Wednesday, February 5, 2014

McKenzie Funk Makes a Buck (or more) from Climate Change

McKenzie Funk is a journalist from the Pacific Northwest who has written a book (Windfall: the Booming Business of Global Warming) about people who are making money from Climate Change. These people are profiting from the misery of the rest of us and need to be stopped.

Foremost among the Climate Change Profiteers, as nearly everyone knows by now, are the multinational oil companies. Like war profiteers and munitions manufacturers, these capitalists don't care where the money comes from as long as it gushes.

Funk spent five years going around the world researching the book, a journey that took him to Greenland, where separatists are using their new-found energy wealth to create a new nation, and Senegal, where the government was planting a hedge to keep out the encroaching sands of the Sahara (good luck with that, by the way).

One of the most disturbing sections of the book concerned our own Southwest, where profiteers are buying up water rights and selling them to the highest bidder. This is disturbing because the results of this monopoly grab are obvious and life-threatening. Those who own the water will thrive, while those who must buy the water may die or be forced to leave their homes.

Funk claims to be impartial about all this. The profiteers, who deal in human misery, should be recognized as parasites, stripped of their profits, and given some time in prison to think about their responsibility to the human race. But Funk says the profiteers are good guys, "doing things they believe in."

This is nonsense. People who try to corner the market in any commodity are criminals. People who try to corner the market in commodities that are necessary for human existence are no better than murderers, because they have a balance sheet where they should have a conscience, a bottom line where they should have a soul.

No comments: