Imagine the tobacco producer who invests in smoke limitation programs, or the arms manufacturer who attends a conference proposing to ban weapons and seek a better future.\u00a0 Gautam Adani, one of India\u2019s most ruthlessly adept billionaires, has added his name to the growing list of corporate transvestism, using ecological credentials as his camouflage for fossil fuel predation.<\/p>\n
The central feature of Adani is having a nose for getting on the bandwagon and pushing to its front.\u00a0 Everyone is doing it, at least when it comes to renewable energy sources.\u00a0 Recently, the Adani Group, an entity specialising in power generation, real estate, commodities, and port infrastructure, promised it would invest $US70 billion in the green energy transition and associated infrastructure in what it calls<\/a> \u201can integrated Hydrogen-based value chain\u201d.<\/p>\n In terms of solar energy, the company has jostled its way up the ranks through Adani Green Energy, creating<\/a> sprawling \u201csolar parks\u201d comprising thousands of hectares in Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.\u00a0 The acquisition of such land has come at considerable cost to local farmers, many of whom have protested such alienation and loss of fertile land.<\/p>\n Adani\u2019s program is relentlessly expansive, part of a suite of approaches that seems to be winning investment from such companies as the French multinational TotalEnergies, which poured in money<\/a> to acquire 25% of a stake in Adani New Industries.\u00a0 In this, the Indian billionaire is simply pursuing what his other colleagues in the fossil fuel line are doing: pretend to go green and hope that no one notices the off-colour joke.\u00a0 In this enterprise, Adani hopes to make his company the world\u2019s largest renewable energy producer by 2030 (surely the<\/em> joke), which might encourage some laughter but for its seriousness.<\/p>\n At the Forbes Global CEO conference held in Singapore, Adani was preeningly confident<\/a>, exhibiting the cocksure awareness of a crossdressing trickster. \u201cWe are already the world\u2019s largest solar player, and we intend to do far more.\u00a0 Adani New Industries is the manifestation of the bet we are making in the energy transition space.\u201d\u00a0 He also told his audience that the new business, additionally \u201cto our existing 20 GW renewables portfolio\u201d would \u201cbe augmented by another 45 GW of hybrid renewable power generation spread over 100,000 hectares\u201d.\u00a0 Boastfully, he reminded those caring to listen that this was \u201can area 1.4 times that of Singapore.\u201d<\/p>\n In April this year, he told<\/a> the India Economic Conclave that his country was \u201con the cusp of decades of growth that the world will want to tap into.\u00a0 Therefore, there can be no better defence of our interests at this time than atmanirbhar.\u201d\u00a0 The Hindi word in the statement, denoting self-reliance, is instructive enough, a feature of the Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi\u2019s nationalist drive.<\/p>\n As with most billionaires in history, success is a convenient wedding of self-aggrandisement and patriotic purpose, a case of making money and wrapping oneself in the flag.\u00a0 More to the point, it is a shamelessly calculating push to combine interests of another sort, notably of the environmentally appealing nature.\u00a0 \u201cFor India,\u201d Adani told the audience at the IEC, \u201cthe combination of solar and wind power coupled with green hydrogen opens up unprecedented possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Making greenwashing an essential part of its public relations, the Adani Group is globally engaged in promoting souped up ecological crossdressing.\u00a0 In October 2021, the London Science Museum announced a sponsorship deal<\/a> with Adani at the Global Investment Summit, a lead-up event to the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow.\u00a0 The agreement involves the development of an exhibition space titled, \u201cEnergy Revolution: The Adani Green Energy Gallery\u201d.<\/p>\n Dame Mary Archer, chair of the Science Museum Group, explained<\/a> that the gallery would \u201ctake a truly global perspective on the world\u2019s most urgent challenge.\u00a0 We face a grave threat, but the future is not predestined\u201d.\u00a0 Critics were less than impressed by the Museum\u2019s breezy refusal to consider Adani\u2019s blotchy human rights record and treatment of indigenous communities both in India and Australia.\u00a0 Protests were organised at the entrance to the museum.\u00a0 Two trustees resigned.<\/p>\n Nothing, however, gets away from the core business of the Adani Group, which has close ties with the Modi government, ever keen to fashion it as a spear of influence.\u00a0 The renewables canard cannot hide the practical, solid elements that keep Adani big in coal mining, gas distribution and transportation.<\/p>\n The latter has been particularly striking, with the company winning government tenders to operate a number of airport facilities despite lacking any experience in aviation.\u00a0 This was a source of consternation for Kerala\u2019s Finance Minister Thomas Isaac, whose state government was ignored in the bid for Thiruvananthapuram airport.\u00a0 \u201cPeople of Kerala will not accept this act of brazen cronyism,\u201d he declared<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n Whether its brazen cronyism or thick-as-thieves solidarity, no one, in terms of scale and influence, has as much influence with New Delhi as Adani does.\u00a0 As Tim Buckley of Climate Energy Finance, a Sydney-based think tank explains<\/a>, \u201cHis political power, his ability to understand the lay of the land in India, is second to none.\u201d<\/p>\n The Adani Group also remains controversially, and deeply embedded in such controversial projects as the Carmichael Mine in Queensland, Australia, where it is looking, increasingly, like a relic, an echo of habitual ecological vandalism best shelved.\u00a0 The company made a concerted effort to suppress the findings of a university report<\/a> into its lack of consultation in mining operations with Traditional Owners, who had not \u201cgiven their free, prior and informed consent\u201d to the operations.\u00a0 The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination also expressed its concerns<\/a> in 2019 that Adani\u2019s consultations regarding the Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) \u201cmight not have been conducted in good faith\u201d.<\/p>\n All this paints a picture of a company keen to cut corners and stomp on toes with ruthless disdain.\u00a0 For his efforts, Gautam Adani finds himself at a peg below the summit of wealth, being the second wealthiest man on the planet.\u00a0 Only the extra-terrestrially minded Elon Musk bars his route on the rich list\u2019s chart.\u00a0 Ecological crossdressing, it would seem, pays.<\/p>The post Gautam Adani: Ecological Crossdresser<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Imagine the tobacco producer who invests in smoke limitation programs, or the arms manufacturer who attends a conference proposing to ban weapons and seek a better future.\u00a0 Gautam Adani, one of India\u2019s most ruthlessly adept billionaires, has added his name to the growing list of corporate transvestism, using ecological credentials as his camouflage for fossil [\u2026]<\/p>\n The post Gautam Adani: Ecological Crossdresser<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,16614,41321,7890,452,948,10601],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":817708,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817706\/revisions\/817708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}