First up is this article by Matt Taibi entitled "Bill Gates Says We'll Survive Climate Change, World Furious." As you may have heard, Bill Gates, whose Gates Foundation had committed (whatever that means) $1.4 billion to climate change research, released an essay earlier this week on "Three tough truths about climate" including: "Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise." His justification for a shift from focusing on climate change was that we needed to instead focus on fighting poverty and disease in third world countries. (And I'm sure that his foundation will gladly take your tax dollars to "solve" those problems).
As Taibi relates:
Reaction was swift and furious. In the words of the immortal Greta Thunberg, “HOW DARE YOU!” The New York Times rushed a piece out titled, “Bill Gates Says Climate Change ‘Will Not Lead To Humanity’s Demise.’” The paper linked to Gates’s net worth on the Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index, to his prior comments about irreversible ecological damage, and to the Gates Foundation’s $1.4 billion commitment to climate change research. It didn’t link to Gates’s new essay, though, instead quoting the editor of Inside Philanthropy, who said “one could imagine” this was Gates’s way of “not wanting to be a target of the Trump administration.” Social media is still burning with theories about Gates betraying the climate cause to get out from under an investigation into his foundation’s alleged funding of Chinese entities. The imminent extinction dream is dying hard.
But if Taibi had any thoughts on the why of Gates' sudden shift, he wasn't sharing them.
And that brings me to the second article, "California's Retirement Fund Lost 71% Of $468M Investment In Clean Energy And Won't Say How." As evident when you read the article, the losses weren't due to an economic downturn as the Fund's overall returns were well above 10%. CalPERS won't release information about what specific investments were made, but the article generally discusses the collapse of "green" based industries, including solar panel manufacturing.
The reality is that "green" industries are only "green" in the sense that they suck up lots of money: they rely on government (i.e., taxpayer) funding, subsidies, and mandates to be profitable, but that government largesse has been drying up. Ditto for the climate NGOs. The climate-industrial complex has had a 60 year run of doom scaring, but after 60 years of failed predictions and the economic havoc its policies have had, its days are numbered.
My take is that Bill Gates has realized this and is getting out of the global warming business--reducing his exposure, you might say--before the public subsidies completely dry up.
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