COP 29: The Big UN Money Grab

By Craig Rucker, President @ CFACT

The sums of money being demanded at the UN climate conference in Azerbaijan are staggering.

The UN estimates that the world currently spend $3 trillion per year on climate and wants to dedicate $3.5 trillion to energy transition per year by 2050.  This would skyrocket total annual global climate spending to $5 trillion.

A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

They are pushing for something they call the “new collective quantified goal” at COP 29 in Baku.  This mainly means a fortune in climate redistribution from the developed to the developing world. 

Delegates are all too aware that this spending largess in no way squares with President-elect Trump's "America first" agenda, but they are hoping to wait him out as they did once before.

One surprising positive development, is that in the process of demanding redistribution, developing nations have woken up to one of the key absurdities of the UN climate regime.  Nations such as China and India are given a pass on emissions reductions and paying out funds.  This, despite the fact that China is the world's number one emitter of greenhouse gases and boasts the second largest economy, while India's economy is all the way up at number five. 

This is due to something the UN calls "common, but differentiated responsibilities," which has been baked into the climate regime going all the way back to 1997's Kyoto Protocol.  China, meanwhile, holds $8.16 trillion of U.S. debt. 

Wherever climate policy goes next, China should equally bear the pain and shoulder the responsibility they advocate for us. 

President Obama shoveled $1 billion over to the UN's Green Climate Fund shortly before President Trump began his first term.  This included $500 million transferred just three days before inauguration day.

Will the Biden Administration try to top that?

The last time President Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement it took four years.  Under the terms of the Agreement, this time he can do it in one.

Let's hope President Trump resurrects climate and energy reality for the U.S. and the world before much more damage is done.

For nature and people too!

P.S.  Thank you to all of CFACT's friends and readers who have given so generously to make CFACT's Mission Azerbaijan possible.  CFACT is your eyes, ears and voice in the UN climate process.  We are approaching our goal, but still have a short way to go.  Please make the most generous gift you can right now.  We cannot do it without you.

Big Green

By John Ray @ Greenie Watch

Half a trillion dollars!  Does that seem enough? That's what "Green" donors have spent since 2010 on pushing their invariably destructive causes.  You wouldn't think there would be so much money sloshing around among American charitable sources but there is.  It has been used to fund advertising and to "buy" activists, journalists and politicians. Substantial contributions to a politician's election campaign tend to be very warmly received by the politician.

So there is a vast mechanism trying to influence American public policy towards self-destruction. Freud's warning about "Thanatos", the death instinct that is in us all to varying degrees, does spring to mind. Global Warming is a lot of hokum so they need to be spending all that money to drown out those of us who simply mention the climate facts.

So how do we know about all that spending?  It's in a vast new academic journal article by Nisbet that goes through all the "philanthropic" spending line by line. It's a very thorough and authoritative article.

It is way too long for most people to read so I have just reproduced below the beginning and the end of it.  Those excerpts tell you plenty, however. I have just done a rough download into text from a PDF so the formatting and word-separation is pretty scrappy but that's all I had time for.

If you are a masochist you can go back to the original and read the whole thing HERE.

Exposing the Green Money Machine

By Alan Caruba

On Tuesday Alan posted this review of “Cracking Big Green: To Save the World from the Save-the-Earth Money Machine.” A book that I think is well worth reading. His review appeared here and I wish to thank Alan for allowing me to publish his work. RK.

 

It is doubtful that most Americans and others around the world know how vast the organizational structure of the environmental movement is and how much wealth it generates for those engaged in an agenda that would drag humanity back to the Stone Age.

If that sounds extreme, consider a world without access to and use of energy or any of the technological and scientific advances that have extended and enhanced our lives, from pesticides that kill insect and rodent disease vectors to genetically modified seeds that yield greater crop volumes.

Two of my colleagues in the effort to get the truth out are Paul Driessen and Ron Arnold, both of whom are affiliated with a free market think tank, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, CFACT, They have done the research necessary to expose the wealth and the power structure of the environmental movement. They have joined together to write “Cracking Big Green: To Save the World from the Save-the-Earth Money Machine.”($4.99, available from Amazon.com)

The Greens are forever claiming that anyone who disputes their lies is receiving money from big energy companies, but my experience is that it is think tanks like CFACT, small by any comparison with any major environmental organization, that support the search for the truth and its dissemination.

“Big Green” was formerly known as the Iron Triangle, “a mutually supportive relationship between power elites” so-named by Mark Tapscott, the Washington Examiner’s executive editor. It consisted of “government agencies, special interest lobbying organizations, and legislators with jurisdiction over their interests.” Today, it includes major environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. To these add wealthy foundations and corporations that fund them.

It will no doubt astound many readers to learn that there are more than 26,500 American environmental groups. They collected total revenues of more than $81 billion from 2000 to 2012, according to Giving USA Institute, with only a small part of that coming from membership dues and individual contributions.

