From the MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN
Francis Menton
Less than three weeks ago, on December 23rd, in a post about optimism about the possible end of the green energy fantasy, I noted that two of the largest U.S. banks had just withdrawn from the so-called “Net Zero Banking Alliance.” The two were Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. These two banks, along with many others, including all of the largest, joined the NZBA when it organized under the auspices of the United Nations in 2021. The NZBA, along with other related groups formed around the same time, sought to create cartels of financial institutions that would save the planet by divesting hydrocarbon fuels of all investment capital while redirecting the money into the “green” energy transition . Now, shortly after Donald Trump's re-election, two of the biggest banking giants decided to exit. Could this be a sign that the zero-carbon green energy fantasy is losing its grip?
In the short 19 days since this post, the trickle of resignations from the NZBA and related groups has turned into an avalanche. In the blink of an eye, the once serious threat that hydrocarbon fuels could be wiped out by a group investor boycott has almost completely disappeared.
More on the latest developments later in this post. But first a little history of NZBA and the associated alphabet soup of do-gooders.
2021 was the year that the major United Nations climate conference, known as the Conference of Parties or COP, was scheduled to take place in Glasgow, Scotland. Although the COPs usually take place every year, there was none in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. After the one-year break, COP-26 finally took place from October 31 to November 13, 2021. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who had gone from being a climate skeptic to a complete alarmist, was determined to make this COP -26 the be-all and end-all of all COPs. The swarms of small aspiring tyrants in the UN bureaucracies were ready to flex their new muscles on climate shortly after their highly successful Covid takeover.
During the many months of preparation for the Glasgow conference, the United Nations came up with the bright idea of organizing all of the world's major financial institutions into cartels to direct their capital toward an “energy transition” and away from hydrocarbon fuels. To achieve this goal, an organization called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) was formed in April 2021. According to his website:
The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) brings together leading financial institutions and other financial services sector participants individually committed to supporting the goals of capital mobilization and addressing the barriers faced by businesses in scaling decarbonization. . . . GFANZ was established to create a forum to address and catalyze action to address the industry-wide challenges and opportunities associated with the transition to net zero.
The driving force behind this initiative appears to have been a man named Mark Carney. Have you heard of him? Here is a picture of him from the GFANZ website:
Carney is a native of Canada and a major guru in the world of central banking: he was governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, then promptly moved to governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020 (the first non-British person to hold that position ). Over time, Carney became one of the climate alarm religion's top evangelists. After leaving the Bank of England, he moved to the United Nations, where he was given the lofty title of Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. According to its website, “GFANZ was launched in April 2021 by UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney and the COP26 Presidency to accelerate the transition to a net-zero global economy.”
Carney became chairman of GFANZ. By the time of COP-26 in November 2021, Carney had also recruited none other than the ultimate climate hypocrite Mike Bloomberg (of seven houses and eight private planes) as co-chair. According to the GFANZ website, the two remain co-chairs to this day.
GFANZ was then instrumental in organizing a number of subsidiary groups divided by sector. Relevant to today's post are the NZBA (founded at the same time as GFANZ in April 2021) and the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, NZAMI, which was actually launched a little earlier in December 2020.
Both the NZBA and NZAMI quickly managed to attract essentially all of the biggest names in their industry as members. The groups' mission statements are written in a bureaucratic style that makes them difficult to understand, but it is at least clear that the idea is to stop funding the hydrocarbon industry. For example, here is the first point of the NZAB's “Commitment Statement”:
transition Reduce operational and attributable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their lending and investment portfolios to put them on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.
That brings me to the latest developments: Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo's exits from the NZAB at the beginning of December quickly opened the door for the other big players to leave. On December 31, Reuters reported that Citibank and Bank of America had just exited the NZAB. Morgan Stanley announced its exit on January 2nd. JP Morgan exited on January 7th. These six major banks have a market share of more than 25% of the entire US banking sector.
And then, just yesterday, the country's largest asset manager, BlackRock, left NZAMI. Of the three largest asset managers, another, Vanguard, had already terminated its contract in 2022. Of the big three, only State Street remains.
Meanwhile, if you're wondering what's going on with Mark Carney, he appears to be a leading candidate for leader of the Liberal Party of Canada after Justin Trudeau quits. The CBC said in an article yesterday that Carney had the support of about 30 Liberal MPs. That would mean Carney could become Canada's next prime minister if the Liberals win the election, expected to take place sometime this year. On the other hand, according to recent polls, it appears the Liberals are facing one of the most decisive defeats in Canadian history. This Jan. 6 CBC News poll finds that if the election were held that day, the Conservatives would gain about 227 seats to the Liberals' 44 (out of a 338-seat parliament).
So Carney could get a chance to test how well the climate alarm message continues to resonate with Canadian voters. So far things aren't looking good.
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