The Redemption and Rehabilitation of Enron

Rent Seekers, Greenist Puppets, and the Rest of Us

In the NZ Herald recently we were treated to an advocacy piece by three authors urging the government to continue with the Emissions Trading Scheme. One of the authors was Gary Taylor, a long time greenist. Another was Peter Neilson whose employment requires him to advocate for greenist causes (he is chief executive of the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development—a quango created by the Labour government to garner the support of business for its environmental causes). The third was Peter Clark, CEO of PF Olsen, a company deeply involved in the forestry industry.

It is the combination of greenists and business that presents an intriguing picture that should give pause for careful reflection. The piece itself was arguing that New Zealand stands to suffer many bad consequences if it does not press ahead with an emissions trading scheme. The world will think us silly if we do not proceed, the authors gravely intone. Actually, the reverse is true. The world thought we were acting like masochistic crazies with our emissions trading scheme. All around the world, now, governments are back pedaling furiously on Kyoto commitments (no nation has got anywhere near the utopian targets recorded on that piece of worthless paper); even the much vaunted European emissions trading scheme—less onerous than our own, incidentally—is being watered down by the day as governments in Europe move to protect and cocoon their manufacturing economies.

Moreover, as each day passes more and more scientists are raising their voices in dissent against the so-called scientific underpinnings of man-caused global warming. The fact that the globe has not warmed for the past ten years, and for the past seven has actually cooled has led many hitherto lemming-like scientists to pause and reconsider the whole global warming enterprise. Many have come to realise that it is more a propaganda spin machine than a serious scientific enterprise. Advocacy has simply replaced hard science—while the rest of us were sleeping. But, thankfully, the world appears to be gradually waking up, notwithstanding “new” politicians like Obama, who on this issue, sounds more and more like a broken record pressed fifteen years ago.

To Obama and his ilk we say, “get your heads out of the sand, and take notice of the change that is happening before your eyes. That is the change you can really believe in.” But this will not be settled by debates over the sciences related to the global climate. It turns out that there are far “darker” powers involved: business has now teamed up with greenists to push for anti-warming government action because business sees a wonderful commercial opportunity.

The greenist-business alliance is reflected in the coalition of authors of the Herald advocacy piece. This is a global phenomenon, however. Christopher Horner has recently authored Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Force, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. Horner is interesting because he first became involved in the global warming crusade while working for Enron. Remember that name. Enron was one of the first companies advocating for a global warming treaty, and Horner was hired to help achieve it. Why, you ask? Surely Enron was an energy company.

It was. It believed, however, that with the passage of a global warming treaty, it stood to make an awful lot of money. A reviewer of Horner's book records:

That big players in global energy should be in cahoots with environmentalists and climate change alarmists came as something of a shock to Horner. ‘Though I was a fully grown man, I had yet to understand the concept of “rent seeking” or even these “baptist and bootlegger” coalitions.’ Just as prohibitionists and drink smugglers had a common interest in maintaining a ban on alcohol, so big companies that want massive subsidies for renewable energy schemes and the right to sell emissions permits – the nearest thing yet to selling thin air – can find common ground with those who want us all to reduce our ‘carbon footprints’.

When Horner finally realised what was going on, and checked back with Enron bosses to make sure they understood what was happening, Enron bosses were not impressed. They knew what they were doing all right:

They reminded me that they knew exactly what they were doing, that they had cobbled up businesses on the relative cheap that would – if they got their way – be worth a fortune. That was now their number one priority: windmills, owned by General Electric; gas pipe, owned by General Electric and Warren Buffett; solar panels, now held by BP, and so on.

Horner is concerned to make people aware that there is little objectivity in the public discourse over man-caused global warming. There is, however, a lot of business and enterprise money being poured into greenist coffers, and into government advocacy—and we need to know why? What has business to gain? Well, in the end, business has only one end goal--profit. This of course is not a bad thing in and of itself. But it becomes both instantaneously bad and corrupt when business teams up with governments to create regulatory monopolies that skim money off everyone else, not as a result of creating value, but as a result of favourable government regulation. It becomes a private rent-seeking tax, enforced by governmental power.

Horner is even more scathing about politicians: "[Global warming] allows them the option of cheap virtue – cheap to them, expensive to us – of satisfying constituencies for something that’s never solved. They get to emote and spend; there’s something in it for everyone."

There is a breathtaking irony in the smear constantly perpetrated against those who oppose the global warming propaganda machine as being in the “pockets” of big-business. The reverse is the truth. It is the global warming alarmists who are in the “pockets of big-business”. Like the recently dumped Labour government—the very thing of which they accuse their opponents, is what they themselves are guilty. As Horner puts it:

There’s a lot of rich people backing this cause. Al Gore has just raised $300million. Over the past few years, the greens continue to say we receive Exxon Mobil support – and we do not. But where did Al Gore get $300million, far more than the entire sceptic community has received ever from any source? No one seems to care. How much of this is from George Soros? How much of it is from his buddies at the venture capital companies that are invested in a bunch of dogs-with-fleas that won’t be at all attractive until this regime is put in place? We don’t know – and we don’t have a curious media or state.

As we in New Zealand contemplate the respective merits or demerits of an emissions trading scheme over the next six months, let's not forget one inconvenient truth: the proposed international trading in carbon “units” was first the brainchild of the smart folks at Enron. Now that alone does not make it wrong. But it should give pause for thought. Enron never did anything without believing its commercial payoff would be substantial, if not huge.

So, it is crucial that we follow the money. Who is going to benefit, and how, and why? Only when we get answers to these questions will emissions trading schemes be able to be fairly assessed. As for the greenists in all this—they increasingly looking like naïve puppets being manipulated by rent seekers—that most manipulative, exploitative, immoral, and lazy type of capitalist.