Carney To Target Fossil Fuels as UN Climate Action Envoy

Dec. 30, 2019 (EIRNS)—In an interview with BBC to air today, outgoing Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney said he would be targetting fossil fuel companies when he assumes his new position as the UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance. Carney gave the interview to a special addition of BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program edited by child abuse victim and would-be eco warrior Greta Thunberg.

According to the Guardian, he said the climate crisis was a “tragedy on the horizon” and that more extreme weather events were inevitable. “By the time that the extreme events become so prevalent and so obvious, it will be too late to do anything about it,” he said. Political leaders had to “start addressing future problems today.”

He failed to mention that the more likely “extreme event” will be the collapse of the Western financial system, for which he has been serving as a leading figure since at least his 13-year career with Goldman Sachs in 2003, then the Bank of Canada and Bank of England.

As he dictated in his UN climate speech in September as then-director of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), he said investors should be divesting from companies in the fossil fuel sector; fund managers would “have to make the judgment and justify to the people whose money it ultimately is.”

Carney warned that pension funds must divest from oil and gas companies:

“They need to make the argument, to be clear about why is that going to be the case if a substantial proportion of those assets are going to be worthless. If we were to burn all those oil and gases, there’s no way we would meet carbon budgets. Up to 80% of coal assets will be stranded, [and] up to half of developed oil reserves. A question for every company, every financial institution, every asset manager, pension fund or insurer: what’s your plan?”

On the Dec. 28th edition of BBC Today, so-called climate skeptic and former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore, was guest-editor. He questioned the ostensible, global consensus on the climate crisis and accused the BBC of “climate-change alarmism.”