US climate envoy John Kerry presented a new plan at the UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP27, currently underway in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
The plan calls on private companies to send huge sums of money to developing countries.
Why, you may be wondering, would companies want to send their money to developing countries?
See, this is why US climate envoy John Kerry needs a plan.
“Our intention is to make the carbon market work, to deploy otherwise unusable capital, to accelerate the transition from dirty energy to clean energy,” Kerry said at a summit event.
What exactly does this mean? Let’s break it down.
The “dirty to clean energy transition” means shutting down or not building affordable power plants that routinely run on coal or natural gas and rely instead on expensive, intermittent solar and wind power. “Otherwise unemployable capital” means that the government has imposed restrictions on companies that limit their investments or operations. “Putting the carbon market to work” means selling permits for these companies to invest or operate.
Kerry’s plan asks American companies (and indirectly American consumers) to finance the “transition” in developing countries.
It’s yet another ploy to sell carbon credits, these sketchy creations that supposedly certify that somewhere in the world something measurable is being done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and that measurement can be chopped and sold to companies that want to “offset” their own greenhouse gas emissions. Companies that buy enough carbon credits can put a little green leaf on their website and brag about being “net zero”.
If you think this sounds more like a scam than an energy policy, you’re not alone. Activists, scientists and government officials attending the summit expressed varying degrees of shock, concern and dismay. “The implications of John Kerry’s proposal are that companies wouldn’t actually have to reduce their emissions if they bought offsets,” said Bill Hare of Climate Analytics, one of the experts on a UN panel. .
Kerry was even heckled by an Indigenous justice activist who later told a reporter, “We don’t need to associate with polluters.
Some in the climate crowd would like to see a total ban on the use of fossil fuels for electricity, heating, transportation and even the manufacturing of materials such as plastics. Luckily for them, if there’s one thing a government knows how to do, it’s make something illegal.
It’s the part of the plan that Kerry calls “otherwise unusable capital.” Whether through outright bans, ridiculously high taxes, relentless social stigma, or pension fund investment boycotts, your United States government can torture companies that develop and supply coal-derived energy, natural gas and oil. It can do the same for businesses that rely on this energy to run their businesses.
So far, Kerry reported, he has “strong interest” from PepsiCo and Microsoft to buy the carbon credits, which he promised would be “high quality”. By this he means they will not be like the carbon credits described earlier in the week by UN experts as cheap, bogus and lacking in integrity. The experts’ report warned that net zero is “undermined by false claims, ambiguity and ‘greenwash'”.
Kerry says its carbon credits will come with “strong guarantees” and that no fossil fuel company will be allowed to buy them. In fact, everyone who buys them will need to have a goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions as well as a plan to reach a ‘science-based’ intermediate goal.
Kerry also said credits cannot be used as a substitute for reducing emissions. But if so, they won’t be worth much to the companies he hopes will secure $100 billion in project funding by 2030 to fund the green transition in developing countries.
The UN climate summits are like an imaginary camp where activists can have fun pretending that the world can run on sunshine and breezes without any negative consequences, like huge numbers of starving and frozen people in black. Participants can see that carbon credits are a scam that allows “polluters” to carry on business as usual under the guise of public relations. What they don’t want to see is that the companies they call “polluters” are providing products and services that most people want. That’s what capitalism does.
Capitalism is not welcome at climate summits.
Climate summit activists are demanding governments ban productive activities. They insist on radical cuts in carbon dioxide emissions to appease the angry gods of computer-generated climate models. When democratically elected governments fail to go that far, climate activists will erupt like a volcano.
This is why the US government has a “climate envoy”. It’s his job to go to these summits and talk softly about making capital “unusable” to create a “carbon market” where productive companies are forced to buy absurd permits to operate.
Kerry calls his plan the Energy Transition Accelerator. It is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund. He does not have the support of the US Congress, which would not agree to provide billions of additional dollars in “climate financial aid”. But the activists haven’t given up on getting your money. The Sharm el-Sheikh summit featured a discussion on “loss and damage”, also known as “climate reparations”. There is talk of creating a fund and forcing high-income countries to contribute to it so that low-income countries can benefit from it.
This whole racket could be stopped in a day if American companies decide to stop being associated with it. In the meantime, here’s one way to pay lower prices: Avoid doing business with companies that claim to be “net zero.” Look for the leaf on the label, then buy something else.
Write to [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley
