Peter Foster: Profiting from green hysteria
Eric Gisin
So much easier now that Creenies created the AGW apocolypse.
June 23, 2009, 16:42:00 | NP Editor
How can the WWF be an eco-watchdog while it bills Nike, Sony and Lafarge?
By Peter Foster
'There is no business on a dead planet." That balanced and inspiring message was displayed at a
seminar yesterday organized by the Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) on how to profit
from climate change.
There is something jarring, even obscene, about regarding the allegedly apocalyptic threat of
climate change as a money maker. Still, for many people, from Al Gore down, that is what it
primarily is. The problem is that all the investment potential derives from restrictive legislation
and/or subsidies, that is, from force and favour, salted with a good dose of economic fantasy.
From the point of view of investment funds, it's rather like observing that Frederick Bastiat's
broken window fallacy (that broken windows are good for the economy since they mean business for
glaziers) is government policy, then suggesting investors buy mutual funds filled with window
manufacturers. Except that climate change amounts to a rationalization for a much more
comprehensive bout of economy-smashing.
Bastiat's 19th century had no equivalent of modern multinational environmental NGO lobbyists who
could manufacture and/or promote scares and then take fees for advising companies on how to respond
to them. But then perhaps a World Window (Smashing) Fund (WWF), might have seemed beyond satire
even to Bastiat.
Now we have the World Wildlife Fund, which has a growth business consulting to major companies on
their environmental impacts, both real and imaginary.
WWF-Canada was represented at yesterday's IFIC seminar by Hadley Archer, its perky vice-president,
strategic partnerships. Mr. Archer announced that he was not going to get into the specifics of
doom and gloom. "You've all bought into the science," he said, "if not we can talk after."
This is surely one of the remarkable aspects of the climate-change industry. It depends on the
utterly non-scientific notion that the enormously complex science of climate is "settled," even if
average global temperatures have actually been falling for the past decade, and the only
"consensus" is coming from highly politicized reports issued by the UN and governments trying to
justify draconian legislation, such as that of President Barack Obama.
When Mr. Archer and his ilk suggest that it's "just good business to address carbon emissions," he
means something quite different from traditional notions of "good business." Every business thrives
by economizing on resources. But this "good business" means anticipating both a barmy regulatory
environment and "stakeholder expectations," that is, the fact that some NGO might chain itself to
your front door, or climb your smokestack, or smash your windows or tell lies about you to a
gullible media, thus representing a "competitive disadvantage."
Every business now lives under the expense of having to "disclose" its carbon emissions, and spout
about its concern for the environment, and yet, according to Mr. Archer, most consumers think it's
all greenwashing. So what businesses need is for Mr. Archer to tell them how to exercise
"leadership on climate change." In fact, leadership - when it doesn't amount to begging for
"certain" legislative shackles or gimme subsidies - amounts to signing onto a meddlesome list of
carbon-checking activities that are mostly covered by simple adherence to the bottom line. Except
that would be "Business As Usual," the most hated phrase in the green lexicon.
Mr. Archer displayed an impressive list of "Climate Savers" who had achieved that designation by
paying greengeld to the WWF. What he didn't explain is the blatant conflict of interest if the WWF
is meant to be a watchdog of the environment at the same time as it is billing Nike, Sony and
Lafarge.
The IFIC's other presenter was Elizabeth McGeveran of London-based F&C Investments, which has $3.2
billion in "sustainably managed assets."
This gives it an immediate advantage over all those funds who are into unsustainable asset
management.
Ms. McGeveran claimed that higher temperatures were already "locked in," whatever that meant. She
then presented categories of companies that could benefit from the policy climate including
manufacturers of "smart" electricity meters (a great idea unless some central authority is using
them to regulate your thermostat, or shut off your "non-essential equipment" during energy
shortages precipitated by the central authority.)
She suggested that since travelling might go the way of the Dodo, manufacturers of teleconferencing
equipment would be big (Just think of the huge emissions savings if those weekly cast-of-thousands
pre-Copenhagen climate change meetings went electronic).
Ms. McGeveran's most intriguing revelation was that the U.S. solar industry had been hard hit by
the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, which was also hot on carbon trading. Meanwhile her most
revealing stock pick was Munich Re insurance, because the company is "incorporating climate risk
into their pricing." In other words, they are using the threat of climate change as an excuse to
jack up rates (as noted by Lawrence Solomon in his Saturday Climate Profiteers series).
"Socially responsible investing" is the playground of moralists and those who wish to make a buck
from them. Nothing wrong with that, but while people should be free to avoid investing in tobacco
or alcohol or weapons companies (suicidal as the last-mentioned is), there is something obscene
about profiting from a movement that demonizes consumerism and wants to eradicate free markets.
It's
like the businessman manufacturing the rope for his own hanging being concerned that the process is
"carbon neutral."
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Ouroboros Rex
> WWF used to show pictures of baby seals being clubbed to extort
> funding. So much easier now that Creenies created the AGW apocolypse.
>
> http://network.nationalpost.com/
Sorry, k00ksite.