{"id":306221,"date":"2024-03-07T08:28:55","date_gmt":"2024-03-07T07:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=306221"},"modified":"2024-03-07T08:28:57","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T07:28:57","slug":"enron-and-greenpeace-an-exchange-with-martin-porter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=306221","title":{"rendered":"Enron and Greenpeace: An Exchange with Martin Porter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Master Resource<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Robert Bradley Jr.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cEnron was the \u2018greens\u2019 favorite company, remember? Enron, in the words of a Greenpeace ex, was \u2018the company most responsible for sparking off the greenhouse civil war in the hydrocarbon business.’\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Greenpeace was a fan of \u201cgreen\u201d Enron in the old days. Today, a Greenpeace UK leader has been trying to debunk me, based on my prior association with Enron and Ken Lay. And it has backfired with him just like it backfired when Joe Romm of Climate Progress tried the same thing 15 years ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is our exchange. I report, you decide. My final comment follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin Porter<\/a>: so, tell us what it was like working for one of the most corrupt companies in US history? Did you ever visit your old Enron boss in jail??!?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porter<\/a>: \u2026 Do you miss those Enron days Rob Bradley<\/a>??!?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradley<\/a>: Enron was the \u201cgreens\u201d favorite company, remember? Enron, in the words of a Greenpeace ex, was \u201cthe company most responsible for sparking off the greenhouse civil war in the hydrocarbon business.\u201d [Jeremy Leggett, The Carbon War (London: Penguin Books, 1999, p. 204)]. And the Kyoto memo<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradley<\/a><\/strong>: Profitable opportunities will trump DEI emotionalism. Fossil fuels are for the masses, remember. Not the climate elite driving their Teslas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin Porter<\/a>: Says the guy who used to work for a crook<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradley<\/a>: Ken Lay? The beloved \u2018green\u2019 chairman of Enron? Remember: Enron\u2019s first crime that set the tone for what followed was with a wind farm. But I repeat myself with an issue that backfires on you\/Greenpeace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porter<\/a>: why? Just because a bunch of crooks tried to make themselves look green it\u2019s nothing to do with Greenpeace. The whole sorry story does ask questions on \u2018green capitalism\u2019 though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradley<\/a>: You forgot my quotation from Greenpeacer Jeremy Leggett. didn\u2019t you. [\u201cthe company most responsible for sparking off the greenhouse civil war in the hydrocarbon business.\u201d Jeremy Leggett, The Carbon War<\/em> (London: Penguin Books, 1999, p. 204)].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porter<\/a>: hardly a ringing endorsement though, was it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradley<\/a>: Read his book for context. Leggett was surprised and elated! (The more homework you do, the more you might question the Climate Industrial Complex.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porter<\/a>: I think we were all very pleased Enron was accepting climate science when most others in the oil industry weren\u2019t, and it did help break up the united front of denial by the fossil fuel industry. Unfortunately it was all bullshit to cover massive fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradley<\/a>: Actually, internally, it was the other way around. The science behind climate alarmism was exposed as speculative. An executive on the renewables side even asked if the implication was that CO2 should be subsidized, not penalized, because of settled CO2 science. Please stop guessing \u2026 wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradley<\/a>: Yes, \u201cUnfortunately it was all bullshit to cover massive fraud.\u201d That\u2019s politicized energy and a reason you should be as critical of the Climate Industrial Complex as you are of fossil fuels. You might even change your views!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin Porter<\/a>: Well, we tried business without government control and the result was the Credit Crunch and Enron, but you were there for that so I don\u2019t need to tell you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradley<\/a>: Just the opposite, sir. Government intervention created an Enron and fooled just about everyone. Enron: The Perils of Interventionism \u2013 Econlib<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Comment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With thousands of connections on LinkedIn and free market conversations ongoing, at times I have to push back on ad hominem, one being my past association with Enron where I worked for 16 years. My Political Capitalism<\/a> website anticipates and debunks this line of attack. No doubt many of my detractors have had to realize that ol\u2019 Bad Enron was all \u201cgreen\u201d with climate alarm and big investments in wind and solar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enron Energy Services also was promising \u201cKyoto compliant\u201d energy efficiency gains (10 percent reduced usage) in its long-term energy outsourcing contracts. It was a fraud based on \u2018mark to model\u2019 net present value accounting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enron was the epitome of fake \u2018green\u2019 energy. \u2018Green\u2019 energy today is Enron on a much larger scale. Not good for the anti-CO2, anti-industrialization worldview, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A funny story in this regard concerns Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, who had to quell the concern of a newly hired coal executive that Enron was going to hide its coal push. \u201cMike,\u201d Skilling assured<\/a>, \u201cwe are a green energy company, but the green stands for money.\u201d [1]<\/strong> And calculator-driven business ethics it is!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/strong>\u00a0Bradley interview with Michael Beyer and George McClellan, Enron Corp., April 10, 2021. Quoted in Bradley,\u00a0Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy<\/em>\u00a0(M&M Scrivener Press, 2009), p. 310.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEnron was the \u2018greens\u2019 favorite company, remember? Enron, in the words of a Greenpeace ex, was \u2018the company most responsible for sparking off the greenhouse civil war in the hydrocarbon business.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":306223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"\u201cEnron was the \u2018greens\u2019 favorite company, remember? 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And Enron did much to bolster, even save, the U.S. solar and wind industries.","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-351.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-351.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-351.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-351.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-351.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":417444,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=417444","url_meta":{"origin":306221,"position":1},"title":"\u201cTHIS AGREEMENT WILL BE GOOD FOR ENRON STOCK!!\u201d (1997 Kyoto memo)","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"16\/12\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Global green planners back in the 1990s were euphoric that\u00a0somehow,\u00a0someway, the world had embarked on an irreversible course of climate control (and thus industrial and land-use control). 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