The ESG Sleight of Hand
How the cleverly executed trick and deception works
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Sir Arthur C. Clarke CBE FRAS (1917-2008)
ESG is an advanced technology and—to the untrained eye—is indistinguishable from magic. In this post, I’ll introduce you to a magician who explains how magic works. I’ll then use his exact explanation and apply it to climate change and ESG. Once we’ve understood how the ESG sleight of hand works, we’ll be able to make more informed decisions about how our business responds with integrity to ESG. In a future post, we’ll tackle the thorny issue of ESG compliance, in light of this understanding of ESG.
“The WEF and its sponsors BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and Bank of America have deployed the social credit scheme-like ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) scoring system in a remarkably short time, including ‘independent’ ESG auditor organizations.”—Robert W Malone MD, MS in Integrity Lost
What’s in this Post?
Meet Magician David Kwong
In this 5min video, magician David Kwong breaks down the “7 Principles of Illusion” that are relied on for any good magic trick.1 I know your day is busy and that magic may not be high on your list of priorities, but please take the time to watch it. Understanding these principles is the bedrock of understanding ESG.
Let’s now unpack how these same seven principles are used to create the climate change narrative.
Mind the Gap
Amodal Completion (from 0:55 in the Kwong video above) is the technical term to refer to the way our brain 'fills in' missing details.2 For example, our brain can instantly recognize a ball, even when a significant part of the ball is hidden behind a wall.3
To explain how our brain interprets climate-related news items, let’s consider the 2020 Australian bushfires.4
The Wall
Before looking at the 2020 fires specifically, it is worth noting that Australia has—for at least the last 200 years—been the most fire-prone country on Earth. Fire services respond to between 45,000 and 60,000 bushfires in Australia each year. That’s because the continent has a generally hot and dry climate. Importantly, naturally occurring fires account for only six per cent of known causes of fires. Over 90 per cent of bushfires are started by people.5 That's because Australians love their barbies.6
In other words, the link between climate change and Australia's bushfires is tenuous at best. While no such research exists, the link between the number of bushfires started and barrels of beer consumed is likely more convincing (and interesting).
Over the past 170 years, an area covering more than 290 million ha has been destroyed in various catastrophic Australian bushfires. The top 10 most devastating fires in Australia—in terms of the number of hectares destroyed—look like this:7
When data is presented in this manner, it becomes immediately obvious that the 2020 fires, while traumatic, were certainly nowhere near the most calamitous fires experienced. 2020 represents only 6% of the total amount of area burned since 1851. If we’d presented only the top 5 fires, 2020 would have been at the bottom of the list.
This data represents the wall: information which is so easily available that our brains filter it out amidst all the noise. Our brains are focussed on the fraction of the ball partially hidden behind the wall. Since we’re a puzzle-solving species, we’re more interested in identifying the partially visible than the obvious.
The Ball
In 2019 and 2020, we were inundated with two different media themes simultaneously: bushfires and climate change.
The repeated images of raging fires, homes destroyed and wildlife escaping the flames—interspersed with endless reports about climate change—triggered an assumption in our overtaxed brains: climate change is responsible for these 'apocalyptic' catastrophes.8 When overlaid with images and reports from the 2020 California fires,9 we become convinced that climate change and wildfires are somehow linked. The data, however, does not back up the narrative. Our brain 'fills the intentional gap' and 'lies to us,' just as it does in any good magic trick.
Write the Script
Writing the Script (from 1:48 in the Kwong video) refers to the use of specific language to manipulate our memory and to construct the desired belief.
“Global warming is a meme. No-one experiences it directly. They experience it through perception.” - Joe Brewer10
The organization most active in writing the script of climate change has been the Club of Rome.11 Four influential reports have been published:
1972: The Limits to Growth
1976: Reshaping the International Order
1991: The First Global Revolution
2020: The Planetary Emergency Plan
The messaging used by the IPCC, all of the ESG standards boards, as well as the World Economic Forum, can all be traced to one or more of these reports. The most efficient way of summarizing the reports is to quote from The First Global Revolution:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” Aurelio Peccei, co-founder with Alexander King and first president of the Club of Rome. Quoted in The First Global Revolution, page 75 (1991)
In contrast to this well-established script, there is a growing body of scientists and academics who are alarmed and concerned by the arrogance of those who advocate the climate change hypothesis. They are even more concerned about the complementary hypothesis that links climate change to particular human activities. Some examples of these groups are:
1992: Heidelberg Appeal12
1996: Leipzig Declaration13
1999: Oregon Petition14
2022: World Climate Declaration15
In addition to these groups, David Siegel, an American serial entrepreneur in Washington, DC., publishes a weekly climate blog. Each week he summarizes the vast scientific research which is critical of the mainstream climate narrative: http://www.shortfall.blog/
The point here is that the script doesn’t have to be scientifically accurate. It must just be easy to remember and it must be repeated over and over again.
