Climate ‘Scare Story’ Began With Far-Left Ideology: Greenpeace Co-Founder

Patrick Moore talks about why he left Greenpeace and why the the push for net-zero emissions is an unattainable goal 

By Isaac Teo July 27, 2021 @ Epoch Times

Patrick Moore was only 24 when he co-founded Greenpeace in the early 1970s. He soon became the driving force behind the environmental activist group’s many influential campaigns, such as to stop nuclear testing, protect endangered whales, and prevent toxic dumping.

“It began in 1971 with the first voyage to stop U.S. hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska, which we did,” Moore told The Epoch Times. “And then we went after France’s atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific.”

Greenpeace would go on to launch its “Save the Whales” campaign in 1975, followed in 1976 by a campaign to end the killing of baby seals for their fur, and later that decade a campaign to end toxic dumping in rivers by factories in Europe.

But as Greenpeace gained influence, Moore says he started to see it getting hijacked by what he characterizes as people with political ideology from the left.

“None of us in the original group was there to make money. We were all volunteers,” he said.  “But the ultra-leftists took over my organization when they realized there was a lot of money and power to be had there.”

He said it was during the “Save The Whales” campaign that people started donating money to Greenpeace in larger numbers, and that was when the group started getting a bank account and renting an office.

“So as time went on into the late 1970s, Greenpeace turned into a kind of business,” he said. “Pretty soon it actually became a business where fundraising started to become more and more important.”

By the time Moore left in 1986 after being with the organization for 15 years, “fundraising had now become the most important priority, and they would go ahead with a campaign for which there was no scientific basis,” he said.

He left Greenpeace due to “philosophical and political” reasons, he said, after having served as director, president, and international director.

“Greenpeace had started out with a strong humanitarian orientation, as well as a belief in saving the environment,” he said. “‘Green’ is for the environment, ‘peace’ is for the people not to be killed by nuclear war, among other things, or pollution.”

Over time, “peace” was gradually dropped, and Greenpeace, along with the rest of the environmental movement, drifted into a belief that sees the “human species as the enemy of nature, the enemy of the Earth,” Moore said. 

Emphasis on Fundraising Over Science ..........

The Importance of Carbon Dioxide.........

Net-Zero a ‘Political Goal’...........To Read More.... @ Epoch Times

The BIG MONEY In The Climate Change Delusion

By Dr. Jay Lehr & Tom Harris November 19th, 2019 @ American Out Loud

Most of the public believe that climate activist groups are the Davids in a battle with the Goliath industrial complex across the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. In Cracking Big Green: To Save the World from the Save-The-Earth Money Machine (2018), authors Ron Arnold and Paul Driessen use information derived from the annual reports of non-profit organizations, as revealed in the Internal Revenue Service IRS form 990s, to show the true wealth of ‘Big Green.’ Focusing on the year 2012, which was readily available, they discovered the staggering annual incomes of various environmental groups, some of which are listed as follows:

The Sierra Club: took in $97,757,678
The Sierra Club Foundation: $47,163,599
The Environmental Defense Fund: $111,915,138
Natural Resources Defense Council: $98,701,707
National Audubon Society: $96,206,883
National Wildlife Federation: $84,726,518
Greenpeace USA: $32,791,149
National Parks Conservation Association: $25,782,975
The Wilderness Society: $24,862,909
Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection: $19,150,215
But those are just the medium sized incomes. Here are some large ones:
The Nature Conservancy: $949,132,306 (yes, nearly $1 billion)
Greenpeace International: $406,000,000
Wildlife Conservation Society: $230,042,654
World Wildlife Fund: $208,495,555

Yet green groups portray energy companies like Exxon-Mobile and BP as spending gigantic sums of money lobbying to keep the government on its side. That too is false. They do not spend more than a tiny fraction of the sums listed above in an effort not to be driven out of business. In fact, these companies and their competitors, rather than battling the Green Ideology, often spend money in support of the climate scare by embracing wind and solar energy, energy from bacteria and wholly nonsensical efforts to pump carbon dioxide emissions underground.

But the extraordinary wealth of environmental groups is only part of the reason they have such influence on public policy. They work their magic through a program of law suits against the government which the government settles rather than going to court, thereby giving the groups success in their goals without reducing the funds in their coffers.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s report Sue and Settle: Regulating Behind Closed Doors, shines a long overdue light on the back-room manipulations that are now common between Big Green and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This has become a significant part of their legal strategy. It works like this: 

A private environmental group sues the EPA to issue new regulations by a certain date. The agency and group meet behind closed doors. The government then usually agrees to do whatever the activist group wants. This is because, for decades, the EPA has been staffed by people who support extremist green ideology. There are no messy congressional hearings, no public comment period, no opportunity for parties that will be adversely affected by the deal to have their day in court. Making the situation even more egregious, in most cases the taxpayer foots the bill for the suing groups’ legal fees.

Dozens of philanthropic funds set up by conservative industrialists of yesteryear have been hijacked by radical liberals who now battle the industries that initially spawned them. Their founders would turn over in their graves if they knew how their money is being spent. Not one of these staggeringly wealthy groups objects to the climate change delusion that has gripped our nation.

But there is much more supporting Big Green. The international banking community is turning over gigantic sums of money to finance the world’s rush to solar and wind projects. The San Francisco-based Climate Policy Initiative showed that, of the more than $1 billion USD spent every day around the world on climate finance, the largest single part of it goes to ‘renewable energy’ schemes. This despite the fact that they have no chance of providing the abundant, plentiful energy the world needs. Germany’s Deutsche Bank, Switzerland’s Credit Suisse, America’s Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and nearly all its competitors are knee deep in the billions of dollars of the global warming industry with apparently no concern about where and when the fraud finally comes to roost with an economy smashing to the ground. And we must not forget the $76 billion that the U.S. government has invested in the delusion over the past 20 years.

Big Green holds public policy captive to a scientific-technological elite of climate mongers, ecology gurus, land grabbers, vicious lawyers and computer fortune tellers.

And, in so doing, the fanatical supporters of the ‘Save The Earth Money Machine’ have now strangled our freedoms as well as our economic well-being. Our fear is that many of their ideas will become law, further eroding our freedom.

Educating true believers is a hopeless task. So, one of our major objectives now should be to limit their power. We must also battle their wrong ideas by loudly publicizing better ideas so that the public can come to understand the degree to which they have been misled. We have to help the public realize that environmental extremists are not attempting to solve problems. They are primarily promoting a political doctrine, an ideology, a mix of myth, philosophy and science that goads supporters to action as representatives of the ideology’s attitudes and beliefs. This endows its adherents with a sense of respectability and self-righteousness.

Today’s environmental activists call for changes in present political systems, in the reach of the law, in the methods of agriculture and industry, in the structure of capitalism, the profit system, international dealings and, of course, in education.
Global warming and climate change just turned out to be the very best mechanism to achieve these goals.
They must be stopped!

Portions of this article were excerpted with permission of the authors and publisher of Cracking Big Green by Ron Arnold and Paul Driessen. It is a stunning expose of the modern environmental movement and its hidden financial masters. It tracks the dark money machine of wealthy foundations and individuals that even give instructions along with their cash. It explores how donors manipulate eco-ideology, sponsor attacks on selected industries and influences regulations by promoting agreeable experts as advisors to powerful government agencies. We cannot recommend Arnold and Driessen’s book too strongly.

The climate change crisis racket

August 20, 2019 By Taylor Day

Do Democrats really believe in the climate crisis they have dubbed an "emergency," or is it really just a way to make a quick buck?

• Beto O'Rourke has suggested spending $5 trillion over the next ten years investing in climate change initiatives primarily for "vulnerable communities."
•  Not to be outdone, Kamala Harris was one of the co-sponsors for the "Green New Deal," which proposes $700 billion a year in spending on a utopian garden future.
•  Bernie Sanders, also a loud supporter of the GND, proposes going even farther and banning any new developments that would require fossil fuels.
• Cory Booker uses climate change to drum up fear, claiming with an re-introduced bill that the environment is racist (yeah, seriously), and although he hasn't laid out any specific plans, he has insinuated possibly legislating veganism.

All in all, looking at just the remaining 2020 Democratic candidates' proposals, the total amounts to $180,000,000,000,000 over a period of ten years, with climate change and health care–for-all mandates taking up the majority of this desired spending. One hundred and eighty trillion dollars. Just for perspective, that number is: .......To Read More....

Green Tech – the climate crisis syndicate

Manufactured climate crisis fears and renewable energy schemes create gold mine for the rich

Paul Driessen

Renewable Portfolio Standard advocates recently held their 2015 National Summit. The draft RPS agenda suggests it was quite an event – populated by bureaucrats, scientists and consultants who have jumped on the climate and “green energy” bandwagon, to follow the money.

Indeed, they are no longer content with 10% corn ethanol in gasoline, or some wind and solar power in the electricity mix. Now they want to convert the entire electrical grid from fossil-fuels to renewable sources and, if Catholic bishops get their way, totally eliminate hydrocarbons by 2050, despite the horrendous impacts that would have on workers, families and the world’s poorest people.

There’s certainly a lot of money to be made. The green revolution is estimated at $1.5 trillion per year, which means potentially huge profits for those with political connections. Many who are making big bets on green technologies are ultra-wealthy people who say they are protecting the planet, when they really seem to be “protecting their wealth for future generations” of family members and cronies.

