Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Bill McKibben suggests billionaires should spend their money on him building up the climate movement – to help the climate movement overcome the “power of the fossil fuel industry”.
How should billionaires spend their money to fight climate change? I asked 9 experts.
Is it better to invest in developing clean energy technologies, say, or in trying to get a Democrat elected president?
By Sigal Samuel Nov 12, 2019, 8:50am EST
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Some megadonors are already trying to help us avert the climate crisis. Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, and Tom Steyer, the environmental philanthropist turned presidential candidate, have each donated millions to the cause. So have major foundations like the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. According to the Open Philanthropy Project, “overall American philanthropic funding for climate change activities appears to be on the order of several hundred million dollars per year.”
But are the wealthy spending their money well? Are the billions they’re donating going to the best climate change causes? Should a billionaire who cares deeply about the climate sink money into developing clean energy technologies, say, or are they better off trying to get a Democrat elected president?
Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and co-founder of 350.org
I’d spend the money helping build the climate movement. My logic goes like this: We’ve got some solutions available already but we’re not deploying at anything like the speed we need — that’s the ongoing power of the fossil fuel industry at work. The only way to break that power and change the politics of climate is to build a countervailing power. It’s happening now, but it needs to happen quicker.
And truthfully, it doesn’t take a billion dollars. Look at the amount of good Greta Thunberg and her young colleagues have done while barely spending a nickel. Money would help, but really, we need all the non-billionaires out there just to join in. Our job — and it’s the key job — is to change the zeitgeist, people’s sense of what’s normal and natural and obvious. If we do that, all else will follow.
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Read more: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/11/12/20910176/billionaire-philanthropy-charity-climate-change
My thought – Bill McKibben’s suggestion that fossil fuel interests are somehow using their power to suppress climate friendly solutions is absurd. In capitalist societies, the affordable and convenient solution wins the market.
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McKibben’s problem isn’t how much money or how it’s spent, it’s the message.
It’s also the messenger.
Y’know, if everyone stopped giving this a-hole ink, pixels and attention, he might shut up and go away. Just sayin’!
Yes. The messenger is a journalist: smug, under educated, uninformed.
Maybe he should talk to Bill Gates.
https://stopthesethings.com/2019/11/13/system-upgrade-bill-gates-backs-new-wave-nuclear-for-worlds-clean-energy-future/#comments
Sommer
Brilliant link, the picture of the wind mill and the nuclear plant is epic lol
People seem to listen to Mr gates, hopefully we get our wish of 24/7 365 electricity came true, as bill hates to waste money, and as stated he has a full team of nuclear scientists…
The reporter’s story also casts a different perspective on the claims of the climate carpetbaggers that skeptical groups (such as WUWT) are funded to the tune of brazillions by “big oil”-
$$$ support for skeptics pales into insignificance compared to this –
“overall American philanthropic funding for climate change activities appears to be on the order of several hundred million dollars per year.”
“The reporter’s story also casts a different perspective on the claims of the climate carpetbaggers that skeptical groups (such as WUWT) are funded to the tune of brazillions by “big oil”-”
See my WUWT guest thread, “Notes From Skull Island – why climate skeptics aren’t ‘well funded and well organized’”
If our side were well funded and well organized, as warmists charge, it would have the following 22 characteristics–which it doesn’t.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/16/notes-from-skull-island-why-skeptics-arent-well-funded-and-well-organized/
Perhaps they spend THEIR money any damn way they please!
I love the McKibben picture. Reminds me of a Saturday Night Live character. Over his life, Bill McKibben has exhaled how many tons of CO2? He really isn’t doing all he can to stop the rise in this killer gas.
For mine, his demeanour just says ‘completely out of control loon’ and reminds me that all the CAGWarriors are too. As icons of the eco loonaverse, its a close run thing between Batshit Bill, Nutjob Naomi or Moonscape Mike Mann.
Looking at that image, imagine him and Greta death stare on stage at same time … scary.
Is it immature to say that beauty is only skin deep but ugly goes through to the bone?