Load Up
Loading Up (from 2:15 in the Kwong video) refers to doing all the prep work ahead of time. Over the decades since 1970, there has been significant prep work done to prepare for today’s climate narrative. This is where the climate deception becomes really, really interesting (and it’s not what you might think).
The Edge Foundation is an association of science and technology intellectuals created in 1988 by prominent literary agent, John Brockman. Brockman specializes in publishing scientific literature, with a very specific bias designed to change the global culture.
Brockman also hosts annual Billionaire Dinners: sumptuous gatherings of the uber-wealthy.16 The stated purpose of these gatherings is to rewrite global culture.
“To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.” - every page on edge.org.
Prior to his apparent suicide, Jeffrey Epstein had a strong relationship with Brockman. There is more than ample evidence that at least some of the Billionaire Dinners were hosted on Epstein’s island.
More than 1,500 authors, scientists, world leaders and opinion shapers have attended these dinners over the decades. An advanced Google search on the Edge Foundation website makes it really easy to see who has attended so far. Try this Google search or see our research portal, filled with household names including Bezos (Amazon), Bostrom (Transhumanism), Brin (Google), Csikszentmihalyi (author), Dawkins, (evolution biologist), Diamandis (X-Prize), Diamond (author), Dyson (philanthropy), Gates (Public Health Policy), Harari (author), Harris (author), Kurzweil (inventor & author), Mayer (Yahoo), Musk (SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter), Omidyar (philanthropy), Page (Google), Pinker (author), Taleb (author), Thaler (behavioural economics), Williams (Twitter), Wozniak (Apple), Zuckerberg (Facebook) and hundreds more.
All of these individuals and the organizations they represent are, in some way, involved in rewriting global culture. Auditing and legal firms have have been well-represented at these dinners:
Mike Brown of Deloitte & Touche LLP17
Rosemary Leith of Coopers and Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers)18
Zoe-vonna Palmrose of PricewaterhouseCoopers19
Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins20
Giulio Boccaletti of McKinsey & Company21
At least twenty WEF Young Global Leaders have also attended. ESG and the climate narrative forms a very large part of the effort to rewrite global culture.
Stated another way: Over the past few decades, opinion shapers have coordinated a global control of Science in general, and Climate Science in particular.
Understanding and becoming comfortable with the extent of scientific deception is no laughing matter. As a business leader, becoming comfortable with this deception is a prerequisite to responding consciously, ethically and with integrity to ESG mandates and compliance.
A framework that helps me personally cope with the extent of the manipulation of Science is the 7 Phases of the Cycle of Civilization.22 This framework is my way of loading up, on my terms, scientifically, historically and evolutionarily. This framework shows how all previous civilizations that have collapsed are preceded by a phase in which reality is distorted by those at the pinnacle of society. This time is no different, and knowing that helps—at least a little—with maintaining some semblance of sanity. You can download an infographic of the cycle here.
Design Free Choice
Designing Free Choice (from 2:38 in the Kwong video) refers to our willingness to buy into the illusion, provided we are given the sense that we are in control of our choices. In the magic example, we were asked to choose a card, not knowing that the deck was stacked against us. The point is that our choices were predetermined.
In the ESG world, we’re given the illusion of choice through various standards and rating agencies.23 But choosing any standard means we have bought into the illusion. It’s a trick; a deception; a sleight of hand.
(There is one standard which is an exception: the UN’s Sustainable Development Performance Indicators.24 We will tackle the SDPI standard in the context of this post in a future post.)
Employ the Familiar
Employing the Familiar (from 2:56 in the Kwong video) refers to the brain’s need to respond to patterns and how this need can be manipulated. In the magic video above, Kwong showed us the first few cards and from there we were able to extrapolate that the deck was normal.
Building from the late 2010s into the early 2020s—at least among millennials—there is a deeply sensed intuition that things are not right, at a very fundamental level. This dis-ease extends well beyond climate into the areas of education, health, injustice, economics and more. Since millennials are not being provided with meaningful answers by Business-as-Usual systems, they search elsewhere for patterns. The patterns they are shown follow a familiar theme, over and over again, usually related to carbon:
In other words, millennials are inundated with another sleight of hand about what is essentially a non-problem, while the real challenges the world faces—hunger, disease, denial of human rights and more—are ignored. Many of them succumb to the illusion and passionately participate in protests and marches. What they may not realize is that they are simply repeating a script that has been carefully prepared for them.
