This is also well worth the read. It’s a good analysis of the greed behind the Green New Deal.
This is a small extract of the longer article.
In free markets, commodities bought and sold possess perceived value. When a buyer and seller reach an agreed upon price for any product, there is a “meeting of the minds.” The value of any natural raw material is proportional to its scarcity. The more of it there is, and the more easily it can be obtained, the less value it holds. A vendor who sells ordinary rocks cannot make a living when his product is found freely all over the ground. If he transacts in gold or silver, diamonds or rubies, however, his hard-to-find “rocks” are worth a small fortune. If only there were a way to turn ordinary rocks into valuable commodities!
There are, in fact, two well-known ways to do so. An unscrupulous vendor could simply paint ordinary rocks gold and pretend that common minerals are rare, and an unsuspecting customer might never be the wiser. Through fraud, the seller can hijack the perceived value of his goods and undermine the agreed “meeting of the minds” between himself and any deceived customer. His “precious” rocks actually hold no value but provide him with ill-gotten gains. Over time, however, this type of fraud does not last. More discerning customers eventually catch on to the ruse, and that information is shared among prospective buyers. And unless he is quick to move on to a new town with new buyers yet to be deceived, old swindled customers are likely to end his livelihood or much worse. Engaging in fraud comes with serious personal risks.
…
When a king and vendor conspire to make only a small fraction of available rocks “legal,” then their manufactured “unavailability” makes them extremely valuable.
…
From this lens, it is easy to see why so many investors love government intervention in energy markets.
Governments possess the power to conjure artificial value from nothing by creating laws that make it impossible to participate in the market without first paying for the privilege. One such scheme is to take an essential raw material needed for all industrial production and commerce — energy — and regulate it to the hilt. When abundant sources of hydrocarbon fuels are heavily regulated, ownership of government-approved, hydrocarbon-based assets becomes much more valuable. When governments limit drilling and mining for hydrocarbons in the ground, they manufacture scarcity. When governments set strict limits for how much oil, coal, and natural gas may be used commercially, such energies’ broad industrial usefulness ensures increasingly high demand. When companies are forced to limit their “carbon footprint” or purchase “carbon credits” (ordinary rocks) from licensed “green” vendors, then the government’s preferred business partners reap windfalls (and the government’s treasury mushrooms, too).
When only certain wealthy individuals and companies can afford artificially expensive hydrocarbon energies as regular business costs, then budding entrepreneurs and small firms can no longer compete. Those at the peak of society’s wealth pyramid have a much easier time staying on top when the same natural sources of hydrocarbon energy once used to amass fortunes are now denied to those who would do the same.
A war on “fossil fuels” is a superb tactic for protecting private market share. It is a profitable ideological cause for fattening government revenues. And it is a constant source of income for environmental “nonprofits” and other special interests that are more than willing to feed from the government’s spending troughs in exchange for promoting the government’s profitable “green” game.
Are electric vehicles as powerful as their internal combustion engine counterparts? Can wind and solar energies really provide nations with reliable power grids robust enough to avoid rolling blackouts? Can plastics, heating oil, and most synthetic materials found around a home be magically manufactured without petroleum?
Can the global population stave off famine and starvation if farmers are forced to overhaul agricultural and livestock production methods in order to abide by “green” laws limiting the use or release of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen, and phosphate — molecules and compounds essential to basic farming and high crop yield fertilizers?
…
When boardrooms and investors distort free markets by treating stocks and other assets as more valuable than they really are, simply because they are painted a shiny “green,” then ESG overvaluation turns misguided yet “politically correct” fantasies into gold. Ideology hijacks the market’s natural direction toward an objective and transparent “meeting of the minds.” There is an unspoken but unmistakable fraud.
…
Anyone once blissfully unaware of that kind of crummy crony capitalism surely learned a thing or two watching global vaccine mandates drive up pharmaceutical industry profits, while government-granted indemnification clauses rendered vaccine makers free from financial liability for any resulting injuries.
…
Sure, going “green” has been lucrative for some, but can that lucre last? That is the magical thing about hydrocarbon regulations and carbon credit requirements. Should the government’s preferred “green” vendors need more wealth, then politicians can simply ratchet up the energy pain for everyone else. The fewer hydrocarbons that companies and citizens are “allowed” to consume, the more money they will be willing to pay for “credits.” Through self-dealing mandates, governments create artificially appreciating “green” assets. The sky is the limit!
…
This much is certain: irrespective of prevailing politically correct Western “wisdom” and the current environmental “madness of crowds,” should the hydrocarbon bedrock of the global economy be traded for worthless “green” rocks, neither wealthy capitalists nor poor citizens will long survive.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/green-energy-profiteering-scam