So apparently we’re going to “partner” with giant investment company, BlackRock, to invest in renewables via a $2 billion fund, all part of our Net Zero effort to get to 100% renewable energy by ????…. well, sometime this century.
Naturally “Chippie” is very happy about this and it’s across the MSM, both here and overseas.
To be fair, some on the Left are not happy about this: BlackRock are Corporate Nazgul and this investment deal is manipulative Greenwash.
Yeah, preach it brother Bomber Bradbury. I’m confident that the likely incoming National-led government will fully approve of this when they land in government later this year because National worship huge corporates.
Perhaps all the parties should go back in time, just to just over a year ago:
Investment Giant BlackRock Loses $1.7 Trillion In Six Months
BlackRock lost $1.7 trillion of its clients’ money since the beginning of the year — the largest sum ever lost by a single firm over a six-month period, according to a Wednesday report from Bloomberg analyst Marc Rubenstein.
Blackrock are one of the largest fund managers in the world, controlling trillions of dollars of their clients’ funds – which is often the retirement and pension savings of typical American investors.
So why is this good news? Because BlackRock have been one of the leading proponents of the bullshit known as ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), insisting that companies it invests in use this method of measuring themselves rather than boring old crap like revenue, profits, dividends and ROI (Return on Investment):
By adopting ESG goals — or, in the case of BlackRock, pushing portfolio companies into adopting ESG goals — executives commit themselves to pursuing green energy, appointing a certain number of minorities to serve as managers, or otherwise blending profitability with progressive politics.
BlackRock have been bullying bastards on this matter since they have so much financial power. They even managed to place three environmental activists on the 12-person board of Exxon Mobil. That’s how much power they have.
Or perhaps had. You’ve all heard of luxury goods, things you can buy when you have a lot of money. Well there are also things called luxury ideas; electric cars in a world of $NZ 20/litre petrol; a world of organic farming and 100% renewable energy, But also very gauzy academic ideas like ESG or White Privilege and Critical Race Theory.
Which is to say that when times get tough, when the food, the petrol and the money start running out and that Bachelor in Environmental Gender Studies just ain’t pulling in the big bucks, luxury ideas tend to get jettisoned, and right quick. BlackRock is not at that stage yet; more pain must be inflicted on them.
However, an exclusive Daily Wire poll conducted by Echelon Insights showed earlier this year that 64% of respondents believe “individual investors whose savings are being invested” should ultimately decide whether retirement funds and pension plans are allocated according to ESG criteria. A mere 20% believe that “Wall Street asset managers” should make such decisions.
As an old varsity buddy cum investment manager in Wellington told me in the wake of the 1987 share market crash, regarding some clients who’d ignored his warnings, “People don’t react until the blowtorch is applied to the goolies”.
Goolie burning is a nasty business, as Sri Lanka has found out and which deserves its own post. But for the moment let’s note this:
“But the underlying reason for the fall of Sri Lanka is that its leaders fell under the spell of Western green elites peddling organic agriculture and ‘ESG,’ which refers to investments made following supposedly higher Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria. Sri Lanka has a near-perfect ESG score (98) which is higher than Sweden (96) or the United States (51).”
Michael Shellenberger, from his article ‘Green Dogma Behind Fall Of Sri Lanka‘
It’s a tempting idea to kidnap the BlackRock execs and dump them in Sri Lanka where they’ll have, shall we say, direct contact with the joys of near-perfect ESG score. Assholes.
Because nothing says “Your bank is safe but you can’t get your money out” than encountering a Main Battle Tank blocking the front doors.
Could be worse; in the future they’ll probably be using these instead – and this is not from the well-known firm, Boston Dynamics that pioneered these things: this is a Chinese model.
I was talking to my oldest about the robot dog, and we found this article about it: from The Verge
However, it’s likely we will see these sort of weapons in the future anyway … not good.
Onto BLACKROCK:
A while back, I saw that Blackrock was backing down from ESG scores, but likely not in a meaningful way. Will have search back through a couple of months of Twits .. ah, here we are: Entrepreneur Behind Anti-Woke Asset Management Fund Celebrates BlackRock Ending Support For Certain Climate Change Proposals That ‘Micromanage’ Its Portfolio Companies. @VivekGRamaswamy is worth following, though annoyingly enough, even though I do follow him on Twit, they are not showing me any of his updates. Another account I need to turn on notifications for.
Yeah, hence my appreciation for this news…:
Moore is currently working with other Red States to get them doing the same thing. It’ll add up but I don’t want them to stop just when BlackRock cries “uncle”; they’ll just wait and try again when the heat is on.
No, do it even if BlackRock promises to play nice. Hurt them, and especially pricks like Larry Fink; get him fired from BR as a lesson to others. Hurt me? I hurt you!
Oh, and thanks for that piece on the “Chinese” robot dog. I think I may have seen the same guy running an automatic weapon on a drone. 🙂
But I’ve seen that other one, with the custom-fitted sniper rifle, and of course I covered the Israeli’s use of a robot sniper in Iran in the post, The Iran-Israel Cold War. Even cooler was that it blew itself up after the hit.
As of 10am this morning (https://www.transpower.co.nz/system-operator/live-system-and-market-data/consolidated-live-data)
Total demand = 6,550 MW
Hydro 4,283 MW (80% =nameplate capacity)
Geothermal 975 MW (92%)
Gas 579 MW (45%) – one unit out at Huntly
Coal 433 MW (45%) – supply constrained
Wind 90 MW (9% of capacity) – equivalent to 1.3% of total demand
Solar – currently too small to feature but unlikely to be doing much before ~10am
100% renewable…not with rainbows and unicorn farts.
Mind you, at least we aren’t aussie. Under Chris Bowen and other assorted muppets, they are fucked, and for what:
https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=CHN~AUS~NZL~USA~IND#what-are-the-country-s-annual-co2-emissions
Thanks for that. Farcical. I wonder if anybody in the National Party will show these figures to Luxon. He is a numbers man, so he claims.