For better or worse, billionaires now guide climate policy

They are not elected to any office. But in the fight against global warming, the world’s billionaires have more influence than many heads of state.

As government struggles to move quickly to contain greenhouse gases, ultrawealthy investors and philanthropists are increasingly grabbing the reins, using their fortunes to guide the transition to cleaner energy toward their favored projects and market strategies.

They are men with household names like Jeff Bezos (net worth: $114 billion, according to Forbes), Mike Bloomberg ($77 billion) and Bill Gates ($106 billion), along with other billionaires who have lower profiles but equally large climate ambition. Their role as shadow policymakers has grown amid the evolution of the Biden administration climate agenda and the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, known as COP27, where their projects were on prominent display.

“This kind of hobbyist approach has become a big factor in the way we are addressing climate change,” said David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California at San Diego. “Is this the ideal way to do it? No. The ideal way would be large publicly oriented programs. But that is not happening anywhere in the world.”

Many of these men have benefited from the same industrialization they are now purporting to save us from. In a recent report, Oxfam International found that 125 billionaires create more emissions through their investments and lifestyle than all of France.

“They need to pay up, and not as philanthropy,” said Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a climate activist from the Philippines. “What they are doing is not solidarity or aid. They should not be praised for this. Their greed has caused the global climate crisis.”

It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club! ~ George Carlin

(Warning! Typical George Carlin language!) May 4, 2014

“But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never gonna get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got.

Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t.

You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want:

They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them.

That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting ***ked by a system that threw them overboard 30 ***king years ago.

They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money.

They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something?

They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, ‘cause they own this ***king place.

It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks.

The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people — white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on — good honest hard-working people continue — these are people of modest means — continue to elect these rich ************s who don’t give a ***k about them. They don’t give a ***k about you.

They don’t give a ***k about you. They don’t care about you at all — at all — at all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their ********** everyday. Because the owners of this country know the truth: it’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

― George Carlin////May 4, 2014

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/964648-but-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason

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