COP-27 financiers and merchants of death

Africa resists policies that promote primitive farming and energy, and making muffins out of flies

Paul Driessen

As Americans give thanks this week for our many blessings, let us recall the Pilgrims’ and Native Americans’ primitive agricultural knowledge and technologies, the hunger and disease that were constants in their lives – and how so many around the world are not much better off today.

Much of Africa still lives on the edge, with well over 600 million people not even having electricity. Many parts of India, Asia and Latin America also face serious energy and food deprivation.

Incredibly, so does Europe. “German industry stares into the Net Zero abyss,” “Europe’s energy crisis may get even worse next year,” “Even Germany’s wind industry is sliding into crisis,” “Millions face poverty and destitution in Green Britain, as Brits pay highest electricity bills in world,” headlines warn.

Banning Russian gas imports amid Putin’s war on Ukraine plays a role and is frequently scapegoated. But the primary cause is Europe’s love affair with intermittent wind and solar, and hate-fest for fossil fuels and nuclear, amid frigid winter realities that have caused Germany to obliterate ancient villages and recent-vintage wind farms to mine lignite coal beneath them.

Closer to home, New England and New York also face a cold, dark winter, because they too have voted against drilling, fracking, pipelines, coal and nuclear power – and now demand more oil and gas from the same companies that they and President Biden want to drive into oblivion.

However, the greatest hypocrisy of all was on full-throated display at the COP-27 climate circus in Egypt November 6-18 – where attendees kept asking whether Africa should be allowed to exploit its oil, natural gas and coal reserves to improve living standards, feed families and save lives! 

Al Gore preached that fossil fuel investments should be terminated worldwide, including in Africa. UN Secretary General António Guterres absurdly asserted that “New funding for fossil fuel exploration and production is delusional” and will only “feed the scourge of war, pollution and climate catastrophe” (the manmade cataclysms found in computer models and COP-27 rants, though not in the Real World).

At the COP-27 climate gabfest in Sham-El-Sheikhdown, Egypt, John Kerry said African nations shouldn’t rely on natural gas to generate electricity and modernize. (Kerry has five houses, a yacht and private jet – but that’s OK because they’re in his wife’s name, and he merely “makes use of them.”)

Even worse, it’s not just energy these arrogant eco-totalitarians want to obstruct in Africa and other developing regions. It’s also modern fertilizers -- indeed, all aspects of modern agriculture – everything that can actually help farmers feed hungry people and make enough money to build a home or barn, send their children to school, and buy tractors and other equipment.

They don’t even want Africa producing natural gas and using it to make nitrogen fertilizer, which dramatically boosts crop yields and is absolutely essential if the world is to feed eight billion people – especially without turning millions more acres of wildlife habitat into marginal croplands.

Poor countries are no long going to tolerate this outrageous, intolerable, racist neo-colonialism. Nor should they, especially when they realize now-rich countries are on the verge of de-industrialization and bankruptcy – and have neither the intention nor ability to shell out billions, much less trillions, of dollars in annual “reparation, loss and damage” payments for alleged impacts from manmade climate change.

So when the UN, now-rich countries and eco-pressure groups tell them there’ll be no financing for fossil fuels and modern agriculture – only for wind and solar energy, organic farming and “AgroEcology” – poor countries should just tell these purveyors of poverty, hunger, disease and death to buzz off. That would leave poor countries largely on their own.

But they have numerous advantages that their predecessors lacked: access to the incredible energy, agricultural, industrial, economic, medical, communication and other advances of recent centuries, especially during the fossil-fueled industrial era.

They simply need to chart their own destinies and utilize these advances. Every project they undertake will generate new wealth, innovation and self-confidence to undertake subsequent projects.

I’ve written about these callous eco-imperialists – these financiers and merchants of death – many times (here, here, here and here, for example).

Unfortunately, they never repent, never revise their lethal attitudes and policies. The global following they enjoy underscores how the ill-informed but well-intended really are led around by the well-informed but ill-intended – on climate, energy, agriculture and human rights.

