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« CCS "unlikely to succeed" | Main | Beddington on tipping points »
Tuesday
Jun192012

EU funds climate activists

Tell us something we don't know! Still, it's nice to see the mainstream media picking up on a story that has been doing the rounds of the blogosphere for several years.

A new report found Europe has given £75 million to green lobbying groups, including Friends of the Earth and Climate Action Network.

“Taxpayers pay twice: once for the grants, then again with the higher prices that result when environmentalist groups successfully campaign for new regulations,” the report said.

It claims many of these groups campaign for new regulations that could lead to higher energy bills for British households.

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Reader Comments (29)

Sorry, this news item is of no use to me unless it appears in the Guardian, which is regarded as gospel by all those people whom I would seek to persuade of the machinations and intentions of the EU and the Green lobbies.
The Telegraph is right-wing rabid lie machine etc according to them.

Jun 19, 2012 at 7:49 AM | Unregistered CommenterJack Savage

And the catastrophiliacs get all excited about Hartlands meagre funding?

Mailman

Jun 19, 2012 at 8:08 AM | Unregistered CommenterMailman

Richard North had a bit of a dig at this a while back.

Jun 19, 2012 at 8:20 AM | Registered CommenterAndy Scrase

Yesterday I bought four new light bulbs at a cost of £5-36 each - the price of green madness is becoming ever more visible !

Jun 19, 2012 at 8:31 AM | Unregistered CommenterMartin

"It claims many of these groups campaign for new regulations that could lead to higher energy bills for British households."

And as a direct consequence, more deaths via fuel poverty.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15359312

Jun 19, 2012 at 9:01 AM | Unregistered CommenterJoe Public

As these organisations are clearly political they should be investigated by the Charity Commissioners and lose their charity status. This happened to Green Peace in New Zealand I believe.

Jun 19, 2012 at 9:22 AM | Unregistered CommenterRoss Lea

Yesterday I bought four new light bulbs at a cost of £5-36 each - the price of green madness is becoming ever more visible !~ Martin

---

Don't turn the light on, then, and you won't see it... oh wait, that's what they Want.

Jun 19, 2012 at 9:27 AM | Unregistered CommenterOtter

In the US, the EPA does a similar thing with ENGOs. They give money to the ENGO, who then sues the EPA over an environmental issue. The EPA loses the suit, enforces new regulations, and blames it on the courts.

In Canada, though, they are starting to look under the rocks the ENGOs are hiding under. Political activism is seen to be masqeruading as environmentalism.

Jun 19, 2012 at 9:52 AM | Unregistered CommenterLes Johnson

And when the Green propaganda is effective political parties can gain support by parading their Green credentials so that they will gain power, impose Green taxes, and support more subsidies to Green groups, and so on, and so on, in a vicious circle.

Jun 19, 2012 at 10:09 AM | Unregistered CommenterRoy

Bonkers.

It is no role of government to fund NGOs. Perhaps there should be an enquiry into the extent government and politicians cosy up to NGOs. This is equally detrimental to a free society as the cosy relationship between government/politicians and the press.

Jun 19, 2012 at 10:46 AM | Unregistered Commenterrichard verney

Martin,

Go to your local car boot sale, that's where I get my evil planet heating light bulbs from! Scored a half dozen 100 and 150w planet killing bulbs for 50p the last time I went to my local car boot!

Mailman

Jun 19, 2012 at 11:06 AM | Unregistered CommenterMailman

It's the only time a politician is allowed anywhere near the word legitimate.

ie: Friends of the Earth has raised legitimate concerns about x,y,z so the Government will be using them as an... excuse to raise taxes/...force through legislation we want\...construct windmills on national park land/...etc,etc.

Jun 19, 2012 at 11:12 AM | Unregistered CommenterShevva

Still, it is surely a sign of incipient defeat of the warmistas that the MSM will now touch the story!

Jun 19, 2012 at 11:41 AM | Unregistered CommenterIan E

Dung posted this on Unthreaded. It belongs here IMHO, because these are NGO's in the sense defined by Wiki thus

'A non-governmental organization (NGO) is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any form of government. The term originated from the United Nations (UN), and is normally used to refer to organizations that are not a part of the government and are not conventional for-profit business. In the cases in which NGOs are funded totally or partially by governments, the NGO maintains its non-governmental status by excluding government representatives from membership in the organization. The term is usually applied only to organizations that pursue wider social aims that have political aspects, but are not openly political organizations such as political parties.'

So here is Dung's comment-

I have been reading about the UN Agenda 21 and have been alarmed by what I have seen so far so I bought a PDF copy. I do not appear to be able to copy text so I will have to type in the bits that seem significant as I find them.

Page 230

Societies, governments and international bodies should develop mechanisms to allow non-governmental organisations to play their partnership role responsibly and effectively in the process of environmentally sound and sustainable development .
With a view to strengthening the role of non-governmental organisations as social partners, the United nations System and governments should initiate a process, in consultation with non-governmental organisations, to review formal procedures and mechanisms for the involvement of these organisations at all levels from policy-making to implementation.

Jun 19, 2012 at 6:39 AM | Dung

This is a despicable circumvention of democratic freedom, freely promoted by our political leadership.

Jun 19, 2012 at 12:20 PM | Registered CommenterPharos

What's a climate activist? Please explain. It has perjoritive overtones that everything connected with liberal thought seems to have here. What is a climate activist?

