Essay by Eric Worrall
“A cancel culture destroys wealth and progress” – Stuart Kirk’s warning to people who want to silence debate about green investments.
“Climate change is not a financial risk” — HSBC’s head of responsible investment Stuart Kirk resigns
By Velvet-Belle Templeman
Jul 8 2022 1:38PMStuart Kirk, global head of responsible investments at HSBC Asset Management has resigned from the bank after an explosive reaction to a recent speech he gave asserting that climate change is not a financial risk.
In a LinkedIn post announcing his resignation, Kirk said that HSBC’s behaviour towards him since the speech has made staying in the role, ironically, “unsustainable”.
…
“Investing is hard. So is saving our planet. Opinions on both differ. But humanity’s best chance of success is open and honest debate. If companies believe in diversity and speaking up, they need to walk the talk. A cancel culture destroys wealth and progress,” he wrote.
“There is no place for virtue signalling in finance. Likewise as a writer, researcher and investor, I know that words or trading shares can only achieve so much. True impact comes from the combination of real-world action and innovative solutions.”
Read more: https://www.itnews.com.au/digitalnation/news/climate-change-is-not-a-financial-risk-hsbcs-head-of-responsible-investment-stuart-kirk-resigns-582404
What message does this resignation under pressure send to investors, about the quality of advice they are likely to receive from their bankers about climate change investments?
Spain proved renewable investments can be very risky indeed, when the Spanish government’s retrospective cancellation of solar tariffs in 2010 bankrupted 10s of thousands people who thought they could rely on the promises of politicians. Britain also slashed solar tariffs in 2011, causing similar pain.
Stuart’s sin was explaining in detail why adaption is a better strategy than mitigation, using the IPCC’s own figures. He also criticised the dubious management of central banking climate risk models:- “Even with a carbon tax, even with growth, they couldn’t make climate risk move the needle, so they had to get their clever little wonks in the back room to put a gigantic interest rate shock in their models to make headlines”.
We may all be about to experience an interest rate shock – but this shock will occur because excessive public borrowing and political attacks on affordable energy have driven up consumer prices and inflation, not because global warming damaged the production of any important commodity.
Now Stuart has “resigned”, and posted a comment on social media about “cancel culture”. Draw your own conclusions.
Don’t expect any further warnings from the banking industry – Stuart’s “resignation” in my opinion sends a strong message that bankers who question the financial fundamentals of green investments get fired, or have to resign.
If you haven’t watched it already, Stuart Kirk’s speech is available here.
Update (EW): Bloke down the pub points out the UK tariff cut in 2011 wasn’t brutally retrospective like Spain’s tariff cut. But I’m guessing some people still got hurt – hard luck if you were already committed to an expensive solar build.
I hope Stuart declared “Constructive Discharge” in the process of “resigning”. Hooray for him standing up to the Green Mob, and hope he lands in an even better position with a financial institution that has the singular goal of “maximizing client wealth” (with a little caution due to dysfunctional economic policy now in effect).
He is starting his own investment fund.
At least I would confident about putting my money with him. If I had any to put.
We call it “constructive dismissal” and he definitely has a case for compensation, whatever his immediate prospects. What he suffered is outrageous. Speaking the truth should not entail martyrdom.
If one is making an investment that will only be reasonable if government policy remains the same, I would suggest that is a high risk investment.
It has been a solid approach for a long time now. “Renewable” energy has done well over the last two decades. There would be no W&S at grid level without government regulations.
I suggest you watch the video on what happened in Spain. UK investors also got stung by surprise government tariff adjustments. The EU just included gas and nuclear in their definition of “green” energy sources. A value crashing change to the rules could happen anytime at the whim of politicians.
Eric
I have not paid anything for household energy for the last 5 years. My capital spent 10 years ago on solar panels and battery has been returned and some.
Do you think Australia’s future fund is investing in coal fired power stations?
This is the investment strategy for AustralianSuper, the super fund for the trade unions that back Labor:
Do you think Labor is going to change policies and laws to the detriment of the people who put them in power.
