Paul
Driessen
In
a more rational, moral, compassionate, scientifically literate world, this
Cornwall declaration would not be needed. It assesses the “far-reaching, costly
policies” that the world’s governments are adopting, supposedly to prevent
global warming and climate change. It calls on governments to focus instead on
protecting the poor, who desperately need the affordable energy that those
policies circumscribe.
The
declaration was crafted by the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship
of Creation. This coalition of theologians, faith leaders, scientists, and
economic, environmental and policy experts is committed to safeguarding God’s
entire creation: not just the Earth and its wildlife, but the people who also
inhabit our wondrous planet, especially the poorest among us. More than 150
have already signed
the declaration.
The
declaration lists ten reasons to
“oppose harmful climate change policies.” It notes that our Earth is “robust,
resilient, self-regulating and self-correcting.” Its climate system will
respond to and correct damage that might arise from the relatively small
effects of carbon dioxide that we humans are adding to the atmosphere –
compared to the numerous, complex, powerful, interacting natural forces that
have always ruled our planet’s ever-changing climate and weather.
For
one thing, crops and forests and other plants will respond to the extra
CO2 by growing even faster and better, greening the planet and helping to feed
wildlife and people. For another, as my extensive new climate report
makes clear, the real world is simply not cooperating with the alarmists’ dire
forecasts.
President
Obama says climate change “will define the contours of this century more than
any other” issue. Secretary of State John Kerry insists that climate change is
“the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction,” and poses “greater
long-term consequences” than ISIL, terrorism or Ebola – even as ISIL butchers
crucify men, behead little children,
and promise to murder Westerners in their homes and streets.
Reality
tells a different story. Not a single category 3-5 hurricane has struck the
United States in nine years – the longest such period since at least 1900 and
perhaps the US Civil War. Arctic ice has rebounded. Antarctic ice that is supposed to be
melting is instead expanding to new records, “because of” global warming that’s
supposed to be happening with increasing speed, but instead stopped 18 years
ago. Sea levels are barely rising. Perhaps all this good climate news is due to
our carbon dioxide emissions?
All
these “inconvenient truths” are at the heart of the Cornwall appeal. Look first,
it suggests, at actual, empirical, real-world climate observations. In almost
every case they differ significantly from – or are directly opposite to – what
the White House, Environmental Protection Agency, Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change and other alarmists assert and predict.
Second,
the declaration implores, consider how anti-fossil fuel climate policies would
affect the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth. Then “abandon fruitless
and harmful policies to control global temperature, and instead adopt policies
that simultaneously reflect responsible environmental stewardship, make energy
and all its benefits more affordable, and so free the poor to rise out of
poverty.”
As
UCLA emeritus professor Deepak Lal (who wrote the foreword to the India edition
of my Eco-Imperialism book) wrote in Poverty
and Progress: Realities and Myths about Global Poverty:
“The greatest threat to the alleviation of the structural
poverty of the Third World is the continuing campaign by western governments,
egged on by some climate scientists and green activists, to curb greenhouse
emissions, primarily the CO2 from burning fossil fuels.… [I]t is mankind’s use
of the mineral energy stored in nature’s gift of fossil fuels … accompanying
the slowly rolling Industrial Revolution, [that] allowed the ascent from
structural poverty which had scarred humankind for millennia. To put a limit on
the use of fossil fuels without adequate economically viable alternatives is to
condemn the Third World to perpetual structural poverty.”
The
Cornwall Alliance echoes and expands on these concerns in its Call to Truth, Prudence and
Protection of the Poor, a 55-page analysis by professor
of climatology David Legates and professor of economics Cornelius van Kooten.
Abundant,
affordable, reliable energy is indispensable to lifting and keeping people out
of poverty, the Alliance points out. Mandatory reductions in CO2 emissions
would greatly increase the price of energy, as well as goods and services. Such
policies would slow, stop or even reverse the economic growth that enables
people to prosper and adapt to all climates. They would harm the poor more than
the wealthy,
President
Obama says the United States is committed to helping poor nations deal with the
effects of “climate disruption.” However, he has also signed an executive order
requiring that federal agencies take climate change into account when preparing
international development, loan and investment programs. This has meant that
U.S. agencies will support wind, solar and biofuel projects – but will not
provide loans or other assistance for state-of-the-art gas-fired power plants
in Ghana, coal-fired power plants in South Africa, or similar projects in other
severely energy-deprived and impoverished nations.
Worldwide,
2.8 billion people still use wood, charcoal, coal and dung in open fires to
heat and cook. At least 1.2 billion
people still do not have access to electricity and the countless blessings it
brings. In India alone, more than 300 million people lack electricity; in
Africa more than 550 million. The result is millions of deaths every year from
lung and intestinal diseases. The vast majority of these victims are women and
children.
But
under current White House, IPCC and EU policies, they are not likely to get
electricity anytime soon. Mr. Obama justified his policies by telling students
in Johannesburg, South Africa, “if everybody has got a car and everybody has
got air conditioning and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will
boil over – unless we find new ways of producing energy.”
In
other words, in a world where hydrocarbons still provide 82% of all energy, for
this White House and IPCC, exaggerated concerns about climate change 50 or 100
years from now trump concerns about safeguarding billions of people from
rampant poverty and lethal diseases. This is intolerable.
Wind
and solar power will let people in remote areas have light bulbs, cell phone
chargers and tiny refrigerators, until they can be connected to an electrical
grid. However, such limited, unreliable, expensive electricity cannot support
modern economies, factories, shops, schools, hospitals or families.
No
wonder China, India and other developing countries are building hundreds of
coal-fired generating plants. Their leaders may be happy to participate in
wealth transfer schemes, in which they receive (at least promises of) “climate
adaptation and mitigation” money from rich countries. But they will not sign
any international accord that restricts their fossil fuel use and economic
development. They understand all too well the need to end rampant poverty,
misery, disease and premature death – even if Mr. Obama, UN Secretary Ban-Ki
Moon and Al Gore do not, or do not care.
Put
bluntly, “climate-smart” policies
for poor countries and poor families are stupid – and immoral.
As
American University adjunct professor Caleb Rossiter
asked in a June 2014 Wall Street Journal
article: “Where is the justice
when the U.S. discourages World Bank funding for electricity-generation
projects in Africa that involve fossil fuels, and when the European Union
places a ‘global warming’ tax on cargo flights importing perishable African
goods?”
So
study these issues. Ponder what the Cornwall Alliance has to say. Sign the declaration. Speak
out against energy deprivation, prolonged poverty and needless death. And help
protect your children’s futures – and the hopes, aspirations, lives and basic
human rights of the world’s poorest families
______________
Paul Driessen is senior
policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of
Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
No comments:
Post a Comment