Save the World and Make Money Doing It!

The next time you hear how the Koch Brothers are buying the election or that climate realists like yours truly are nothing more than tools of big oil, let's be a little honest about who are the biggest profiteers.

Tom Steyer is a billionaire who is committed to saving the world from man-made climate change, and he has made it clear that he will spend 100 million dollars to elect Democrats. Of course this billionaire has earned much of his hedge fund fortune by, get this, financing coal mines and coal-fired power plants throughout Asia and Australia. This is one of those facts often ignored when mainstream media often talks of Tom Steyer.

Steyer profited from various fossil fuels projects that he now condemns like the Canadian tar sands development. One environmentalist praised Steyer for giving up his lucrative career as a hedge fund manager but as one pundit quipped, “Yes- after earning well over a billion dollars, a substantial portion of which came from coal investments. The first billion is always the hardest, right.”

Actually, I have no problem with Mr. Steyer helping developing nations produce cheap energy to help lift millions out of poverty. What I do have a problem with is the hypocrisy of a billionaire who has made his billion and is now working on policy that will ensure that those millions he helped lift out of poverty, return to poverty.

Rarely is it mentioned that Mr. Steyer's present interests include investments in many green technologies including solar and wind. Millions of dollars are at stake, and Steyer along with others are pushing for government subsidies for green technologies. So Tom Steyer is profiting from his war on fossil fuels. The candidates he is supporting will favor carbon taxes and stricter emissions on coal plants and subsidies for energy projects. Least we not forget, how many of these subsidies will end up in the hands of Democratic donors? As one pundit observed, “Steyer is a rent seeker. He wants governments to make him and his cronies even richer by subsidizing the companies he invests in and by forcing consumers to pay for inefficient energy that could never survive in a free market. Thus, Steyer’s self-interested dealings with government are anything but admirable. It is one thing to succeed by competing in an open market; it is something quite different to succeed because government has its thumb on the scale.”

The biggest profiteers are those who promote the theory of man-made climate change. It is not about the science, for as I have already shown in past articles, the science favors climate realists and not the climate alarmist; it is about the money to be made from research grants and government rent-seeking. The climate alarmists are profiting from the panic that is climate change or is it climate disruption? Nor can we ignore the increased power awarded to Federal bureaucrats in determining what size house we live in, what cars we drive and eventually a government edict on the size of a family we will be allowed.