My response to the Business of Climate Change

I write this with an almost prophetic fear of being condemned and called names. Critics of the propaganda have been denounced as vicious debunkers and wishful conspirators. This has been the spear with which the “pro-climate-change” lobby has been surging forward globally on their mission to strategically instil fear into the minds of its citizenry. Looking back now, the entire evolution pattern of the climate-change fiasco seems like that of some scam. Voices have been silenced, crushed to insignificance, data extrapolated and fundamentals mis-assumed. Global Warming was recently (and very subtly) rechristened and reconfigured. “Climate Change” suited the purpose better and yes, also provided a comfortable buffer zone for the gamblers. “Who knows if it is warming or cooling? Stakes are high. Let’s de-risk and call it climate change instead. It’s a safe bet” they must have thought. We are being forced to believe that we humans have suddenly (by the virtue of some random spontaneous mutation) turned into nature killers and that thousands of years of man-nature equilibrium has been destroyed almost relatively overnight.

The entire propaganda came to its full force with the release of “An Inconvenient Truth” – a work of one Mr. Al Gore. Although his love for the nature and worry for what is happening with it are not the things that I would like to question, I have my serious doubts. Is it a mere “co-incidence” that after the movie’s release The US energy Dept announced a grant of £2 billion of which more than £305 million will go to utility companies for the implementation of smart grid technology(The Telegraph, Nov 2009) . Silver Spring networks, a California based energy solutions provider is one of the front runners in this technology and most companies that bagged the grant have contracts with Silver Spring. It just so happens that, Al Gore’s venture capital company invested over £45 million in Silver Spring Networks just the previous year. Not to mention, Mr. Gore’s personal fortune has risen from £1.2 million to £ 60 million since the time he quit politics (Telegraph, Nov 2009) much of which has gone into investments in green technology such as carbon trading markets, solar power, bio fuels etc. No, this calls for no suspicion and indeed the climate change movement is pristine and devoid of any human greed.

Project Global Warming appears to be one of the biggest Public Relations scams of 21^st century. It has been dressed up, quite elegantly, as science while it is far away from it. It is propaganda with hidden economic agendas. The crisis has been custom manufactured to keep the citizenry in fear of an impending disaster and elicit the most out of them in form of consumption. My only problem with the fiasco is that the conversation of environmental depletion and looming crisis is being held in a language of economy and finance. If it were any serious, the proclaimed crisis, immediate government measures had to have been enforced cuts in luxurious consumptions. If it were as serious as claimed, reflex response would have been to shift to need mode of living like most of us did during the recent financial turmoil. However that is not the case and talks are of newer “Green technologies”. If excessive human consumption is what that led us to this stage, efforts must be on to cut down on it. But nobody seems to really think this way.

Airlines have started a fancy campaign of collecting donations to reduce per capita carbon footprint of passenger’s travel. The blame game is at its full play and the needle is constantly made to point towards the consumer. Polythene bags at hypermarkets are being charged for, people forced to comply with norms of the new green environment and asked to pay to get such a compliance authenticated, and billions of taxpayers’ monies are being laundered into research projects to look into the enormity of the crisis. Every part of the capitalist empire is claiming its share of the feast. The corporate media is leaving no stone unturned in capitalizing on the frenzy. Newer Ads “promoting green living” are being extracted out of corporations. Tailor made hysteria packages are being broadcasted to maintain the fear. Cards and merchandises sold on “Earth Day” and many more of such days are in planning.

Governments have assumed the role of a school bully, not quite changing what happens but claiming their share in everything that does. Hence, you now have to buy your right to pollute the environment. Licenses to kill the nature are being auctioned in markets, mathematically constructed to make money for the big boys of school. The Cap-and-Trade scheme chooses to un-see the fact that its contribution to bringing down carbon emission is relatively nil. Corporations can still poison the nature but only that there is a price tag on the indulgence this time around. Governments have been kind with the supply of these licenses. Market is burgeoning and you can now buy these licenses from a variety of outlets including the fellow players. No one ever cares to notice that the suffering of nature has remained significantly untouched.

The “Go Green” movement is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology. An ideology that is substantially backed by the governments and businesses which aims at maintaining some element of fear in the electorate as fear brings in submission and submission means business. The environmental molestation is being legitimized by dossiers and contracts and this is now a democracy. Business pursuits have been morphed and dressed in the name of climate change to create newer business avenues and revenue models. Why is it that “going green” is being referred to as a new trend in consumption when it has to be the absence of it or at least conscious cutting down of the same ? Why are businesses taking the liberty of charging premium for their eco-compliant products? They seem to be taking advantage of the guilt smitten consumers who have been forced to believe that they are the masters of the atrocities against nature.

With virtually every venture capitalist and other big names of the industry having chosen the green track, it is imperative of the government and businesses to invent crisis and discover business opportunity in it. Richard Sandor of Chicago Climate Exchange estimates that climate trading could be a “$ 10 trillion dollar market” (Investor’s Business Daily , April 2010) and this is just the trade bureau. Estimates of the entire industry value bring in unimaginable numbers on board. World’s first carbon billionaires are now gearing up to be unveiled in a display of the rescuer pride.

In all this drama, only the constituencies are left lurking in the shadows with no imaginable gains. Ordinary people have once again been fooled, then it was World Peace and now it is Climate Change. The mass hysteria has once again churned out opportunist businesses that will soon disappear heaving a sigh of “good-god-we-finally-managed-to avert-it”. Chapter will be closed and no one allowed to even investigate if there was even anything to be averted !

“The absence of proof is not the proof of absence” – we’ll be told !