'Green' groups worked with Enron to make billions in CO2 trading schemes with made up global warming

MLB is now intertwined with the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) which rose to prominence allied with Enron. The group praised Enron as a great environmental steward:

• NRDC's Ralph Cavanaugh was quite impressed with Ken Lay's opposition to some anti-environmental measures in Congress. "He is part of the reason why the bad guys ultimately failed at most of what they attempted," Cavanaugh stated.
• "On environmental stewardship, our experience is that
• you can trust Enron""...

NRDC and other 'green' groups were in on the beginnings of using the global warming movement as a way

• to trade carbon emissions for great profit for Enron. That was the whole point of the global warming movement.

NRDC presents itself as a saintly and progressive organization and has shaken down MLB, diverting the efforts and attention of players and fans.

• On MLB provided sites, the NRDC encourages teams and fans to buy carbon offsets, an unproven and scandal ridden web of 'green' businesses which include energy and oil companies. (Detailed numerous times on this blog and of no interest to anyone)

In 1997, Christopher Horner worked as a lawyer for Enron for a few weeks, and there ran into the NRDC. Transcript of his radio interview on Glenn Beck, 11/18/08, about 3/4 down the page:

• "GLENN: Okay. So you were an attorney and they hired you (in 1997) to do what?

HORNER: It was essentially a job offer to be director of federal government relations and that's what law firms do is send associates in to clients. And off I went and was told that

• my number one priority was to get
• a global warming treaty.

I ran into the Natural Resources Defense Counsel at Enron's palatial offices in D.C. and then my first or second day on the job I sat around the table with BP, American Gas Association. And on the other side, oh, union of concerned scientists and other equally measured folks. And I discovered that I was there chairing for Kenny boys who don't make it.

• This was in 1997 before there was a Kyoto protocol,

before there was unanimous Senate instruction to not agree to a Kyoto protocol and it amazed me that

• we were figuring out how to get a Kyoto protocol.

And I came back to my office, sent an e-mail, Houston, we have a problem; do you have any idea

• this group you are chairing is trying to get an energy rationing treaty.

And that went over not too well and they said we didn't get a chance to explain our business plan, we bought a bunch of companies on the cheap

• that don't make any money now but they will if we get this regime in place,

that subsequent memos after they came out of the unpleasantness were supposed to be good to Enron.

• Be the biggest boon to Enron depending on the, citing a bunch of green groups and so on.

• It's the world's second oldest profession.""...****

THE CLIMATE CHANGE INDUSTRY IS NOW THE LARGEST IN THE WORLD, with that much money involved in this big a scam, no wonder Obama threatens use of the military...

• Including "Enron, a pioneer in the climate-change industry. (5/30/09, National Post, Solomon)

Almost two decades before President Barack Obama made “cap-and-trade” for carbon dioxide emissions a household term,

• an obscure company called Enron — a natural-gas pipeline company that had become a big-time trader in energy commodities —

had figured out how to make millions in a cap-and-trade program for sulphur dioxide emissions, thanks to changes in the U.S. government’s Clean Air Act. To the delight of shareholders,

• Enron’s stock price rose rapidly as it became the major trader in the U.S. government’s $20-billion a year emissions commodity market.

Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, keen to engineer an encore, saw his opportunity when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were inaugurated as president and vice-president in 1993.

• To capitalize on Al Gore’s interest in global warming, Enron immediately embarked on a massive lobbying effort

to develop a trading system for carbon dioxide, working both the Clinton administration and Congress. Political contributions and Enron-funded analyses flowed freely,

• all geared to demonstrating a looming global catastrophe if carbon dioxide emissions weren’t curbed.

An Enron-funded study that dismissed the notion that calamity could come of global warming, meanwhile, was quietly buried.

• To magnify the leverage of their political lobbying, Enron also worked the environmental groups. Between 1994 and 1996, the Enron Foundation donated $1-million to the Nature Conservancy and its Climate Change Project, a leading force for global warming reform, while Lay and other individuals associated with Enron donated $1.5-million to environmental groups seeking international controls on carbon dioxide.

The intense lobbying paid off. Lay became a member of president Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development, as well as his friend and advisor. In the summer of 1997, prior to global warming meetings in Kyoto, Japan, Clinton sought Lay’s advice in White House discussions.

• The fruits of Enron’s efforts came soon after, with the signing of the Kyoto Protocol."...

“Enron now has excellent credentials with many ‘green’ interests including Greenpeace, WWF [World Wildlife Fund],

• NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council],

German Watch, the U.S. Climate Action Network, the European Climate Action Network, Ozone Action, WRI [World Resources Institute] and Worldwatch. This position should be increasingly cultivated and capitalized on (monetized),” (former EPA regulator and lead Enron Kyoto lobbyist) Polisano explained."...

• "Enron's Other Secret," by Lawrence Solomon, 5/30/09

*********************** Horner from another interview, 11/23/08, on his brief time with Enron in 1997:

• "I was seated next to the American Gas Association, Niagara Mohawk Power and BP, and on my other side was the Union of Concerned Scientists and so forth.’

That big players in global energy should be in cahoots with environmentalists and climate change alarmists came as something of a shock to Horner. "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’....

‘I came back to my office and sent an email, essentially saying “Houston, we have a problem”. Did they have any idea what this group, which I was essentially chairing in [former Enron boss] Ken Lay’s stead, was doing? That didn’t go over well. 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 Buffet; solar panels, now held by BP, and so on.’

• “Criticism of the global warming consensus is increasingly regarded as heresy”

While (Ken) Lay, later convicted of a massive accounting fraud at Enron,

• was visiting the Oval Office just a few weeks later to

• give Bill Clinton and Al Gore tips on how to negotiate at Kyoto,

Horner decided to jump ship and go over to the ‘other side’. Or maybe, if you’re a climate change activist, that should be called ‘the dark side’."...

• Cap and Trade, The Temple of Enron:

“Since 1976, Enron [and predecessor company] employees have been at the forefront of developing air credit trading policies for governments and businesses…. Enron today is the largest and most sophisticated air emissions credit and allowance trading organization in the United States. Since 1990, Enron has participated in over 80 SOx allowance transactions and has also been active in establishing policies for trading NOx in the United States and carbon [dioxide] world-wide.”

- “Enron Corp.’s Participation in Air Trading,” Enron Capital & Trade Resources, November 4, 1996 (copy in files).

“If implemented, [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative…. The endorsement of [CO₂] emissions trading was another victory for us…. This agreement will be good for Enron stock!”

- John Palmisano (December 12, 1997) from Kyoto, Japan. Quoted in Bradley, Capitalism at Work, p. 307

“If anyone has environmental credit needs, that’s what we do. We want to be to be the clearing house to

monetize available credits or to manage risk.”

- Kevin McGowan, director of coal and emissions trading, Enron Corp., (Enron Biz, November 29, 2000, copy in files)

“We are a green company, but the green stands for money.”

- Jeff Skilling, CEO, Enron Corp., quoted in Capitalism at Work, p. 310.

Enron is Exhibit A against Waxman/Markey’s cap-and-trade proposal.

• Enron was poised to make money coming and going by being the nation’s and the world’s largest market-maker in CO₂ permits,

and the “smartest guys in the room” were ready to game and game for incremental dollars (remember California?)....

And so, happy-be-it that, in the words of a Ken Lay (with Roger Sant) editorial, “Controlling Climate Change: It Is Not a Sprint, It Is a Marathon” (Energy Daily: September 1, 1998). Such a “marathon” (and although not mentioned, complexity) is what Enron wanted and needed—

• to make money month after month, year after year

• in a political-market setting."...

5/14/09

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