One is Ward McNally, great-great-great grandson of the founder of Rand McNally maps. He and 11 other billionaire families created the Green Tech Syndicate in 2010. So far they have invested $1.4 billion in green schemes – for a greener environment, but mostly to put still more green in their bank accounts.

Wags might suggest that “syndicate” is a perfect name, as it recalls Capone, Cosa Nostra, yazukas and tongs. But what they are doing seems perfectly legal, if not always in the public interest. And the “climate crisis” foundation of this vast enterprise seems increasingly based on exaggerated, manipulated, even fabricated science, data, computer scenarios and official reports – and on silencing CAGW skeptics.

President Obama is the piper leading the nation and world to a green Shangri La. As he continues to impose policies that move the US economy away from fossil fuels and toward pseudo-alternatives, he is calling for public and private investments. The Clean Energy Investment Initiative, for example, seeks investors who will plow $2 billion into wind, solar and other infrastructure projects – all of them augmented with money from taxpayers and consumers who have no voice in the decisions.

There’s another problem: Fossil fuels remain more affordable than renewable energy, a better value for consumers and generally better for the environment. For green investors and the Administration, this means coal, oil and natural gas must be made more costly, so that renewables can compete. What to do?

As a 2014 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff investigation revealed, a cabal of billionaires, millionaires, foundations and “charitable” organizations are colluding to smear fossil fuels and scare Americans about fracking and climate change. They funnel millions of dollars into far-left environmentalist groups, which launch campaigns and create phony grassroots groups that hold protests and spread more anti-fossil fuel propaganda, to kill projects and jobs and reduce living standards.

Using an Amazon-sized river of cash, these 0.1 Percenters buy the services of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, American Lung Association and many similar groups, to stir up fear, loathing and opposition among the 99 Percenters. They want to make the electorate feel guilty about pseudo-problems: the plight of polar bears, rising asthma rates, and “environmental injustice” – the claim that minorities are disproportionately affected by fossil fuels and “dangerous manmade climate change.”

Their “charitable” contributions fund 350.org and its battles against fossil fuels. Founder Bill McKibben has called the organization “a scruffy little outfit” with “almost no money.” But between 2011 and 2014 it received multiple six-figure grants from outfits like the Park Foundation, Marisla Foundation, Tides Foundation, Climate Works Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and Rockefeller Family Foundation – with much of the money passed through the Sustainable Markets Foundation.

The Senate report says such pass-throughs allow secretive donors to remain anonymous and get tax deductions for contributing to a supposed charity. Last year, 350.org spent more than $8.3 million on anti-fossil fuel activities around the globe.

But 350.org pales in comparison to the Energy Foundation (EF), the “quintessential example of a pass through.” The report says EF receives huge sums from the Sea Change Foundation, which gets money from Vlad Putin cronies and whose other “major donors are heavily invested in renewable technologies.”

Sadly, this is not the first time a greedy few have elevated their interests over the needs of working-class consumers. A prime example is the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). With its ethanol mandate, the RFS was pitched to the public as a way to wean America off foreign oil, which fracking does much better. But one of its primary goals was to “incentivize” the U.S. ethanol industry. It certainly did that.

Corn farmers and ethanol producers grew fat, while American families footed the bill. Forcing ethanol into motor fuels caused food prices to climb, vehicle engines to be damaged, and motorists to get fewer miles-per-gallon. Ohio motorists alone paid $440 million more in additional fuel costs during 2014.

Since the RFS was passed ten years ago, the clever racket that gives influential 0.1 Percenters sway over environmental and energy policy has become increasingly sophisticated and less transparent. The RFS was negotiated openly, but today’s policies appear to be generated by a group of insiders who put profits over honesty and fairness, and rabid environmentalism over the well-being of our nation and citizens.

Indeed, EPA justifies the ethanol mandate by claiming it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). However, even the Environmental Working Group says ethanol puts more carbon dioxide into the air, not less. In October, the EPA Inspector General said it would investigate ethanol’s impact on GHGs. 

Unfortunately, most Americans do not comprehend the huge self-interest behind the green movement, nor its harmful effects and minimal benefits. EPA’s anti-coal Clean Power Plan, for example, will sharply hike electricity rates and lower household incomes by $2,000 a year – but reduce global temperatures by only 0.02 degrees C (0.03F) over the next 85 years, assuming CO2 actually drives climate change!

In reality, global temperatures haven’t warmed in 19 years, no category 3-5 hurricane has hit the United States in ten years, Antarctic sea ice is expanding, and seas are rising at just seven inches a century. But anyone who questions climate chaos mantras faces vilification, and worse. Famed French meteorologist Philippe Verdier was fired from his TV job after calling climate change hype a “global scandal.” A Paris journalist says Verdier was the victim of an “outrageous, unjust, ridiculous” climate “fatwa.”

