By Ronald Stein
The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) divest from fossil fuels movement, pushed by many of the masters of the financial universe, is leading the world to an era of Extreme Shortages Guaranteed, ESG), with a vengeance!
Collusion Against Public Interests
Allowing banks and investment giants like BlackRock and Bank of America, to collude to reshape economy and energy infrastructure is a very dangerous precedent.
Their efforts to forcibly create a monolithic, regimented economic system under the control of the elite investment bankers is beginning to resemble the fascism of the past, which the media largely embraced.
The American people never voted to give banks this sort of control over our country.
The notion that unelected and unaccountable functionaries—such as Larry Fink of Blackrock, World Economic Forum executive chairman Klaus Schwab, Federal Reserve Bank Governor Lael Brainard, or SEC Chairman Gary Gensler—can legitimately substitute their progressive fixations for the will of the American people is incomprehensible. The idea that businesses should be forced to adopt ESG guidelines, regardless of the costs and personal desires of their owners, consequences be damned, is dangerous.
Depriving citizens of the more than 6,000 products that did not exist before 1900, made from from crude oil, is evil, virtually guaranteeing extreme shortages will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths.
Wind and Solar Need Oil
Virtually all the components of wind turbines, solar panels, and all forms of transportation are assembled with products manufactured from crude oil.
Ridding the world of crude oil would eliminate most forms of transportation and electricity generation from wind and solar.
The domino effects of tinkering with the supply chain of crude oil, is supply shortages and soaring prices for not only electricity, but for the thousands of products that support the entire agricultural and medical industries, all branches of the military, airports, electronics, communications, all manner of shipping, as well as asphalt for roads.
This ESG crusade represents environmental nihilism morphed into an ideological fervor the world has not witnessed since the rise of National Socialism in Germany in the early 1930s.
Adolf Hitler appeared on the cover of Time Magazine on multiple occasions, and most famously, on January 2, 1939, when Time Magazine named Adolph Hitler their Man of the Year. The mainstream media endorsed National Socialism, and it is now promoting a globally destructive green transition on all seven continents.
Leaving Developing Countries Behind
Many African, Asian, and South American children are being enslaved and dying in mines and factories in order to extract and process rare earths and exotic minerals required for the solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and utility-scale battery warehouses demanded by green elites in wealthier and healthier countries.
The authors of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book, “Clean Energy Exploitations – Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support Clean Energy,” call these, BLOOD MINERALS.
Most poor in the United States are not poor by any historical standard. They have cell phones, cable TV, cars, lots of food, and plenty of disposable income. What’s more, there is no such thing as a fixed class called the poor. People come and go, depending on age and life circumstances. Plus, in American politics, when you hear kvetching about the poor, everyone knows what you’re supposed to do: hand the government your wallet.
The same cannot be said for those lacking access to fossil fuels in energy starved developing countries.
Coming to the United States
Still the fascist economic model is quickly killing the American dream.
If ESG becomes the law, no longer will one generation expect to live a better life than the previous one. Already, government policies have resulted in economic changes for the worse. Ask yourself, how many incomes in a single household it takes to pay the bills. After World War II, the single-income family became the norm.
Then, in large part as a result of government policies, the value of money was destroyed, American savings were wiped out, and the economy’s capital base was devastated.
The year 1985 was the turning point. This was the year that it became more common than not for a household to need two incomes rather than one.
Today, in real dollar terms, the median family income is only slightly above where it was when Nixon wrecked the dollar, put on price and wage controls, created the Environmental Protection Agency, and the whole apparatus of the parasitic welfare-warfare state came to be entrenched and made universal.
Big Government is the Problem
The problem is more fundamental. It is the existence of hundreds of state and federal regulatory agencies. It is the presumption that the government must manage every aspect of market interactions.
No aspect of life is untouched by government intervention, and often it takes forms we do not readily see. All of healthcare is regulated, but so is every bit of our food, transportation, clothing, household products, and even private relationships.
No government in the history of the world has spent as much, borrowed as much, and created as much fake money as the United States.
Fascism has no new ideas, and not even its partisans really believe it can accomplish what it sets out to do.
The similarities between the effects of ESG divesting objectives and fascism are truly frightening. Efforts to end the use of crude oil would pose a greater threat to civilization, than climate change itself. Decarbonization would recreate the 1800s, resulting in billions of fatalities from disease, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths.
Ronald Stein (Ronald.Stein@PTSadvance.com) is the founder and ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure at PTS Advance.