“Cracking Big Green” examined the Internal Revenue Service Form 990 reports of non-profit organizations. Driessen and Arnold discovered that, among the 2012 incomes of better-known environmental groups, the Sierra Club took in $97,757,678 and its Foundation took in $47,163,599. The Environmental Defense Fund listed $111,915,138 in earnings, the Natural Resources Defense Council took in $98,701,707 and the National Audubon Society took in $96,206,883. These four groups accounted for more than $353 million in one year.

That pays for a lot of lobbying at the state and federal level. It pays for a lot of propaganda that the Earth needs saving because of global warming or climate change. Now add in Greenpeace USA at $32,791,149, the Greenpeace Fund at $12,878,777; the National Wildlife Federation at $84,725,518; the National Parks Conservation Association at $25,782,975; and The Wilderness Society at $24,862,909. Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection took in $19,150,215. That’s a lot of money to protect something that cannot be “protected”, but small in comparison to other Green organizations.

“If that sounds too intimidating to confront,” say Driessen and Arnold, “it gets worse. Our research found a truly shocking blind spot; many major environmental groups get nearly half their revenue from private foundations like the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Wal-Mart’s Walton Family Foundation. Just the top 50 foundation donors (out of 81,777) gave green groups $812,639,999 (2010 figures), according to the Foundation Center’s vast database.”

If you wonder why you have been hearing and reading endless doomsday scenarios about the warming of the Earth, the rise of the seas, and the disappearance of species and forests, for decades, the reason is that a huge propaganda machine is financed at levels that are mind boggling.

Allied with politicians in high places, Big Green can count on them to maintain the lies. When the Earth ceased to warming nineteen years ago, it changed its doomsday campaign to “climate change” but the objective is the same, keep people so scared they will accept all manner of restrictions on their lives at the same time the availability of the energy on which they depend is reduced by a “war on coal” and other measures to keep oil and natural gas in the ground where it cannot be used.

“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” said President Obama on January 21, 2013, in his second inaugural address. “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and powerful storms.”

This may appeal to those who do not or cannot examine these claims, but the reality is that the climate is always in a state of change, is largely determined by the Sun and other factors such as the oceans and volcanic activity. Humans play virtually no role whatever and Big Green’s Big Lie, that carbon dioxide (C02) emissions influence the weather and/or the climate has long been disproved and debunked. The problem is that that the news and other media continue to tell the Big Lie.

For Big Green, science is not about irrefutable truth. It is an instrument of propaganda to be distorted to advance their lies.

The impact on their lives and on our economy can be seen in “higher energy bills, disappearing jobs, diminished family incomes, and fewer opportunities for better living standards for their children”, all factors that played into the outcome of the recent midterm elections.

For a short, powerful insight to Big Green power and agenda, I heartily recommend you read “Cracking Big Green.”

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Book Review: Cracking Big Green To Save the World from the Save-the-Earth Money Machine

By Rich Kozlovich

Cracking Big Green To Save the World from the Save-the-Earth Money Machine was written by Paul Drissen and Ron Arnold.   By way of openness, I know Paul Driessen, I've been in communication with him for some years, and I have had communications with Ron Arnold – both whom I've admired and respected for years. 

I’ve believed those opposing these ‘green’ agendas have won the battle of facts.  They always have.  Those supporting these ‘green’ issues win the battle on emotion.  They always have.  In order to win the war means winning the battle of facts and emotion.  This book does that.
 

In order to understand any issue means understanding the history of that issue, and this is clearly demonstrated.  The green movement started out with people with good intentions but it didn’t take long for it to be corrupted to what it is now, and the authors clearly show how this was done and by whom.   They show how and why extremely rich people and foundations fund these groups to amounts of money that can only be considered amazing.  They show why no trade association in the nation can stand against them financially.  

These bureaucracies openly and illegally flaunt legislation and even court orders, while demanding the strictest interpretation of law by everyone they oppose while ignoring clear violations by those they support.   The green movement and their allies in government are in cahoots in order to gain authority the legislature never intended for these agencies to have, via sue and settle lawsuits, and behind the door closed deals with the most important green groups, which would normally be illegal under the “Administrative Procedures Act.”

This book shows how the greens have not only infested government and science, but every aspect of life, including religion, where they formed a group called Interfaith Power and Light that “dutifully disparaged coal and oil as “fuels from Hell”, while praising costly wind and solar schemes as “fuels from Heaven” – without mentioning the “godly” energy sources’ extravagant and not-so-divine federal subsidies, or their less than ecological impacts on birds, bats and other wildlife.”  And then there’s the “Office of Faith- Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the EPA”, and more. 

