Explosive revelations connecting Atlas and Luxon

In October 2021, Ben Franta, Stanford University, published a paper titled "Weaponising economics: Big Oil, economic consultants, and climate policy delay"

Ben traced the history of economic consultants hired by the petroleum industry from the 1990s to the 2010s to estimate the costs of various proposed climate policies. The economists used models that inflated predicted costs while ignoring policy benefits, and their results were often portrayed to the public as independent rather than industry-sponsored. Their work played a key role in undermining numerous major climate policy initiatives in the US over a span of decades, including carbon pricing and participation in international climate agreements.

The way Ben discovered this amazing pattern involved him taking every single news article about climate from the archives and reading them - and he noticed that the American Petroleum Institute always referred to reports written by the same four economists from the same company - Charles River Associates.

Everything had been in public view - but until 2021, nobody had realised what had been really going on until Ben saw the pattern.

Why should you care about this in New Zealand right now? What if I told you that Christopher Luxon's current economic advisor had worked for the same company ( Charles River Associates ) together with a small group of economists ensconced at Victoria University in Wellington - and they had been paid by the Oil and Gas industry to write very similar reports?

What if I also told you that the economists at Charles River Associates in the US had switched to a different company named NERA - and gone on to write bogus economic reports to support Trump when he pulled the USA out of the Paris Accord in 2017 - and some of the same economists in Wellington had also switched to that same company?

As a New Zealander this matters so let's start at the beginning.

As you know Matt Burgess ( Atlas NZ Initiative ) is Christopher Luxon's economic advisor - just like he was economic advisor to Bill English - and between December 2001 and December 2005, Matt Burgess makes no secret of the fact he worked for Charles River Associates.

What may be less well known, is Matt Burgess was working at the Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation ( ISCR ) in Victoria University along with a few other economists and Matt wrote research papers with them. One notable paper Matt Burgess wrote with Lewis Evans in 2005 concluded that between 1998-2001 the parallel importing of DVDs in NZ enhanced the welfare of consumers. ( Published in Competition and Regulation Times, September. Issue 17 ).

Lewis Evans is a Professor of Economics (Emeritus), Victoria University of Wellington (1987-, Emeritus from 2014), working at the time alongside Burgess and others like Neil Quigley ( Chair of RBNZ, Vice Chancellor Waikato University ), and coming up through the ranks was a young James Mellsop who would later become Vice President of Charles River Associates ( the local chapter ) and in March 2008 switch to be M.D. of NERUS ( as mentioned above ).

Long story short - on 17 June 2003, Charles River Associates submitted a report to Shell (Petroleum Mining) Limited, OMV New Zealand Limited and Todd (Petroleum Mining Company) Limited - written by Matt Burgess, Lewis Evans and James Mellsop.

The report concerned the coordinated Marketing of the Pohokura Gas Field by the three Big Oil companies ( Shell 26%, OMV 48% and Todd 26% ) and was presumably paid for by them - because this was about contesting a draft determination by the Commerce Commission that these three Oil Companies needed to market ( extract and sell ) the gas separately and not jointly.

The Commerce Commission had said okay but subject to certain conditions and - Burgess, Mellsop and Evans argued those conditions were economically unworkable.

Their report was the battle for investment - as Matt Burgess, and mates ( Lewis Evans and James Mellsop ) argued that the Commerce Commission had got it wrong - and these three BIG Oil companies needed long time secure contracts to secure investment - and Burgess et al - presented models - that contradicted other experts like Professor Tim Hazeldine and tried to assert that only joint marketing was the way to go ...so eventually the Commerce Commission relented and granted Shell, OMV and Todd permission to act jointly to sell the gas without the conditions.

So what? Well soon after this Shell, Todd and OMV decided they did not need to do that joint marketing thing - which made the Commerce Commission threaten to revoke the authorisation and you can read all about it in Decision 581, 2 June 2006. Yes the Commerce Commission decided to revoke the authorisation granted in Decision 505.

This smelt like Burgess and company had been writing BS for Big Oil - just like the Stanford Study uncovered. Same company Charles River Associates, small group of economists nestled in a University, funded by Big Oil in the background, same delays and long term contracts to extend the use of fossil fuels...using models which told a story Big Oil wanted told.

Now you know a bit more about Christopher Luxon's economic advisor - let's keep going.

Matt Burgess stopped working for Charles River Associates in December 2005 and started up a website with a friend called MyTradesman where you rate Tradies as bad or good - but that was soon followed by Matt's role within Victoria University where he was the CEO of iPredict from January 2008 till December 2016 ( according to his CV ).

Naturally this venture ended up having issues with the Problem Gambling Foundation.

"By 2014, and during the lead up to the general election, the approximately weekly reports on the status of the political contracts were reported as at a random time by Exceltium, on a pro bono basis. Exceltium is a Wellington-based corporate and public affairs consultancy, majority owned by right-wing political lobbyist, Matthew Hooton. The gaming of iPredict by National Party members was specifically noted by Nicky Hager in his book "Dirty Politics", which was released in August 2014." - wikipedia.

On page 64 Nicky Hager refers to Cameron Slater manipulating rankings in the Rodney candidates using IPredict - in the battle between Scott Simpson and Mark Mitchell.

The NZ Initiative say Matt Burgess was Senior Economic Advisor to Minister of Finance Bill English between 2012 and 2016 and as you know iPredict was shut down by Simon Bridges cos well it was a money laundering risk.

