BloggeRhythms

According to Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Josh Wingrove @finance.yahoo.com/news: “President Joe Biden delivered his strongest endorsement of oil on Thursday, ordering an unprecedented release of emergency U.S. crude in a move that gambled his climate-saving credentials on lowering gasoline prices in an election year.”

While it’s been expected here that one way or another Biden would relax fossil fuel restrictions to capture as much of the vote as possible in November, the text reveals that there are climate activists that actually believe their own rhetoric. Sarah Ladislaw, managing director at RMI, a nonprofit group focused on the clean energy transition said, “If the global economy hits a recession, our climate goals are going to get slowed down by a lot. It’s difficult to build additional support for clean energy when everyone’s worried about getting the economy back on track.”

In effect what worries Ladislaw is that there are people more concerned about their livelihoods, standards of living and costs than there are about sea levels rising an inch and a half over the next hundred years. Aside from the incredible disparity in potential harm from the perils of rampant inflation compared to computer model predication’s of future warmth, one has to wonder where the gullibility stems from.

 It seems that climate-change zealots are either unaware of the premises’ origin or naïve enough to accept the sales pitch which goes back more than 20 years.

Since leaving office in 2001, Al Gore has been an advocate of climate action, founding two organizations, writing several books, and been the subject of two documentary films, all raising awareness of the climate crisis and proposing solutions

According to Forbes, “in 2007, optimistic that a Democrat-controlled Congress would pass cap-and-trade legislation Gore lobbied for, GIM and David Blood’s old GSAM firm took big stakes in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) for carbon trading. Accordingly, CCX was poised to make windfall profits selling CO₂ offsets if and when cap-and-trade was passed.  

Speaking before a Joint House Hearing of the Energy Science Committee, Gore told members: “As soon as carbon has a price, you’re going to see a wave [of investment] in it…There will be unchained investment.”

“After all, what better way to reduce evil carbon than to make it a profitable commodity? But unfortunately for GIM and CCX investors, trading hot air credits proved just too good to be true.

“Between May of 2008 and October of 2009 the CCX market value for one metric ton of carbon plummeted from $7 per metric ton to $0.10 along with the shareholders’ investment values. Losers included the Ford Motor Company, Amtrak, DuPont, Dow Corning, American Electric Power, International Paper, and Waste Management, along with the states of Illinois and New Mexico, seven cities, and a number of universities.”

In another attempt to capitalize on his scam, last year Gore tried to tie climate-change and racial prejudice together saying, “We cannot have climate justice without racial justice. They are intertwined. The pandemic has underscored just how interconnected these issues are. For example, we know that exposure to air pollution increases the death rate from COVID-19. And we know that low-income communities and communities of color have faced disproportionate impacts from both the pandemic and the legacy of environmental racism that has led to the location of some of the dirtiest fossil fuel facilities in or near communities of color. 

“I’ve been incredibly inspired by the grassroots leadership of indigenous communities in the US in standing up to oil and gas companies trying to build dangerous fossil fuel pipelines over sacred land and endangering vital water supplies.

“One thing we must do is to ensure that indigenous and local communities have prioritized access to decision-making spaces, legal rights to their territories, and protection from harmful extractive industries. The transition away from fossil fuels provides an incredible opportunity to deliver on the promise of environmental justice. As we invest in the solutions to the climate crisis, we must ensure that those solutions are deployed equitably.” 

So this time around, to enhance carbon trading and sell CO₂ offsets, rather than trusting to creating simple fears of fossil fuels harm to the environment, Gore’s trying to make it racially prejudicial not to buy his offerings. And in this way, even if climate threats lessen, fear of prejudice guarantees continued product demand.

 That’s it for today folks.

 Adios

 PS: One of the Bronx barmaid in Congress’s customers told her he never worries about being driven to drink. He just worries about being driven home.