Shorten just missed out and he would have a 50% RET already. These guarantee winners.
The first issue of green gilts in the UK were oversubscribed 10-fold. They have a fixed rate of 2.3%pa. The best investment for GBP would be to buy RUBs but woke investors would not consider that as an option.
This will all carry on until it collapses like Sri Lanka.
This is what the subprime people thought Rick. All those solar investors who got burned in Spain, you think they will be the last? When the government runs short of cash, or cost of living spirals out of control, renewables are a soft target.
For those of us who are not fortunate enough to live in a country where the sun shines strongly enough for 365 days of the year, solar is not viable for anything other than a bit of hot water.
The only way his “capital” could have been returned in just 10 years, is if the taxpayers paying 90% of the cost of his toys.
Indeed, RickWill has been on the dole for the past 10 years. He guessed correctly at how to take advantage of his fellow citizens.
This will all carry on until it collapses like Sri Lanka.
It’s just a matter of time but there’s short term returns to be had-
Tesla: Battery Material Strategies // Maintaining a 50% Growth Rate – YouTube
The problem is: household energy makes up a very tiny part of the country’s energy budget. Of course, depending on where one lives (insolation, heating needs in winter) one can get along with very little energy, but that isn’t representative for most people.
How much of your capital investment was repaid via subsidies and tax credits? Be honest.
”I have not paid anything for household energy for the last 5 years…”
So you can go without the grid power necessary for hospitals and industry that keeps the country going.
In Spain the cut was retrospective, in the UK the cut was announced in advance and as long as you registered before the cut off date you got the old enhanced FIT rates. These madly high old FIT rates are still being paid to this day. They were so stupidly high they could not be maintained. Whether you get left high and dry depends on the country, the Northern Ireland wood fired furnace scheme, which is a blatant scam, still pays out to this day.
Solar enterprises have collapse like paupers during the Black Death. Energy systems that have more than a pinch of wind and solar energy crammed into them become increasingly expensive, unstable and undependable. The fact that some industrialists and investors have made some cash on hopelessly flawed government interventions without merit is not success in the larger sense.
Yes the “solid” approach was to raise my electric bills by 20% without any good reason for doing so. They don’t even disguise it’s a green levy, it’s clearly marked on the bill.
Meanwhile they don’t show how the unreliables just down the road can do much of any use as they stand stock still for weeks at a time during those Scandinavian anticyclone, or why they install solar panels at 60N when for 6 months a year they produce sweet f-all.
Your solid approach is looking like something less healthy and less useful than oil from Nigeria.
It’s called a 419!
Look it up.
When I was in long range planning for capital projects for a major telephone company, taxes (income, ad valorm, etc) were one of the major factors we always did detailed sensitivity analysis on. You simply could not stick in the current tax rates and expect them to remain the same. Neither did we *ever* show the tax rates going down. If that happened it would just make the winning projects come out better. But we always tried to find that breakpoint where tax increases would make a project uneconomic. Those projects that remained profitable even after doubling or tripling tax rates were usually the ones that won the competition for capital funding.
Tom even your prescient caution is an understatement. I hope I’m wrong, but I cannot see a way the world can avoid a horrific depression. The inflation caused by idiot Western governments acting in concert to destroy the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industry and pushing unworkable renewables has created conditions for upwardly spiraling prices for everything.
And what is their prescription for the policy-caused inflation? Jacking up interest rates! This inflation is definitely not due to too many dollars chasing too few goods. Everyone with too many dollars, please raise your hands! Raising interest rates will only kill off housing and productive industry investment. Demand for everything will go down. G
If you have government at your back, you will do better than the rest.
The UK ship is sinking to the tune of 18% of GDP in the Q1 2022. At the same time, green gilt issues are still oversubscribed. This is money guaranteed a return by the money creators all aimed at mal-investment for Net Zero.
The first issue of green gilts back in 2021 were oversubscribed 10-fold.
The USA central bank will soon be issuing green bonds to attract all the woke money. Then the government will do all it can to ensure those mal-investment produce a return at the expense of the entire global economy.
