HSBC has reportedly suspended its head of responsible investment, Stuart Kirk, following a blunt address where he called climate change catastrophisers “nut jobs.”
Kirk offered a substance-based rebuttal of at least two speeches on the day, stating: “Climate change is not a financial risk that we need to worry about.”
Pre-empting his career’s inevitable lynching, Kirk wisecracked, “heresy.”
The HSCB senior said he understood the competition, and the game of having to “out-hyperbole the next guy.”
However, he added:
“The constant reminder that we are doomed. The constant reminder that within decades it’s all over, and we’re not going to survive, is getting out of hand. I wouldn’t normally mind that; 25-years in the finance industry, there’s always some nut job telling me about the end of the world.”
Kirk illustrated his point with the irrational fear-mongering caused by apocalyptic “Y2K bug” predications.
He then challenged previous speakers to explain the relationship between catastrophising and the higher prices, stating:
“The number of times the phrase climate catastrophe is mentioned around the world the higher, and higher, and higher risk assets go; The more we’re doomed the higher prices go. How is that possible? So what’s going on?”
Kirk doubled down, asking the climate catastrophisers of the world to tell “us why prices are going up” despite the world’s apparent “catastrophic” demise.
In other words, the figures don’t justify the fearmongering, so fearmongers need to fess up.
Kirk also attacked the flood of regulations dragging down workplace efficiency.
“We’ve got inflation coming down the pipes, and I’m being told- time and time again – to spend time looking at something that’s “going to happen in 20 or 30 years.”
“The proportionality is completely out of whack,” he said.
Note here the relevance of the South Australian Labor government’s move to shift the state from a “COVID-19 emergency” into a “climate emergency.”
Kirk’s 16-minute pragmatic speech also ran up a red flag over the lack of financial focus being spent on adapting to the challenges of alleged “climate change”, with Kirk arguing that they were expending way too much energy on mitigating “climate risk,” when they should be spending that energy on “climate adaptation.”
Humans, he said, “have been fantastic at adapting to change, adapting to climate emergencies, and we will continue to do so. Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100-years? Amsterdam has been underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place.”
“We will cope” with any “climate emergency” just as we’ve always done, “through adaption.”
According to Kirk one of the “tragedies of this whole debate” is spending “way too much time [obsessing over] mitigation financing and not enough on adaptation financing.”
The ballsy speech sent a shockwave through HSBC higher-ups causing panic, with prominent figures within the banks making an effort to publicly distance themselves from Kirk, and his common-sense comments.
As Fortune reported, HSBC CEO, Noel Quinn took to social media, rebuking Kirk.
His views, Quinn said, are “inconsistent with HSBC’s strategy and do not reflect the views of the senior leadership of HSBC or HSBC Asset Management.”
Fortune added that Quinn was backed by a co-CEO, and HSBC’s head of personal wealth and business banking,
“The transition to net-zero is of utmost importance to us and we will strive for ways to help our clients on this journey.”
Unsurprisingly, Kirk has now been suspended and is under investigation – a likely euphemism for the euthanising of Kirk’s banking career.
Opposition to Kirk’s free-thinking optimism is probably due to his advocacy of free-market solutions to the perceived threat broadcasted daily by climate change catastrophisers.
Put simply, for the Climate Cult hardliners: Kirk’s heresy is preaching capitalism when he should be preaching ‘Das Kapital’.
The “How dare you!” cancellation of Kirk puts him in the same boat as Tesla’s Elon Musk.
The more we deploy the free market toward solving the perceived “climate crisis,” the more likely that that crisis is resolved.
This threatens powerful political opportunists who want the crisis in order to further their own power and advance a COVID-coercive government agenda.
Unleashing the power of the free market on “climate change” would put a solid full stop to the Climate cult’s proposed government overreach, and their apparent goal of centralised control, aka Global Communism.
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