Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Greens have requested that Private Businesses step in and top up an anticipated funding shortfall of in excess of ten billion dollars per annum, when Trump cancels US government funding of climate programmes.
The Private Sector May Lead the Charge Against Climate Change During the Trump Administration
Why? Because it makes economic sense. No matter what Trump and his cabinet do, the private sector will likely forge ahead, argues Shayle Kann.
by Shayle Kann
December 15, 2016
As the inauguration of President Donald Trump approaches, the future of federal action on energy and climate change remains highly uncertain. And while nothing is set in stone, there is mounting evidence that the new administration will drastically change course from the path set out by President Obama.
…
While no outcome is preordained, it is probably safe to assume that the U.S. will not take significant federal action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next four years. And it is possible that the federal government will begin to roll back many of the R&D and investment programs that have supported the recent domestic boom in clean energy. Initiatives already underway in a few states may act as a limited countervailing force, but the absence of federal action will be strongly felt.
Large companies are already taking action
If the federal government steps back, the private sector may leap forward. The U.S. business community has already become an increasingly emphatic voice in the chorus of calls for greater action on climate change. Just after the U.S. election, during the Marrakech climate talks, over 300 businesses signed an open letter to the incoming president in support of the Paris climate accord and continuation of low-carbon policies. Ninety-one of these companies have annual revenue over $100 million, including DuPont, General Mills and Intel Corporation.
…
Corporate action cannot entirely make up for intransigence at the federal level, but it may just be enough to allow the global decarbonization trend to continue apace.
While there is no doubt some CEOs are as rabidly committed to renewables as any Greenpeace protestor, this assumption that private businesses will step into the breach, that they will somehow be able to keep the party going, verges on delusional.
I’m sure private businesses run by hardline greens be able to stump up a few hundred million, maybe even every year. But in my opinion green groups are about to experience a very hard landing. Nobody will be able to cover the multi-billion dollar cash shortfall they are all about to experience.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“While there is no doubt some CEOs are as rabidly committed to renewables as any Greenpeace protestor…”
Not, some, a large percentage of CEOs, and the number is growing rapidly. https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/07/renewable-energy-demand-among-fortune-500-100-companies-growing-quickly/
Chris: Not too surprisingly, they are only in it for the money. The climate business is a dirty one. Where there’s muck, there’s brass. It is easy for a CEO to spend OPM on flights of fancy – no skin off their noses. Note that they spend ‘company money’ and don’t take it out of their contractual bonuses.
(OPM=other people’s money)
Crispin – Specifically how is Walmart in it for the money?
Virtue signalling to the naive public, and sucking up to the greens in the government. The motive for most “green” behavior.
Some companies fear being slimed by Greenie demonstrations and/or online dissing, so they succumb to greenmail.
Chris~ they are a business? Like everyone else?
Walmart is a business – so what? If anything, their customer base is more likely to be skeptical regarding AGW than strong believers.
I have always found that Walmart is more worried about its national image than it is about the local customers’ complaints. Furthermore, people of skeptic ilk are reasonable enough that they will patronize a business whose policies they might disagree with, where the “strong believers” will follow any spin of public correctness and boycott as instructed by the green action groups. That is why corporate America has chosen to align with the movement so far.
Pop, do you have evidence to support your claim?
I checked your link & note-
1 • The writer Joshua S Hill
(“I’m a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we’re pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review “),
Lives in a full time Fantasy world & is a believer rather than an interrogator of facts.
2 • They merrily show solar capacity …. but not production.
people can draw their own conclusions
Believe me when I say that the average “evangelical” Christian does not support the AGW or CAGW religion or bad science. Most of them (I’m excluding myself here) barely know what science is and the older ones, having observed that the weather really hasn’t changed much over the decades, certainly don’t believe the bull crap coming out of the MSM.
We are most interested in our personal lifestyle choices, to use liberal garbage terminology. It took Obama working to pull the noose tight around our necks, using global warming as an excuse, to make us finally turn out and vote for Trump because Hillary was all about the progressive endgame. I am one of the millions of voters who did not show up in poling because we chose not to participate in the MSM game.
