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Saturday, October 10, 2009

Soros to Put $1 Billion in Clean Energy

The famed hedge fund investor George Soros has decided to make a serious push into clean energy, not only investing in projects but also forming an organization to weigh in on policy issues. From Bloomberg:

Billionaire George Soros, looking to address the “political problem” of climate change, said he will invest $1 billion in clean-energy technology and create an organization to advise policy makers on environmental issues…

“I want to apply rather stringent criteria to the investments,” said Soros in an e-mailed message. “They should be profitable but should also actually make a contribution to solving the problem.”…

Soros, 79, also will establish the Climate Policy Initiative, a San Francisco-based organization to which he will donate $10 million a year for 10 years.

“It will be part advisory service, part policy developer and part watchdog,” said Thomas Heller, who is heading the initiative. Heller is a professor at Stanford University Law School whose expertise is in energy law and regulation and environmental law.

Its goal is to look after the public interest as policies and programs are created to address climate change. The group will work in the U.S., Europe, China, India and Brazil, he said.

“The problem of global warming is primarily a political problem at this point,” Soros said. “The science is beyond dispute, but how do we achieve the objectives we all know are necessary? That is a political problem.”…

Soros has said he prefers a greenhouse-gas tax because carbon emission-trading systems, which are used in Europe, can be manipulated by investors.

Topics: Energy markets, Environment, Global warming, Politics

Email This Post Email This Post Posted by Yves Smith at 9:35 pm

8 Comments » Links to this post

8 Comments:

  • Vinny G. says:
    October 10, 2009 at 10:32 pm

    This is why I firmly believe they should immediately confiscate Al Gore’s Nobel Prize medal and give it to Soros instead.

    That’s also be a nice way to demonstrate how recycling works in practice… :)

    Vinny G.

  • Fred says:
    October 10, 2009 at 11:44 pm

    An entire new enrgy infrastructure is un economic unless the current energy infrastructure can be marginalized.

    Oh, right. Soros has minions for that.

  • Walther says:
    October 11, 2009 at 5:46 am

    Here we go again!

    The economist Kenneth Boulding derived from Malthus’s essay on population three theorems: the Dismal Theorem, the Utterly Dismal Theorem, and the moderately cheerful form of the Dismal Theorem.
    The Utterly Dismal Theorem directly challenges the progressivist view: Any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for as long as misery is the only check on population, the improvement will enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in misery than before. The final result of improvements, therefore, is to increase the equilibrium population, which is to increase the sum total of human misery
    Kenneth Boulding,

    • michael says:
      October 11, 2009 at 6:52 pm

      Now that’s a great theorem!
      It tells us that we cannot allow less developed countries to rise, as that will only lead to more misery.
      And the final solution can only be to make humanity extinct.
      I tap my hat to such brilliance!

      • Dave Raithel says:
        October 11, 2009 at 9:53 pm

        Yep. Only heartless bastards leave the miserable to suffer; compassionate souls will do what is necessary to relieve the miserable of their misery. Responsible people do not leave what must be done to chance, or influenza … or environmental catastrophe…

        • don says:
          October 17, 2009 at 10:14 pm

          Heartless ruthless elite bastards > secret groups are going to murder countless numbers for profits.
          Greed and control have gone on & on from getting ouy of the caves. The people are but sheep lead by murdering wolves..

  • ssngellone says:
    October 11, 2009 at 6:46 am

    So, to justify and make economic the billion dollars in actual
    ‘clean energy’ production you must also spend $100 million on political agit-prop to mandate its use otherwise no one, or very few, will buy the output.

    Local paper here revealed that only 3500 customers, out of 2.3 million, opted for ‘green energy’ given the choice. So Georgie boy is going to just have to ‘force’ the rest of us to subsidize his business plan.

  • MyLessThanPrimeBeef says:
    October 11, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    I rather he put that billion in clean politians.

    Also, I wonder what Boulding thinks about my own theory – that today’s inventions are tomorrow’s disasters?

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