Climate Risk Is Negligible, Free Speech IS Endangered!

Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

….

…. 

Climate risk is being hyped by corporatists in inverse proportion to actual public concern over the issue while the real risk is the squelching of free speech.

Last week the corporatists pushing green eggs and scam on ratepayers on taxpayers as part of the Great Green Grift met in London at a conference self-righteously titled as the “Moral Money Summit Europe.” That’s just what the world needs right now, isn’t it? A bunch of bankers out to steal everything they can from us under the banner of morality. The worst evils are, of course, always committed by those preaching the highest of principles they believe for a second. The 20th century proved that as utopian schemes founded on the supposed “common good” descended into one of the darkest eras of humanity. This conference went a bit awry, though, as one speaker threw a white rat on the dinner table, illustrating a few things about climate risk no other big banker wants to hear uttered out loud.

That speaker was a fellow named Stuart Kirk, responsible for “responsible investing” at big bank HSBC ($3+ trillion in assets).  This is a big bank with rapidly shrinking profits, earning a lousy $12.2 billion or 0.4% on its assets for the preceding year. A little bank in New York State in which I own a tiny bit of stock did almost three times as well. The solution for the big guys when you can’t make money the old-fashioned way, of course, is classic corporatist and relies upon lending schemes that amount to raids on public treasuries.

The sub-title of the conference — “Turning Talk Into Action to Hit ESG Targets” — spoke to this strategy in politically correct terms of obfuscation. Stuart Kirk, though, made a critical mistake in his presentation by being more candid. He bluntly said big bankers needed to “get back to making money out of the transition [from fossil fuels to green eggs and scam] because there are thousands of opportunities out there.” That comes at the end of the presentation, which I encourage readers to watch with this background in mind:

Banker Kirk, in other words, was just a tad too honest. Still, I couldn’t help but like the fellow. I’m always attracted to contrarians and those who exhibit optimism in the human sprit even as it plummets into civilizational decline, resorts to mass hysteria and takes direction from the same damned idiot “experts” who have led us into one man-made disaster after another and then show up to fix it. He methodically demolishes the Climate Cassandras for being doomsayers in the same fashion as Steve Koonin in “Unsettled.” He exposes climate risk as complete nonsense. The video has received a lot of attention for this reason, although most commentators fail to note the underlying message of “Let’s get in on that transition and make some money.”

The corporatist crowd behind the hyping of climate risk didn’t like either set of observations from the intrepid “Responsible Investment” banker. He dismissed the climate risk claptrap they were pushing out the door as some perverse sort of morality. Worse, he admitted also that it was all about getting in the Great Great Grift. And, that brings us to the real risk that was indirectly exposed by Kirk; the attempts by elites to squelch free speech; that is to say any speech that goes against the joint corporatist and government platform. Here’s what happened as a result:

HSBC has suspended a senior banker after he referred to climate crisis warnings as “unsubstantiated” and “shrill” during a conference speech that has since been denounced by the lender’s chief executive.

Kirk’s presentation controversially included slides that said “Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong”, while referring to comments made by officials at the UN and Bank of England, who have tried to raise the alarm over global heating.

“Human beings have been fantastic at adapting to change, adapting to climate emergencies, and we will continue to do so,” Kirk told attenders at the Financial Times’ Moral Money conference on Thursday. “Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place.”

Stuart Kirk, who has been HSBC’s head of responsible investing since last July, will remain suspended until the bank completes an internal investigation into the matter.

Yes, the corporatist and government elites have determined one cannot challenge climate risk orthodoxy or expose the agenda. The beatings will continue until this renegade submits, apologizes and disappears forever. The Big Bank, Big Government, Big Green Ministry of Truth has spoken. Their speech is always permitted. of course, but here’s the thing; the coverup is always worse than the crime and we all now know what’s really happening. May it spread far and wide.