Delingpole: Climate Hypocrite George Soros Bets Big on Fossil Fuels

George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management, listens during a seminar titled "Charting
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

George Soros spent $160 million investing in fossil fuel companies in the final quarter of last year alone.

This makes him a huge liar or a massive hypocrite or an outrageous cynic – or, likely, all three – for almost no one in the world has spent more campaigning against “climate change” than Soros.

The Daily Caller reports:

In the last quarter of 2017, Soros Fund Management reported investments in eleven new fossil fuel corporations totalling nearly $160 million, according to his company’s December 31, 2017, filing before the Securities and Exchange Commission reviewed by TheDCNF.

His investments in fossil fuels undermines his public pledge to use his money to eliminate the oil, gas and coal industries, claiming they threaten the planet by accelerating climate change.

The billionaire’s most recent political efforts to warn about climate change was his underwriting of the organizations behind the April 29, 2017, “People’s Climate March” that marked the 100th day of President Donald Trump’s administration. Soros donated $36 million to 18 of the march’s 55 steering committee organizations between 2000 to 2014, according to the Media Research Center.

As with his pal Tom “Rhymes with Liar” Steyer – another billionaire environmental campaigner who has made a chunk of his fortune from fossil fuels – it appears to be a case of “do as I say, not do as I do.”

Let’s be clear: if you truly believe in “man-made climate change” then fossil fuels are a big no no. For a prominent environmental campaigner to profit from them is a bit like a vegan dabbling in foie gras or a Catholic priest engaging in a spot of devil worship.

That’s because the most basic article of faith among climate alarmists is this: that by burning fossil fuels (to generate power) mankind is releasing into the atmosphere unprecedented quantities of carbon dioxide which are causing the planet to heat at a catastrophic rate.

Hence the Keep It In The Ground campaign championed by eco loons like Greenpeace and the Guardian. In the wake of a junk science study that Nature published in 2015, they are keen to promote the ludicrous idea that fully 80 percent of the world’s fossil fuel resources must remain unused if we are not to experience climate catastrophe.

Even major financial institutions have bought into this drivel. Even Big Oil companies.

Here is an actual quote from an actual oil executive, quoted in a 2016 Guardian piece crowing about the vast number of investment funds which have committed to divest themselves of their fossil fuel holdings. $5.2 trillion’s worth, the piece claims.

As Lou Allstadt, a former senior executive at Mobil Oil, puts it: “Divestment is speeding up the clock on the final accounting that will show fossil fuels are out and clean energy is in.”

Well clearly George Soros knows something they don’t know. Maybe clean energy isn’t the future, after all.

What he also knows is that fossil fuels are looking quite cheap right now. Suddenly, all those millions Soros has given campaign groups to talk them down must seem like money well spent.

This is especially true of the fossil fuel which for years has been vilified by eco-campaigners as the dirtiest of them all:

Soros not only invested in oil and natural gas companies, but also into coal. Soros tried to position himself as an enemy of coal, stating at the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit, “There is no magic bullet for climate change, but there is a lethal bullet: coal.”

In the last quarter, however, he invested $4.7 million into Peabody Energy Corporation, the largest “pure play coal company” in the United States, according to the company’s website. Peabody sold 188 million tons of coal to electric utilities in 2016. The company operates 23 surface and underground mines in the United States and in Australia.

At Davos, Soros said:

“I don’t want to go into details on climate change either because it is well known what needs to be done,” he said. “We have the scientific knowledge; it is the political will that is missing, particularly in the Trump administration.”

In light of Soros’s investment decisions that looks like an admission of defeat. He doesn’t want to go into the details on climate change because it’s boring and embarrassing. And also – thanks to Trump’s revival of “beautiful clean coal” – increasingly unprofitable.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.