Pension funds are supposed to invest your money wisely so they can provide a return when you retire. So why are so many of them obsessed with controversial political causes like Net Zero?
In this special episode of the Sceptic, James Graham, Senior Researcher on Financial Freedoms at the Prosperity Institute, exposes the scourge of Environmental and Social Governance, why your pension fund is costing you money by funding Net Zero, his confrontation with green fanatic fund managers and the ongoing dangers of debanking.
Donate to the Daily Sceptic to access our premium content: www.dailysceptic.org/donate/
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Produced by Richard Eldred.
Filmed at the Westminster Podcast Studio.
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We desperately need a bit of hope this side of the pond. Maybe change will come
Reform councils ‘save taxpayers £40m’ by scrapping net zero
Party’s leaders say they have also cut more than £50m of wasteful costs in other areas during first 100 days in power
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/08/07/reform-councils-save-taxpayers-40m-scrapping-net-zero/
Apparently, the civil servants are most unhappy. Can’t be bad.
“…Apparently, the civil
servantsleeches are most unhappy. Can’t be bad.FIFY
Then again…
Britain must copy China in net zero race, says Miliband’s energy tsar
Chris Stark calls for UK to embrace ‘cold, hard economics’ of going green
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/09/britain-must-copy-china-in-net-zero-race-says-chris-stark/
There you have it. Oh for an election.
“Britain must copy China in net zero race, says Miliband’s energy tsar.”
Really? Since China is increasing its output of carbon dioxide every year, we must follow suit and build dozens of coal fired power stations immediately.
They take the word of the Chinese on anything. Miliband won’t even publish the details of his energy deal with China.
Won’t publish? How is that even possible in a free society?
It’s not. Obviously.
The UK is not a free society.
Truthfully we never have been. But the latest attack of free speech is just a symptom. The Government won’t let us see or know information that they think that we would get angry about.
Well…
“Miliband refuses to publish details of green energy deal with China”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/02/ed-miliband-refuses-publish-details-green-energy-deal-china/
Some here may have noticed I refer to the British system as an elected dictatorship. This and the other lunatic antics of the Labour government (Parliament) give you an idea why. They do exactly as they please.
NB We are not free of the thought police and the new online act of Parliament.
‘Woke’ police tell shopkeeper to take down sign calling shoplifters ‘scumbags’. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2093147/woke-police-shopkeeper-remove-sign-shoplifters-scumbags-wrexham
Well, I can’t and won’t throw stones; Our “Blue” cities and states are attempting the same thing; at least here the stores can move to a “Red” state. And we have aggressive lawyers (God help us!) that are very prepared to spend your money…and to counter that, the ACLU and Democrats. Generally speaking tho, the thought police are not doing so well, thanks to the Constitution and SCOTUS.
Yes you have the first Amendment, and we… we have a Parliamentary dictatorship and the infamous non-crime hate incidents etc.
And the thought police… (I expect this policeman will lose his job)
‘Some here may have noticed I refer to the British system as an elected dictatorship.’
If our beloved Alexander Hamilton had had his druthers, we’d have a very similar system today in the US:
“At the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton played little part in the writing of the Constitution itself, although he served on the committees that outlined convention rules and writing style. His proposal for the new government was modeled on the British system, which Hamilton considered the “best in the world.”
Under Hamilton’s system, senators and a national “governor” would be chosen by special electors, and would serve for life. Members of an assembly would be elected directly by citizens; each member would serve a three-year term. State governors would be chosen by the national governor.”
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/duel-hamilton-and-us-constitution/
As a general rule, the greatest threats to liberty on our side of the pond always came from those who our Left and their ‘court historians’ agree were our greatest statesmen.
Are the details locked away forever or can the next climate czar release them?
Yep. China approved almost 100GW of new coal plants in 2024. The UK should definitely follow their example!
Chyna, Chyna, Chyna.
China’s use of renewables is dwarfed by fossil fuels. Stark wasn’t quite stupid enough to use the “95% of all renewables are in China” line because 95% of eff all is eff all.
Vast fields of solar seem to be located in rural rather than industrial areas, presumably as a stop gap to getting coal fired power stations built there, so people have some electricity at least.
The build out of new coal stations appears to be concurrent with the building of new nuclear, more than the rest of the world put together. Come 60 years time they will be switching off, by then, ageing coal and connecting 1.4Bn people to full nuclear, while we’re still struggling to build new, grossly expensive (thanks to Newt conservation, environmental rules and Health and Safety regulations, amongst others) nuclear, and all the talk of SMR’s will be swamped with the same problems.
Nor do I blame China for any of this, they may have an obnoxious regime, but it’s dragged 1.4Bn people from poverty in a mere 40 years or so, a feat never achieved in mankind’s history.
No, this is our fault for being complacent enough that we believed the welfare state doesn’t come at vast cost. And we don’t get out of this without paring it back to the bone and stimulating business to generate enough wealth to pay off the debts we have accumulated.
