Environmentalist protestors swarmed New York’s financial district (and prison cells) this week, in the name of taking the climate back from the capitalists.
The “Flood Wall Street” protest was based on the premise that big business, especially the banking industry, was exacerbating climate change and blocking the “climate action” that “the people” all want.
Liberal author Naomi Klein (who used to argue that disasters spawn laissez-faire policies, but is now selling a book arguing that disasters are useful for advancing big-government policies) spoke just before the climate protest and said, as an MSNBC article paraphrased it, “averting disaster may require doing more than Wall Street and its allies would ever willingly do.”
“The fact is, if we’re going to respond to this crisis, we need to break a whole bunch of the free market rules that these guys hold very dear,” Klein said on All In with Chris Hayes. “We need to regulate. We need to get in the way of the fossil fuel companies.”
Flood Wall Street organizers proclaimed on their website that U.S. corporations “are profiting from the climate crisis.”
Here’s the twist: Much of Wall Street, and big business broadly, also want “to regulate” the energy sector in the name of fighting climate change, because they will profit from climate regulation.
Who represents Wall Street better than Henry Paulson, former Treasury Secretary and CEO of Goldman Sachs?
“Climate change is not only a risk to the environment,” Paulson said on a panel as the protestors flooded Wall Street, “but it is the single biggest risk that exists to the economy today.” Paulson has long called for federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions, the central demand of the protestors, and this week he announced a new climate project run out of his personal think tank.
Paulson’s old firm, Goldman Sachs, calls climate change “a defining issue of the 21st century.” Goldman formerly owned part of a trading floor in emissions credits, the Chicago Climate Exchange. Goldman has also battled fossil fuels in the past by investing in ethanol companies and then lobbying on renewable fuels.
It’s a similar story with the rest of the protestors’ targets. They weren’t just railing against the financial firms, but the companies whose stocks are traded on Wall Street.
The single biggest public firm by market capitalization (market cap is the value of the company, measured by multiplying the number of shares by the price of shares) is Apple. Apple now employs Obama’s former EPA director, Lisa Jackson. Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at the Climate Week NYC conference, warning that “the time for inaction has passed,” because “the long-term consequences of not addressing climate change are huge.” In 2009, Apple quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because the Chamber wasn’t supporting binding emissions cuts.
The public company that has spent the most on lobbying this year is Dow Chemical. Dow’s top lobbying priority fits in perfectly with the green climate agenda: blocking the export of natural gas, because Dow consumes large amounts of it and wants to keep domestic prices down. Dow is also a consistent and firm advocate for binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions.
Whither the green anger at Wall Street and Big Business, then?
Part of it is simple distrust: Many companies support some sort of climate legislation, but not any laws that would really force them to change the way they do business. Companies like Dow and Apple, have lobbied for real, binding caps on emissions.
Democratic propaganda is another culprit. Democrats seek the moral high ground by posing as the scourges of special interests, and casting their opponents as shills for polluters. Too many — in the media, on the Left, and on the Right — believe this spin.
But the most important reason liberals rail against big corporations even when the corporations are on their side may be simple psychology. Imagine you are willing to dedicate a day or two protesting about politics; Fighting The Power will necessarily be part of your self image. “Let’s go march to support the agreement between Dow Chemical and Chairman Bingaman!” isn’t much of a rallying cry.
So protestors may have flooded Wall Street with signs, banners, and polar bear costumes this week. If they get their way, they’ll be flooding the biggest businesses with easy profits.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Sunday and Wednesday on washingtonexaminer.com.
