'Green Billionaires Hate Oil but Eagerly Profit From It
WashingtonTimes.com
Leonardo DiCaprio hugs Secretary of State
John Kerry after Kerry introduced him at the second
day of the State Department’s “Our Ocean” conference
at the State Department in Washington, Tuesday, June
17, 2014. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
America’s largest
environmental groups earn millions from crude oil.
The Nature Conservancy, for example, wants Americans
to feel guilty when they fill up the tank and thinks
they should be driving an “environmentally friendly”
electric, not an SUV the size of a river steamer
with the appetite of a dinosaur. Nevertheless, the
Conservancy owns an oil well in Texas and has $23
million invested in energy stocks.
It’s not alone in its hypocrisy. The Sierra Club
demands that universities withdraw investments in
companies related to fossil fuels. An audit by the
accounting firm Grant Thornton reveals that the
club’s pension program invests in index funds that
benefit from the stellar performance of oil and gas
stocks, such as Chevron and Exxon Mobil.
The National Resources Defense Council opposes
“dirty fuels,” but does not shed profitable
fossil-fuel companies from its stock and mutual
funds portfolios. Despite urging the United States
to quit using fossil fuels completely by 2050, the
World Wildlife Fund continues to earn from
investments in affordable energy. The Nation, the
left-wing political magazine, asked the
Fund whether it applies environmental screens to
its $75 million in investments in publicly traded
securities. The
Fund declined to answer.
The Ocean Conservancy preaches against Arctic
drilling and blames fossil fuels for ocean
acidification, but it includes “energy” and
“utilities” in its investment portfolio, which
suggests that it profits handsomely from activities
it publicly condemns.
The great self-appointed guru of all things
environmental, Al Gore, is one of the nation’s most
indulgent electricity gluttons. While writing his
“sky is falling” conservation screeds in the glow of
three large-screen computer monitors, Mr. Gore runs
up electric bills of $2,439 per month. That’s more
than most families spend on electricity in a year.
Earlier this month, The Washington Times reported
that Greenpeace flew its international program
director, Pascal Husting, on a weekly 500-mile
roundtrip commute between his home in Luxembourg and
his office in Amsterdam. Greenpeace leads a charge
against air travel for everyone else, claiming that
the growth in aviation “is ruining chances of
stopping dangerous climate change.” The actor
Leonardo DiCaprio makes a huge carbon-dioxide
footprint on the poor earth by flying around the
world doing “good” for the environment.
Such high-profile work imposes binding rules on
everyone but themselves. When they succeed, the
economy suffers with the oil and natural-gas
industry that generates $240 billion in economic
activity every year.
North Dakota’s GDP grew nearly 10 percent from 2012
to 2013 with the extraction of energy from the
Bakken Shale. More than 9 million Americans owe
their jobs to the energy industry and the hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking, renaissance.
This energy boom is threatened by the anti-progress
leftists who talk big about the need for everyone
but themselves to replace affordable fuels with
inefficient energy from windmills and solar-power
cells. These leftists rarely travel the world in
wooden sailboats, nor keep time with sundials. Their
luxury Gulfstream and Dassault Falcon private jets
are funded by the success of the affordable-energy
industry. Instead of doing as the environmentalists
say, we should all be fortunate enough to do as they
do. We all reap the comforts and benefits of oil,
natural gas and modern technology. That’s what it’s
here for.