Jun 19, 2012 at 1:36 PM | Unregistered CommenterJim

DNFTT

Jun 19, 2012 at 1:47 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil D

Jim
A "climate activist" is someone with his head firmly up his backside.
Since climate does what it does regardless, there is little point in being "active" in regard to it because the net effect is that, as with Cnut (careful how you type that), there will, in effect, be no effect.
Another definition of an activist is someone who cannot sit still when he sees something going on in the world that offends his personal sensibilities, the more so if whatever it is appears to be either approved of or, at worst, condoned by the overwhelming majority of the human race.
An activist can easily be identified by his (equally often her) strident condemnation of anyone who disagrees as well as his inability to consider even the vaguest possibility that he might be wrong.
Once the evidence for his misconception becomes too apparent to ignore he shifts seamlessly to some other obsession.
He is not, regardless of what you may think, a "liberal" in any proper meaning of the word. Like all those who would like you to believe they are liberals, their liberality extends only as far as being permitted to agree with them. In effect most liberals are closet control-freaks (some actually out of the closet). Such "liberals" are easily identified. They always know what is best for the human race and somehow or other that is never the same as what they see as best for themselves.
And the word is "pejorative". (Chambers do a good dictionary.)

Jun 19, 2012 at 1:54 PM | Registered CommenterMike Jackson

It is my view that the EU is an extreme right wing corporate super state. Basically Thatcherism writ large. That should tell us who is behind global warming, namely big business.

The reason that the extreme lunatic fringe like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, Delingpole, Monckton et al have been given publicity is to ridicule opposition to global warming as being based on unhinged ideology.

Please remember that Enron created carbon trading, BP and Shell supported the Kyoto Protocol, Guardian Copenhagen propaganda was sponsored by Shell and Al Gore and his father are lifelong servants of Occidental Oil.

Jun 19, 2012 at 1:55 PM | Unregistered CommenterE Smiff

A quote from our favourite scientist. Yes it really is the oil companies who are pushing global warming


James Hansen in the Guardian


Governments today, instead, talk of "cap-and-trade with offsets"a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/26/james-hansen-climate-change

Jun 19, 2012 at 2:34 PM | Unregistered CommenterE Smiff

It's fun seeing the penny drop. I have been investigating stakeholder forum's relationship with the bbc for a year now and it astonishes me nobody has heard of them. At Rio they are guiding basically everyone down a path of centralised global wealth redistribution.

Jun 19, 2012 at 2:46 PM | Unregistered Commenterblackswhitewash.com

Big enviro/ big green/ AGW promotion is a parasitic movement feeding off of government funding and corporate largesse.
.

Jun 19, 2012 at 3:09 PM | Unregistered Commenterhunter

Re: Jun 19, 2012 at 12:20 PM | Pharos

"So here is Dung's comment-

I have been reading about the UN Agenda 21 and have been alarmed by what I have seen so far so I bought a PDF copy. I do not appear to be able to copy text so I will have to type in the bits that seem significant as I find them. "

E.M.Smith at the Chiefio blog did an excellent write-up about Agenda 21 - well worth reading with some excellent links in the comments too , showing how this agenda is already badly affecting real people. It's already happening NOW.

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/foia-agenda-21/

Jun 19, 2012 at 4:11 PM | Unregistered CommenterMarion

Anybody point me to the evidence that FoE get Euro handouts? They claim in their accounts to the Charities Commission that it's all 'voluntary contributions' and it cost them £1.5 million to raise it.

Jun 19, 2012 at 4:54 PM | Unregistered CommenterRich

Rich, they have arms-length organisations. Here is my suspect:

http://www.foei.org/en/resources/publications/annual-report/2007/what-we-achieved-in-2007/funding-and-membership-support

Jun 19, 2012 at 5:20 PM | Unregistered CommenterRhoda

It's about grabbing power, freedom and money from people. Democracy?

The truth is that too days "hippi" western democracy is turning them self towards the people that have elected them.

Maybee we should ditch these politicians before the ditch us?

Jun 19, 2012 at 7:42 PM | Unregistered CommenterJon

Politicians don't represent the people any more - they simply represent the political class that has now evolved and the vested interests that support them.

Jun 19, 2012 at 9:26 PM | Unregistered CommenterMarion

They create or find ideas that give more "democracy" to the "democratic" elected leaders and less democracy to the people.

They want more power because they want to "change" the World. And to do that they are working for less democracy and a steady boxing of freedom for the individual.

Kick them out of their offices.

Jun 20, 2012 at 7:18 AM | Unregistered CommenterJon

Rhoda, thanks. It's the hydra problem. I checked FoE in the UK. FoEI is a different head:

"subsidies

85.5 percent of our income is subsidies received from government agencies and foundations. These funds are granted to us for specific projects and campaigns and for our Membership Support Fund."

Jun 20, 2012 at 10:15 AM | Unregistered CommenterRich

Rich

...specific projects and campaigns...
One of which, no doubt, is lobbying the government to get it to do what FoE thinks is a good idea but the people who are supposed to decide these things, ie the electors/taxpayers via their members of parliament, have long since and often decided is total crap.
How do you spell 'democracy' again?

Jun 20, 2012 at 2:58 PM | Registered CommenterMike Jackson

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