Greens Occupy Wall Street...Again

OR, We Have Met the Enemy…

I’m not sure if this is artistic irony or infighting, with the unwashed membership of green groups fighting back against their establishment overlords, but this story, “Environmentalists Join The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Fray”, is pretty darn hilarious.

While this soiled and spoiled mob may not have gotten the memo when recruited on campus, the shaggy movement depends upon big business to underwrite much of its advocacy, and most of its lobbying heft.

I learned this while sitting around a table with BP, Niagara Mohawk Power, American Gas Association and others, on behalf of Enron, in a coalition cooked up by Enron, and …the Union of Concerned Scientists and like-minded folks piling out of a Volkswagen (this was the summer of 1997, so the Prius was just being rolled out in Japan). This, my first outside meeting as Director of Federal Government Relations for Enron, was the beginning of the end of my uncomfortable three-week adventure in sleazy ‘green jobs’ and ‘global warming’ advocacy and Baptist-and-Bootlegger coalitions for the supposed free-market pioneer that, it turned out, was just another rent-seeker creating a movement to add value to their uneconomic wind (now GE Wind) and solar (now BP’s) ventures.

It was in the fancy offices of a New York firm. Goldman was Enron’s adviser on creating the market for selling carbon dioxide ration coupons.

So the love- or love-hate affair has been going on for some time. Here’s a nice taste of what the greenies would find upon occupying Wall Street. They’re among friends, having occupied — or been occupied by — Wall Street for some time.