‘Green’ Economics Has Failed Even on its Own Terms – and Imperilled Our Pensions in the Process
Yet another nail in the coffin of ESG has been hammered home by a recent analysis of EU policies intended to drive the investment fad and boost Europe’s failed ‘green economy’. According to the FT, researchers from Stanford, Harvard and Amsterdam universities and London Business School found such policies “had not meaningfully improved funds’ green credentials in terms of carbon emissions or on other measures, nor had [they] boosted fund flows to green funds”. Once, and not very long ago, private finance was going to change the world, and all it took was the right policy framework. Rishi Sunak stood on the stage at COP26 and announced the alignment of financial institutions with $130 trillion of assets under management. Mark Carney, then Bank of England governor, now Prime Minister of Canada, joined him to explain how the “plumbing” of world’s entire financial system had been changed, and now climate was at the “centre of every financial decision”, led by alliances of banks and insurance companies. Now that those alliances are in tatters, Carney has exposed the lie of the “rules-based international order” and Europe is in economic torpor, how will the Green Blob respond?
There is a very odd British and European conceit – in both senses of the word – that economic growth and technological development emerge from policymakers’ pens. Consider, for example, the former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, mentioned above. As the promises of AI tech were emerging in the form of early deepfakes and crazy pictures, Sunak believed that the way to incubate this new technology and nurture British talents to exploit it was to establish a “global hub”, which would house an “AI Safety Institute”. This would “cement the UK’s position as a world leader in AI safety”. Similarly, British and EU governments have, as needs no re-telling here, long argued that, somehow, aggressive emissions-reduction policies will ‘boost’ and ‘kickstart’ the ‘green technologies’. Instead, of course, the job of making solar panels and wind turbine materials and components lands with manufacturers in the East. ESG was a very similar proposition.
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When the economy finally goes over the cliff, doubtless these people will be the ones blaming it on ‘climate breakdown’ (rather than boring old ‘spending money you don’t have’)
Marxists socialist economic policies generally don’t work. Meaning, they impoverish most people.
We need to start systematically calling “green”, climate policies what they really are – Marxist, socialists policies, brought in through the back door when we weren’t paying attention because we thought Marxist socialism had been defeated at the end of the cold war.
We need to stop pretending that the premises behind their schemes are legitimate. They aren’t misguided but well intentioned. They are devious and deliberate. The underlying motivating force is a desire to collectivise society, control it and centrally plan it. The climate story is the excuse – this time.
Socialism never ever ever dies It’s like a weed that you either keep cutting back or it grows out of control and takes over your garden.
Your garden??
Property is theft.
(Have my upvote)
Marxism is never defeated. As Ronald Reagan reminded us we have to fight for our freedom in every generation.
I remember well how there was no acknowledgement of fault by any of the different varieties of the left when the Soviet system collapsed. They shuffled off and spent years rebuilding.
They used tax payer money hosed to them by quangos (international and local) where their mates had well paid jobs. They exploited charities. They never stopped planning their take over.
The left is closer to absolute control today in most nominally democratic countries than it has ever been.
The modern day left is a hybrid of fascism and Marxism.
They’ve adopted the fascist approach of controlling the economy and society at large through the collusion of state and private corporations. And they’ve combined that with the Marxist communist internarionalism.and Soviet technocracy.
They’ve shed the most easy to spot, easy to understand aspect of traditional fascism, which is the conservative, nationalist element and use it instead to taint their opponents.
The modern day left is terrifying.
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that climate policies are environmental policies anymore. We redistribute the worlds wealth via climate policy”—Edenhoffer (lead Author UN IPCC some years ago. ——-It isn’t about the climate and never has been.
We see it happening with car production. Cars from China are seriously undermining European car production, with plentiful cheap energy from non-reneables, cheap labour in working conditions that would not. be tolerated in Europe. If we in Europe were serious about the ESG agenda, there would be a complete ban on all goods made in China. Is this likely to happen?
‘But what do climate scientists know about economic models?’
You might wonder what ‘climate scientists’ know about science.
Or the ‘climate’?
They are mostly “modellers” not “scientists”, but models are not evidence of anything, especially when they are full of assumptions and guesses and many of the parameters are either poorly understood or unknown altogether.
Our readers have a view which is probably correct but I am trying to understand WHY. This was once said by my Physics teacher to be the mark of intelligence? FWIW consider the changes that have taken place with technology in the last 50 years. Couple that with an education system that eschews the three Rs in favour of well rounded individuals. The result is a complete divorce from physical reality. Our governing class is almost entirely devoid of any engineering or scientific skills. Decisions such as building railways to carry people rather than fast digital communications – the latter being left to an over regulated private sector administered by body now charged with ensuring our on-line safety. Electricity as a replacement for fossil fuels? I wager all the decision makers imagine electricity is energy. Hydrocarbons? Must be limited and bad, whilst forgetting how much of an EV relies on synthetic oil products. Oh, well, at least we might get back to real leather seats, especially after we kill all those methane producing cows. FWIW, in the early 70s I expounded that oil was too valuable a commodity just to be burnt. I was ignorant, as were the experts who… Read more »