The last thing that far left extremists want is to scam everyone to make billions of dollars. I suspect what you mean by that label is corporate democrats.
I think it’s probably both (real and a scam). I don’t doubt that there’s a scientifically verifiable climate change happening. It’s not a stretch to believe that man made pollution is contributing to that change most obviously on a trees-water-and-dirt environmental level.
However, I also believe that we’re going to be taken for a ride. The foundation for carbon taxes were laid in the first bailout bill (just as we’re seeing glimmers of a reduction in fossil fuel dependence). I think the military (or whomever) has technology that allows them to weaponize the weather (google it if you don’t believe me), so just about anything goes, I think in terms of creating weather extremes (or Indonesian tsunamis, e.g.) Plus, we’ve got jetliners spraying god knows what all over the globe (i.e. chemtrails), so either that’s really to mitigate global warming or for something else.
And let’s not forget the probability that greener technology has been suppressed by the same capitalist interests who are now asking us to pay for our environmental transgressions.
I’m reading this book currently, and in it there’s a story that isn’t altogether uncommon in human history but really struck me w/r/t the current chant of global climate change. When one particular Mexican dynasty ascended to power in the 1400s, the ruler transformed his nation state into a “keeper of the cosmic order” and instituted a dogma that the sun (which makes life possible) had to battle with the moon and the stars every night in order to return the next day. The sun could not hold out forever and would eventually lose this battle, but in the meantime that apocalypse could be postponed if the sun was fortified with chalchihuatl, or life energy. Society, then was charged with providing a steady supply of that life energy, which could only be produced through human sacrifice. The humans to be sacrificed were generally criminals, slaves or more and more often prisoners of war. So, what grew into their imperialist quest on earth was legitimized by their sacred mission to preserve the sun’s power.
I think it’s obvious to see the manipulation in that story (and so many others like it), and it makes me wonder if we’re being set up for something similar in this lifetime.