Is Greenpeace facing its Warsawgrad?

Guest opinion by Fred F. Mueller

In large-scale wars, there are sometimes prolonged periods of fierce clashes with neither side being able to place the decisive blow that will ultimately tilt the balance in its favor. Then all of a sudden, certain events occur that mark the decisive turning point where one side definitely loses the strength to continue posing a threat to its opponents. From that decisive moment on, it will lose the initiative, being largely confined to defensive actions and hoping to be able to force its opponents to accept a peace agreement instead of having to face the enormous costs of a prolonged war. One of the most famous turning points in World War II was the battle for Stalingrad, where the seemingly unstoppable German onslaught could finally be brought to a standstill. The outcome is well known: Hitlers annihilation a few years later.

Switching to our times, one might well get the impression that in the decades-long war of Greenpeace, WWF and their countless NGO brethren for control of the public opinion about the so-called global warming threat allegedly caused by human CO₂ emissions, such a turning point has been reached. The UN meeting in Warsaw (Poland), where further measures to curb these emissions should have been laid on keel, has seen a number of leading countries bluntly refusing to continue supporting the scam while many others stayed on the sidelines, paying lip-service to the noble cause of saving the climate and the planet while abstaining from any sizeable commitments. Maybe historians wanting to highlight the real dimensions of the blow dealt to the CO2 alarmists might coin the word Warsawgrad later on. Having failed to reach any substantial accord on the main question, the focus of the event has instead shifted to financial aspects, with third world countries trying to extort as many billions as possible from developed nations under the pretense that they should be held liable for each and any natural disaster happening on their territory. Upon seeing the related list, one wonders why they haven’t come up with claims to include asteroid impacts, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcano eruptions as well. But there might still be room for improvement…

The CO₂ alarm finally seems to run out of steam

The clear impression one can draw from the course of events and the echo it finds in the media is that the CO₂ scam advanced by Greenpeace and their numerous allies in state agencies, scientific institutions and the media is finally losing traction. The greed of too many profiteers has generated costs and technical consequences in key industry sectors to such an extent that the tide in public opinion seems to be finally turning, at least in some more lucid countries such as Autralia. Of course, just as in many other historic examples, the final shot has not yet been fired, but from now on, it seems likely that the faithful of the Anthropogenous Global Warming (AGW) belief will have to fight an uphill battle. While some country leaders such as Germany’s Merkel still seem staunchly committed to continue their course, it is becoming increasingly obvious that a number of decisive nations such as Canada, Australia and Japan are already manning the lifeboats. And as in the case of a dam break, once the first cracks have appeared, the subsequent sequence of events will probably follow the usual scheme. We might eventually see a stampede of highly qualified story-tellers and academic charlatans flooding out of all sorts of state agencies und NGO-related consulting services in a frantic search for new fields of activity.

In quest for new business models

One signal hinting that this threat has already been clearly perceived in the leading ranks of Greenpeace are new or newly revived ideas for alternative business models being floated by prominent members of the organization. If the public gets tired of sinking money into the CO2 black hole, fresh ideas have to be brought forward in order to save the planet from humanity while keeping the flow of donations at current high levels. Among the ideas currently thrown into the discussion are plastic garbage in the oceans, with subtle modifications such as micro-plastic particles coming back into the human food chain or causing fish liver damages. Other topics that might well be rediscovered after having been left dormant for some years are fine dust particles in the air, pharmaceutical active substances in the water or the noise levels inextricably linked to business and traffic activities. The bets are open which ideas will replace the CO2 hypothesis once the wheels are definitely coming off the current model.

Chinese cleverness

Upon reviewing the evolution of the CO2-related blame game that has been going on at such UN events over the past two decades, one cannot but pay respect to the clever strategy of one country that had been put on the pillory for excessive emission of CO2 not too long ago: China. In pace with its remarkable economic rise, the country has in the meantime overtaken all other countries to become the biggest CO2 emitter in the world. Nevertheless, this time it has been successfully avoiding to be blamed, forging an alliance of poor and developing nations instead that is aggressively claiming billions of money in compensation from developed Western nations while shielding the CO2 gorilla in their ranks. According to some reports, even renewed political efforts by the US administration have ultimately failed to drive a wedge into this coalition.

Is the smart money shifting focus?

Another development that can be observed in parallel to the Warsaw events is a shift in financial streams that seems to take place in the wake of the debacle the AGW proponents have suffered in Warsaw. While we might still be years away from a decisive collapse of the “climate-saving” energy policies still upheld by a number of politicians such as EU Commissioner Conny Hedegaard or President Obama, who have gone way too far in their ignorance of the laws of physics, markets and common sense to be able to back down without losing face, the smart money seems to have immediately gotten the message. Uranium shares, which had been on a constant decline since the Fukushima events, are currently experiencing a sudden rise that might well signal the sector has bottomed out. With news from Spain indicating that people operating solar cells for their private consumption while maintaining their connection to the power grid will now become liable to pay a special levy, chances are that more and more banks and trusts will start to rate investments into such projects as “higher risk”. On the other hand, investments in uranium and coal mines as well as in conventional power equipment producers and operators might become attractive again after a prolonged period on the dark and cold side of the markets.