Is Bitcoin the future of currency or a polluting ponzi scheme? Is the Metaverse the future of the internet or a desperate bid to keep Facebook profitable? Is the latest bid to oppose Environmental, Social, and Governance standards in finance a worthwhile investment, or is it a transparent money grab surfing the wake of the years-long professional anti-ESG efforts?
Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme, the metaverse is uninhabited, and the latest bid to fundraise for an anti-ESG campaign is just as much of a scam as the others. But boy is it an entertaining one!
Meet David Siegel and his "Cutting Through the Noise" dot net website, which is one of the most visually unappealing websites we've seen this side of Y2K. With a white font on bright blue and fuchsia backgrounds, it's a veritable assault on the eyes. And with claims that the "UN Environmental, Sustainability, and Governance goals" are "nothing more than a Trojan Horse to control people via one world government" and that "Wokeism and cancel culture have drawn a tighter and tighter noose around markets, businesses, individual freedoms, and expression," it's also an assault on one's brain.
Such is the result of optimizing your website design for display on tin foil hats, but that's apparently the audience David Siegel is targeting. His other projects include Pillar, the virtual wallet for your fake digital currency and NFTs, and something about the metaverse, so clearly Siegel is on the cutting edge of technology that efficiently separates fools from their money.
Which is why it's so amusing that he's now eyeing the anti-ESG racket and has even gone so far as to publish a "road map" detailing how he'll "lead us out of the trap" of ESG in the same way the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration apparently did for Covid. (lol, lmao, rofl)
First off, Cutting Through the Noise is "looking for agents of change" like "scientists, engineers, business people, marketers, etc" (heavy on the "etc," we assume) from "think tanks, non profits, companies, and retired." (Think tanks are non profits, but okay.) Additionally, what is apparently "most important" is for this new effort to recruit "officers from corporations who want to change."
What will these “agents of change” do? They "will work in a Slack group to put a plan together, [sic] to craft our platform and launch our strategy." Oh, cool! (If anyone feels like checking out what is certainly an entertaining community of very smart people, the sign-up link for said Slack is at the bottom of every terrible page on the site.)
They "also need fundraisers who can help us get the resources we need," and the "plan is to create a set of education offerings that companies will pay for to send their people to learn about these issues," since "asking for charity money doesn't work (we tried that)."
So instead of spending $10 million on ESG compliance and a "greenwashing PR budget and other fake programs," Siegel wants companies to instead give him "$1 million a year to get out of that trap."
What a bargain! Companies can either spend money on rigorously exploring the potential costs and risks associated with polluting the environment, being hated by society, and being governed by a maniac, or they can just pay this guy a cool $1 million dollars for a 'get out of ESG jail free' card.
Siegel would "like to have a budget exceeding $10 million per year as soon as possible" because his group "will need officers, trainers, communications, event organizers, fundraising, and more." To this end, he’s hoping to find a few "charter members" (aka "companies to contribute $1 million each").
With cash in hand, Siegel can then start creating his checklist for pushing an agenda: a "credible body of evidence… ongoing research… cost/benefit analysis… a proper climate debate… a PR firm… a network of experts… a marketing department… events… a web site…" and “videos, podcasts and other media." And of course he also needs "lobbying to help eliminate many of the useless regulations we have today" as well as "lobbying to change the frameworks governments use to reinforce the status quo."
"If things go well," Siegel writes, Cutting Through the Noise "can raise money to really build an organization, [which] should be ready for a public launch by sometime in 2024 or 2025." Oh, okay! Good to know he's not rushing things!
Hopefully, between now and 2025, someone will let poor Dave know that an obscure little newspaper known as The New York Times has exposed the fact that there already IS an organized, billionaire-funded campaign to oppose ESG measures. People like Koch-backed former VP Mike Pence and Peter Thiel-backed Vivek Ramaswamy as well as fossil fuel-backed groups like PragerU, SFOF, the Heritage Foundation, and the Heartland Institute have been attacking ESG for years.
But perhaps Siegel is well aware of this effort, and that's why he thinks that a "credible body of evidence" against ESG standards has yet to be produced.
We suggest that because we found one very interesting post among his lengthy list of climate disinformation resources. In "An Open Letter to the Heartland Institute," Siegel absolutely roasts the "toxic" fossil fuel and tobacco-backed group that's playing a recurring role in the organized anti-ESG campaign.
Apparently David went to one of Heartland's annual conferences, and despite being a fan of the speakers and totally buying into climate denial, he was not impressed.
Here is one of our favorite quotes from the open letter: "I was sad to watch the theater that played onstage. It wasn't a conference, it was a jamboree. It was a scout-troop meeting of old white-haired American men who thought they were winning the argument, the same way they 'won' back in Vietnam."
Siegel goes on to explain, "most of the talks I heard at your event were childish," which is quite a follow-up to the complaint that the conference consisted of a bunch of old men. He was disappointed to see that what he considered "several good, reasonable scientists (Willie Soon and Tim Ball) have become cartoon characters on stage" who were merely "preaching to the sexagenarian choir."
No wonder Siegel wasn't invited to be a part of the organized anti-ESG campaign and has instead had to resort to trying to crowdfund his own effort, two years after the real one got started! Getting in the good graces of disinfo funders requires lying about pretty much everything, especially how fantastic all your would-be-fellow fundees are. By calling out Heartland as a bunch of sad old losers, Siegel did the one thing that disqualifies you from getting a piece of that easy climate disinfo money: He showed that he's capable of telling the truth!
Now if only he'd notice that the same "sad" "old white-haired" "childish" he criticized for "preaching to the sexagenarian choir" are singing from the same hymnal he is.