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Disasters Bring Out the Vermin

You know, crisis situations like natural disasters often bring out the best in people. everyone pitches in and complete strangers do their best by their fellow man. This has been particularly evident during the bushfire crisis here in Australia and my hat is off to every one of those who went the extra mile to help another.

Unfortunately though,  disaster situations also bring out the vermin and I’m talking about the human kind. Also known as looters, these are the lowlife types who see a disaster situation as an opportunity to profit at the expense of the innocent victims. During the bushfire crisis, many people were evacuated from their homes and towns as the fire front approached and while they could save some of their possessions, they couldn’t take everything. And so they sat it out in another town and prayed their homes would survive. Some of them were lucky, but many were not.

But what the fires didn’t take, looters did, and a number of people returned to their home towns only to find that while their house was still standing, looters had ransacked the place and taken off with whatever they could carry away. This would have to be one of the lowest acts a person could inflict on another and the unnecessary grief and stress it causes is unforgivable. No one should have to come home to that, but to survive a life-threatening situation only to find that looters had helped themselves to your belongings while you were taking refuge somewhere else is something none of us should have to experience. But there they were, breaking into homes in deserted coastal towns without a thought for the homeowners stranded elsewhere.

Fortunately, when word got out to the authorities, they arrived and hung around and before long had caught just about all of them, I think, and do you know what these vermin claimed in their defence? That they were entitled to loot because they needed things. I think it was more a case of they just wanted to help themselves to whatever took their fancy and saw a unique opportunity. Need would have had very little to do with it.

They were not after food specifically, or water, blankets or other necessities. These were not the items they took. Instead, the looters took valuables like jewellery and electronics, money if they could find it, clothing they didn’t need, goodies from garages as well as vehicles and in at least on instance, a caravan! This is not need. This is selfishness on a criminal scale.

Luckily for them, the police caught them before the community did, because I think they would have had a much rougher time if the locals had got their hands on them. Luckily for us, those who went a-lootin’ will not get of lightly when it goes to court. But nor should they. These people deliberately took advantage of a bad situation for personal gain and that’s really disgraceful. I commend the diligence of the local police forces who turned out to catch these people. But the fact we had looters coming in and targeting  deserted coastal towns in the first place made me so angry. I’m glad they were caught and I hope they get the sentences they deserve.

Vermin. Plain and simple.

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Climate Change? Nope, Arson.

Aside from the few lightening strikes that started some of the fires in Australia, it is alleged the rest of them were the result of arson and some of the arsonists were actually caught in the act and I’m sure I’m not the only one asking why anyone would want to deliberately set the country on fire?

A friend ,whose nephew is a fire fighter, told me his nephew had revealed that around 84 per cent of the fires ravaging the state of NSW were deliberately lit. They know this because of the way these fires happened. Because they did not follow the general pattern that fires follow and finished up by saying “Someone out there has an agenda, and they’ve put it into action.” That is a scary thing.

As expected, referrals to climate change have been doing the rounds, but lightening strikes cannot be attributed to climate change and arson certainly can’t, anymore than someone out there with an agenda can be linked to climate change. Unless that someone is at the extreme end of the climate debate and did something very stupid to force the issue. It wouldn’t be the first time a rabid extremist (individual or organisation, take your pick) has taken things into their own hands just to prove a point and force an issue or action, but if that’s the case here, we may not know about it for some time, if at all.

Unless someone talks. That is often how the crazies get caught. And it doesn’t take much. One too many beers and they decide to confide in their drinking buddy, or can’t resist the urge to big-note themselves, or one of their cronies lets the cat out of the bag and whichever the case, whoever they talked to dobs them in to the authorities. That’s how it generally goes down. I’m not necessarily talking firebugs here. Firebugs just set fires for the thrill of watching them burn. They don’t need an agenda, they just love fire. A climate change extremist on the other hand would see setting off a string of disastrous fires as a good way to force the Government to sit up and take notice, and implement the climate strategies the extremist individual or group believe should happen. Yes, that sounds completely over the top to suggest someone would go to such lengths to execute a deliberately calculated bushfire disaster and then attempt to pass it off as a natural climate change disaster just to say “I told you so!” , but show me a level-headed extremist and I’ll show you a vegan in a fast food outlet enjoying a beef burger and a milkshake.