Excellent comment apart from the call to pay off the public debt, which should instead be repudiated because it is immoral.
To put it bluntly, anyone who has ever loaned money to a government knows that the ultimate beneficiaries and obligors of all government debt are not only separate parties, but that repayment by the latter is always achieved through coercion.
Our idiot politicians count on inflation to eventually make the debt payments inconsequential.
Yup. Government debt is simply deferred taxation, whether paid directly in taxes or indirectly in the form of a debased money. Btw, I failed to point out, above, that government debt is also immoral because the obligation to repay is usually shifted out in time to generations beyond those that actually benefitted from the government’s initial ‘largesse’.
…plus capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes that ensure governments get about 25% of everything’s value once per generation.
The welfare state is about to go bust.
The bottom has fallen out of the Chinese solar boom. More than 40 sector players have gone bankrupt and 87,000 jobs have been lost. The boom was subsidized by massive Government bungs that led to huge overcapacity which sank prices and destroyed profits. The industry has been in decline since 2023.
All over China there are ghost solar farms busy producing no electricity similar to the ghost cities with no people.
“ghost solar farms”
This seems likely but I don’t find a reference.
China’s solar industry appears to be in decline according to Reuters. I am completely devastated by the news……..NOT!
China’s solar giants quietly shed a third of their workforces last year | Reuters
“BEIJING, August 1 (Reuters) – China’s biggest solar firms shed nearly one-third of their workforces last year, company filings show, as one of the industries hand-picked by Beijing to drive economic growth grapples with falling prices and steep losses.
The job cuts illustrate the pain from the vicious price wars being fought across Chinese industries, including solar and electric vehicles, as they grapple with overcapacity and tepid demand. The world produces twice as many solar panels each year as it uses, with most of them manufactured in China.”
Except, there is increasing evidence that the population is much below 1.4Bn. Japanese estimates of salt consumption suggest 800M. Wonder where the people went.
The estimates of the missing population has a high variance.
Soylent Green?
“Vast fields of solar seem to be …” … a way of soaking up the excess production that can’t be sold to the rest of the world. That productions does keep people employed, housed, and fed.
Industrial areas need reliable electricity: Coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro.
Have they dragged people out of poverty? Two points.
1) You can’t believe most of the data coming out of China.
2) The non-communist world has created much more wealth without the huge violations of human rights that China routinely engages in.
The vast majority of the intellectual property in China was stolen from the West (e.g. high-speed trains, based on IP from Alsthom, Siemens, and Bombardier).
Chris Stark calling for the UK to embrace the cold hard economics of going green is funny.. He and the Climate Change Committee have never faced the cold hard economics of Net Zero.
Remember in their latest report earlier this year they said this (page 306)
“For the typical household bills will be lower in 2050 than in 2025 for heating and driving with minimal changes to food costs”
You have to believe in fairy dust to accept that.
Mine isn’t. I’m managing it myself!
I’ve put some aside in Bitcoin. It’s doing very well.
DuckDuckGo “Search Assist” provides the following:
Defined benefit plans provide a guaranteed payout at retirement based on salary and years of service, while defined contribution plans depend on contributions made by the employee and employer, with benefits varying based on investment performance. The shift from defined benefit to defined contribution plans has placed more responsibility on employees to save for retirement.
Guaranteed is a misnomer. See Chicago and other large city pension assets versus obligations.
I too had a ‘defined contribution’ while employed that converted to self-managed after retirement. Now, approaching post-retirement, I pay advisor services at a large mutual fund company to take care of the management. We consult on the approach; she does the work. Part of the reason for this is that when I reach ambient temperature, follow-up will be simple.
It’s a bit difficult to listen to because of the heavy accent, but it is pretty basic Econ 101. You can either have your money working for you, or for some cause. If you choose to have it work for a cause, you, and you alone need to choose that, not someone else. If someone else does it without you agreeing to it, then that is highly unethical, and possibly fraud. Any money working for a cause should basically be seen as a contribution, since it is no longer working for you. I would call that “stupid money”.
There are lawsuits in the US addressing those issues and the results, so far, are that most money managing outfits are running scared. Not sure, but I think Texas is the lead in putting the screws to them.
‘Wait till they start rioting – then arrest everyone.’
Good job, this cartoon. You sure you haven’t imported Democrats or Biden’s DOJ?
We have Labour. What’s the difference?
As I’ve said before, I can’t keep track of UK politics; guess I’d have to be a native. But from what you imply, probably not much of a difference. But at least here, we can maybe cap a few when the time presents. At the very least, we can-hopefully-jail a few…but prob. not. Sigh.
No difference whatsoever. Only Starmer et al have to pretend they like Trump. The Democrats are out in the open on that one.
Sounds like China. China wants a massive embassy in London…..for spying and arresting any Chinese dissidents for torture inside the “embassy”. Chicoms are very aggressive and of course are LIARS.
Oh, you DO have Democrats. Please, take a few more. They’ve already been paid for by China, so just snatch them up. Think of the $$$you can save…oh, wait a minute..
