By Jo Nova
Finally, the Green-left activists are starting to ask if Big Money is distorting their own environmental efforts
Twenty years too late, a few on the green patsy environmental side are starting to feel “uneasy” about the billions of dollars gifted into their accounts by the nice caring bankers and oligarchs. The money thrown at believers is so obscenely big even they are raising eyebrows.
After smearing skeptics as shills for Big Oil, a few on the left are wondering if funds 300 times larger just from one man might be a bit concentrated. The Bezos Earth Fund has $10,000 million dollars in total to give away but in the last three decades of climate debate the evil Exxon only gave skeptics a grand total of $30 million dollars. Now they worry?
They wonder if Jeff Bezos is controlling too much of the environmental charity funding, and that he really wants to set up carbon offset schemes which greens fear will be “greenwashed” corrupted and a waste of time. This is quite a rare hint that a few in the environmental circles are just starting to be suspicious that they are being used to support other money making agendas.
But this is a crack in the door for skeptics to wedge:
The Bezos Earth fund has pumped billions into climate and nature projects. So why are experts uneasy?
By Patrick Greenfield, The Guardian
Launched with a skeleton team in February 2020, the Bezos Earth Fund aims to give away $10bn (£7.9bn) of the Amazon founder’s $200bn personal fortune to combat the climate crisis and biodiversity loss by the end of the decade. So far, it has issued more than 230 grants worth $2bn, funding initiatives from AI environmental solutions to clean energy for disadvantaged communities.
In the process, the Bezos Earth Fund has become one of the most influential voices in the climate and biodiversity sector, with its fellows, advisers and directors a high-profile presence at international negotiations.
Now they worry about the conflict of interest?
But privately in the climate and biodiversity sector, the mood around the Bezos Earth Fund has turned to one of growing unease. Researchers, climate policy advisers and NGO staff voiced concerns about the level of influence the organisation holds over critical environmental institutions for halting climate change and biodiversity loss, many of which now count Bezos Earth Fund among their biggest funders. Some did not want to be named due to concerns about the consequences for their own funding.
“We have seen millions of dollars paid to conservation and climate organisations. So many have taken money from the Bezos Earth Fund and I find it really worrying. There is obviously a risk of a conflict of interest,” says Holger Hoffmann-Riem from the Swiss NGO Go for Impact. “The credibility of the system relies on independence.”
The system needs independence indeed, but where were they when science needed independence? They were in bed with the bankers and bureaucrats, demanding carbon credits to save the world.
The aim of the Big Banker class was always to establish a carbon fiat currency brokered by them. It was potentially a $7 Trillion dollar money making venture (for bankers). Wouldn’t you love to be paid to profit from an invisible product where no one needed delivery of anything, yet you could claim to be saving the world? The only “commodity” in this market are paper certificates issued by third world bureaucrats, and checked by people who want jobs with the UN or HSBC? (We all know what HSBC is looking for in an employee, and it isn’t “independence”. (Remember Stuart Kirk’s story?)
More signs that the Green left are starting to fragment
Does Jeff Bezos really want to save the world? Green gravy train troughers are afraid to ask out loud:
One climate policy expert, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says: “In the few years since it started distributing enormous amounts of money for climate change and conservation, Bezos Earth Fund has established influence over many major initiatives and their board members.
“At this point, Bezos Earth Fund’s enormous presence in the climate and conservation space starts to look less philanthropical, and more like an attempt to take over the corporate governance system for its own interests and agenda.”
Things are cracking up in the Carbonista cabal because the impossible Net Zero targets can only be met by buying carbon credits from countries who have a massive dirty emissions industry they can clean up cheaply or who can fake it. The true (delusional but more honest) Greens sense that there is something wrong with this international money market idea. After all, people close to home won’t have to give up their air conditioners and cars if they can just pay some slave in Malawi to do it for them. Hence there was a big dummy-spit when Bezos group was seen supporting “carbon offsets”:
Many in the conservation and climate world say their concerns crystallised this year, when a bitter internal row erupted at the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), one of the world’s most important climate certification organisations. The SBTi, which received an $18m grant from Bezos in 2021, is the organisation responsible for assessing whether some of the world’s leading companies are decarbonising in line with the Paris agreement.
In April, the SBTi board unexpectedly announced plans to allow companies to meet their climate targets with carbon offsets from the unregulated voluntary carbon market for indirect emissions. The move provoked internal fury. Staff and technical advisers said they were not consulted about the announcement and warned it could open the door to greenwashing.
They expressed fears that the science-based process was being sidelined in favour of more company-friendly policies with weaker standards, with large polluters allowed to buy offsets instead of cutting emissions. Dozens of SBTi staff called for the resignation of the CEO, Luiz Fernando do Amaral, and board members, including the Bezos fellow Iván Duque, in an internal letter.
But ponder this –a lot of the green-left-industrial complex don’t want a real free market in carbon either. The renewables industry wants a half-baked one to support them, but doesn’t want want a full open free market in carbon because the sell products that are expensively stupid ways to reduce CO2. So if there is anything resembling a free market in carbon credits, they might lose market share to all the cheaper options. When Australia had a carbon auction system small tree farms used to win the bidding at $14 a ton of carbon “saved”. While wind and solar power were costing hundreds of dollars a ton. And electric vehicles are even worse.
So other big money guys who are using the greens have an interest in making sure the carbon market isn’t too free and only certain “low emissions” schemes can be accepted.
From the Bezos Fund site — obviously they don’t want a real free market, they want a rigged one, as long as they get to do the rigging, eh?
“The market economy can play a valuable role in shifting to a green future, but free markets alone can simply perpetuate past pollution and depletion. The Bezos Earth Fund is working to accelerate changes in goods and financial markets to create a virtuous cycle of investment, prosperity, jobs, innovation, emission reductions and ecosystem protection.”
But when you have $10 billion dollars to give away and Big Bankers for friends, what’s to say you can’t rig the market?
