Obviously didn’t like kids.
Including the next 50,000 generations of kids.
Hundreds of years from now, this is what history will remember about the climate denial movement, just as today, we remember Nero fiddling while Rome burned – as a shorthand for the decadence of a corrupted wealthy class’ culpability in a collapse.
I’ve posted before about the meeting between Epstein and climate “lukewarmer” Bjorn Lomborg. Amy Westervelt has more details, I’ve brutally excerpted longer story here.
Until that moment, Lomborg, a political scientist who has consistently argued that climate change is real but governments should not do anything to address the issue and should instead focus on other priorities, didn’t know Epstein. He was more of a friend of a friend. In documents released as part of the latest trove of materials published by the United States Department of Justice, he is described by Epstein’s staff in a notation for their boss as “John Brockman’s friend”.
Brockman, an influential New York literary agent, was a long-time associate of Epstein, once described by The New Republic as the pedophile’s “intellectual enabler”. The relationship was mutual. Epstein was a funder of Brockman’s foundation, Edge, and in return Brockman organized lavish “billionaire’s dinners” at which Epstein and his associates could mingle with the intelligentsia. As part of this relationship, Brockman regularly ran errands for Epstein. In one example from June 2011, he sought to make contact with Gavin Andresen, the author of a book on cryptocurrency, on Epstein’s behalf. As a foot in the door, Brockman’s email spotlighted some of the more noteworthy names on his literary agency’s list—including trader-turned-thought leader Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak—and Epstein’s billions. His email signature included a five-page list with the names of every author represented by Edge, including Bjorn Lomborg’s.
Brockman had arranged the meeting as a favor to his client who, at that time, had been crying poor. In January 2012 he told The Ecologist his thinktank, the Copenhagen Consensus Centre needed money. He claimed to have been the “victim of a vendetta” after his funding was cut by the Danish government. As a philanthropist, Brockman suggested, Epstein might be able to help Lomborg out.
A spokesperson from the Copenhagen Consensus Center confirmed there had been a “single meeting in New York, arranged by Lomborg’s literary agent” between Epstein and the Danish economist. It would prove a fruitless encounter with the Copenhagen Consensus Center receiving neither money or help from Epstein.
Epstein’s lack of interest in Lomborg and his ideas is perhaps not surprising. Climate change was never a significant subject of interest to the late pedophile and philanthropist, except where it might gain him access or advantage. Where he did discuss climate change, it appears he was a denier.
“I think you might consider the sources you guys rely on for info , are the same that write the bad articles about each of us,” Epstein wrote in an email apparently sent to Soon Yi Previn, Woody Allen’s wife, on 11 May 2012 following a dinner with the couple. “Your knowledge of the falsity of articles about each of us, is really no different than the ones on climate change etc.”
In July 2016, Epstein discussed climate change in an email exchange with German cognitive scientist, AI researcher and philosopher Joscha Bach. Bach, who offended Noam Chomsky by contradicting his work on language, wrote to Epstein to better explain his argument. During the back-and-forth, Bach compared individual people to cells in the human body and described fascism as “the most efficient and rationally stringent way of governance, if somebody could pull it off in an sustainable and efficient way” – though he added he did not personally support fascism. At one point, Bach appears to quote a line written in Epstein’s uncanny, lazily spelled script as saying: “, maybe climate change is a good way of dealing with overpopulation. . the earths forest fire. potentially a good thing for the species”. In response, Bach agreed: “I suspect that strong reductions in population will come from large-scale failure of agriculture. The climate change itself with result in migration and wars, but most people will probably survive that. But who knows, I might be wrong.”