So this is all a bit grim isn't it - Leaping forward Matt Burgess joined up with the NZ Initiative ( Atlas Network ) where he wrote mostly about the perils and costs of Climate action when an ETS will do everything at much less cost. The "high costs" were exactly what the fossil fuel Industry had been arguing for decades via economists at Charles River Associates with their models, as a reason not to act on gross emissions but now it was modified to "cost effective".

It is also worth noting that Matt Burgess had an investment in the ETS - holding shares via the SALT fund at the same time.

The NZ Initiative ( Atlas Network ) was growing larger year after year, nearly all retail banks were members, the energy companies, notably the likes of Foodstuffs ( oh the cost of living crisis ) were onboard and as you know the Chair of Air New Zealand was a founder.

So this brings me to the point where Fran O'Sullivan was terribly excited in May 2017 because 39 people, mostly CEOs who were members or directors of the NZ Initiative including Christopher Luxon had agreed to go on a jolly to Switzerland together for a week. ( I will publish all their names ).

Roger Partridge and Oliver Hartwich were there and Fran bought her own ticket - as the CE's marvelled at the wonders of Switzerland's federal system - how small areas self funded and the education system included vocational skills training not just academic training.

Most notably to me was the way Christopher Luxon and NZ Initiative friends returned to NZ and spouted how we need to be more like Switzerland, oh the standard of living, the prosperity - but hang on, I am skipping over another important point.

While in Switzerland the NZ Initiative had organised for their cult members ( lol ) to visit a think tank named Avenir Suisse - which according to DeSmog is one of the eight Atlas Network think tanks in Switzerland.

There was Christopher Luxon being groomed by Atlas, his chair, the network all around him, Fran ever adoring and guess where the folks involved at the Mood of the Boardroom is derived from lol.? You know the ones who gave Jacinda 2 out of 5 etc.

Anyway it was all in the open - nothing secret about it - just like in the USA as all these monied interests wanted to influence policy and Ben at Stanford just started to go through the press stories looking for patterns.

I discovered Christopher Luxon had declared "we need to turn New Zealand into Switzerland not Cancun ( Mexico )" in an interview with Corin Dann on Q&A on 26 November 2018 - where he also said he was happy not going into politics cos he had more to do in aviation and loved what he was doing.

In the 2018 NZ Initiative Annual Report - a full page glossy - showed Christopher Luxon - endorsing the Atlas Network think tank - because it made us all think.

I'll post that image soon - and to me that's kind of explosive because it's the current PM of NZ endorsing an Atlas Network think tank. Now you can see it in its real light.

Luxon was not the only one blowing smoke up Atlas here - various people like Barbara Chapman did likewise the year before - before she became Co-Chair of the NZ Initiative.

Anyway the point is Christopher Luxon was very connected to the members of the Atlas Network in 2017 and 2018 and as G News has previously pointed out - he travelled with them again to Copenhagen in July 2019 where he developed ideas about "localism and devolution".

Meanwhile Matt Burgess was posting on his blog "The Great Society" a name ripping off Lyndon B Johnson - that he loved Gas cos well it means we don't need coal and nuclear. No mention of wind or solar.

Skipping over all sorts of anti climate action work by Matt Burgess ( All hail the Cap and Trade ETS theory ) and attacks on Labour's 100% renewable energy goals - etc based on the fore runner of the Climate Commission...we arrive at the time when Matt Burgess left the NZ Initiative on Friday 26 March 2022 just as Luxon hit the lead in the polls in March 2022.

Curiously Matt Burgess had written a paper in March 2022 named the "Pretence of Necessity" concerning Grant Robertson spending $4.5 Billion on Climate Change Emissions Reduction work - and how we should leave that to the ETS - a waste of money, wasteful spending etc especially if the carbon price got over $50 - and journalists like Richard Harman and John Campbell speculated if Luxon would abandon his Climate Change position?

Luxon said no - cos we will build roads and John Campbell nearly fell out of his chair as Luxon said roads are needed for EVs and he would get those EV chargers going etc.

In other words do nothing and the excuse about GIDI projects being corporate welfare rang strong from Luxon.

A week after Matt Burgess had been thoroughly platformed by media ( as we do with Atlas Network here ) - Matt became the economic policy advisor to Christopher Luxon.

Notably Thomas Coughlan did not detail much about all this in his inner circle article...where he named Matt Burgess as one of Luxon's key influencers.

We soon started to hear about how "We are committed to our climate goals" from Luxon - and "We have a different approach" and you could almost see the invisible hand of Matt Burgess operating the bald glove puppet - as fossil fuel interests and agricultural interests were protected from change with yet more delays.

It's all about being cost effective and Luxon will not be lectured.

Ben Franta, Stanford - says in 100 years time we will look back and know who to blame - because the effects of what we do now will still be happening then ( even in 1000 years ) and he says - the doubts and delays caused by the Fossil Fuel Industry will be damning - the economists at Charles River Associates will always be seen as deliberately manifesting the situation the future populations have to live with.

"We're getting back on track" sounds thin against this context and I'd like to end with a quote from Matt Burgess who is advising Luxon these days...

"Pretending NZ is off track is the foundation officials and Ministers need to claim the draconian emissions reductions plan is necessary" - Matt Burgess advisor to Luxon.

Clearly that is what he is saying to you.

Explosive revelations connecting Atlas and Luxon

Morena

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