For months, the UN climate change summit that began yesterday in Copenhagen has been billed as the world's last best hope to match the scientific consensus on global warming with a policy consensus. But now it turns out there is little of either, and Copenhagen looks like it will go down as one of the more remarkable cases of political hubris in recent memory.So declares the Wall Street Journal which suggests that much of the momentum for Copenhagen is now driven by the alternative fuels industry and its investors, who stand to lose vast sums unless governments artificially raise the price of carbon.
These, we are told, include our friends at Kleiner Perkins, the ecoventure capital fund that includes Al Gore as a partner. And of course that part of the political class congenitally eager to redistribute taxpayer monies also wants to dispense "carbon credits" to friends and political donors.
I don't think the majority of people even begin to realise quite what how big a scam the "carbon" market really is.
We saw yesterday an example of how one company, the Tata Steel Group, stood to gain £400 million a year from this market, without reducing in any way the amount of carbon dioxide produced. The alternative fuel industry, we know, actually consumes in total, more energy than it produces and the hugely inefficient wind industry survives only on a colossal raft of subsidies.
While Pachauri is eager to dismiss the sceptics as "criminals", these rent-seekers are the real criminals, and their are not victimless crimes. The money that Tata Steel so diligently milks from the system does not grow on trees.
It comes at the price of 1,700 jobless in Teesside – the dole for whom we are going to have to pay – the loss to the economy of the steel they produce, with a commensurate loss in tax income, and the additions to our household bills as utility companies buy the carbon credits from the likes of Tata so that they can continue generating electricity.
The real criminals though are the politicians whom we pay to protect our interests, to protect us from the rent-seekers and their ponzi schemes which have no other intent but to raid the public purse.
It is all very well for them, as they will do tomorrow, to get excited about the pre-budget report but, while they will be agonising over a dozen or so billions, their compatriots are in Copenhagen planning a raid amounting to trillions - $45 trillion at last estimate.
And when it comes down to it, this is what Mann-made global warming is all about – money. It is "green" only in the sense that money – the once almighty dollar – is green. Copenhagen is robbery in broad daylight, and it is about time our opposition party made its voice known or, as The Times indicates today, there is a very good chance that it is likely to remain the opposition for a very long time.
Their members could start by reading this from the National Post, which tells us why Climategate is so important, and then do something about it. Silence is not an option.
CLIMATEGATE THREAD