No, it’s a perfectly adult sentiment
I would imagine that as an excellent engineer Bill Hewlett, if he were still around, would now have a few rather pointed questions about ‘Catastrophic Global Warming.’ The others, i.e. Bloomberg, Steyer, etc., can be excused for their ignorance. However, their incompetence in not recognizing their ignorance, is inexcusable .
Clueless Climate Propaganda.
It is a cult.
Clueless Climate Change Propaganda
CCCP
…where have I seen that before? oh that’s it, they were cyrillic.
McKibben has the usual socialists complete failure to understand “the system”. First off, the “rich” already pay a high tax rate to “government”. Then they give what they have left over to “banks”, who lend it out to expanding businesses, and banks are allowed by “government” to lend out 10 times what has been deposited. ALL the money ends up being used by “the system” to make people richer. Taking more from “rich people” in tax up front simply reduces the amount banks can multiply by 10 and reduces the effectiveness of the ”system”. So we already have a near totally government controlled system in which the rich actually have no money, but are lulled into the belief that the IOU they receive monthly from their bank on the form of a bank statement, is “wealth”. Sorry to burst the bubble of anyone who thinks they are rich.
Let me guess. The only TRUE wealth is counted in gold and silver? Weapons and a store of food?
Say I have a hundred bucks. Then I lend it to you. Now, you have a hundred bucks and I have none. But if I put the hundred bucks in a bank, and the bank lends it to you, then you have a hundred bucks, and the bank only tells me I have a hundred bucks in my account. Not only that, but the bank is allowed by government to lend my hundred bucks to 10 other people.
And Kenj, the only real money is gold, everything else is “debt”….Sorry, McKibben’s views irritate me.
Correct. I would go one step further and say it’s not only debt, it is interest bearing debt based on a 300+ year old system created by the Bank of England. The Bank doesn’t actually have the extra $1000 for the other 10 people. It doesn’t actually exist. It is “created”, literally, out of thin air.
Just once, I wish to see even the slightest evidence that CO2 in infintesimaly small amounts causes a rise in global temps.
They should invest in renewable.
They’ll rake in the money from Government subsidies.
It worked for the Solyndra guys.
Yep. The Solyndra theives are still lounging around their custom-built swimming pools (heated by Solar City panels) and cabana’s outside their estate-homes.
the pink hippo!! welcome!
Billionaires should spend their money for promotion and lobbying for clean dependable nuclear power. And I’m available as a communications consultant at $750 per hour.
They should create more businesses that pay more people and enjoy themselves with the fruits of their labor or investments.
Mark,
Make that $5,000 an hour and more people are likely to hire you. Back in 1989, our accountants caculated charge-out rates for our senior people when hired by outside groups. Mine was Chinese lcky, an easy to remember $888 per hour. Geoff S
My suggestion: first find out what is driving climate, assuming this can be understood, so invest in research. Then when you have found out what drives climate and climate change see if it is a good or a bad development and then see if there is anything within reason to be done about it. Pretty trivial I think.
Science has already done the first part of what you suggest.
As to the second part, why or why isn’t the world economy now devoting $hundreds-of-trillions to develop technical methods to change Earth’s spin orientation and orbital ephemeris so as to eliminate those darn Milankovitch cycles?
As you say, “trivial”.
Bravo.
How about Save nature from Massively unsustainable RE: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/05/monumental-unsustainable-environmental-impacts/
By building MSRs…Case for the Good Reactor https://spark.adobe.com/page/1nzbgqE9xtUZF/
More about Bill McKibben
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/06/24/cjr/
How to spend someone else’s money, or, more subtle, how to tell others to spend their money, always was a favourite hobby of the left.
Since man-made climate change does not exist, spending any money to ‘fight’ it is nonsensical, while spending money on fighting climate change, the natural process, is just futile.
Er, how able they do what they choose to do themselves? They worked for it, so their choice…
Being rich or poor, we all eat food and wear clothes from other countries, taking more flights or having a big boat means the co2 is helping trees and planets grow stronger. Z😐
The day these greens become Amish, I will consider what they have to say… But as it stands, vile greta and her white faced red clothes wearing freaks can F##k off, as I have bills to pay and a house to heat.