1savenergy, haha, if you want to play the fantasy world game, I can point you to a frequent poster on WUWT who claimed to have cured HIV and multiple sclerosis. if you have information that refutes the key points made in the article, please provide supporting links.
The artical states
“The 22 companies (and their corresponding ranking in the Fortune 500) committing to 100% renewable energy are as follows:”
Please explain how such companies manage to achieve this 24/7 without resorting to accounting tricks or riding on the back of fossil fuels.
“Chris December 17, 2016 at 9:20 am
1savenergy, haha, if you want to play the fantasy world game, I can point you to a frequent poster on WUWT who claimed to have cured HIV and multiple sclerosis.”
In my many years reading WUWT I have never seen anyone claim to have cured HIV or MS.
Patrick, if our friend Chris is calling for supporting links, surely he’ll be willing to oblige by showing us links to the postings to which he refers.
“surely he’ll be willing to oblige by showing us links to the postings to which he refers”
Nah.
Taking things out of context, and if that fails plain straightforward “making stuff up” is more his method.
Here you go:
“Chris December 18, 2016 at 8:44 pm”
Too funny! You are as credible as Griff and tony.
I consider it self-protection against future quintupled power bills at their facility locations. If you recall Mr. Obama stated that electricity rates would necessarily have to rise dramatically to pay for our carbon debt.
Hold on to that article and post it after 2 years of Trump. We’ll see how the trend goes then.
Time for the climate experts in Hollywood to step up!
Like all wealthy greenies/lefties, they only enjoy spending other peoples money. Anyway they all said they were leaving the USA because Trump was elected.
Trump needs to demand that Universities repay the Federal Government for all research that was found to be biased/fr@udulent and whose conclusions don’t match the data. Once Universities and Fake Scientists discover that there is now a cost for perpetuating/manufacturing this nonsense we will never hear of it again. Any “consensus” based upon a conclusion reached by using “Mike’s Nature Trick…to hide the decline,” is a consensus of F00ls.
What “global decarbonization trend” would that be?
The author of this article is so upbeat about:
– the ability of the private sector to drive the research on climate change,
– demand renewable energy sources for their companies to use,
– how the cost per Watt for renewable has fallen faster than expected
that by the end of the article she has made the case for no government involvement needed any more.
Perfect. Taxpayers are finally done paying for all this.
One way to reduce the cost of climate research is for the government to fire the present researchers but before they leave they have to teach their replacements who qualify under the H1-B program. The replacement most from India will do their jobs at a fraction of the price. Maybe even do a better job since they actually may do some reseach.
polski — You are evil. I like you. — Eugene WR Gallun
300 businesses signed an open letter to the incoming president in support of the Paris climate accord and continuation of low-carbon policies. Ninety-one of these companies have annual revenue over $100 million,
==============================
translation: they want government handouts, paid for by the taxpayer. The want the government to continue to function as a Reverse Robbin Hood. Stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
And what will these companies do with this money? Use it to pay the cost of moving their operations offshore to take advantage of lower foreign tax rates and free trade back into the US. If you can move offshore, using US tax deductions, then pay no tax in the foreign location, and sell your products back into the US duty free as a result of free trade, your shareholders would be up in arms if you stayed in the US. In point of fact you could be sued by the shareholders if you didn’t move offshore,
ferdberple
I like the idea of Aunty Robin Hood.
Robin Hood takes from the rich and gives the rich-free back their own money taken as taxes.
Aunty Robin Hood taxes the rich-free and gives it risk-free to the rich in order to ‘save’ the rich-free from the consequences of the means of production used by the rich to get themselves into a position where they can dictate how much tax the rich-free should pay them.
Pretty good work, if you can get it.
I would like to add that it is this kind of arrangement that ‘makes the world go round’ but I think it goes round because of inertia. Oh, wait…
Free trade is not the problem. Trade makes us all richer. Forcing people to pay double for an iphone just to provide a few thousand jobs would not improve our economy. Taking advantage of cheaper labor and expertise through trade is a good thing. Offshoring simply to avoid taxation is not. The root cause of why companies move offshore in name only is the ridiculously high tax rate here. Hopefully Trump will address the root cause by loiwering corporate taxes, instead of playing more crony capitalism games.