This isn’t just here in the U.S. Their abuses are a worldwide activity, showing complete contempt for humanity and the lives they’re destroying.  This gives lie to their continuing smoke screen that what they do is “for the children”.  What they really do is “to the children".  This book names names and outlines events and describe how they occur.  Events that have at time been reported in the media, but mostly largely unreported, going on for decades - and most importantly the outcome of those events. 

The intent of the authors is to state the facts and let those facts outrage our natural sense of justice.  It does.  This is a book that needs to be read by every honest regulator, legislator, industry trade association member, every journalist and most importantly.  The public!  

Cracking Big Green: To Save the World from the Save-the-Earth Money can be ordered here from Amazon. 

Author Biographies:

RON ARNOLD is an author , columnist and citizen activist working with non-profit organizations to uphold American rights and liberties, advocate for productive harmony between man and nature, and counter threats to open and responsive government. He is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise and publishing editor for CFACT, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, non-profit public policy institutes with long track records of education and positive influence. He writes a weekly column for the Washington Examiner with insider views on national and local social and political issues. Arnold has written more than 300 magazine articles, numerous book chapters, and is the author of eight books and editor of ten books.

Between 1976 and 1981, he was a contributing editor of Western Conservation Journal and Logging Management Journal, where his 1979 magazine series, “The Environmental Battle”, won the American Business Press 1980 Editorial Achievement Award in a New York City ceremony. In 1981, Arnold was commissioned to write the authorized biography of President Ronald Reagan’s first Interior Secretary, James G. Watt. His growing political expertise brought an invitation to direct the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise in 1984, where he remains Executive Vice President. He subsequently founded the Free Enterprise Press to give a voice to writers on politically incorrect themes and edited ten of the Press’s books.

In 1988 he founded the Wise Use Movement to advocate for property rights and resource workers. His own highly acclaimed books on politics and the environment were distributed by Merril Press, which quickly became his publisher. His “EcoTerror” was included in the “100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century” Random House / Modern Library Reader’s List. His activism has been reported in major print media including Time, People, U.S. News & World Report, Outside, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune , San Francisco Examiner and Los Angeles Times, and profiled in Playboy and Maxim magazines. He has been featured on CBS News 60 Minutes, ABC News Nightline, Fox News Big Story, and the evening news of all U.S. TV networks. He was first listed in Who’s Who in America in the 2000 edition, and has been listed in Who’s Who in Business and Industry since 1994. He is profiled on an Amazon Author Page, and is profiled in Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia.

PAUL DRIESSEN is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), public policy institutes that promote environmental stewardship, the enhancement of human health and welfare, and personal liberties and civil rights.

He writes and speaks frequently on the environment, energy and economic development, malaria eradication, climate change, human rights, corporate social responsibility and sustainable development. His articles have appeared in newspapers (Wall Street Journal, Washington Times , Investor’s Business Daily, New York Post , Houston Chronicle, and others) and magazines (Risk Management, American Coal, Hispanic Times and others) and on news and opinion websites in the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Peru, Venezuela, South Africa, Uganda, Bangladesh and other countries. Driessen’s book, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death, documents the harm that restrictive environmental policies often have on poor people , especially in developing countries, by restricting their access to life-enhancing modern technologies . It is in its second US printing and has also been published in Argentina (Spanish), India (English), Germany (German) and Italy (Italian). He was editor for Energy Keepers - Energy Killers: The new civil rights battle, by CORE national chairman Roy Innis; Rules for Corporate Warriors: How to fight and survive attack group shakedowns, by Nick Nichols; and Creatures, Corals and Colors in North American Seas, by Ann Scarborough -Bull. He has also written detailed reports on the role of carbon dioxide in enhancing plant growth, modern mining methods in Peru, sustainable development, and Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

Driessen’s studies and analyses have also appeared in Conserving the Environment (Doug Dupler, editor), Resurgent Diseases (Karen Miller, Editor) and Malnutrition (Margaret Haerens, editor), all part of the Thomson-Gale “Opposing Viewpoints” Series used in many high schools and colleges; Redefining Sovereignty: Will liberal democracies continue to determine their own laws and public policies, or yield these rights to transnational entities in search of universal order and justice? (Orin Judd, editor); and other publications. He played a lead role in the “Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now ” campaign, an international effort that restored the use of DDT to African and other malaria control programs, and served as an advisor to the film “3 Billion and Counting,” examining how environmentalist and EPA campaign against DDT have had devastating impacts on families in poor developing countries.

Paul received his BA in geology and field ecology from Lawrence University and a JD from the University of Denver College of Law, before embarking on a career that also included tenures with the United States Senate, U.S. Department of the Interior and an energy trade association. He has produced documentary films about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, immigration through Ellis Island, and marine habitats beneath offshore oil production platforms. Driessen is also a frequent guest on radio talk shows and college campuses, and at business and public policy forums. He participates in energy, health and environmental conferences, and was active in the Public Relations Society of America, where he served as Washington, DC chapter newsletter editor and in the Social Responsibility Section.).