“In capitalist societies, the affordable and convenient solution wins the market.”
Exactly right, and there is the problem for radical environmentalists/socialists. Free markets, capitalism, and democracy are designed for value and reward merit. This stands in the way of promoting global governance, socialism and restrained development which fail any competitive contest. Therefore, they want new rules and systems that are oblivious to real value. They won’t be happy till everyone either believes or is forced to accept that Venezuela is the goal toward which we should all aspire.
That’s right, they see the solution as the problem.
That is why Bill needs billionaire guilt money. To fund a Green Antifa mob, that will threaten and intimidate anyone that disagrees with his paranoid delusions.
Did he miss the bus back to the rest home?
There’s money on them thar campuses with all that student activity fee there for the taking.
No, they told him 3PM, sharp, then pulled out at 2:45 …. the other inmates we’re complaining of the shrill whining
“How should Billionaires Spend their Money to Solve Climate Change?”
Well, considering that there isn’t anything to change or solve, and that climate is, has always, will always change – all by itself, irrespective of human activity – and considering that the climate is literally controlled by non-human activities (large volcanoes, sun’s activity, large meteor impacts, orbital/celestial activity, etc.), billionaires should spend their money to finance and operate charter schools in the inner cities, and provide scholarships to those students from the inner cities who cannot afford to attend college and who wish to study a SERIOUS major (this would exclude the hate majors such as women’s, black, hispanic, LGBQT majors; would exclude those majors guaranteed to provide it’s graduates jobs as waiters or fast food employees, such as social work, psych, etc.)
Well before humans walked this earth and all the years before the industrial revolution, the climate changed. And today, we are experiencing a climate well within the “norm” of climate that has existed over the last 2000 years.
Articles such as this , suggesting that the biggest scientific hoax in the history of the world has some validity, at least provide the opportunity for commentators to express their views.
Then again, articles written describing that the Holocaust never happened would do likewise .
“I’d spend the money helping build the climate movement.”
I’m in the business of making the community more aware so give me all your spare millions as I don’t require a billion. That would be greedy.
Me? . . . in this matter, I’m waiting on the evidence/lawsuit that the “powerful” fossil fuel industry had a massive campaign to fight the introduction of commercial nuclear fission reactors for electric power plants, circa 1955.
Yes, it seems pretty clear that’s the real ‘crime’.
Greta envy again
There is a new low-cost service for protest management needs–it’s called “Rent-A-Pigtail.”
Will Bill get a wig to stay competitive?
There is no such thing as “clean” or “green” energy after you account for the full spectrum of environmental impacts from raw materials acquisition through transport, manufacture, installation, maintenance, and proper decommissioning after useful lifetime. Wind/solar/battery combinations may very well be responsible for worse environmental consequences than fossil fuel and nuclear power, especially when you look at the HUGE number of units that would be required to replace fossil fuel and nuclear power.
“…especially when you look at the fact that there is no number of wind/solar/battery combinations that could ever replace fossil fuel and nuclear power – and the amount of land required to make the futile attempt to do so would be stupefying, not to mention that the amount of rare Earth metals required probably doesn’t exist.”
There, fixed it for ya.
Billionaires are hoarding cash because of Sanders and Warren. They aren’t in a mood to share right now.
He needs a little green book to wave in the air when doing his rant on campuses–even if the pages are blank.
Q: “How should Billionaires Spend their Money to Solve Climate Change?”
A: Any way they want as long as they don’t to spend my money, too!
How should Billionaires Spend their Money to Solve Climate Change?
Answer: they shouldn’t. At all. Billionaires generally don’t get to be billionaires by wasting their money trying to solve non-issues. They have much better uses for their money. Heck, just stuffing their mattress with their money would be a better use then wasting it trying to solve a non-issue.
BINGO!
Billionaires have money to burn – and in the coming ice age, they’re gonna need it
Or in the case of Branson, screwing people over! Yeah!