This is being enabled by a senile Joe Biden and thousands of bureaucrats buried in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and scores of other agencies.
The US Treasury, SEC, and the Federal Reserve have even joined in by regulating loans to the oil and gas industry, as well as requiring financial disclosures about climate change and other ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) metrics.
The World Bank (controlled by the US) is being encouraged to deny loans to industries that involve carbon-based development and to steer financing toward projects approved by the climate mavens. This is called the ‘all of government’ approach, in which every agency gets involved in pushing the climate agenda, even if it’s not the primary job of that agency. The pressure never stops.
In short, the climate change debate could not be more relevant to investors. Those calling the shots in the Green New Deal (what I call the Green New Scam) will decide which industries win or lose, which projects get financed (or not), which initiatives are subsidised by the government or left to wither on the vine, and which companies will feel the regulatory heat if they don’t get with Biden’s programs. Climate change is not a sideshow. Nothing is more relevant to markets, investors, and asset allocators today.
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| Source: Jim Rickards |
Yes, the climate has always changed
Let’s get one thing cleared up before we go further. The climate does change. It always has.
During the Medieval Warm Period (950–1250 AD), the Vikings had farms and settlements in Greenland. Today, those settlements are covered in ice. From 1300–1850 AD, Europe and parts of the US experienced the Little Ice Age (not a true ice age but a distinct cooling period). The Thames River routinely froze, and Londoners held frost fairs on the river itself with merchants’ booths filled with goods for sale. Locals could cross the river on ice without using a bridge.
I lived for more than 10 years in a house on the water in Long Island Sound. The beaches were rocky as they are through most of New England up to Canada. I grew up in New Jersey, where the beaches have fine sand and almost no rocks. Why the difference?
It’s because New York City is approximately the southernmost point of glaciation during the last ice age (the Pleistocene glaciation) that ended about 11,700 years ago. Glaciers are ice flows that push rocks to either side.
When the glaciers melt, the rocks remain in a formation called a moraine. Long Island Sound has a rocky shore because it was a glacier that melted. Today you can fish, swim, and sail in the Sound. That’s climate change. But it took thousands of years to unfold.
When some ideological climate cultist calls you a ‘climate denier’ because you don’t buy into their hysteria, just say that you don’t deny climate change. You just deny the fake science they are peddling.
Climate change is real, but it’s slow, powerful, and has nothing to do with trace gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. It’s caused by the interaction of complex systems such as sun cycles, ocean currents, wind patterns including the jet stream, volcanic activity, salinity levels (in turn caused by the subduction of ocean currents) and other mega-systems over which humans have no control.
We’re living in a world where major forces beyond our control have been hijacked by elites to create a climate of fear to achieve their agenda of total government command over your life. It’s time for Americans and citizens around the world to learn the facts, push back on the elites, and reestablish public policy based on real science. It’s time to push the flawed models, phony data, and bogus warnings out of the way.
The goal should be to get the science right and stop picking market winners and losers based on a political agenda instead of proper analysis. That’s the purpose we are detailing in this series of articles.
Regards,
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Jim Rickards,
Strategist, The Daily Reckoning Australia
