How the Post-Soviet Left Latched Onto Climate For its Crusade on Capitalism

By CONRAD BLACK

The opening of the Paris conference on climate change will be the occasion for the customary lamentations about the imminent demise of life on Earth if we do not pull up our socks as a species and reduce carbon emission levels, and thus avoid the toasting of the world. The adduced scientific evidence does not justify any such state of alarm.......At Copenhagen, the demand arose from developing countries that the economically advanced countries had permanently impaired the under-developed countries and that the $100 billion compensation fund that President Obama had promised to raise for the less-advanced countries was completely inadequate, mere reparations instead of a serious response to a moral debt that could only be quantified in trillions of dollars........What seems to have happened is that the international far left, having been decisively routed with the collapse of the Soviet Union and of international communism, has attached itself to the environmental movement, usurped the leading positions in it from the bird-watching, butterfly-collecting, and conservation organizations, and is carrying on its anti-capitalist and anarchist crusade behind the cover of eco-Armageddonism.

While this has been rather skillfully executed, many office-holders and aspirants, including Mr. Obama, have used dire environmental scenarios to distract their electorates from their own policy failures, much as Arab powers have long diluted anger at despotic misgovernment by harping on the red herring of Israel.....To Read More.....