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Stephens: Climate Prophets and Profiteers
The most cynical part of John Kerry's climate-change speech.
By
Bret Stephens
connect
<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304675504579389492229581738?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304675504579389492229581738.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_Opinion_LEADTop#>
#
Feb. 17, 2014 7:14 p.m. ET
The weirdest thing about John Kerry
<http://topics.wsj.com/person/K/John-Kerry/7196>'s weekend speech on
climate-changeâ??other than the fact that this is the same guy who in
1997 voted to forbid the U.S. from signing the Kyoto Protocolâ??is that
it begins by quoting something Maurice Strong said at the U.N.'s 1992
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro: "Every bit of evidence I've seen
persuades me that we are on a course leading to tragedy."
Maurice who?
Mr. Strong, a former oil executive from Canada (he was Pierre Trudeau's
pick to run state-owned Petro-Canada in the mid-1970s), was for many
years the U.N.'s ultimate mandarin. He organized many of its
environmental mega-confabs, including the 1972 Stockholm Conference and
the 1992 Rio summit, before rising to become Kofi Annan's right-hand
man. At various times Mr. Strong has served as director at the World
Economic Forum, chairman of the Earth Council and the World Resources
Institute, vice chairman of the Chicago Climate Exchange and chairman of
the China Carbon Corporation, to name just a few of his many prominent
affiliations.
In 2005 it emerged that Mr. Strong, who was the chairman of the U.N.
panel that created the Office of the Iraq Program, had accepted a check
for close to $1 million from a South Korean businessman named Tongsun
Park, who in the 1970s had been involved in an effort to bribe U.S.
politicians. Mr. Strong claimed that the check, from a Jordanian bank,
was meant as an investment in a family company that later went bankrupt.
Mr. Park (who also sublet office space from Mr. Strong) later went to
prison for trying to bribe U.N. officials overseeing the Oil-for-Food
program that was propping up Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Mr. Strong
was accused of no wrongdoing and has denied involvement in Oil-for-Food.
He left the U.N. that year and moved to Beijing.
Enlarge Image <javascript://>
Maurice Strong in Beijing in January 2003. Reuters
Draw your own conclusions. Ask yourself: Is this a guy who deserves a
shout-out from the U.S. Secretary of State?
When John Kerry
<http://topics.wsj.com/person/K/john-kerry/7196?lc=int_mb_1001> speaks,
people wonder: Is he seriously clever or totally oblivious? Profound or
void? Detective Columbo or Chance the gardener?
The secretary devoted much of his speech to venting spleen at those in
the "Flat Earth Society" who dispute the 97% of climate scientists who
believe in man-made global warming. "We should not allow a tiny minority
of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with
scientific fact," he said. Once upon a time people understood that
skepticism was essential to good science. Now Mr. Kerry is trying to
invoke a specious democracy among scientists to shut down democratic
debate for everyone else.
This is of a piece with the amusing notion that the only thing standing
in the way of climate salvation is a shadowy, greedy and powerful
conspiracy involving the Koch Brothers, MIT's Dick Lindzen, Oklahoma
Sen. Jim Inhofe and this newspaper's editorial page. Oh, the power!
And yet there goes Mr. Kerry extolling Mr. Strong, who really does stand
at the obscure intersection of public policy, private profits and the
climate science that joins the two. "I have to disclose my own
association with this process in my earlier role in the United Nations
negotiations which established the basis for the development of these
new [market] opportunities," Mr. Strong said in a 2007 speech, noting
his roles in the Chicago Climate Exchange and the China Carbon Corporation.
If George W. Bush <http://topics.wsj.com/person/B/George-W.-Bush/5369>
had left office and immediately joined the boards of defense contractors
building MRAPs for Iraq, hard questions would be raised. When Maurice
Strong, Al Gore and other climate profiteers seek to enrich themselves
from policies they put into place while in office, it scarcely raises an
eyebrow.
It should. The carbon-trading schemes enacted with such fanfare just a
few years ago have effectively ceased to operate amid collapsing prices.
The sustainable-energy craze produced the expensive bankruptcies of
solar-panel maker Solyndra, Fisker Automotive and battery maker A123
Systems, to name a few. Germany, which has taken its climate-change
fetish further than any other major economy, is now coming to grips with
a comprehensive fiasco of higher energy prices and higher carbon
emissions. Who would have thought that when the sun doesn't shine or the
wind doesn't blow, people might still want to switch on the lights?
It is now the dogma of the left that any hint of doubt when it comes to
predictions of climate doom is evidence of greed, stupidity, moral
turpitude or psychological derangement. "Climate denial" is intended to
be the equivalent of Holocaust denial. And yet the only people who've
predicted anything right so far are those who foresaw that the Kyoto
Protocol would fail, that renewable energies didn't really work, and
that climate bureaucrats accountable to nobody but their own sense of
virtue and taste for profit were a danger to everyone.
Rereading Mr. Kerry's speech, I have to say he really does come across
as a true believer. That it begins by citing Maurice Strong, the
ultimate cynic, tells you what you need to know about where this strain
of true belief leads.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304675504579389492229581738?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304675504579389492229581738.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
"Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeonâ?Ś.the
pigeon knocks over all the pieces, sh--s on the board and then struts
around like it won the game."
Vladimir Putin
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