But the bottom line is this, the majority of the fires devastating Australia were deliberately lit and I don’t give a rats about the perpetrators’ agenda. What they did was criminal, and the destruction of bushland, towns, homes, lives and the decimation of our native wildlife is beyond forgiveness. My dearest wish is that they are caught and incarcerated for a long time. There should be no other considerations here. People who deliberately do something like this should be taken out of the community and placed where they cannot do it again. Meanwhile, the fires are still raging.

It’s not over yet.

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Do Networks Never Learn?

Not long ago I saw an ad on television promoting the return, next year, of the has-been reality TV series, Big Brother and I had to ask…do networks never learn from past experience? I am guessing not if they are planning to revive this one.

I think the first series did reasonably well because it hadn’t been done before and viewers were curious. They also got in on the voting out thingy and some of the more popular housemates went on to bigger and better in TV land once it was all over, and that’s probably where it started to go downhill.

Wannabe starlets (male and female) saw the Big Brother series as a springboard to fame and celebrity (as they do with reality TV full stop) and so applications to be part of the following seasons began coming in from the narcissists and the talentless in the hope that media stardom would land in their lap too and, inevitably, the context of the show went from mildly entertaining, to same old same as, to tasteless, until it finally bottomed-out at crude and offensive. It was at this point that the television station airing it at the time wisely decided that it wouldn’t be airing it again.

Yet here we are. Again. Okay, so it’s on a different network but guaranteed that other than the change in station, nothing else will have changed at all. And this is the problem with reality television. The Internet is overflowing with talentless individuals who believe they are the whole package and I suspect many of them will be making a beeline to the auditions  for this resurrection because they will view the experience as great exposure in their relentless pursuit of instant fame and fortune.

The thing is, there are a lot of hopefuls out there who have studied for the degrees and worked themselves ragged to make their way in the media world, be it television, online or the print media. They have the goods but are often sidelined by a reality “star” who gets the role, sans skills, degrees or working experience, because they look nice onscreen and/or were popular with those who sat through whichever mind-numbing reality rubbish they appeared in, and that is really wrong. But it happens and that’s why casting for Big Brother 2020 will be flooded with applicants hoping to up their Instagram profiles and/or get their names and faces out there to the people that count. Instant fame, easy money.

Except the shows they are appearing on are not very challenging, intellectually. On the other hand though, I suppose they don’t need to be, as many of today’s media jobs, especially television roles, just want you to look good. You don’t need a good head on your shoulders, just a pretty one.

But Big Brother 2020? That is scraping the bottom of the barrel and it was scrapped for a reason. It degenerated each season, with the time slots getting later and later as the content and behaviour of the housemates sunk to sleazier levels until it finally bit the dust. Then it had a banal revival that was short-lived and after that, it looked like networks finally saw the light and shelved it permanently. Best move they ever made.

Except now it looks like it’s coming back for another stab at popularity and of all they rubbish they could have revived, they chose the rubbish-est. Are they kidding or what?

Giving this one a Big Miss.

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Pill Testing: It Won’t Change a Thing.

With the Summer festival season about to hit the ground running, the subject of having pill testing booths present at events is hitting the news again.

The Government has remained firm on its stance to not buy into pill testing booths, while the other side continues to argue that if the booths don’t get the green light, more festival goers will die from ingesting illegal pills and it will be all the Government’s fault.

Well I’m sorry, but it won’t. It’s those who take the pills, despite all the warnings swamping the media, who will have to bear the blame, but they’ll probably be dead. That may sound horribly blunt, but what is any government supposed to do when, having put all the information out there regarding how dangerous these pills are, people still opt to buy them and then ingest them in the full knowledge that they have just popped a potentially deadly bullet into their mouths? Yes, it is tragic when someone dies so needlessly and it is devastating for their families and friends, but somewhere in that outpouring of grief they need to understand and accept that their loved one would not have died if they had abided by the warnings and not taken a dangerous and illegal drug in the first place.