Not enough people would pay double for an iPhone, me included. Currently, we pay more than double the manufacturing costs, looking at Apples annual revenues and capital. If Apple moved back to the U.S. for manufacturing they would be forced to make a smaller profit to stay competitive. Any operation moved back to the U.S. would involve the heavy use of robotics and not as many jobs as people think. They would be skilled-labor jobs, however.
Look at what McDonalds is rolling out to combat $15 an hour wages becoming popular in Democrat held cities. They are willing to totally change their image by going for automated ordering up front. Frankly, I support this given the number of English-as-a-second language employees I have to deal with in Arizona at fast food places. Just this week I locally ordered a Quarter Pounder Deluxe and was delivered a Quarter Pounder Double Cheese. In fact, I seldom eat at fast food places locally because prices are already so high family run restaurants can compete with better food.
I chose these examples because they show the labor situation has grown so complex, it will take more than lowering taxes to fix the labor end of the problems in this economy.
Trade makes us all richer.
=============
Not if you are the one thrown out of work and unable to feed your kids or make your mortgage payments.
Read the history of the Opium Wars in China to see what happened to England when it started trading with China. Brought to the verge of bankruptcy, the British hooked the Chinese population on Opium to balance the trade books. The Chinese have a long memory, and consider the US descendants of the British. Revenge is best when served cold.
Actually, the phone would not double. The labour content is only a portion of the cost (10%). There are a number of really good studies that show the cost advantage in china is only about 10% in many cases. Their cost of energy, transportation etc. have all soared in recent years. Toss in shipping, and you are BARELY ahead.
I don’t have the link handy, but iPhone cost would only increase by about 12% if built here. And all of the factory jobs, taxes pay for schools, roads, hospitals etc. – it really is a no brain to have that phone built here.
While china factory job wages were about $1 say 15 years ago, their costs are now $7 and are expected to continue to increase.
Given with advanced manufacturing and assembly, then labor cost is not that large of a % of cost of the product. (only single % digits for today’s automated production lines)
In fact there are some studies that show manufacturing in the USA is cheaper than most many places. Transportation costs are key. GE recently moved production of their water heaters from China back to the USA. The time from factory floor to Home Depot used to be about 6-8 weeks. Want to take a guess how fast it is now? – In some cases the water heater is delivered to Home Depot on the SAME DAY as the product having been manufactured!
Free trade has absolute gutted the manufacturing economy here.
Name one country in the world right now that shows increased standards of living – you find 99% of those cases that is countries that are stealing manufacturing jobs from someplace else. There is ZERO countries showing increased standards of living by adopting free trade and the resulting loss of jobs.
Like global warming, free trade been sold as a job creating system and the results of this 30 year experiment has utter failed! Like global warming, free trade is a job killing scam.
Don’t you find it interesting that Al Gore is the MAIN person who sold everyone on free trade, and now he is pushing global warming? So Al Gore and Bill clintion sigining the free trade act here is ALL YOU NEED to know!
Free trade and global warming are the same thing – an anti west policy that re-distributes the world’s wealth.
Regards,
Albert D. Kallal
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
“300 businesses signed an open letter”
How does a business sign a letter?
I read Shayle Kann’s article and scanned through the comments. Kann’s examples of businesses funding the green blob are based on the past 8 years of the US federal government encouraging and coercing businesses to spend money on green projects without any consideration as to whether such projects could be financially justified based on a positive ROI. Kann also sites many regulatory mandates for green compliance based on the false premises of climate change. Kann uses all of these examples of government coercion as reasons why businesses will continue to fund green organizations. In my opinion, Kann’s article lays out a road map of policies and regulations for the Trump administration to remove.
This is a rhetorical question? If there is a project that doesn’t make any sense, which is more likely to do it – government or private sector?
I love the cartoon. Money, money, money.
“Trump said that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real …”
Is kind of like saying nobody really knows if Russell’s teapot exists. The current incarnation of ‘climate change’ in which every change in an always naturally changing system is attributed to the human emitted component of a naturally occurring trace compound makes poor Russell’s teapot blanche in shame at the sheer scale of the unfalsifiability.