And the west has been a model of honesty and integrity over the past 200 years…..
It’s yet another nation, along with Russia, which has largely abandoned imposing strict communism on its people and enabled them to engage in the Capitalist endeavour and become self sufficient. Millionaires and billionaires abound in the country.
They were also second only to the USSR in the number of people lost during WW2 fighting the Axis. Meanwhile, other than border disputes, unlike the west, China has sent no expeditionary forces overseas to fight for oil. It has zero military bases outside it’s territorial waters (Russia has fewer than 20, all by invitation of internationally recognised governments) and the west (NATO) has over 700, some (Syria) are/were illegal.
Yes, you are likely to get arrested for criticising the government, but 30 people a day are arrested in the UK for Non Crime Hate Incidents (NCHI’s) from which a few immediate things should jump: How can anyone be arrested for a “Non Crime” and what defines the term “Hate”. The answer, as can be seen from above, is simply upsetting someone by expressing hurty, albeit justified, words on a shop window – or in a social media post.
Now we are joining the EU’s Digital Services Act with our own Online Safety Act. Already, criticism of our government officials has been censored. Social media platform operators are threatened with fines of up to 10% of their global turnover if they don’t police individual posts, which they have little to no control over.
In the greatest twist of irony the world has perhaps ever seen, the EU and UK kleptocrats imposing this will head for the hills as fast as their little legs can carry them, the moment Russia has Ukraine under control.
When citizens begin to ask why all their taxpayers money was wasted on a futile endeavour which was all but resolved in April 2022, these people will have no answers. When they ask why the west watched as Russia reamed itself to become the most formidable military in the world, they will have no answers. And when they ask why western propaganda was mercilessly turned on them by their own malign governments, presenting Russia as a peasant occupied, glorified gas station, they will have no answers.
Once again, the west has attacked Russia. Napoleon tried, the British tries, the Nazi’s tried and the combined might of NATO tried. All have failed, and Europe’s citizens will ask too many unanswerable questions. Starmer, von der Leyen, Boris Johnson, Merz, Kaja Kallas, Scholz, Habeck and Baerbock and their socialist polices will be finished.
Delicious for Russian’s. They killed socialism off in their own country and will be responsible for ridding Western Europe of the same disease.
All China has to do is pick up the pieces.
Support war criminals like Putin…Stalin ….much? Stalin had his train under steam as the Germans approached Moscow – what saved him was USA and British aid. Putin is a moron criminal….a very strong enemy of the Russian people. The Russian population is far lower than it would be w/o the Czars and commie dictators finding ways to kill them. In my dictionary…..Putin Stalin Mao Xi Jinping Kimmy Jong appear as beneath scum.
Just like under communism, those who run government and their friends and family get fabulously wealthy. If you object, you get thrown in jail.
Calling either China or Russia, capitalistic shows a complete ignorance of both economics and history.
Must say I’m not surprised to see you still defending Putin’s desire to put the Soviet Union back together.
After all, it was Chinese military guru Sun Tzu who wrote in “The Art Of War” –
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.“
Pension and investment funds need to do two things
At one time it seemed that ‘Green’ funds would be attractive to investors and would make profit, provided taxpayers carried on subsidising GreenCrap™.
Unfortunately subsidies are being rolled back and ‘Green’ industries are dying faster than moths in a nuclear blast…and ‘Green’ funds are amongst the worst performing on the markets.
“At one time it seemed that ‘Green’ funds would be attractive “
Like tulips?
or tulip bulbs even
The answer is that none of them have gone to prison yet for violating rules.
The core of socialism is the belief that the elite have the right, if not obligation, to use as much “other people’s money” as they need in order to perfect society.
Most of the time, the means government workers using taxpayer funds.
Over time, socialists have started to realize that they can’t extract enough money from the economy via taxes to do all the good work they want to do. So they reach out to other piles of money.
In their minds, perfecting the world takes precedence over anything as trivial as fiduciary duty.
One of the main reasons that investors and investment firms have been abandoning green finance is that both have been rejecting the climate crisis theory in ever-larger numbers. Canada provides a typical example because only three years ago 73% of the population felt that climate change was the #1 issue facing the country. Today surveys show only 4% share those sentiments as they fail to see major shifts in weather occurrences but hardly appreciate proposed EV mandates, inconsistent alternate energies like wind and solar and obviously unattainable Net Zero targets. As well, when they hear that the government has spent between $150 and $220 billion on green initiatives and is nowhere near being on track for its emissions reduction goals, they feel that to keep throwing their own money on grossly underperforming green investments, they would soon be at the top of the suckers’ list. Better for everyone, governments and investors, to put their money into proven energies like fossil fuels, hydro and pipelines with proven past returns.
Very nice.
Milliband’s suggestion to copy China’s energy policy would be a vast improvement over his own policy, but do not get your hopes up. Milliband apparently got his info on China from a Polish relative living in a Uighur ‘reeducation’ camp. .
For what it is worth, green is symbolic of greed.