But would having been able to access a pill testing booth have saved their lives? Maybe some, but on the whole I don’t think so. Having watched a documentary on this topic, I saw people accessing a booth at an event in Europe with their illegal pills and, in the case where the pills were deemed dangerous, they were then handed back to the person with a recommendation that they not take it. The pills were handed back to them! Why weren’t they disposed of or destroyed by the pill tester? Those whose pills had failed to pass the safety test were asked by the film maker if they still intended to still take them and only one of them said no. Only one. The rest seemed unconcerned and figured the high would be worth the risk. Except the pills, if it all went wrong, would not just make them sick. They would make them dead.

So what does that say about pill testing booths saving lives? Not very much.

Which is why I cannot agree with one grieving mother insisting it’s the Government’s fault her son died from ingesting MDMA at a festival, because if the Government had allowed pill testing at events where the drug is rife, he would still be alive today. No, he would still be alive today if he had simply not used the drug. Placing the blame with others may help her to cope, but the bottom line is, her son knew the risks yet still bought the pills, and then took them. I know how harsh that sounds, but it’s the truth here. He did know. At some point, people have to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing.

And that’s the thing. The information is out there on the dangers of MDMA, also known as ecstasy and “Molly”. So if all that information on the dangers of using these pills is not enough to deter people from taking them, how is negative feedback from a pill tester going to make any difference? Especially when the tester hands the pill back? Okay, some have taken it and suffered nothing worse than a headache when they came down but they are in the minority. In most cases it will have a detrimental affect on the user’s brain and then they will collapse and die. This happens fairly quickly after ingestion and for the user who has an adverse reaction, there is no coming back.

One would think that the number of fatalities would be enough to convince people not to use these pills. But it’s not. They are still taking them and still dying. And that’s not the Government’s fault.

And pill testing will change nothing.

 

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How to Avoid Going to Gaol…

With the way our current justice system works, it would seem it’s not that difficult to get out of a gaol sentence, even if you have committed a crime that apparently warrants it.

If you are caught using and/or in the possession of illegal drugs, it is advantageous if you can claim you have a depressive illness and are only using all those drugs to help you to cope with it. The fact that if you had actually been diagnosed with the above, you would have been prescribed legal medication for your condition, appears to be beside the point. A good lawyer can still work with this. If you are a famous sportsperson, all the better, because no matter what you did while you were off your face, none of it will be your fault and your fans/teammates will all be sympathetic.

Anyone else though, is more than likely to end up with a hefty fine and possible custodial sentence, depending on just how off their face they were and how bad whatever they did, was.

But the same leniency appears to be happening with sex offenders. Periodically, the system claims to have done an about-face and those convicted of sexual offences will face much tougher justice in the form of longer gaol sentences etc, and then you read about the repeat offender who strikes again while on a good behaviour bond or out on bail. And again, lawyers can be very creative when it comes to arguing why it may not necessarily be their client’s fault, and before you can say “Just lock the mongrel up!” we will have a new “medical” condition that at least partly exonerates them.

A case in point is the cybersecurity expert who was caught using his iPhone to film up the skirts of women and schoolgirls at shopping centres and train stations around Sydney. Spotted by a keen-eyed shopper at Westfield Hurstville in May of this year, the 26-year-old man pleaded guilty to 10 up-skirting offences after being caught in the act.

The court heard the man used a covert filming application on his iPhone that made the phone screen appear blank as he held the camera beneath his victims’ skirts to capture images of their underwear and genital area. This is very sleazy, yes? Oh yes, it definitely is.

