Posted on 02/10/2013 1:17:50 AM PST by kathsua
Remember Enron, the corrupt firm whose failure should have disproved the myth "too big to fail", but didn't? At the time it was the seventh largest corporation. It's bankruptcy was the largest in history until Lehman Brothers failed. Incidentally, Lehman Brothers was also involved in carbon trading.
Enron owed part of its early success to emissions trading. Basically emissions trading was established as a way for some companies to profit from pollution while allowing some companies to continue to produce the chemicals that can cause acid rain.
Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute, is reporting that Enron played a major role in pushing the global warming scam, including establishing the Kyoto Protocals. [Solomon's article in the National Post is apparently no longer posted on the web.]
Enron had already profited from trading sulfur dioxide credits and saw the potential for even greater profits from trading what would become known as "carbon credits".
The article is the first in a series of articles about those who seek to profit from what Weather Channel founder John Coleman calls "the greatest scam in history."
Solomon states, " The climate-change industry — the scientists, lawyers, consultants, lobbyists and, most importantly, the multinationals that work behind the scenes to cash in on the riches at stake — has emerged as the world’s largest industry. Virtually every resident in the developed world feels the bite of this industry..." which increases the costs of various goods and services.
Enron was an early player beginning early in the administration of Bill Clinton to push for a carbon dioxide trading system. Enron also sought support from environmental groups. "Between 1994 and 1996, the Enron Foundation donated $1-million to the Nature Conservancy and its Climate Change Project, a leading force for global warming reform, while [Chairman Kenneth] Lay and other individuals associated with Enron donated $1.5-million to environmental groups seeking international controls on carbon dioxide."
According to Solomon, "Political contributions and Enron-funded analyses flowed freely, all geared to demonstrating a looming global catastrophe if carbon dioxide emissions weren’t curbed. An Enron-funded study that dismissed the notion that calamity could come of global warming, meanwhile, was quietly buried."
Enron advised the Clinton administration what to do at the Kyoto Japan Conference in 1997.
To improve its chances for success Enron hired former Environmental Protection Agency regulator John Palmisano to become the company's lead lobbyist as senior director for Environmental Policy and Compliance. Palismano wrote a memo describing the historic corporate achievement that was Kyoto.
“If implemented this agreement will do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the energy and natural-gas industries in Europe and the United States,” Polisano began. “The potential to add incremental gas sales, and additional demand for renewable technology is enormous.”
The memo, entitled “Implications of the Climate Change Agreement in Kyoto & What Transpired,” summarized the achievements that Enron had accomplished. “I do not think it is possible to overestimate the importance of this year in shaping every aspect of this agreement,” he wrote. He cited three issues of specific importance to Enron in the climate-change debate: the rules governing emissions trading, the rules governing transfers of emission reduction rights between countries, and the rules governing a gargantuan clean energy fund.
Polisano’s memo expressed satisfaction bordering on amazement at Enron’s successes. The rules governing transfers of emission rights “is exactly what I have been lobbying for and it seems like we won. The clean development fund will be a mechanism for funding renewable projects. Again we won .... The endorsement of emissions trading was another victory for us.”
“Enron now has excellent credentials with many ‘green’ interests including Greenpeace, WWF [World Wildlife Fund], NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council], German Watch, the U.S. Climate Action Network, the European Climate Action Network, Ozone Action, WRI [World Resources Institute] and Worldwatch. This position should be increasingly cultivated and capitalized on (monetized),” Polisano explained.
Those who believe in Global Warming like to claim that they are opposed by corporate interests in the form of the energy companies. They neglect to mention that the battle isn't against corporations, it is between different groups of corporations. The energy companies are attempting to continue providing energy to consumers. Companies on the other side are merely attempting to create a financial opportunity for themselves as financial parasites who provide nothing to anyone and get rich in return.
Democrats often criticize Republicans for being too close to business. Democrats are just as close to business. They simply favor different businesses.
As William O'Keefe, chief executive officer of the Marshall Institute, puts it: "The American people have had enough of convoluted, indecipherable financial schemes and the opportunists who exploit them. The public is understandably angry about Wall Street's exploitation of Main Street, and yet our political leaders are setting the stage for another complex trading market, ripe for corruption. The future Enrons and Bernie Madoffs of the world would like nothing better than to see the U.S. impose a new market for carbon emission trading."
I don’t think the journialists are being paid cash - they get paid in contacts and parties. Journalists are in large part stupid. They are the bottom of the education system. The cannot do math. If they were smart they would have gotten a law degree but they can’t. So we have stupid people telling the uneducated what to believe. And they all think America is evil and Socialism works
The ugly face of the Global Fascists shows itself again.
Who put Obozo in Power? They did. Who are they? That is not clearly revealed, yet.
But, we are seeing the convergence of a great evil. It is the convergence of the Left, the Muzzies and the Global Fascists. They, like all Totalitarism, are evil. They all serve the Father-of-Lies.
I would say this....out of a hundred journalists who work for big media (New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, etc)....most simply know how to package something and tell a story.
They might know almost nothing about the topic, yet pretend later that they have some vast knowledge that the regular American simply doesn’t have.
If you watch the Sunday talk shows....I’d say that some ‘experts’ who sit on the chat panels are idiots and a regular guy off the street from Memphis could ask better questions or make a better analysis.
I’m waiting for some network to just go out and pick up five guys from the heartland, and let them run a whole show of Sunday political chat.
I do get more analysis and better questions from my racquetball buddies. But to be honest the only reporters I hear are clips on Rush or Levin. Some NPR when driving. But you are right - they pretend to know. They seldom ask the obvious follow up.
At least they learned enough grammar to be able to write proper headlines.
Enron's Global Warming Scam Survived It's Bankruptcy
Well, at least they have finally been taught no to get White Out on their monitors.
Always double check your typing before criticizing a journalist's grammar.
Noah Webster
“The freedom of the press is a valuable privilege; but the abuse of it, in this country, … is a frightful evil. The licentiousness of the press is a deep stain upon the character of the country; & in addition to the evil of calumniating good men, & giving a wrong direction to public measures, it corrupts the people by rendering them insensible to the value of truth & of reputation.
“I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.”
General William Tecumseh Sherman
“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.”
General William Tecumseh Sherman
My favorites:
—Advertisements... contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Nathaniel Macon, January 12, 1819—
Speaking particularly about the “press” and their “license”, Mark Twain said:
That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoe making and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poor house.”
— Mark Twain
Those are some great quotes.
I really don't watch TV anymore. Sports is it. I read the news, mostly here. Any of the guys at the gym every day have better insight that what I hear from the media. I hear what these media idiots say on Rush and Levin.
The sad thing is that there are so many GREAT stories the media should explore, but won't.
I still think Rush should put a group together to buy ABC, NBC or CBS. It would dominate the airwaves.
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