It’s From Bankers – OpEd – Eurasia Review

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco warned 2019 that climate change could result in banks ceasing to lend, towns losing their tax revenue, as well as home values falling. Last year, 36 pension funds managers managed $1 trillion worth of assets. said climate change “poses a systemic threat to financial markets and the real economy.”

And President Joe Biden was inaugurated warned government agencies that climate change disasters threatened retirement funds, home prices, and the very stability of the financial system.

But a major new staff report from the New York Federal Reserve Bank throws cold water on the over-heated rhetoric coming from activist investors, bankers, and politicians. “How Bad Are Weather Disasters for Banks?” asks the title of the report by three economists. “Not very,” they answer in the first sentence of the abstract.

The reason is because “weather disasters over the last quarter century had insignificant or small effects on U.S. banks’ performance.” The study looked at FEMA-level disasters between 1995 and 2018, at county-level property damage estimates, and the impact on banking revenue.

The New York Fed’s authors only looked at how banks have dealt with disasters in the past, and what they wrote isn’t likely to be the final word on the matter. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, along with other scientific bodies, predict that many weather events, including floods and hurricanes, which are the most damaging to financial assets, will become more extreme due to climate change.

And in February The New York Times quoted one of six United States Federal Reserve governors saying, “Financial institutions that do not put in place frameworks to measure, monitor and manage climate-related risks could face outsized losses on climate-sensitive assets caused by environmental shifts.”

But the Fed economists looked separately at the most extreme 10 percent of all disasters and found that banks impacted not only didn’t suffer, “their income increases significantly with exposure,” and that the improved financial performance of banks hit by disasters wasn’t explained by increased federal disaster (FEMA) aid.

In other words, disasters actually exist. Good for banks, since they increase demand for loans. The larger a bank’s exposure to natural disasters, the larger its profits.

Happily, banks’ profits are insignificant compared with rising societal resilience against disasters. This can be seen in the fact that the percentage of GDP that has been spent on natural catastrophes has declined. actually declined over the last 30 years.

Scientists expect hurricanes to become five percent more extreme they also expect them to become 25 percent less frequent, and now, new data show global carbon emissions actually declined over the last decade, and thus there is no longer any serious risk of a significant rise in global temperatures.

Banking against Growth

Climate is the real threat to banks and global economy. policyNot climate change, but energy prices and reliability. This includes increased use of renewables, new taxes and new regulations.

“For policymakers,” warned the three economists writing for the New York Fed, “our findings suggest that potential transition risks from climate change warrant more attention than physical disaster risks.”

Although they may seem outliers, they are not the only ones expressing concern. The Fed governor referred to climate change in the second half. hyped by The New York Times, warned that banks “could face outsized losses” from the “transition to a low-carbon economy.” (My emphasis.)

Members of Congress are now more concerned about the dangers of relying too heavily on weather-dependent energy. with some members citing the New York Fed’s report after The Wall Street Journal editorialized about it last week .

The worst global energy crisis in 50-years is a clear indicator of the economic threat posed by climate policy. Shareholder activists played a significant role in creating it, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, The Financial TimesBy reducing oil and gas production investment and causing nations over-investing in unreliable solar or wind energy, this has driven up energy prices and contributed significantly to inflation.

Yet, a Biden Administration nominee to bank regulation has said that she would like banksrupt firms that produce oil or gas, the fuels whose scarcity is creating the global energy crises. Progressive academic, Saule Omarova, nominated by Biden, said recently that “we want [oil and gas firms] to go bankrupt” and that “the way we basically get rid of these carbon financiers is we starve them of their source of capital.

Omarova is not an exception. The Biden Administration’s Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) is advocating 30 new climate regulations that should be imposed on banking. Many analysts believe the US Securities and Exchange Commission will require new regulations. The goal is to radically alter how America’s banks lend money, the energy sector, and the economy as a whole.

Mark Carney, a former Bank of England chief and co-chair of Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero has organized $130 Trillion In investment And said recently that his investors should expect to make higherReturns that are not lower than the market. How? Omarova predicted exactly the same thing: by bankrupting certain companies and financing others through government regulations and subsidies.