The offender was originally charged with two offences pertaining to an unknown woman at Central Station and a schoolgirl at the shopping centre before police linked him to eight identical offences at Central Station, Hurstville Station and Greenwood Plaza in North Sydney. Okay, you would be forgiven if, at this point, you are expecting to hear that the offender got exactly what he deserved once he got hauled into court. But unfortunately, you would be wrong.  The Magistrate hearing the case at Sutherland Local Court said he accepted the excuse that the offender had since been diagnosed with “voyeuristic disorder” (yes, you read that correctly) by a forensic psychologist, as a reasonable defence. The offender was sentenced to a two-year supervised community corrections order, whatever that is, and that was it. Personally, I would have thought he would have at least been placed on the Sex Offenders Register and been given a custodial sentence seeing as he had filmed so many and had taken such steps to conceal what he was really doing. After all, he’s a repeat offender, and someone should have considered whether he is likely to escalate, once looking at images he’s taken on the sly no longer give him the fix he obviously craves. But no.

Anyway, “voyeuristic disorder” is a new one on me, but no doubt it’s going to get quite a workout now via future offenders caught covertly peeping, filming or just plain perving on others without their knowledge. Defence lawyers are going to be all over it and if one magistrate is prepared to accept it as a valid excuse for lewd and offensive behaviour, then no doubt there will be others and this is where the system is all wrong. Rapists, murderers, and other violent criminals are getting bail, despite recommendations from police that bail be refused, and while they are out awaiting their next court appearance, they re-offend, and every time that happens there is a lot of noise about the justice system being overhauled to stop it happening again.

And then an obvious sex offender gets off with a slap on the wrist because he has been diagnosed with “voyeuristic disorder”.

This is really profane.

 

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Should GetUp! just Get Out?

So what is GetUp! really up to?

They call themselves an “issue based” organisation and claim they neither make financial donations to, or receive same, from registered Australian political parties, nor do they run or fund candidates at Australian elections, yet they are certainly a political presence and were especially visible when it came to ousting Tony Abbott in favour of Zali Steggall for the seat of Warringah in the 2019 Federal Election, despite Steggall’s denial of any association with them. But  GetUp!’s Louise Hislop, part of the Warringah Action Group, was sharing information on how to target Tony Abbott in the lead-up to the election and GetUp! threw a great deal of money into Steggall’s campaign. Meanwhile, Steggall was also denying that her campaign manager, Anthony Reed, was a member of  the Warringah Action Group. But I don’t think I believe her on either count.

Headquartered in Sydney, GetUp! was foundered by Jeremy Heimans, and David Madden, co-founders of international activists groups Avaaz and Purpose and Win Back Respect, and Amanda Tattersall, co-founder of Labour for Refugees. Their website was launched on 1 August 2005, along with a television ad campaign. Initially they stated the aim of their campaign was to help voters to “keep the Howard Government accountable” after it won a majority of seats in the Australian Senate following the 2004 Federal Election. They also claim to be a non-profit organisation, but have an annual budget now of around $10 million, apparently funded by “thousands of small-dollar donations from everyday Australians”.

Early members of the GetUp! board were drawn from across the political spectrum and included Cate Faehrmann, Bill Shorten (who was the National Secretary of the Australian Workers Union at the time), Former Liberal Party Leader, John Hewson and entrepreneur, Evan Thornley.  CEO of superannuation fund Future Super and Australian political activist, Simon Sheikh, became the National Director of GetUp! in September 2008, at the age of 22, and remained in the role until July 2012.

Paul Costing is the current National Director.

Calling itself a movement to “build a progressive Australia” GetUp!’s initial funding of $50,000 was donated by the Labour Council at the suggestion of Amanda Tattersall. The second major donation was $100,000 and came from the Australian Workers Union, after which Bill Shorten served as a GetUp! board member until 2006. But their largest donation, received in the early days of the Group’s formation, was $1.1 million from the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CMFEU) in 2012. GetUp! claim they have not received further donations from any Unions since 2012, but by 2018, had raised more than $11 million in donations.

In 2015, GetUp!’s accounts indicated that four per cent of its total revenue for the year was received from large individual donations and the Group noted in its 2015 Annual Report that 11, 700 core members had donated 45 per cent of the organisation’s annual revenue.  In 2017, GetUp! disclosed $217,,418 in gifts, worth much more than $13,200 (which need to be declared to the Australian Electoral Commission).  Used on political expenditure over the course of the year, approximately $106,000 of this came in from overseas sources.

