Under the leadership of Dutch financial speculator ING and with the help of French Société Générale, six global financial institutions have “come together to define common standards of action for steel sector decarbonization” under the umbrella of the Steel Climate-Aligned Finance Working Group. Together, these “liquidity-challenged” global institutions — Citi, Goldman Sachs, ING, Société Générale, Standard Chartered, and UniCredit — will be working through the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Center for Climate-Aligned Finance, “with the goal of crafting an industry-backed agreement before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in November 2021 (COP26, in Glasgow, U.K.).”
Lost in all the verbiage about “degrees centigrade” and the like which follows their announcement, is the fact that the steel industry essentially cannot be decarbonized, leaving two realistic possibilities for this venture: Either it will serve to create a huge financial flow by extorting purchases of “carbon offsets” from those industries which can afford them, or it will oversee the financial strangulation of one of the founding bedrocks of modern, industrial society. No surprise then, to find that this “Working Group” is a direct offshoot of the Davos Forum’s “Mission Possible,” which has set its sights on all global carbon-intense industries—steel, aluminum, concrete, air and ship travel—for elimination.