With Michael Bloomberg, Carney founded the Glasgow Financial Alliance, or GFANZ. They did this under the official seals the United Nations. “Carney said the alliance will put global finance on a trajectory that ultimately leaves high-carbon assets facing a much bleaker future,” wrote a reporter with Bloomberg. “He also said investors in such products will see the value of their holdings sink.”

What’s going on, exactly? How is it that some of the world’s most powerful bankers, and the politicians they finance, came to support policies that threaten the stability of electrical grids, energy supplies, and thus the global economy itself?

The Unseen Order

Three billionaire financial titans George Soros and Michael Bloomberg are the biggest donors to climate change causes. They all have significant investments in both fossil fuels and renewables.

Soros is worth $8Billion recently made large investments in natural gas firms (EQT) and electric vehicles (Fisker), Bloomberg has a net worth of around $70 billion and has large investments in natural gas and renewables, and much of Steyer’s wealth derives from investments in all three main fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas — as well as renewables.

All three men finance climate activists and politicians, including President Biden, who then seek policies — from $500 billion for renewables and electric vehicles over the next decade to federal control over state energy systems to banking regulations to bankrupt oil and gas companies — which would benefit each of them personally.

Bloomberg donated more than $100 million to Sierra Club to lobby for shutting down coal plants. Bloomberg had purchased a large stake, natural gas, in the replacement. The company is one of the most important news media companies in the world. It publishes articles daily and sends emails almost every single day, reporting on climate change and the need to find cost-effective solutions.

Soros donates heavily to Center for American Progress, whose founder, John Podesta, was chief of staff to Bill Clinton, campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and who currently runs policy at the Biden White House. Steyer also funds the climate activist group founded by New Yorker author Bill McKibben, 350.org, which reported revenues of nearly $20 million in 2018.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is the most influential environmental organization in the Democratic Party and the Biden Administration. They advocated for federal control over state energy markets. This included the $500 billion for electric cars and renewables. International carbon markets would also be under the control of the bankers, financiers, and donors to the NRDC.

Enron, an energy trading firm, used NRDC to distribute hundreds and thousands of dollars to environmental groups during the 1990s. “On environmental stewardship, our experience is that you can trust Enron,” said NRDC’s Ralph Cavanagh in 1997, even though Enron executives at the time were defrauding investors of billions of dollars in an epic criminal conspiracy, which in 2001 bankrupted the company.

From 2009 to 2011, NRDC lobbied for and helped to write complex cap and trade climate legislation that would have allowed some of their donors to profit from a carbon-trading marketplace worth upwards to $1 trillion.

NRDC invested $66 million of its money in a BlackRock stock funds that invested heavily in natural-gas companies. In 2014, it also disclosed that millions had been invested in renewable funds.

Former NRDC head, Gina McCarthy, now heads up Biden’s climate policy team, and Biden’s top economic advisor, Brian Deese, last worked at BlackRock, and almost certainly will return at the end of the Biden Administration.

Money can buy influence. In 2019, McKibben called Steyer a “climate champ” when Steyer announced he was running for president, adding that Steyer’s “just-released climate policy is damned good!” And in 2020, McKibben wrote an article called, “How Banks Could Bail Us Out of the Climate Crisis,” for The New YorkerWhich repeated the claim that extreme weather created by climate change threatens financial interests, and that the way to prevent it is to divert public and private money away from reliable energy sources toward weather-dependent ones.

Forms filed to the Internal Revenue Service by Steyer’s philanthropic organization, the TomKat Charitable Trust, show that it gave McKibben’s climate activist group, 350.org, $250,000 in 2012, 2014, and 2015, and may have given money to 350.org in 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, as well, because 350.org thanked either Steyer’s philanthropy, TomKat Foundation, or his organization, NextGen America, in each of its annual reports since 2013.

At the same time, McKibben’s motivations are plainly spiritual. He claims that various natural disasters are caused by humans, that climate change literally threatens life on Earth, and is thus “greatest challenge humans have ever faced,” a statement so unhinged from reality, considering declining deaths from disasters, declining carbon emissions, and the total absence of any science for such a claim, that it must be considered religious.

