So-called stewards of the environment would have us believe that gluttonous greed and capitalism will be the undoing of planet Earth, and that we must immediately put a leash on corporate big-wigs who are the culprits of it all. Spinmeisters of every stripe - including elected politicians - have unleashed a multi-front war on corporate America and have been quite successful at creating villains that unwitting Americans have giddily set upon in their manufactured outrage.
Never mind that trading carbon offsets will accomplish little more than an exchange of cash in the grand scheme of the welfare of the planetary climate, it is still a bill of goods being thrust upon every American as beneficial, and they're buying it like it's on sale. What many of them don't realize is that the benefit is going to a very few who have built a lucrative market to which they are herding us like so many beleaguered bovines.
Two of the people who are setting themselves up to make king's fortunes are Al Gore and Maurice Strong. Strong is on the board of directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange (hmm, Chicago...), which has been described as “the world’s first and North America’s only legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil.” Gore is both the chairman and a founding partner in Generation Investment Management LLP, which is a firm that holds considerable influence over the major carbon credit trading firms currently in existence, including the Chicago Climate Exchange.
The collaboration between the two dates back to, appropriately, Earth Day in 1995, when Gore went to give a speech at Molten Metal Technology Inc. in Fall River, Massachusetts. The company claimed to have devised a process for recycling metals from waste. It was also run by Maurice Strong and Peter Knight, Gore’s former top Senate aide and the companies lobbyist. Gore had gone there to sing the praises of Molten Metal as a pioneer in the kind of innovative technology that can save the environment, and be beneficial to investors at the same time. Sound familiar?
The company received $25 million in R&D from the Department of Energy and a subsequent $8 million from federal taxpayer coffers. After Gore's endorsement, the firm's stock on Wall Street went to $35 per share. A short time later, the DOE stopped funding the companies projects due to a lack of commercial viability, and between March and October of 1996, Strong and six other officers in the company sold off $15.3 million in personal shares. On Sunday, October 20th of that year, the company issued a press release stating that DOE funding would all but end, and notified brokers via conference call. The next day when the market opened, the stock plunged 49% to $5 per share.
It was learned in the subsequent lawsuit by angry shareholders that Strong had done something similar earlier with a Swiss company called AZL Resources, artificially driving up the stock prices before bailing out with a fortune.
It gets better. On March 25th, 2009, Fox News Ed Barnes wrote an article titled, Obama Years Ago Helped Fund Carbon Program He Is Now Pushing Through Congress , in which he wrote, in part:
"While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president."In 2000 and 2001, Barack Obama served on the board of directors of the Joyce Foundation, the above mentioned charity, which gave over $1 million in two separate grants that, according to Barnes, "were instrumental in developing and launching the privately-owned Chicago Climate Exchange".
So, while corporate CEO's are being raked over the coals (no pun intended) for their "excessive greed", we have the triad of Gore, Strong and Obama preparing to tax the living daylights out of us through the punitive cap and trade scheme and enrich themselves at the same time. But when the Earth begins to cool, so will the fervor over CO2, and you can bet your last tank of gas that these three will have long sold off their stakes before the shareholders ever knew what hit them. Meanwhile the poor grunts - the rest of us - will have been driven to poverty.
Hat Tips to:
Judi McLeod of Canana Free Press
Ed Barnes of Fox News Sphere: Related Content
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1 comment:
Why does none of this surprise me? I guess deep down I knew Gore was more than a flake. The way he trots around the globe hawking his "inconvenient truths" like so much snake oil should have clued me into the fact that he must stand to profit in some way. I do know this much; if the cap and trade becomes law I will have to sell my damn house to pay the electric bill. We will all regret this fiasco.
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