It is all good for Australia. China makes all the stuff that underpins the mal-investment and Australia supplies some of the coal and most of the iron ore and bauxite China needs to convert into the trinkets for the woke westerners.
Governments can change the rules anytime, or debauch the currency and print cash to repay their loans. I wouldn’t call a business plan whose profitability entirely relies on politicians keeping their promises a safe investment.
“The USA central bank will soon be issuing green bonds”
The Fed does not sell bonds to fund their operations.
They buy bonds with credit created out of thin air.
Some of the interest on those Treasury bonds
pays for their operations, but most
is returned to the US Treasury.
The US Treasury might sell green bonds.
They already sell a lot of bonds to fund deficit spending.
“ The USA central bank will soon be issuing green bonds to attract all the woke money.”
The central bank issues bonds?
Nope. The central bank tells someone like Goldman Sachs they need to buy $X bonds. GS prints them up and the FED buys them at face value. VIOLA! $X injected into the money supply! Thus weakening the dollar.
Yes, those who suck at the government tit, usually make out better than those who have to pay your tab.
The USA pension funds are forecast to be broke in 2026. Green will not help.
Tell us where he lands so we can move our investments there.
You can still follow him on LinkedIn and he has promised to keep his followers updated on a new portfolio he is developing with like minded investment advisors. Unfortunately the platform itself has become very woke from what it began as and I am informed it is owned by Microsoft, Mr Gates.
I’m not opening up Linkedin. Not for anyone or anything. I’ll have to keep an eye on places like WUWT and just hope that the info comes through. It will probably be too late and/or an investment vehicle not initially open to the general public. When it does eventually become available, hopefully I will have made so much money from my coal shares that I’ll be able to make a nice-sized investment.
“I’m not opening up Linkedin. Not for anyone or anything.” – I agree…
I still have some significant investments in oil, which are doing just fine and paying decent dividends.
Re: That UK Government gilt offering..
I’m a million miles from being any expert or having any much knowledge but, £1 Billion over 12 years seems to be pretty well nothing.
e.g. BoJo blew over a trillion on Covid and £200,000 on a new kitchen for his mistress, who will now surely dump him.
(Not very long ago the pair were expecting at least 10 years in power. Well, Princess Nutz certainly was while she used BoJo as an affable cuddly buffoon, putting up a sweet sort of Public Face – a lot like Brandon in fact)
Anyway, do we know what sort of Interest Rate those Green Gilts were promised to yield?
iow: If the UK Gov’mt were promising 10% while the rest of the market was running 5%, it’s perfectly no wonder they were oversubscribed.
Gilts are Gilts after all. Gilt = Golden and absolutely guaranteed by Government. (and normally aimed at Pension Funds as buyers so usually over longer terms than 12 years)
When a highly regarded entity such as UK Gov starts defaulting on Gilts, the less-than-fragrant really has hit the fan.
That’s the league Venezuela, Zimbabwe and now Sri Lanka play in.
Something doesn’t smell right here, methinks there’s a large element of Turd Polishing going on there.
“The human animal cannot lie”, it always gives itself away somehow
All that money spent and not one pence on a comb.
Yield is 2.3%pa.
The first issue was GBP10bn and was oversubscribed 10-fold. That was April 2021. The recent Issue of GBP6bn was oversubscribed as well.
Since March, GBP has lost 60% against the Russian RUB. Would seem smarter for those in the UK to buy energy backed currency like RUBs rather than green gilts.
UK will be an ugly place to be by March next year after it emerges from a cold winter of continual energy shortages. .
Or a haircut.
He didn’t even spend one cents on it 🙂
My cynicism says he wants recognition for a new project although his statements are right on.
My BarbaraStreisand-ometer went off when I first heard about the guy. It’s a PR stunt for a planned project. Nobody makes a statement like that thinking that they would get away with it, unless they have ulterior motives, or want to retire against their spouse’s wishes. It’s sad that I’m so jaded, isn’t it?
Since the government is so fond of sticking it’s nose into everybody’s business I think it should require every business that has a stockholders meeting to invite Stuart Kirk to speak at those meetings. You know in an effort to celebrate diversity.