GetUp! campaigns very actively against politicians who refuse to toe the GetUp! line. They target conservative politicians, and for an organisation that claims to make no donations to political parties, they certainly spend up big on campaigns designed to oust the ones they don”t like. They have been tagged by some as a highly partisan, extreme left wing front that targeted the Liberal Party in the last election via handing out how-to-vote cards to specifically direct support away from Liberal candidates, due to the Liberal Party’s stance on immigration, Islamic terrorism and climate issues.  They  continue to maintain strong links to the Greens and the CFMEU. They still claim they are a non-profit, non-political group, but their actions and their wealth appear to indicate otherwise. Why else spend so much time and money on actions directed at driving the campaigns of candidates they prefer over those they want to see voted out? This is political activism at its most aggressive.

I don’t believe for a moment that GetUp! have Australia’s best interests at heart.  I believe their vision of a “progressive Australia” is seriously flawed, as it supports their own heavy-handed doctrine and after the way they conducted their efforts to get their puppet, Zali Steggall, elected, these would be the very last people we would want having any influence on how our country is run. Like most extremist groups, they are all about pursuing their own agenda, wielding their own power, and, of course, money.

And they certainly have plenty of that.

 

 

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Bureaucrats Target the Vulnerable

They don’t give up, do they?

The Federal Government is determined to stickybeak into the lives of Australian citizens and is hoping to open the door  into their privacy via targeting welfare recipients with controversial face matching technology. The case they are putting forward is that the technology would be “helpful” for people on welfare in times of crisis, such as in the case of natural disaster as well as victims of domestic violence.  But once they have access to those on welfare, it is only a short jump to extending the system to all Australians.

The Department of Human Services has backed the introduction of a national facial recognition database to link government agencies. In a submission to the Federal Government, the Department indicated that it was “particularly interested” in using Facial Verification Services on its “vulnerable customers” for instance, those affected by disasters such as bush fires, homeless people and victims in domestic violence situations who may have lost, or be unable to access, ID documents.

The Department was referring to the “Identity Matching Services Bill 2019” which was introduced to Parliament early this year and recently rejected by a government-controlled intelligence committee, which raised concerns about the technology being used for mass surveillance. And rightly so. Prior to the availability of this technology, the Department was able to offer help to those caught up in situations where they required special assistance, so the claim they need to introduce it now in order to help people just does’t hold up.

In order to collect the facial biometric data, the database would scrape photos from drivers’ licences, from passports and from visa documents. From any document at all that has photo ID. This would then allow various government departments, as well as some private organisations, to compare images. This means those on the target list would have no say on their image being taken and it would not be long before the photos of all citizens with a drivers’ licence, passport or whatever, welfare recipient or not, would be scraped because there are those currently within the government, namely Peter Dutton, who want that back door open to provide access into the lives of all Australians and he/they will employ every lame excuse in the book to try and get this through Parliament, because once they do, they will extend it to encompass the entire population. It is unnecessarily invasive and a disgusting misuse of power.

According to the Home Affairs submission though, face biometric technology “has the potential to replace this manual process” and would also “strengthen the accuracy of identity confirmation against photo identity documents… and therefore reduce the risk of incorrect matching.” Sorry, but I’m not buying that either.

Cassandra Goldie, chief of the Australian Council of Social Services, rightly commented “No one was asked for their permission to do this. When people had their photos taken for drivers’ licences, they had no idea the images might one day be shared with Centrelink.” And that’s the thing. No one was told and whether they would grant permission, or not,  for this to happen has never come up. Dr Goldie also noted “There are serious risks that widespread use of facial recognition… could be used in future to track people’s movements.” And again, no one will be told should it ever come to that.

Seriously though, why would anyone give their permission to allow the government to potentially track their every move? But more importantly, why should the government have that option? It is completely unnecessary to have “eyes” on every person in the country and as far as “national security” goes, the various police departments already have their methods for keeping tabs on criminal suspects and other specific persons of interest. Anything outside of surveillance on those specific elements is just plain fishing, and nothing can justify that.