Their AgroEcology schemes reject virtually the entire foundation of modern agriculture, which feeds feed billions of people with less acreage and water, using monoculture farming, carefully developed and tested chemical fertilizers and insecticides, biotechnology, hybrid seeds and mechanized equipment. 

Instead, they demand “food sovereignty” – the “right” to “culturally appropriate” food produced through “ecologically sound and sustainable methods, in accord with AgroEcology policies – the kind that brought hunger and chaos to Sri Lanka.

They even vilify Golden Rice, which could end Vitamin A Deficiency, blindness and death among malnourished children.

Could the insanity and hypocrisy get any worse? Sadly – yes.

European leaders have been pleading with African nations to launch oil, gas and coal projects – for shipment to Europe. In their next breath, the EU Commission says supporting nitrogen fertilizer production in Africa would “clash” with EU climate goals.

The International Energy Agency worries that half of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population has no access to electricity. In its next breath, the IEA says stopping planetary overheating doesn’t allow for more African petroleum production.

Even more colonialist, Time magazine promotes the notion that “humans eating insects could help save the planet.” The New York Times extolls a new Julia Child “Joy of Cooking (Insects).” And a group of “renowned” African and European “ecology and nutrition experts” says climate change and other considerations make Africa “the perfect laboratory” for testing new ways to feed humanity – like turning lake flies from the Lake Victoria region into “crackers, muffins, meat loaves and sausages.”

COP-27 (or FLOP-27) claims to have reached another “historic milestone” in saving Planet Earth! But it’s all driven by unfounded hysteria about manmade climate cataclysms. Let’s all take a deep breath.

We certainly face climate fluctuations and extreme weather events – but no worse than in the past, and with no replicable, convincing evidence that manmade emissions have replaced natural forces. More importantly, we have far greater wealth, far more knowledge, far better technologies and resources than in the past – to help us adapt to climate changes, survive extreme weather events and rebuild afterward.

That’s infinitely preferable to blanketing the Earth with wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transmission lines, mines and factories to build the things – and processing plants to make bug burgers and other delicacies, in time for climate luminaries to enjoy them at COP-28.

Can’t we just be calm and rational (and thus colonialist?) just this once? Just asking.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental policy and human rights.

 

A Declaration of Mineral Independence against eco tyranny

It’s an essential first step in making the USA less dangerously dependent on foreign minerals

Paul Driessen and Ann Bridges

As we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, let us view it from a 21^st century perspective.

Many of the colonists’ grievances against King George III resonate today, as tyrannical environmentalists continue to block domestic development of minerals that are critical for our businesses, security and living standards. To protect our freedoms, we have updated that revered 1776 statement, to highlight and upend the status quo.

A Declaration of Mineral Independence

of and for the People of the United States of America

from tyrannical environmentalist organizations,

with a goal of full mineral independence by the 250th Anniversary

of America’s first Declaration of Independence, July 4, 2026

WE still hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men and Women are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator and protected by our Constitution with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, which require access to the minerals that make modern societies, defense and other technologies, health and living standards possible.

To secure these rights, our Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and whenever our Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter, abolish or institute new laws.

This declaration of the need for change is not due to light or transient causes. Unfortunately, many of our citizens and businesses are more disposed to avoid conflict or start over elsewhere, than to change the status quo, even while suffering under its ill effects. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations by non-elected agents of the Government and Environmentalist Non-Government Organizations (ENGOs) creates legal despotism under the guise of wildly inflated risks, distorted scientific analyses, willful ignorance, and dire predictions of catastrophic climate and environmental disasters, it is our right and duty to throw off such laws and regulations and provide new safeguards for personal, economic and national security. The ENGOs’ enormous wealth, fundraising ability and political influence rightfully categorizes them as a major industry of similar stature as their named “enemies” – including the fossil fuel, mining and manufacturing industries that provide essential energy, basic building blocks and products for life, defense, security and pursuit of happiness.

