PHM-Exch> New Report: Outing the Oligarchy

[Laura Turiano]

New Report: Outing the Oligarchy
                   
 <http://www.ifg.org/pdf/IFG_plutonomy.pdf> "Billionaires Who Benefit From
Today¹s Climate Crisis"

December 6, 2011
 

The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) released a special report
today, ³Outing the Oligarchy: Billionaires Who Benefit From Today¹s Climate
Crisis,² which identifies the world¹s top 50 individuals whose investments
benefit from climate change and whose influence networks block efforts to
phase out pollution from fossil fuels.
  
 IFG¹s report comes as global debates intensify on how best to protect the
climate and how best to counter the corrupting power of extreme wealth over
politics.  The report draws the links between the two debates and identifies
the emerging, ultra-rich tycoons who are deepening the world¹s climate
crisis.
  
 The world¹s richest corporations and capitalists have been branded by the
Occupy Wall Street movement as the ³one percent,² yet there has been scant
attention to the individuals within in the ³one percent² who have greatest
responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions.  Little information has been
publicly available about the identities of the industrialists, investors and
ideologues who are most responsible for the decisions over carbon-intensive
activities that drive greenhouse gas emissions far past danger levels.
 
IFG¹s new report brings this information to light. The task of calculating
carbon decision-making footprints is highly complex. However, IFG¹s new
study is an initial step in what will be a longer-term initiative of
analyzing the roles played by the planet¹s worst carbon culprits and how
they fund sophisticated influence networks over almost all aspects of
government policymaking, especially energy.
  
³Here we have the ŒWho's Who List¹ of crony capitalists who have gotten rich
by polluting the planet, and now they are plowing their cash back in to
prevent any legal protections for the planet and its most vulnerable
peoples,² said Victor Menotti, IFG director and co-author of the report.
³Behind each of these billionaires are the stories of countless peoples and
places that are being erased from the face of the earth by unregulated
greenhouse gas emissions.  These climate destroyers must be pulled out of
the shadows so that peoples of the world can understand who is responsible
for the world¹s predicament and can figure out the solutions.²
  
Leading climate activist Bill McKibben said, ³Saving our climate means
knowing who is stopping solutions, and the 1 percent have a responsibility
to step up and help shift today¹s paradigm so that our planet stands a
chance.  This list helps make it clear why science has been ignored and
reason thrown to the wind in the face of the greatest crisis we've ever
faced.²
  
 ³India¹s Great Oligarchs are exposed in the IFG report for their
get-rich-quick gambles to grab more land and resources, which, in turn,
concentrates even more political power in fewer hands in Œthe world¹s
largest democracy,¹² said co-author and IFG board member from India, Dr.
Vandana Shiva.
  
 Dr. Jeffrey Winters, in the politics department at Northwestern University,
calculates in his 2011 book, Oligarchy, that wealth in the US is twice as
concentrated in the hands of the few at the top today as it was during the
Roman Empire. Most Americans are shocked to find out that they live in a
society that is vastly more unequal than Rome."
  
 IFG is a global research and education center that helps bring grassroots
perspectives to international economic and environmental policies.  Based in
the Presidio of San Francisco, California, IFG emerged in response to the
creation of the World Trade Organization and was instrumental in educating
people to turn out for the WTO's 1999 ministerial in Seattle. Among IFG¹s
numerous reports is the 2001 title, ³Does Globalization Help the Poor?²
which examines the impacts of global free trade on poverty.   In addition to
its research, education, and monitoring of multilateral trade, investment,
finance, environmental, and human rights rule-making, IFG has been
intensively engaged in global climate talks since the U.N. climate
conference in Bali in 2007.

http://www.ifg.org/programs/plutonomy.html
 



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