This technology is not about national security. It is not about helping the “vulnerable”. It is about one man’s desire to invade the lives of ordinary Australians so he can play God. Fortunately, to date, he has failed to get the votes to get it passed through Parliament.

Hopefully, he never will.

 

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What Extinction Rebellion Really Wants

The group, Extinction Rebellion (XR), has enjoyed a lot of international media attention lately, more than they deserve to be honest, but what is their real agenda? You might answer climate change, but if you did, you’d be wrong, and that’s the problem.

XR promote themselves as, amongst other things, an environmental pressure group, with their stated aim being to use “non-violent civil disobedience” in a concentrated effort to compel governments to take action on climate change. Established in the United Kingdom in May 2018 and launched in October of the same year, they are spouting  predictions of a complete social and ecological collapse if the World doesn’t adopt XR’s theory on social change. If that sounds a bit like fear-mongering, it’s because it is.

But the thing is, they are not really about climate change at all. Sure, they have hitched their wagon to the climate debate to take advantage of where all the media attention is focused right now, but while they proclaim to be part of the action, they are really just riding the coattails of the climate movement to up their profile. XR are about social change, but not in a healthy way, and that is not good.

In order to operate more effectively, XR are suspected of using the ideology of holocracy to operate on a global scale. Holocracy is the decentralisation of management and governance, where authority and decision-making is distributed throughout a holarchy of organised teams, as opposed to a management hierarchy, and is probably the form of global governance they would like to implement should they ever manage to tear down the existing World order, which would allow them to do it. And no, that is not as far fetched as it sounds.

But from where, exactly, did XR sprout? Well, it’s roots lay in another organisation called Rising Up! which, formed in the UK by various activists and birthed in the Occupy movement, is all about changing the World’s social structure, their aim being to become a major social movement. Sound familiar? Rising Up! are all for, and pushing for, a complete system change and advocate “non-violent civil disobedience” (now that definitely sounds familiar) as a means of bringing down the current social system, which they do not support, and creating a “sane and equitable society”. Their words, not mine. Thing is,  if they manage to do that, their probable intention is to replace it with their own agenda; an agenda that is not necessarily in our best interests. Theirs, yes. Ours? No.

Rising Up! however, appear to have lacked a high profile in the World media, which is probably why co-founders Julian Roger Hallam, Simon Bramwell and Gail Bradbrook, along with several other activists from, Rising Up! rebranded themselves as Extinction Rebellion. No wonder the doctrine sounds the same. Hallam, while probably planning his next assault on society, spent the time between 2017 and 2019 studying for a PhD in civil disobedience and researching how best to achieve social change via the same. Hallam’s beliefs centre around what he feels is vital for global survival; the disruption of global order and the tearing down of our social structures in order to save the World. Seriously, that’s his mindset. Personally, I view him as just another 15-minutes chaser who’s  latched onto a way to hopefully extend himself beyond his allotted quarter hour. He brands himself as an environmental activist but I think he is really all about starting his own revolution.

In July 2019, Extinction Rebellion formed XR Youth, which is aimed at recruiting children. This is definitely not good.

But thanks to all the media coverage, we now have XR pushing their (Hallam’s, Bramwell’s and Bradbrook’s) agenda and inevitably they have attracted the support of several vacuous celebrities (why are we not surprised?). This is a group that wholeheartedly supports causing chaos and outrage with their disruptive antics, look annoyingly smug and way to sure of themselves for the cameras, support people getting themselves arrested, and their “global warming” stance is merely an excuse to encourage panic amongst the young in a concentrated effort to coerce them into becoming members of the group and joining its revolt against government. It’s disgusting when you think about it.

And so are they.

 

 

 

 

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Green means Money. For some.

For some, creating an “environmental” market is pretty much a license to print money, and this is what a small clique of money men did when they created a market called Global Warming, which would bring the money rolling in via the launch of their associated product; Carbon Credits.

