Business That Sees Only Profit In Environmentalism: A Note from Bjorn Lomborg
Posted by jennifer, May 22nd, 2009 - under Opinion.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change, Money
“SOME business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets.
“The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the might of the ‘military-industrial complex’, cautioning that ‘the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.’ He worried that ‘there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.’
“This is certainly true of climate change. We are told that very expensive carbon regulations are the only way to respond to global warming, despite ample evidence that this approach does not pass a basic cost-benefit test. We must ask whether a ‘climate-industrial complex’ is emerging, pressing taxpayers to fork over money to please those who stand to gain.
“This phenomenon will be on display at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen this weekend. The organizers — the Copenhagen Climate Council — hope to push political leaders into more drastic promises when they negotiate the Kyoto Protocol’s replacement in December…”
Read more at the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124286145192740987.html#mod=djemEditorialPage
The Climate-Industrial Complex – Some businesses see nothing but profits in the green, by Bjorn Lomborg, May 22, 2009, The Wall Street Journal.
I suspect that this “warmer’s era” is the next new birthing of “Tulipmania”.
If you think we are in trouble with the present GFC better think again.
We ain’t seen nuthin yet!
You may well be right SD, I’m always weary of business that calls for more regulation or taxes in any form.
It ain’t natural.
Some freethinkers see the Gorist-Hansenist climate scare tactics as a manifestation of latter-day Pol Pot environmental ideology. Some others see it as a vast Capitalist conspiracy to get rich at the expense of consumers.
Here in the U.S. we have a venerable tradition of corporate welfare. So the Capitalist angle does have some plausibility. It’s axiomatic that large corporations are always on the lookout for a fast buck. But is that the driving force?
Are both schools of thought mistaken? Or are they both right, in their own ways? Hell if I know.
An environmental friendly war business, why not? If they can get a big propaganda machine (like anyone can guess which) to stick behind it.
But is there a problem to fix (AGW) and will resticting co2 use fix that problem?
I would say that the answer to both questions is no there isn’t a problem and cutting back on co2 will not somehow change the climate.
But it will flush trillions down the toilet for zero return and cost jobs in very efficient industries plus cost a fortune introducing so called new jobs in sustainable (?) green fantasies.
Meanwhile gore gets richer and richer and the msm promotes the likes of hansen to promote this scientific fraud.
Remove the recovery from the LIA from the equation and you are left with no problem to fix at all.
“recovery from the LIA” – how perversely anthropomorphic
“recovery from the LIA” – how perversely anthropomorphic
Luke, so how would you describe it?
Rebound?
Return to MWP levels?
Return to previously enjoyed periods?
Flight from frozen arse?
Death by luxury?
or is anthropomorphic your only hook.
‘recovery from the LIA’
Better described as someone who was rescued in time from hypothermia, but our Luke is a mathematical physicist, in Ivory Tower, so these crass physical states are not within his purview.
Nor might science given his predeliction for the omnipotence of Gravity, and it’s failure to mimic a solar system with 3 bodies, or has he ‘ad hoceries’ to dismiss that as well?
Neville,
Quite – actually the variation of CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere is an effect of a change in the Earth’s climate from external factors.
Our Greeny friends have never understood Isaac Newton’s primary insight – that things change when acted on by an EXTERNAL force.
This is venturing into the philosophical area, no doubt, but from the Plasma Model, life waxes and wanes according to the variation in solar electrical input.
For reasons I have not yet worked out, Climate Changers seem to believe that humanity can affect the order of Nature.
However, none seem to understand that we are an epiphenomenon of the enviromment we are found in, and not that environment’s creator.
If we took their logic to heart, we would be obliged to exterminate all the beavers that dammed creeks in the Nothern America’s for environmental insensitivity.
Or alternatively we could exterminate enviro-wrecking geologists for this http://nqr.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/acid-rain-or-mining-to-blame-for-waterway-pollution/1465226.aspx
Rivers of blue.
Luke,
You really are a cretin – tell everyone here how the Jabiluka uranium deposit was found.
You don’t know?
Well, it was found geochemically from stream sediment sampling – the exploration people at the time found a high assay of uranium in a sample taken from a creek, and discovered that it was the Jabiluka uranium deposit that outcropped and was releasing uranium (it’s quite water soluble) into the water course.
I suppose you are going to now blame us in the mining industry for that as well, are you?
Splendid – not often we find ourselves on trial with Mother Nature/God.
Actually mining is simply an acceleration of the natural process of weathering and erosion – in time most mineral deposits will be eroded and deposited into new places. So mining is, from one viewpoint, quite natural.