The Climate-Industrial Complex
By David Theroux on May 21, 2009 in Business, Economics, Energy, Environment, Fascism, Global Warming, Regulation, Religion, Science
In an article in the May 22nd issue of The Wall Street Journal, Bjørn Lomborg (former Director, Environmental Assessment Institute, Copenhagen) correctly discusses the climate-industrial complex, in which many top firms in the U.S. and elsewhere stand to greatly benefit financially from the gigantic wealth-transfer and cartelization schemes being pushed by Al Gore and the global-warming lobby. This environmental corporatism is akin to the military-industrial complex that our Senior Fellow Robert Higgs has so well documented (see here, here, and here). As Lomborg notes:
Naturally, many CEOs are genuinely concerned about global warming. But many of the most vocal stand to profit from carbon regulations. The term used by economists for their behavior is “rent-seeking.”
The world’s largest wind-turbine manufacturer, Copenhagen Climate Council member Vestas, urges governments to invest heavily in the wind market. It sponsors CNN’s “Climate in Peril” segment, increasing support for policies that would increase Vestas’s earnings. A fellow council member, Mr. Gore’s green investment firm Generation Investment Management, warns of a significant risk to the U.S. economy unless a price is quickly placed on carbon.
Even companies that are not heavily engaged in green business stand to gain. European energy companies made tens of billions of euros in the first years of the European Trading System when they received free carbon emission allocations.
American electricity utility Duke Energy, a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council, has long promoted a U.S. cap-and-trade scheme. Yet the company bitterly opposed the Warner-Lieberman bill in the U.S. Senate that would have created such a scheme because it did not include European-style handouts to coal companies. The Waxman-Markey bill in the House of Representatives promises to bring back the free lunch.
U.S. companies and interest groups involved with climate change hired 2,430 lobbyists just last year, up 300% from five years ago. Fifty of the biggest U.S. electric utilities—including Duke—spent $51 million on lobbyists in just six months.
Many have forgotten that it was no less than Enron that was the biggest backer of the Kyoto Protocol for the simple reason that as a major natural gas producer, Enron stood to make billions of dollars from a system of mandated emission credits.
The cozy corporate-climate relationship was pioneered by Enron, which bought up renewable energy companies and credit-trading outfits while boasting of its relationship with green interest groups. When the Kyoto Protocol was signed, an internal memo was sent within Enron that stated, “If implemented, [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory business.”
In addition to Duke Energy, among the firms pushing for mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions are General Electric, Shell, British Petroleum, Ford, ConocoPhillips, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Alcoa, American Electric Power, Caterpillar, John Deere, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, PNM, Siemens, Xerox, IBM, PG&E, News Corp., PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Nike.
Yet, this obvious interest-group component of the stampede to adopt extremely costly (and pointless, as Lomborg himself has shown) regulations of such non-pollutants as carbon dioxide appears to matter little in the major media or among most environmental groups. Indeed, there is no outcry! While true-believing climate alarmists have sought to smear and dismiss legitimate, scientific questions raised by scholars and organizations that receive funding from businesses opposed to climate controls, claiming that they are simply stooges for corporate interests, pro-alarmist groups supported by firms having an obvious interest in the adoption of climate statism are somehow enlightened, objective, incisive, and reliable. Why the double standard? The answer is that the climate alarmist view has far more to do with power politics, the shallowness of “elite” culture, and the fact that global warming is largely about environmental religion, not science.
Meanwhile, the Copenhagen Climate Council’s upcoming World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen is stacked with proponents of climate catastrophe with Mr. Gore as keynote speaker and media sponsors including MSNBC, National Geographic, the New York Times Company, and Berlingske Tidende. And next week, the Heartland Institute’s Third International Conference on Climate Change will be held in Washington, D.C., featuring two dozen climate skeptics and co-sponsored by forty skeptic groups. So, how do you believe the two events will be reported?
You got his name wrong. The correct spelling is Bjørn Lomborg.
Anonymous Coward | May 22, 2009 | Reply
Thanks, David, for mentioning the upcoming conference for global warming “skeptics,” taking place on June 2 in Washington D.C.
The first two conferences The Heartland Institute hosted, both in New York, attracted 550 and then 800 people, respectively, most of them scientists, economists, and policy experts. Press attention in each case was extensive, by free-market think tank standards, but tiny compared to what the Copenhagen event will attract. This was despite having 100 speakers at the first event and 70 at the second.
This third conference is scaled back and aimed at Congressional staff, journalists, and the political class living and working in Washington, D.C. Headliners include Dr. Richard Lindzen (MIT), Dr. Harrison Schmitt (former U.S. senator and astronaut, moonwalker), Dr. Willie Soon (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), Lord Christopher Monckton, Dr. Roy Spencer (University of Alabama – Huntsville), Dr. Fred Singer, Dr. Patrick Michaels, and on and on. There will be more real science and economics discussed at this event than in Copenhagen, despite our one-day schedule.
For more information about the event, go to http://www.heartland.org or http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org. If you are a blogger or activist of any kind, I hope you’ll consider writing about this event or even attending. The issue couldn’t be more timely, and it’s one of the major public policy turning points of our era.
Best regards,
Joseph Bast
President
The Heartland Institute
jbast@heartland.org
Joseph Bast | May 22, 2009 | Reply
Anonymous Coward:
Thank you and duly corrected.
David Theroux | May 22, 2009 | Reply
Joseph,
I will spend some time looking at heartland.org. As a scientist, I have spent my career looking at things objectively, and from the other side’s point of view to be sure I have a clear picture. As I have passively watched the climate debate unfolding over the past 6-8 years, I have seen a very strong push by a very large number of scientists regarding global warming. I’m talking world-wide, not just in the U.S. In parallel, I have seen a very small number of very well financed (by Exxon and others) scientists arguing with them. My problem is from a scientific perspective. We should let the science do the talking, and keep open eyes and ears, instead of pushing a political agenda.
My observation has been that climate change “skeptics” have tended to simply try to shoot down climate change science without presenting solid contradictory evidence. Rather they seem to prefer casting doubt and questioning credibility. I have no problem questioning things, but in the scientific community, peer-reviewed journal articles are our gauge of integrity. That doesn’t mean junk never gets published, but for the most part, it’s a good system.
I will look at your website with open eyes, and hope you do the same to your opposing-viewed sites.
Skeptical Skeptic | May 29, 2009 | Reply
Skeptical skeptic:
Thanks for the measured comment, and I do hope you continue to spend time on The Heartland Institute’s web sites, particularly Global Warming Facts. On June 2, we are launching a third web site, NIPCCReport.org, containing links to the entire 880-page report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. The study makes it clear that there is plenty of peer-reviewed literature backing the skeptic’s position. On several key issue, it overwhelmingly favors the skeptic’s position.
Your characterization of the “skeptics” side as being a “very small number of very well financed (by Exxon and others) scientists” is too incorrect to be an honest error, or maybe you are newer to the debate than you claim. Oil company funding of skeptics has always been tiny compared to government, foundation, and more recently renewable fuels industry support for alarmism. In the case of The Heartland Institute, it was never more than 5% of our budget, and I know it was much less than that for other think tanks. Surely you know 31,000 scientists signed the Global Warming Petition? It is, by a factor of 10, more than have ever signed a statement in support of alarmism. Have you seen the survey of climate scientists by Bray and von Storch, showing deep divisions on key issues in the debate? If you are sincerely interested in debate, why repeat a lie?
Joseph Bast | May 30, 2009 | Reply
Thanks!!! Nice post!
sonic fast food | Oct 20, 2009 | Reply