But these critically important facts get short shrift in the radical world of climate cataclysm. They will certainly be ignored at the upcoming UN climate gabfest in Paris. Legions of bureaucrats and activists will gather there to plot global governance, energy restrictions and wealth redistribution – while crushing debate and free speech, to prevent the world from learning the truth about climate chaos deception.

Returning to the RPS conference, its agenda notes that Day Two was closed to the public and open only to selected federal and state officials. That’s because a major discussion topic was the scheduled reduction in federal solar tax credits, from 30% to 10% at the end of 2016. Green investors are up in arms, have launched a TV ad blitz, and wanted to lobby officials privately for expanded government largess.

Wake up, America. The ruling class and rich elites are picking your pockets. Don’t get snookered by the president’s claim that climate change is the biggest threat to future generations. Don’t blithely assume the government is working in your best interests. (That’ll be the day.) Don’t buy claims that the enemy is corporate greed. That ancient diversionary tactic is designed to make you look the other way, while the Green Cabal, Climate Crisis, Inc. and renewable opportunists enrich themselves at your expense.

Above all, pay attention to next year’s elections. Your own and your children’s futures are at stake.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death.

Big Green's well-financed death grip on fisheries policy must be broken

By Ron Arnold | December 12, 2013 @ Washington Examiner

President Obama's administration has added to its war on coal and its wind-farm eagle-chopping policy and is trying to yank seafood out of America's diet.

For more than a decade, the National Marine Fisheries Service has devoured fishing fleets while Big Green’s money octopus prods the feds by waving grant-eating enviros in its tentacles, causing them to hook the public’s attention with mindless frenzy against “overfishing.”

Submerge for a moment in the seething political storm that fishermen live in — examine the overwhelming network diagram above. You’re looking at 552 grants totaling $561,907,154 — over half a billion dollars from six Big Green foundations: Pew, Packard, Walton, Moore, Surdna and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, each a funding octopus with anti-fishing payday tentacles that twine and choke and, for the most part, destroy.

Zoom in on one tentacle: Four Pew foundations gave Earthjustice -- formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund -- 20 grants totaling $25,156,500 in the past decade to sue and stop anything productive.

And SeaWeb ($2.6 million 2012 income) — one of the first greenies to declare war on fishermen — used to be Pew SeaWeb, founded in 1996, incubating to become its own public opinion-making octopus in 1999.

Biologist Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- who resigned in February -- was arguably the brainiest and most viciously crass NOAA administrator ever. Members of Congress called for her resignation for destroying fishing fleets in struggling coastal communities using Big Green's brutal “catch shares” rationing program, and for tolerating fisherman fines enforced by corrupt federal cops. Before NOAA, the Packard Foundation gave Lubchenco's Aldo Leopold Leadership Program $2.1 million to enable scientists to lead politicians and the public with scientific-technical control of public policy.

Nils Stolpe, veteran executive, consultant, and advocate for the commercial fishing community, sorted those numbers from Internal Revenue Service Form 990 reports and posted the result on his FishNet USA website. The Washington Examiner used Stolpe's findings to construct the diagram.

I asked Stolpe what seafood producers can do to defend themselves from that swirling galaxy of enemies. “Good marine fisheries management and government that plays by the rules,” he said, adding, “if we can get it.”

Stolpe hopes to get fair play. He spoke of the House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and panel members' concern over attacks on the seafood industry. Stolpe said, “They’ve had four hearings this year, getting ready to reauthorize the primary ocean fisheries management law.”

That law, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, has had provisions for a thriving, respected seafood industry since it was first passed in 1976 -- but Big Green pressure has blotted out everything that would help production.

University of Washington fisheries Professor Ray Hilborn focused on that problem in a September committee hearing, pointing out that the Magnuson-Stevens Act provides not only for rebuilding fish stocks, ensuring conservation and protecting essential habitat, but also, “the Act makes it clear that one objective is to provide for ‘the development of fisheries which are underutilized or not utilized … to assure that our citizens benefit from the employment, food supply and revenue which could be generated thereby.’”

Whoa! The federal government has been enforcing only half of the law? Hilborn thinks so. He told the panel, “The two specifically targeted actions are to rebuild over-exploited stocks and develop fisheries on underutilized species.”

OK, that’s clear enough. But what really happened? “While we have reduced overfishing,” said Hilborn, “one consequence has been far more underutilized fish stocks, and we seem to have lost sight of the actual goals of employment, food supply, recreational opportunity and revenue.”

Those key items, employment, food supply, and revenue are the very things Big Green has targeted for incremental destruction year after year. They’ve crushed, vilified, and destroyed seafood producers nationwide, fed by money earned in gigantic foundation investment portfolios of corporate common stocks, real estate and other assets.

Big Green is a dangerous, overwhelming power. That power lock must be broken.

RON ARNOLD, a Washington Examiner columnist, is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.