Climate Change is hot news right now, so they’ve engineered it well, what with workers and students holding Climate Strikes in a futile effort to force world governments to “do something” about climate change/global warming, but as has been discussed in a previous post, much of what happens on Earth, temperature wise, is governed by solar activity and no government, no matter how committed, can control the Sun. They can do their bit to encourage recycling, to reduce landfill and to penalise blatant polluters of our air, waterways and the land itself, but for as long as the Sun shines, the temperature and the climate on Earth will do its own seasonal thing.

Which leads to the question; why do we need a global emissions trading scheme? The short answer is, we don’t, but green does mean money and anything bearing the “Environmental” stamp has the potential to generate a lot of it.

Hence the Carbon Bubble. Emissions Trading is a market-based scheme where the Carbon Market tracks emissions under cap-and-trade schemes. It is a vastly overpriced scheme where Carbon Credits are disguised as an “environmental plan” and is a virtual repeat of the commodities market. It will allow world governments to mandate rises in pricing as it will place a limit (cap) on coal plants and natural gas distributors on the amount of carbon emissions (greenhouse gases) they are permitted to produce per annum. Should they generate beyond their allotment, they will be able to purchase “allocations”, also known as credits, from other companies that have an excess of credits due to having produced fewer emissions. Which all sounds well and good, except the cap will be regularly lowered, which will result in the availability of carbon credits getting scarcer, and that’s not so good. Basically, cap-and-trade is a scheme that is carbon tax structured, and which will be profitable only for those private interests who will collect the revenue.

In 2004, an $18 billion firm named Generation Investment Management (GIM) was founded by Al Gore, founder and current Chair of The Climate Reality Project. The co-founder is former Goldman Sachs Asset Manager, David Blood. All about “sustainably focused” investments, the company raised a profit of almost $218 million between 2008 and 2011. Headquartered in London, GIM now manages assets of around $22 billion and as of 2019, has raised $1 billion for its latest private equity fund. The third and largest of its similar funds is Generation IM Sustainable Solutions Fund III, which plans to invest $50 million and $150 million each in companies aiding the health of the planet and/or individuals. The demand to invest in a sustainable manner is growing, especially throughout Europe, despite the fact that the definition of what that actually means can vary (a definition that regulators in Europe want to look at more closely). Basically though, its focus in on “sustainable investing” and demonstrating the long-term commercial benefits. Or more plainly, it’s all about the money. David Blood is part of initial working group that brought about the United Nations Principal of Responsible Investment (UNPRI), which relates principally to the interests of “environmental, corporate and social governance”, which means it nurtures the longtime interests of financial markets and investors etc.

In 2005, The EU Emission Trading Scheme was introduced and Goldman Sachs participated in this scheme from its inception as a market maker in carbon credits.

The year 2006 saw the release of Al Gore’s controversial book, An Inconvenient Truth which created worldwide concern (fear) about climate change and global warming, and did much to boost the carbon investment markets, which was good news for Goldman Sachs. In the same year, Al Gore’s film of the same name, was released by Participant Media, a company owned by wealthy businessman, Jeffrey Skoll, first President of eBay and friend of Al Gore. Goldman Sachs is eBay’s investment bank. Anyway, by 2008, Al Gore was in a position to invest $35 million into hedge funds and private partnerships through a company named Capricorn Investment Group, a Palo Alto company also founded by Jeffrey Skoll.

But after the initial panic, perhaps the shock wore off and the market stalled because in 2017, Al Gore released a sequel to his film. It didn’t create anywhere near the impact of its predecessor though, which may be an inkling that more people are beginning to see through the ruse. Because that’s what it is really.

Come 2018 and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) introduced a new index created by Euronext, the largest stock exchange in Europe (6th largest in the world) with roots that go back centuries, apparently. The index, Euronext CDP Environmental Finance is exclusively licensed to Goldman Sachs. Carbon Credits are currently trading at $11 to $20 per credit.

In September 2019, Goldman Sachs released a report which claimed “rising temperatures would lead to changing disease patterns, more intense and longer lasting heatwaves, more destructive weather events and pressure on the availability of water for drinking and agriculture.” It also warns that natural ecosystems would be damaged and human health, food and drinking systems would all come under pressure as well. Hence Goldman Sachs’ Environmental Policy Framework. They are an underwriter for “Green Bonds” and into developing an Environmental Commodities Market. Their Centre for Environmental Markets is where they partner with other corporations, academic institutions and non-governmental organisations to “unlock” lucrative environmental markets.

