How Climate Change Changed Me

[Valin]

Politico Magazine:

TOM STEYER

July 14, 2014

 

When I learned that the New York Times was planning to report on my time as an investor at Farallon Capital Management, I wanted to sit down with the reporter while I was in New York City to discuss the issue in person—and on the record. After all, it was important to me that they have the facts about investments made under my leadership, my subsequent decision to step down from the fund and why I have sought to engage politically on the issue of climate change. The timing didn’t work out for the reporter, and the New York Times subsequently declined my request to run this op-ed in my own words.

 

The article that ran, which detailed fossil-fuel investments that my former firm made when I was leading it, suggested that those investments were inconsistent with my current advocacy for more progressive energy policies. As I offered to say then, I will say now: I left the firm and committed myself to addressing global climate change because—based on the scientific evidence—I could not reconcile my personal values with managing a fund that by mandate is invested in all sectors of the global economy, including fossil fuels.

 

Farallon, as defined by both the returns generated for its investors and its professionalism, is a high performing investment organization, but its personnel were never focused on climate impacts. And it’s true—Farallon did make fossil fuel investments under my watch. But the more I learned about the energy and climate problems we currently face, the more I realized I had to change my life. I concluded that the best way to align my work with my beliefs was to make a real change—leaving my role managing a firm with investments across the industrial spectrum, and instead joining in the global effort to find a solution to climate change once and for all.

(Snip)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

the global effort to find a solution to climate change once and for all........

 

[Valin]

He's explaining, and he's losing
Benjamin Zycher
7/18/14

"He" is Tom Steyer, fossil-fuel billionaire past and present, but now a global-warming activist with the zealotry of a convert, a major funder of politicians promoting the climate-change industry, and a scourge of climate deniers, the Keystone XL pipeline and ordinary people for whom inexpensive energy is a central condition for economic advancement. For reasons simultaneously obvious and subtle, Steyer is a bit touchy about the genesis of his vast fortune — the upper-crust cocktail parties can become rather uncomfortable when the expensive booze releases the ire of the environmental lefties — and so he has offered any number of rationalizations for the yawning chasm between his past investments in coal and oil and his current investment in climate change politics.

Unsurprisingly, the rationalizations fall flat, as a billion-dollar coal-and-oil peg simply cannot fit into the apocalyptic hole of climate-change orthodoxy. And so Steyer now is making a virtue of necessity by framing his transformation as a quest for absolution, an effort consistent with the central nature of modern environmentalism as a religious movement. Consider Steyer's recent essay in Politico Magazine: "How Climate Change Changed Me," a title that calls to mind the vast and amusing number of real and imagined phenomena for which anthropogenic warming has been blamed. (Example: increased UFO sightings.) So: Is it the purported heat that has affected Steyer's thinking? Or is it the contortions necessary to transform a fossil-fuels billionaire into a green superhero?

The answer is less obvious than one might imagine, as the essay offers the kind of sloppy thinking typical of college sophomores writing an assignment the morning it is due:

(Snip)

Notwithstanding his intellectual failings, Steyer has proven himself a master at working the system, first to amass a fossil-fuel fortune, and now to bask in the applause of the environmental left even as he feeds at the green energy subsidy trough. There is nothing wrong with profiting from government policies; but Steyer is perfectly happy to do so while simultaneously masquerading as a green moralist and accusing those "promoting the political agenda of the fossil-fuel industry" of a lack of transparency. Thus has he descended into a display of crass dishonesty shameless even by Beltway standards. And thus has his influence already begun to wane.

 

[Geee]

Steyer Group’s Financial Struggles Cast Shadow on $100 Mil Fundraising Pledge

 

Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer has pledged to pour $100 million into midterm elections this year electing like-minded Democrats, but Politico reports that he’s on track to fall well short of that goal.

 

If fundraising doesn’t pick up, Politico notes, it could be a black eye for Steyer and other radical environmentalists who hope to make global warming a winning issue for Democrats.

 

http://freebeacon.com/politics/steyer-groups-financial-struggles-cast-shadow-on-100-mil-fundraising-pledge/

[Valin]

Steyer Group’s Financial Struggles Cast Shadow on $100 Mil Fundraising Pledge

 

Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer has pledged to pour $100 million into midterm elections this year electing like-minded Democrats, but Politico reports that he’s on track to fall well short of that goal.

 

If fundraising doesn’t pick up, Politico notes, it could be a black eye for Steyer and other radical environmentalists who hope to make global warming a winning issue for Democrats.

 

http://freebeacon.com/politics/steyer-groups-financial-struggles-cast-shadow-on-100-mil-fundraising-pledge/

 

I'm going shopping tomorrow, could you remind me to pick a quart of sympathy? I'm fresh out. Thanks.

[Geee]

 

Steyer Group’s Financial Struggles Cast Shadow on $100 Mil Fundraising Pledge

 

Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer has pledged to pour $100 million into midterm elections this year electing like-minded Democrats, but Politico reports that he’s on track to fall well short of that goal.

 

If fundraising doesn’t pick up, Politico notes, it could be a black eye for Steyer and other radical environmentalists who hope to make global warming a winning issue for Democrats.

 

http://freebeacon.com/politics/steyer-groups-financial-struggles-cast-shadow-on-100-mil-fundraising-pledge/

 

I'm going shopping tomorrow, could you remind me to pick a quart of sympathy? I'm fresh out. Thanks.

 

Steyer is also a member of the Democracy Alliance. A billionaires group which includes Soros, out to push liberal policies by funding liberal candidates and groups. It is a secretive group who tries to keep their names from becoming public, but some have leaked. I have posted several articles about them.

 

About reminding you - if you can remind me to remind you I will. Not to good at remembering to remember lately