“Enron was the ‘greens’ favorite company, remember? Enron, in the words of a Greenpeace ex, was ‘the company most responsible for sparking off the greenhouse civil war in the hydrocarbon business.'”
Greenpeace was a fan of “green” 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.
Here is our exchange. I report, you decide. My final comment follows.
Martin Porter: 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??!?
Porter: … Do you miss those Enron days Rob Bradley??!?
Bradley: Enron was the “greens” favorite company, remember? Enron, in the words of a Greenpeace ex, was “the company most responsible for sparking off the greenhouse civil war in the hydrocarbon business.” [Jeremy Leggett, The Carbon War (London: Penguin Books, 1999, p. 204)]. And the Kyoto memo:
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Bradley: Profitable opportunities will trump DEI emotionalism. Fossil fuels are for the masses, remember. Not the climate elite driving their Teslas.
Martin Porter: Says the guy who used to work for a crook
Bradley: Ken Lay? The beloved ‘green’ chairman of Enron? Remember: Enron’s 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.
Porter: why? Just because a bunch of crooks tried to make themselves look green it’s nothing to do with Greenpeace. The whole sorry story does ask questions on ‘green capitalism’ though.
Bradley: You forgot my quotation from Greenpeacer Jeremy Leggett. didn’t you. [“the company most responsible for sparking off the greenhouse civil war in the hydrocarbon business.” Jeremy Leggett, The Carbon War (London: Penguin Books, 1999, p. 204)].
Porter: hardly a ringing endorsement though, was it?
Bradley: Read his book for context. Leggett was surprised and elated! (The more homework you do, the more you might question the Climate Industrial Complex.)
Porter: I think we were all very pleased Enron was accepting climate science when most others in the oil industry weren’t, 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.
Bradley: 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 … wrong.
Bradley: Yes, “Unfortunately it was all bullshit to cover massive fraud.” That’s 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!
Martin Porter: 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’t need to tell you.
Bradley: Just the opposite, sir. Government intervention created an Enron and fooled just about everyone. Enron: The Perils of Interventionism – Econlib
Final Comment
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 website anticipates and debunks this line of attack. No doubt many of my detractors have had to realize that ol’ Bad Enron was all “green” with climate alarm and big investments in wind and solar.
Enron Energy Services also was promising “Kyoto compliant” energy efficiency gains (10 percent reduced usage) in its long-term energy outsourcing contracts. It was a fraud based on ‘mark to model’ net present value accounting.
Enron was the epitome of fake ‘green’ energy. ‘Green’ energy today is Enron on a much larger scale. Not good for the anti-CO2, anti-industrialization worldview, after all.
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. “Mike,” Skilling assured, “we are a green energy company, but the green stands for money.” [1] And calculator-driven business ethics it is!
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[1] Bradley interview with Michael Beyer and George McClellan, Enron Corp., April 10, 2021. Quoted in Bradley, Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy (M&M Scrivener Press, 2009), p. 310.