McKibben’s first book on climate change The End of NatureHe explicitly expressed his spiritual views by arguing that capitalism had led to the loss of humanity’s connection with nature. “We can no longer imagine that we are part of something larger than ourselves,” he wrote in The End of Nature. “That is what this all boils down to.” Indeed, for William James, the belief in “an unseen order” that we must adjust ourselves to, in order to avoid future punishment, is a defining feature of religion.

Climate change is punishment for our sins against nature — that’s the basic narrative pushed by journalists, climate activists, and their banker sponsors, for 30 years. It is based on the belief natural disasters are getting worse, threatening the economy and killing millions of people. But in reality, they are getting better, costing less and killing fewer people. It offers redemption: To avoid punishment, we must align ourselves with the unseen order, which is a new economy controlled and managed by the U.N. bankers and climate activists. The unseen order is destructive and parasitic, as it is becoming more obvious.

The Bankers Will Follow When Nuclear Leads Are Declared

The unspoken order of bankers, climate activists and the news media is so powerful, it is hard to imagine how it could ever come under attack.

The financial might of the climate lobby covers the wealth not only of billionaires Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg, but also $130 trillion in investment funds, including many of the world’s largest pension funds, such as the one belonging to California public employees. The climate lobby’s political power is equally awesome, covering the entirety of the Democratic Party and a significant portion of the Republican Party, and most center-Left parties in Europe.

And all of that is sustained by cultural power, which has led many elites to view climate change as the world’s number one issue, has convinced half of all humans that climate change will make our species extinct, and has served as the apocalyptic foundation for Woke religion.

However, serious cracks are appearing in the foundation. Many around the globe have seen the limitations of unreliable energy sources. European governments had to subsidize energy in order to avoid backlash. President Biden, other heads of states, opened up emergency petroleum resources, and all countries begged OPEC to produce more energy.

Democrats are supporting nuclear energy due to the rising reliability and blackouts in California. This is in addition to the work of the pronuclear movement over 6 years. Last week, Jennifer Granholm, Energy Secretary, was elected. publicly urged California Governor Gavin Newsom not to close California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, the signature nuclear plant Environmental Progress has been trying to save since 2016. The Democratic support for nuclear is increasing, in particular.

Substack, podcasts and other social media platforms are providing a counterweight for the mainstream media, exposing a large number of people. issues that the media got wrong in recent years, amplifying alternative voices.

The change is occurring faster in Europe than anywhere else. There, energy shortages are affecting heating and cooking as well as electricity supplies in ways which undermine the legitimacy banker-led climate initiatives. The government has been forced to take over after private energy companies in Britain went bankrupt. to bail them out. Like banks, for-profit energy companies rely on taxpayers who are also voters.

Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who led her nation’s exit from nuclear energy, acknowledged that Germany had been defeated in its anti-nuclear energy advocacy at the European Union level, and that nuclear would finally be recognized as low-carbon.

Emanuel Macron, the French president, was under pressure from the political right as voters prepare for elections next year. He gave a passionate speech in support of nuclear power last month and announced $35 billion to build new reactors.

As the world moves to nuclear, policymakers, media and climate advocates will increasingly be confronted by the question of why consumers will benefit from a global trading scheme for carbon and more weather-dependent renewables. This is especially true in a time of decreasing global emissions due to the ongoing transition from coal to natural gases, reduced deforestation and increased reforestation.

Building more nuclear power plants does not mean there is climate change. However, weather-dependent renewables require greater use natural gas to cope with the high level of unreliability.

Slow and patient capital are the key to nuclear power. Pension funds are the obvious funders for nuclear expansion in the West. They need the stable return on investment that infrastructure and major construction projects provide. Unreliable renewables, like the energy crisis, don’t.

And though the news media is currently ignoring the New York Fed’s report, reporters will not be able to continue spreading misinformation about climate change indefinitely. They, along with policymakers and the general public, will have to confront facts that are not in line with their narratives. These include that humans adapt remarkably well to climate changes, that renewables make it unreliable and costly, and that nuclear can achieve sustainability goals that reduce emissions, material throughput, land use, and carbon dioxide.

As people ask, “How Bad Are Weather Disasters?”, not just for banks, but for all of us, the answer will increasingly come back, “Not very.”