At least one financial industry CEO is not so mesmerized by the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement that he has lost their mind. So while BlackRock CEO Larry Fink talks about the virtues of high gas prices, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon provides an excellent counterbalance. In an interview on CNBC, Dimon criticized the Biden administration’s energy policy and called on the U.S. to take a leadership role.
While Fink believes rising energy prices will reduce the “green premium” and cause people to embrace renewables, Dimon’s perspective is much more realistic. The Biden administration has decided to beg some of the worst petro dictators in the world to produce more oil rather than taking it out of the ground at home. As Dimon observes, this has not reduced fossil fuel use:
“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32
“Well, I think we’re getting energy completely wrong, which is, you know, ever since this war started, you know that Europe is going to have a problem.”
“And that it was pretty predictable that Putin was going to cut off some gas and some oil, and oil price would go up and, by the way, for the climate folks here, it’s made the climate worse because people have this bad assumption that higher oil prices and gas prices reduce consumption, reduce CO2. No. Poor nations, India, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, are turning back on coal plants, as are rich nations called Germany, Netherlands, France.”
NIMBY energy policies, like those adopted by Biden, Germany, and other EU countries, have always made the world dirtier. Western nations outsourced their fossil fuel production to countries in the Middle East and Russia that use less environmentally sound extrusion practices. China makes much of the solar and wind equipment they install, and the CCP is building record numbers of new coal plants.
These policies do not reduce CO2. They just move the source to another country.