Problem is that there are way too few people like Stuart Kirk with the intestinal fortitude to push back against the Green Blob, especially if he/she knows how scientifically faulty the climate scare is.
Until somebody in the White House or at No. 10 in London has the brains and guts to push back, I fear not a lot will change. I still wish Trump had done so when he was in the White House, and still wonder why he didn’t.
Because Trump was, and is, an unprincipled buffoon, who managed to get a few things right, and a lot of things wrong….
Did Trump’s tweets hurt your feels Greg 😉
What was it that Trump got wrong? Just disagreeing with a socialist is not evidence of being wrong.
Can you name some of the policy things Trump got wrong?
I don’t know that he got many things wrong, Gregory. He was not always dignified or articulate, and rarely diplomatic, I’ll grant you that. Sometimes it was epic joy to watch. The fake news still whine about it daily.
Greg,
I was only referring to his failure to push back against and attack the climate alarmist narrative. It was not my intent to characterize the former president the way you did. I seriously doubt that a lot of people will juxtapose Biden and Trump today and say that Biden comes out the winner.
Trump had a lot on his plate. Like trying to fight off partisan political impeachment attempts and other attacks by the radical Left.
He’s still having to fight them off, every day. They attack him every day. The most innocent man in American politics. The most vetted man in American politics. Possibly the most unfairly persecuted person in world history.
Election of Trump to another presidential term would be a hard slap in the face to the radical left. I would love to land that blow. Maybe we will have the opportunity.
Bai Den won’t be able to fight off the GOP and their investigations like Trump did with the Dems. Trump wasn’t guilty of colluding with Russia. Bai Den *is* guilty of colluding with China.
Bai Den won’t get *anything* done, including bringing down inflation and crime. That will be *all* GOP. My guess is that Bai Den will resign rather than be impeached. We *will* get stuck with Harris or Pelosi – but they will be pretty much powerless.
He’s wrong. There is a risk caused by clueless politicians, and other virtue signalers sending us down a “clean energy” path that will cripple energy dependent industries.
Why do people not realize that decisions related to energy infrastructure and supply directly impact national security?
Is it not critically important that the people entrusted with these decisions are chosen on the basis of their honouring of the oath they’ve taken to protect the citizens of their nation?
Oh, we realize it, Sommer. And that’s why many of us wonder if The Big Guy is acting on orders from Beijing.
Yeah, the Chicoms paid the Biden family over $30 million. What do the Chicoms get for that money? Maybe, just what we are seeing: Biden bending over backwards to please the Chicoms. And of course, whatever pleases the Chicoms harms the United States.
Who are you really working for, Joe?
Anything the government takes a hand in becomes that much more of a financial risk. Similarly, businesses and Banks going sociopolitical is equally much riskier from an investment P.O.V.. Go woke, go broke isn’t a denier’s critical riposte sans evidence.
HSBC had to make him leave because his point of view was a risk to cash flow. The bank isn’t worried about mom and dad investors, they worry about large pots of money like pension funds that are being run by activist management who would dump HSBC if they weren’t singing from the same hymn book.
A prime example of why I make my own investment decisions rather than depending on pension funds.
Isn’t there an obligation to do the best for your shareholders which becomes criminal if you don’t? There must be a way of ‘shorting’ the greenwash against the time when the hoax becomes apparent and/ or unaffordable, You could make a fortune. Fot eg how much of Octopus Energy is government subsidy?
Well, yes, BUT the market can be (and usually is) wrong for a very long time, during which shorters will be annihilated.
The general public has no idea just how widespread “closet indexing” is amongst supposedly “active” investment managers.
For anyone interested, my own coverage of this subject can be found over at Cliscep:
https://cliscep.com/2022/07/08/another-miracle-just-happened/
This is how 95% of climate scientists agree on the great con that is AGW . Cull the heretics and the narrative will not be challenged .
<i>’Britain also slashed solar tariffs in 2011, causing similar pain.</i>’
Perhaps it should be made clear that the UK did not slash the tariff for existng FIT holders, only for new installations. In fact, for the lucky few who bought systems in the fire sale as installers dumped stock but still got the higher tariff, payback time was slashed.
