While all eyes were on the Middle East at the end of February, anticipating the outbreak of war, in Texas, a climate bomb dropped that blew another hole in the so-called “climate cartel.”According to a February 26 press release from the office of Ken Paxton, Attorney General for Texas, “Attorney General Ken Paxton secured a monumental, first-of-its-kind settlement with The Vanguard Group, Inc. (“Vanguard”), resolving part of his multistate lawsuit against asset managers BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. As part of the settlement, Vanguard has agreed to make the strongest passivity commitments in the industry and to empower its investors with proxy voting — a first for the industry. This landmark settlement represents one of the most significant enforcement actions ever taken against coordinated ESG-driven market manipulation, ensures a competitive and low-cost coal industry, and fundamentally resets the precedent for the conduct of large institutional investors.”Vanguard is one of the world’s top three asset managers (along with BlackRock and State Street) holding millions of shares worth billions of dollars in all six major Canadian banks. To what extent has similar investor activism by Vanguard affected the corporate financing, and the humiliating public pledges corporations have been forced to make on unattainable net zero commitments? How has Vanguard’s influence as an investee in Canadian banks affected government climate policies in Canada, one wonders?The Texas AG release goes on to say, “Attorney General Paxton’s lawsuit seeks to lower the cost of coal — and, thereby, electricity prices — throughout the United States by combatting a BlackRock-led cartel that sought to drive up the price of coal under the guise of ‘green energy.’ BlackRock’s efforts produced massive profits for itself and its co-conspirators and raised the prices of electricity on consumers throughout the United States.”Even the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) had filed a joint statement of interest in support of Paxton’s legal action..Canadian corporations have been facing ESG pressure from investors, climate activist groups, shareholders, banks, the government, and even the Canadian Senate with Bill S-238 (formerly Bill S-243) — the Climate Aligned Financial Act — which was enthusiastically supported by then citizen Mark Carney during Senate hearings on May 8, 2024.Most of this case revolves around US anti-trust legislation, and allegations of collusion by the so-called “climate cartel,” which ‘allegedly effectuated through their joint participation in the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative and Climate Action 100+’ along with signatories to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI).”Recall that Mark Carney and green billionaire Michael Bloomberg were the principal architects of many of these groups. Most of these, like the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), dissolved, suspended work or reorganized as the Republic House Judiciary Committee on anti-trust violations exposed the “Climate Control: Exposing The Decarbonization Collusion In Environmental, Social, And Governance (ESG) Investing,” claiming that these groups had declared war on the American way of life.Complying with unattainable net zero targets forces companies to buy carbon credits, in an elaborate accounting shell game, which is the ultimate driver of the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism, something you’ve probably never heard of.Pleas that these wealthy do-gooder asset managers were just “trying to save the planet” don’t fly with the AG or the Trump administration and Federal Trade Commission, which noted in its Statement of Interest that it is “well settled that good motives will not validate an otherwise anticompetitive practice.”.Or, as Congressman Thomas Massie put it, during the June 12, 2024, hearings on the so-called “climate cartel,” when he said to representatives of these groups, “The fact that you have a noble reason isn’t enough to get you around the law.”Unfortunately, Canada doesn’t have anti-trust violation laws like the USA. So, corporations are being coerced by the noble vision of our government, banks, climate activists, and shareholder activist groups into uneconomic “climate solutions” like the Pathways Alliance/Oil Sands Alliance Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project. This project will have to be heavily subsidized for billions of dollars by taxpayers for decades. Retired energy economist Robert Lyman calls CCS the “Carbon Capture and Storage Trap for Taxpayers” in this 2022 report, published by the Friends of Science Society (where I am Communications Manager).The Pathways CCS project won’t be saving the planet either, but it will provide carbon traders with high-value, high-permanence carbon removal credits, which presently go for $500 to $1,000/t in the market, and which Goldman Sachs predicts will be valued at $7,000/t by 2050.So, when Prime Minister Carney and Minister of Industry Tim Hodgson, both former long-term Goldman Sachs employees, talk about “climate competitiveness,” they are not talking about Canada becoming an energy Superpower, they’re talking about coercive “Carbonomics” and Canada becoming a carbon credit supermarket with optional low-ticket Nature-Based Climate Solutions in abundance, and the high end CCS as well..And hey, didn’t Minister Julie Dabrusin just celebrate “Carbon Removal Day” by becoming a founding member of the Advance Carbon Removal Coalition?In the press, we hear that the industrial carbon price in Alberta might rise to $130/t by April 1. Well, taxpayer friends, don’t be an April Fool. Canada’s own “climate cartel” is doing everything to turn taxpayers into the risktakers with Contracts for Difference legislation, too. Just because the carbon dioxide in CCS is compressed into a dense phase fluid and pumped a few hundred kilometres away to underground storage doesn’t change the fact that this is an exercise in emissions-reduction futility, as our new strategic global partner, China, emits in one month what Canada emits in a year and eight months.The Americans are using the law to stop the climate cartel; Canadians are writing more laws to expand it.Remember Mark Schapiro’s timeless adage from his 2010 “Conning the Climate,” that carbon markets “…entail the lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no one.”