Conjure an Out
Conjuring an Out (from 3:19 in the Kwong video) refers to the backup plans for when things start to go wrong. White House press briefings are a perfect example of how these outs are engineered. In these briefings, only certain questions are permitted and journalists who ask awkward questions are ignored.
In the 5min video below a journalist wanted to ask an important question during Dr Anthony Fauci's last press briefing on November 22, 2022. Her question is one of the most important questions in modern history: “What did Fauci do personally to investigate the origins of COVID-19?” Watch how the out is conjured up:
Control the Frame
Controlling the Frame (from 3:53 in the Kwong video) refers to misdirection by focusing our attention away from where the real action is taking place.
When we take a step back from our day-to-day activities to consider where humanity is in the Cycle of Civilization, climate change is a convenient ‘frame control.’ That’s because during Phase 6 of the cycle—Totalitarianism—dictatorial powers need a story big enough to distract us from their attempts to remove all forms of freedom, both from civil society and the private sector.
ESG mandates are, likewise, a ‘frame control.’ An entire department in your organization is preoccupied with ESG compliance, which is an essentially meaningless activity. Even a perfect ESG rating doesn’t fundamentally address any of the real issues humanity faces.
“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”—Richard S. Lindzen, MIT Professor
So, What to Do?
From an ESG compliance perspective, we will unpack the UN’s Sustainable Development Performance Indicators (SDPI) in a future post. These standards provide a meaningful way for a business to play an impactful role in society better than any of the other standards.
As far as how we respond to the current human predicament, I particularly like the conclusion former Czech President Václav Klaus comes to in his book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles.25 I’ve summarized his conclusion here:
Instead of striving for the environment, strive for freedom (in business and in our personal lives).
Climate change should not come before the fundamental questions of freedom, democracy and human well-being.
Instead of organizing people from above, allow everyone to live his or her own life—human creativity will flourish as a result.
Avoid the temptation to succumb to fashionable (green/ESG) trends, simply because that’s what the media dictates.
Defend against the politicization of science and refuse to accept the illusion of ‘scientific consensus,’ which is always achieved by a loud minority, never by a silent majority.
Be sensitive and attentive toward Nature, and demand the same from those who speak about the environment most loudly.
Be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Trust in its implicit rationality, and don’t make efforts to slow it down or divert it in any direction.
Ignore climate scaremongering and catastrophic forecasts and never use ‘loaded up’ statistics to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.
Conclusion
We’re living through a time where it’s more important than ever to understand the “7 Principles of Illusion.” Magic may not have a place in your business, but as ethical business leaders, it’s important that we don’t unintentionally become part of the illusion. When we become part of the illusion, we lose integrity. Like paradise, once integrity is lost, it can never be recovered.
In the coming weeks we’ll explore much more about how we walk the fine line between ESG compliance and bucking the trend of the illusion.
What I’ve Been Reading/Watching
A useful analysis—even if they don’t come to the same conclusion—of how climate change is more a vehicle to enrich a few than a vehicle to benefit humanity: https://nypost.com/2022/02/20/we-need-a-better-way-to-fight-climate-change/.
“To put this in context, the annual US cost of World War II is estimated at $1 trillion in today’s money. Every year by 2050, climate policy could cost Americans more than twice what they paid during the Second World War.”
A darkly humorous infographic which analyses the repeating pattern across all of the COPs: https://www.netzerowatch.com/content/uploads/2022/11/Flop27.pdf
Friedrich A. Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” was published in the September 1945 issue of The American Economic Review. Although the essay is essentially about economics, Hayek’s findings are just as relevant today as we consider centralized vs. decentralized planning: https://fee.org/articles/the-use-of-knowledge-in-society/
“If you want to learn as much as possible about economics from just one article, read Friedrich A. Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” published in the September 1945 issue of The American Economic Review. First, no other article explains the economic problem as clearly. Second, none provides a better understanding of the superiority of market economies. Third, it exposes one of the most deplorable fallacies in the standard approach to teaching economics. Finally, it throws a spotlight on the dangerous ignorance of economic planning.”
A 16min explanation of the climate fraud:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/akwdp5/photos-frontline-of-australian-bushfires (Note that in this article, Vice refers to 12m acres, which is the equivalent of 5m hectares - the more traditional measure of the area destroyed by bushfires. The larger number sounds more dramatic, and our minds miss the ‘sleight of hand.’)
https://bit.ly/C-o-R - Roam Research portal link (detailed)
To get a sense of how confusing all the standards are, see what we’re tracking here: https://bit.ly/ESG-cacophony