A Presidential Disappointment; ESG in Trouble; & Decolonizing the Green Movement

In his Editor’s Column this week, Michael Walsh reflects on an ultimately disappointing presidency, and urges the GOP to look ahead, not behind.

'A Man Who Could Have Been Great'

Donald J. Trump's recent lackluster announcement that he will seek the GOP nomination for president of the United States in 2024 has a Hearstian air about it, the last cry of a wounded bull who could have been great during the four years the nation allotted him in the Oval Office, but was not. Of course, he did some splendid things with both the economy and in the realm of foreign policy, most if not all of which have been overturned, reversed, and otherwise destroyed by the regime of the doddering Joe Biden. But he failed early and often to grasp the peril he was in, emanating not only from his avowed enemies but also from the vipers right in his own breast: his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner (known around the West Wing as "the Democrats").

Worst of all were his catastrophic errors in personnel judgment and his own insatiable craving for the love of people who loathed him. "The president thinks he can get anyone to like him," a top administration official told me early in the term, and those words certainly suit for Trump's political epitaph.

But there were rallies to be held (why?) and barbs to be traded with the media, while meanwhile the Democrats were laughing all the way to the drop boxes where the votes were already banked and the election already decided.

After two straight election disappointments, the GOP finally seems to be waking up to reality. Naturally, they've grasped it by the wrong end of the stick, and now are being advised to emulate the Democrats rather than re-establishing the notion of one-man, one-vote, one-day. But trying to out-cheat a lawyer-ridden party like the Democrats is a fool's errand; the Republicans just don't have the necessities for it, and so they'll continue to lose around the margins in crucial states, which as we've just seen twice is all is takes.

But do we hear Trump making this case? Of course not:

Almost nothing in that statement is true. As we've seen, there was no "massive and widespread fraud & deception," just the workings of the systems the Democrats, with GOP acquiescence, have put in place over the past decade or so. Yes, the big tech companies colluded with them; just how deep in the tank for the donkeys they were we are just now seeing thanks to Elon Musk. But Trump's query is just nuts: throw out the election results and declare him winner or have a new election? Even were such a thing possible, would it be advisable? That way lies anarchy, and possibly civil war.

Trump really got himself into trouble with his next statement. "A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution." The only sane response is—and immediately was—are you nuts? It does no such thing!

The former president's dwindling band of defenders promptly jumped in to "clarify" that what he really meant was not "allows for" but something more like "leads to" or "results in." That, however, is not what he wrote, and no amount of sympathetic parsing can make it so. Clearly Trump has neither filter nor proofreader on his staff of yes-women, but that a former president, who should know better, can be so cavalier with his syntax does not bode well for a second term. Words matter, and the man with his finger on the button has to be able to say exactly what he means, or else he will be accountable for meaning exactly what he said.

Finally, the kicker: "Our great 'Founders' did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!" This is entirely incorrect. From the start American elections have been marked by finagling, chiseling, horse-trading, vote suppression, and outright cheating. In fact it's something of an American art form, as any student of the elections of 1800, 1824, 1876, and 2000 knows.

With this intemperate outburst, Trump has likely disqualified himself from returning to office. Over the past few years he has become increasingly inarticulate, unable to complete sentences or express a fully formed thought. (In this regard, he's beginning to rival both of the Bushes, off-prompter Obama, and the senescent Biden himself.) Trump is, after all, 76 years old and would be 78 in November 2023. The man most likely to replace him, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, is 44 and will be 46 on Nov. 5 2024, just three years older than JFK when he was inaugurated in 1961. Biden, should he run, would turn 83 a few weeks after Election Day. If you think he's a geezer now, wait 'til you see him then.

---

We published another excerpt from our new book, Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order.

Excerpt from "Green Energy and the Future of Transportation" by Salvatore Babones

Not all government-backed technology projects turn into boondoggles, and certainly examples can be found where governments have made sound investments in new technologies that turned out to be transformative. The hovertrain craze may now sound as silly as the gravity-negating “cavorite,” that propels H. G. Wells’s astronauts to the moon, but there is a legitimate role for government to play in twenty-first century technology development. When multiple governments invest in different approaches to meeting the same social needs, the result can even be something like a competitive marketplace. And when democratic governments make full use of the myriad talents of their own citizens through openly competitive processes, innovation flourishes.

But the more distant technology planning is from the ground level of individual people dealing with the daily challenge of economic survival, the more likely it is that out-of-touch government bureaucrats (often working in collusion with self- interested corporate leaders) will deliver economically impractical solutions. When a single technological approach is imposed by government fiat, catastrophic failure is almost assured. We live in a world of profound uncertainty even about the present, never mind the future. Without a crystal ball to tell us which technologies ultimately will succeed and which will fail, diversity in experimentation is the key to discovering the technologies of the future.

---

Joan Sammon looked into the unexpectedly potent stumbling blocks that the ESG movement has run into of late.

The ESG Counter-Revolution Has Arrived

With this week’s announcement by the asset management giant Vanguard that it is exiting the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, a sub-unit of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, it is clear that the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) movement is no longer in unfettered ascension. Although we're still far from being able to claim that U.S. investors are free of the talons of ESG, it is clear that the voice of investors and industry leaders who have been the target of these evangelists can no longer be ignored.

Created to repair the purported damage caused by capitalism, the ESG construct is in reality, far more sinister. The scheme was created as a mechanism to reorient capital flows toward political and social objectives that its progenitors from the World Economic Forum deem important. With help from its less attractive, though equally mischievous step-brother, the United Nations, they together seek to coerce political and social change that many investors do not want.