Tough luck if you were already committed to a build though.
The government were taken to court, by FOE if I remember correctly, for not having followed proper procedures in anouncing the drop in FIT. As a result, the drop was deferred by a couple of months. Installers, facing a drop in demand had already reduced their prices to get rid of their stock. For those who, like a friend of mine, had placed an order at the reduced price but qualified for the older high tariff , they were quids in.
“A cancel culture destroys wealth and progress”
It certainly destroyed his wealth and progress…
A title for the Wapo: Responsible Banking Head Resigns due to Irresponsible Head Banging Designs..
Speaking truth, when contrary to the narrative, must be punished.
As one who spent a career in the investment field, I cannot stress enough just how critically important a firm’s culture is.
If principals are reluctant to float ideas for fear of back-stabbing or retribution, the firm’s investment performance will eventually suffer.
It is vitally important to establish an atmosphere of openness and a willingness to consider contrarian ideas.
HSBC is obviously a gargantuan organization. A firm that big is bound to be rigidly hierarchical and unwilling to tolerate dissent or departure from the party line. A firm like HSBC is one of the best arguments for indexing (i.e., passive investing) I can think of. They will never beat the indexes. They’re too big and inflexible. It is very likely that HSBC is already a closet indexer.
I suspect index funds will get smacked very hard when central banks finally start to take inflation seriously…
Mr. Worrall,
“When they raid the whorehouse, they’re going to take ALL the girls.”
________________________
“It’s only when the tide goes out, that we find out who’s been swimming naked.”
-quoted by Warren Edward Buffett
When Ayn Rand was writing her epic and prophetic allegories of the decay of America as it pushed toward “scientific socialism” where the policies determine the “science” rather than the other way around, she would have cast Stuart Kirk as one of the heroes. HSBC would have been one of the soon-to-fail commercial enterprises.
Stuart Kirk is a hero. If someone is able to fully understand the financial projections he referred to, especially the high interest rate detail, and a criminal investigation follow-up takes place, his act of courage in calmly and clearly challenging “Sharon and Mark Carney” will have been the historic catalyst.
Thank you WUWT for continuing to follow this very significant development.
Nothing new here. They admit to their lies openly. from:
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/another-climate-alarmist-admits-real-motive-behind-warming-scare/
If they were honest, the climate alarmists would admit that they are not working feverishly to hold down global temperatures — they would acknowledge that they are instead consumed with the goal of holding down capitalism and establishing a global welfare state.
Have doubts? Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.
So what is the goal of environmental policy?
“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.
For those who want to believe that maybe Edenhofer just misspoke and doesn’t really mean that, consider that a little more than five years ago he also said that “the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”
Mad as they are, Edenhofer’s comments are nevertheless consistent with other alarmists who have spilled the movement’s dirty secret. Last year, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, made a similar statement.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said in anticipation of last year’s Paris climate summit.
“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”
The plan is to allow Third World countries to emit as much carbon dioxide as they wish — because, as Edenhofer said, “in order to get rich one has to burn coal, oil or gas” — while at the same time restricting emissions in advanced nations. This will, of course, choke economic growth in developed nations, but they deserve that fate as they “have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community,” he said. The fanaticism runs so deep that one professor has even suggested that we need to plunge ourselves into a depression to fight global warming.
Perhaps Naomi Klein summed up best what the warming the fuss is all about in her book “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.”
“What if global warming isn’t only a crisis?” Klein asks in a preview of a documentary inspired by her book. “What if it’s the best chance we’re ever going to get to build a better world?”
In her mind, the world has to “change, or be changed” because an “economic system” — meaning free-market capitalism — has caused environmental “wreckage.”
This is how the global warming alarmist community thinks. It wants to frighten, intimidate and then assume command. It needs a “crisis” to take advantage of, a hobgoblin to menace the people, so that they will beg for protection from the imaginary threat. The alarmists’ “better world” is one in which they rule a global welfare state. They’ve admitted this themselves.