark warning from Bank of England Governor Mark Carney’s about the potential for “huge” losses from a sudden shift in regulation designed to curb global warming and fossil fuels. Almost half of the world’s top 500 investors are failing to act on climate change — an increase of 6 percent from 236 in 2014, according to a report Monday by the Asset Owners Disclosure Project, which surveys global companies on their climate change risk and management. –Jessica Shankleman, Bloomberg, 1 May 2016
Berkshire Hathaway shareholders have overwhelmingly rejected a resolution calling for the company to write a report about the risks climate change creates for its insurance companies. CEO Warren Buffett says he agrees that dealing with climate change is important for society, but he doesn’t think climate change creates serious risks for Berkshire’s insurance businesses. The activists who proposed the motion tried to urge Buffett to take a public stance in favor of measures to reduce consumption of fossil fuels, but he resisted. —The Washington Post, 30 April 2016
There recently arrived on the desk of the editor of The Times an extraordinary three-page letter, signed by 13 members of the House of Lords. They informed him in no uncertain terms that, if he wished to save his paper’s reputation, he must stop printing articles which don’t accord with the official orthodoxy on climate change. Headed by Lord Krebs, its signatories read like a check-list of our “climate establishment”. The gist of their letter, written in consultation with Richard Black, the former BBC environmental reporter who now runs an ultra-green propaganda unit, was to express outrage that The Times had published two articles which appeared to question the official orthodoxy on global warming. Nothing was more revealing in this letter than its signatories’ claim that in no way did they wish to interfere with the freedom of speech ‚Äì when everything else in the letter showed that this was precisely their intention. –Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 1 May 2016
Sometimes we wonder if we’re still living in the land of the free. Witness the subpoena from Claude Walker, attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, demanding that the Competitive Enterprise Institute cough up a decade of emails and policy work, as well as a list of private donors. Mr. Walker is frustrated that the free-market think tank won’t join the modern church of climatology, so he has joined the rapidly expanding club of Democratic politicians and prosecutors harassing dissenters. This is a dangerous turn for free speech, and progressives ought to be the first to say so lest they become targets for their own political heresies. Rather than play defense, the targets of the climate police need to fight back with lawsuits of their own. –Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 30 April 2016
Even before the skeptical documentary “Climate Hustle” hits U.S. theaters Monday, it already has unsettled the climate change debate. Weather Channel founder John Coleman rushed to the defense of the film, which challenges the catastrophic climate change narrative, after “science guy” Bill Nye slammed it in a clip released over the weekend as “not in our national interest and the world’s interest.” The film has won praise in reviews on conservative and free market outlets including National Review, Breitbart and The Daily Caller. Hollywood in Toto’s Christian Toto called “Climate Hustle” “brutally effective” and “the most dangerous documentary of the year.” –Valerie Richardson, The Washington Times, 1 May 2016
