The EU Climate Policy Has Been Dictated by the Hedge Funds

Aug. 3, 2019 (EIRNS)—Christian Thimann, a former manager at AXA (a major French-based insurance firm) and a past adviser to the EU Commission and to the European Central Bank, revealed that the EU climate policy has been dictated by the financial industry. The idea of creating a “Green bubble” to bail out the financial system, and at the same time finance the deindustrialization of Europe, has existed at least since the famous 2006 Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, commissioned by Tony Blair’s government and edited by Nicholas Stern, seen as the bible by most environmentalist factions. But it became concrete only with the 2015 COP21 UN conference in Paris where the concept of diverting capital flows to reach climate targets was introduced.

In a speech at the House of Finance at Goethe University in Frankfurt on July 27, Thimann said: “If you read the [COP21] agreement, suddenly in Article 2 the financial sector is mentioned. It was an issue for ecologists, industrialists, scientists. And suddenly in the 21st session you have a remarkable sentence about finance. It says the following: ‘This Agreement, in enhancing the implementation of the Convention, including its objective, aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change ... including by ... Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.’

“This is now a process that is going on, where the European Commission is asking experts from the private sector: Can you please tell us, how we would do that...? And this is the program that the commission has been working on for two years, which is now being cast into law.”

Thimann goes on to praise the “FridaysForFuture” and “Extinction Rebellion” movements, saying: “And then come the political lessons, when 12 million young people come into the streets and suddenly you have this big topic going.”