Spot the Vested Interest: The $1.5 Trillion Climate Change Industry

Climate Change Business Journal estimates the Climate Change Industry is a $1.5 Trillion dollar escapade, which means four billion dollars a day is spent on our quest to change the climate. That includes everything from carbon markets to carbon consulting, carbon sequestration, renewables, biofuels, green buildings and insipid cars. For comparison global retail sales online are worth around $1.5 trillion. So all the money wasted on the climate is equivalent to all the goods bought online.

The special thing about this industry is that it wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for an assumption about relative humidity that is probably wrong. As such, it’s the only major industry in the world dependent on consumer and voter ignorance. This is not just another vested interest in a political debate; it’s vested-on-steroids, a mere opinion poll away from extinction. You can almost hear the captains of climate industry bellowing: “Keep ‘em ignorant and believing, or the money goes away!”.

To state the obvious:

Policy, or the anticipation of new policy, has been one of the biggest drivers of the industry, the report shows.

Most industries this size exist because they produce something the market wants. They worry that competitors might chip into their market share, but they don’t worry that the market might disappear overnight. Normal industries fear that a “bad” political outcome might reduce profits by ten or twenty percent, and sometimes they donate “both ways”. But the climate industry has literally a trillion on the table that depends on big-government policy and election outcomes. They are always one prime-time documentary away from disaster. What if the public saw that thermometers were next to industrial exhaust vents? What if they learned that the climate models are unskilled, broken, and non-functional, or that 28 million weather balloons show carbon reduction is fruitless pursuit? What if they knew historic records are wildly adjusted to make the current weather look warmer than it would?

So while The Guardian worries about the dark and evil influence of the fossil fuels industry they don’t seem at all concerned about the vested-monster-in-the-kitchen, the 1.5 Trillion Climate Industry. Ditto for the intrepid souls at the ABC/BBC/CBC who think they speak truth to power, but miss the most powerful lobby in the climate debate.

By the way, you can buy the 200 page Climate Change Consulting Report for $995, or not.

Insurance Journal

Figures for the climate change consulting market are expected to more than double in the next five years, and the report’s authors believe the climate change industry as a whole will have an even steeper and faster growth trajectory than the environmental consulting industry – an industry that in 1976 had billings of $600 million and today generates $27 billion.

The sectors covered in the A new 200 page report include:

I think the lesson here is that if you have a dodgy theory, set up a dependent industry fast, and sit back while they lobby and push your theory for you.

UPDATE: Its worth keeping in mind that only 43% of certified climate scientists agree with the IPCC “consensus” that man-made CO2 is the main driver of climate change. There is no consensus.



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