Well, it stands to reason those who stand to make the most money out of carbon trading will do whatever it takes to keep the ball rolling, as there’s so much money to be made. But not by you and me.

So it’s never really been about “saving” the planet. It’s always been about wealth and how much of it could be raked in by a few savvy money men who trawled through all things “environmental” until they hit on a way to create a whole new enterprise, which they then launched upon the world and turned to their own advantage…at our expense. “Green” is really lucrative for some.

But not us.

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The Carbon Asset Bubble

Some people are very good when it comes to spotting a gap in an existing market and it can often lead to a great idea, which evolves into creating a product to fill it. If the product is sound it should sell well, but how big a profit margin it will create will depend on the size of the market to which it is being pitched.

Okay, so that’s how many products are launched onto the market, we all know that, and in most cases the products are going to be useful to a specific consumer and the customer base will build itself in time, via advertising campaigns and  word of mouth. Nothing wrong with that.

But what do you do if you hatch an idea for something that, as yet, no one has heard of, but has the potential to go global and make you a huge amount of money? Well naturally, you are going to want to sell it. In order to do that though, you are going to  have to create what appears to be a market, one that will allow you to promote the bejaysus out of it and if you get all those things right, you stand to make more millions than you can poke a stick at.

This is not hard to do however, if you have been manipulating money markets for decades, know the right people and have the nous to engineer a global situation that is guaranteed to grant you a customer base world wide.

Anything to do with the environment is big business, which can be measured in billions of dollars, which with encouragement, has naturally attracted a lot of “environmental investment” which has been encouraged by a swathe of “environmental reports” which have convinced almost an entire generation that the world is heading for a climate disaster. And there you have a very big market despite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) owning up that their theoretical simulation models have greatly overstated the Earth’s sensitivity to CO2, and have also admitted that global temperatures have been flat for at least  sixteen years (as at 2013) despite an increase in atmospheric CO2 levels.

But no matter, as I said, some people are really savvy with spotting money making opportunities and one of them, who spotted and plotted the Carbon Asset Bubble, and has fed it since its infancy, is Al Gore. To quote him, “As soon as carbon has a price, you’re going to see a wave (of investment) in it…”

Hence carbon markets. Goldman Sachs conceived the carbon credit market and are also behind the cap and trade system. Carbon brokers/traders have been feverishly gearing up for a futures market and carbon exchanges are promising there are billions to be made in potential profit.  Hence the concept of climate change represents opportunities for businesses and many private sector companies have taken advantage of emerging low carbon opportunities by embedding an internal carbon price into their business strategies. It’s a popular strategy and the momentum is expected to continue.

The carbon credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market cap and trade program which is where carbon emissions are capped at a politically-determined level. Users and producers of coal, oil and natural gas then buy, sell and trade their allowance to emit a given amount of carbon dioxide. This, in turn, is guaranteed to push up the price of coal, oil and natural gas, and the price increase will be employed as a means to compel consumers to switch from the more conventional energy sources to alternative, less reliable, but more expensive forms of energy. It is an economically damaging, vastly overpriced system, and currently the most popular method of regulating carbon dioxide emissions.

The cap and trade system will increase the price of energy but it will not work to reduce omissions, and Europe’s Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) has not been welcomed by all of the world’s leaders, as those opposing it have recognised how negatively it will impact on people at the lower end of the income scale. It also carries a high potential for market manipulation and fraud. But it will make those who got in on the ground floor very wealthy, which is why carbon emissions trading is still very much on the table and those who created it will work hard to keep it there.

In 1992, the term Sustainable Development was coined at the UN Rio Earth Summit. In 1999, Dow Jones launched the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), and in 2000, the UN Millennium Development Goals were announced. And in 2003, Al Gore met Head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood.

And the Carbon Asset Bubble evolved from there.