Technology has moved on massively since Russell’s day and we could now in principle falsify the teapot if we wished to devote sufficient resources to the task but the climate change ‘hypothesis’ is not even in principle falsifiable regardless of resources deployed. It is in short a non-scientific idea and doesn’t even warrant the title ‘hypothesis’ as it lies forever outside of the purview of science.
“Forever” is a very long time. GK
“Why? Because it makes economic sense.”
Demonstrating one of things that is wrong with AGW / Green crowd. Always ready to spend, spend, spend, so long as it is someone else money.
Along with no “sense”.
“The Buffett Rule” on taxes
The billionaire was even more explicit about his goal of reducing his company’s tax payments. “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” he said. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
Think about that one. Mr. Buffett says it makes no economic sense to build wind farms without a tax credit, which he gladly uses to reduce his company’s tax payments to the Treasury. So political favors for the wind industry induce a leading U.S. company to misallocate its scarce investment dollars for an uneconomic purpose. Berkshire and its billionaire shareholder get a tax break and the feds get less revenue, which must be made up by raising tax rates on millions of other Americans who are much less well-heeled than Mr. Buffett.
This is precisely the kind of tax favoritism for the wealthy that Mr. Romney’s tax reform would have reduced, and that other tax reformers want to stop. Too bad Mr. Buffett didn’t share this rule with voters in 2012
When the subsidies STOP, All the publicly owned companies will dump this scam.
“Greens have requested that Private Businesses step in and top up an anticipated funding shortfall …”
If I were AWG / Green crowd, I would be far more worried about getting Pro Bono Legal aid lined up to defend against charges of Waste and Abuse of Federal Funds.
“it may just be enough to allow the global decarbonization trend to continue apace.”
They misspelled decapititation.
As did I.
If there has been a “global decarbonization trend,” it has only been due to a global recession. Replacing nuclear energy with wind and solar, backed up by fossil fuels, is not going to decarbonize anything. Replacing coal with natural gas reduces some emissions. But when the global economy improves, energy use will increase and reverse any decarbonization trend seen in recent years. The Greens’ solution is to reduce the global population by making fossil fuels unavailable or too expensive for the poor. That will serve to reduce life expectancy for the masses and accomplish their ultimate goal. Climate change is just the means to that end. If it falls out of favor, they will simply turn their attention to other means, as they have done in the past.
“Why? Because it makes economic sense.” And they really believe it. There’s a constant state of denial about the economic viability of renewable energy. MSM propaganda may enforce that notion but corporate spread sheets don’t lie. There will be no favors to curry with the new administration in regards to Climate Change and I guarantee the corporations are breathing a sigh of relief and have already allocated that money to something that will help their business grow.
Here’s a good read on the future of Climate Chang:
The Impending Collapse Of The Global Warming Scare
And the solution:
by
Dr. Jonathan Swift
1729
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/30827_modestproposal.pdf
I do not invest my money in business that is supporting the CAGW-fraud. If I’d find out that they are or tend to I’d withdraw it immediately.
Quite like the idea. Private funding will have a start point – tender process – award – strict scope of supply against a strict payment by results timetable – and an end! Doubt there will be year on year cash flow for the effects of an indiscernible amount of warming may have on the natterjack toad.
Let Hollywood fund them.
The private sector is still coming off their high of virtue signaling.
When they realize there are no gov’t favors to be had they will soon redirect their resources to more worthwhile real world endeavors.
Any public corporation CEO who throws his/her company’s profit on UN Climate Aid fire pit needs to be removed by either their board and/or by shareholders at large.
What the greens don’t understand is that big business won’t be giving them shareholders money based on bogus science and propaganda as their motive
Boy those greenies sure panic easily. I guess it is just in their nature, which explains a lot.
300 businesses? 300 businesses? Do they really think those are impressive numbers?
Remember when Trump noted that 70,000 businesses went belly up over some relatively short period of time? He found that number unbelievable, amazing. These radical green people also list 91 businesses with over $100 million REVENUE, not gross income, not net income, not disposable income. Anyone who thinks tightwad Elon Musk will part with any of his millions is cuckoo.
I think we’re inching closer to knowing what is going to happen when the loonie left runs out of Soros’ money. They will have to emerge from their safe space cellars like locusts and shift for themselves. Out with the old, embrace the new. That is progressive group think, isn’t it?