Vanguard’s announcement came about a week after Consumers’ Research and 13 state attorneys general asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to review Vanguard’s request to own energy company stocks, and sought to intervene in Vanguard's blanket authorization renewal request that was pending before the commission. Their brief pointed out that collectively, Vanguard, State Street and BlackRock hold the largest voting blocs for most of the S&P 500, and are the largest investors in public oil, gas, and coal companies, having a combined $300 billion fossil-fuel investment portfolio.

But their membership in the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, created an intrinsic conflict of interest: support the decarbonization of the industries in which you invest, or do what is legally required and represent the best interest of their investors by maximizing returns. The decision was binary. For Vanguard, reason and legal obligation have won out over activism and social bullying.

Until now, asset-management firms have been happy to oblige the vision of these globalists because they believed they would benefit financially. Working in contravention of the sole interest rule and in defiance of legally mandated fiduciary obligations, the largest asset management firms have been attempting to force ESG adoption upon the boardrooms of publicly traded companies so as to transition them to the envisioned New World Order. Seeking power, wealth, and control, they have ordained themselves the arbiters of the acceptable, attempting to define which industries and companies should be permitted to participate in the capital markets and which should be relegated to a world they and their globalist masters unilaterally have decided should no longer exist.  

But now, with Vanguard’s withdrawal from the Net Zero Alliance and BlackRock’s recent market thrashing, asset management meddling may have reached its apex. Beginning earlier this year, investors and states attorneys general and treasurers, like those involved in the Consumers' Research filing, began to assert that investors’ interests were not being fiduciarily represented. These asset management giants have until now believed that their sheer economic heft would allow them to coerce companies and investors into using the ESG yardstick while diverting capital into companies that would help shape the new world they and the global activists envision. With a combined portfolio of $15 trillion under management, they unequivocally represent economic heft. But economic scale aside, market returns and the legal protections conveyed to investors and codified in U.S. law remain an unforgiving reminder of reality.

This week Vanguard was reminded by business leaders and investors of its core business and related legal obligations. Its very existence was threatened by its ESG promises to impede returns. Likewise, BlackRock pension fund clients have reminded CEO Larry Fink that his annual pronouncements of the value of stakeholder capitalism and ESG are falling flat. In the face of abysmal returns and market conditions created by poor economic and monetary policy, investors are demanding an abandonment of the ESG eco-system.

---

Environmentalists (and the governments which support them) are building their house on sand. That’s what Peter Smith wrote about this week.

Panglossian Pipedreams of a 'Green' Superpower

For those filled with zealotry to reset energy generation, one pipedream is built on another. They “have both feet firmly planted in mid-air,” to employ Francis Schaeffer’s description of moral relativists among churchmen. And, to boot, their Panglossian ambitions are unbridled: eliminate all coal, oil, and gas. Cull cows and sheep, or else make their belches methane-free. Transform industrial processes to eliminate their "greenhouse gas" emissions. Convert ships to run on hydrogen. Insulate the stock of all houses and commercial buildings. Ration power, precisely when it’s too hot or cold for human comfort. The list goes on, including the vainglorious ambition of running all cars, trucks, and buses on batteries or green hydrogen.

The Electric Vehicle Council is a national body representing the electrical vehicle (EV) industry in Australia. In mid-October 2022, it reported that EVs now account for 3.39 percent of new vehicle sales; up from a little over 2 percent the year before. Apparently, the Australian Capital Territory, the seat of government and home to only 1.7 percent of the national population but many federal public servants, leads the nation with 9.5 percent of new car sales. Where white-collar, richer-than-average people live, there you’ll find virtue-signalling EVs trundling around well-to-do suburbs. This comment made me happy:

It’s great to see so much momentum behind EV sales in Australia, but to put our 3.4 percent in context – Germany sits at 26 percent, the U.K. at 19 percent, and California at 13 percent. The global average is 8.6 percent so Australia has a long, long way to come.

When lemmings are heading for the edge of a cliff being a straggler ain’t so bad. Moreover, to the chagrin of the Electric Vehicle Council new vehicle sales present an over-rosy picture of stark reality. Only 0.12 percent of light vehicles on Australian roads are EVs. And, bet your life, that percentage would be much lower, if it were based on miles travelled.

RepuTex Energy is the firm used by Australia’s Labor government for modelling its 'Powering Australia’ plan. One projection, now quietly dropped, was that household electricity bills would fall by $275 by 2025. Not quite. They have since risen sharply and Australia’s Treasury department forecasts them rising still further, by over $1000 by June 2024. Hopeless at predicting electricity bills. Trust them on predicting the usage of EVs?

Follow RepuTex’s and Labor’s yellow brick road. They say that the number of light EVs on the road will grow from next to nothing now to 3.8 million by 2030. There will be 1800 new public fast-charging stations, and 100,000 businesses and 3.8 million households (a third or so of all households) will have charging capacity.

Official figures show that 18.6 million light vehicles were registered in January 2021. At current growth rates, approximately 3 million more will be registered in 2030. Assuming about 800,000 to 900,000 million light vehicles are scrapped each year, EVs would have to average 37 percent of all new vehicle sales over the whole period from now until 2030 to reach the projected 3.8 million. It’s sheer unadulterated bunkum.

---

Tom Finnerty blogged about Leftist hypocrisy:

Decolonize the Green Movement!

and the unnatural Voluntary Human Extinction movement:

The Discreet Charm of Human Extinction

---

Thanks for reading, and keep a look out for upcoming pieces by Richard Fernandez, Jenny Kennedy, and Tom Finnerty. And, once again, don’t forget to order our book, Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order. Christmas is just a few weeks away!

All this and more this week at The Pipeline!