Our Nation now unnecessarily imports numerous critical minerals, creating a dangerous dependence on foreign and sometimes unfriendly nations, some of which pay little attention to American laws and standards regarding environmental protection, child labor, and worker wages, safety and health. The global environmentalist industry has a long history of imposing its narrow agendas with little regard for the overall well-being of our nation and its citizenry. It instead seeks to assert control over our mining and other businesses and those enterprises’ ability to raise and maintain the security and living standards of every American citizen through fair commerce between willing customers and providers. The facts speak for themselves.

Environmentalist NGOs driving our policies, laws and regulations have accepted billions of dollars a year from U.S. and foreign individuals, foundations, corporations and government agencies. They use those funds to advance their own global interests and those of their sponsors, to the detriment of American industries, businesses, communities and families.

They have forced American taxpayers to spend billions of dollars for little or no environmental benefit, without the consent of our legislatures or citizenry, thereby subjecting us to foreign and domestic powers that are unaccountable to the American people, our elected representatives, our laws or our Constitution. They have taken advantage of legal protections designed for nonprofit charities, to ensure they are treated as being above laws crafted for the public good, including honesty in public statements.

They have made themselves the dominant and dominating interested parties in local, regional and national environmental reviews, permit issuances and enforcement actions. They demand endless meetings and reviews, often in places far from the locale of the affected businesses, in order to delay, bankrupt, shutter or destroy projects that would responsibly develop our nation’s mineral endowment.

They have repeatedly used their power and wealth to influence and obstruct legislative, regulatory and judicial processes against properly and ethically operated businesses and projects, interfered with property rights, and disrupted fair debate over these matters. They have blocked access to vast acreage through land withdrawals and legal actions, preventing a determination of the highest and best use of areas likely to contain mineral resources vital to our nation’s defense, communication, transportation, medical, energy and other advanced technologies – including wind, solar and battery systems.

They have done so even though innovative modern processes and regulations can simultaneously protect the environment and human health, while reaping the wealth of our lands to further the well-being of our technologically advanced society.

They have demanded new laws, regulations and ever-more stringent standards that industries must meet, despite their proven ability and commitment to be responsible environmental stewards, even though existing laws require that environmental and mineral development interests be balanced. They ignore the fundamental reality that it takes many years or decades to find and develop economically recoverable deposits of strategic minerals, leaving our nation severely vulnerable in the event of a crisis.

This has resulted in: • Excessive permits, licenses, approvals and oversight that chill investment in our country’s own mineral resources, mining operations and manufacturing industries; • Higher costs for materials, goods and services, because of our unnecessarily importing minerals from foreign suppliers; and • Unelected regulators deciding legal interpretations and disputes, levying financial penalties, and creating approval processes that are too time-consuming and expensive for all but the wealthiest companies and citizens to bear.

Environmentalist NGOs have declared war on our nation’s businesses and citizens who seek to find, develop and utilize America’s bounteous mineral endowment to support our defense, living standards and national interests.

This single-minded pursuit of environmental preservation at all costs has harmed our communities and shackled the lives, livelihoods, ambitions and property rights of our people.

At every stage, businesses and individuals have petitioned for redress, but their petitions have been answered only by mockery and continued injury. Any special-interest group whose character is thus marked as tyrannical is unfit to be the primary arbiter of choices of a free people. We have warned our fellow citizens of the foolishness of ceding their future to this elitist minority. We have reminded them of laws intended to protect our access to vital raw materials. We have appealed to their sense of justice and endeavored to create workable solutions. Environmentalist NGOs have been deaf to anything that does not advance their overarching dominance over America’s future.

It is essential that we adopt a sense of urgency and declare our mineral independence, to become self-reliant again. It is crucial that we stop depending on other countries to provide mineral resources that we have in abundance, that are needed for our economic prosperity and national security, and that can be developed with proper attention to air, water, wildlife and other environmental values.

Therefore, we solemnly declare that these United States ought to be free and independent again; that we are absolved from the dictates and bullying of Environmentalist NGOs, their representatives and their funders; and that political obligations to them should be dissolved.

Our businesses and citizens must have full power to explore, develop and mine on federally managed lands, under responsible modern environmental, health and safety standards; establish secure commercial supply chains; and function as independent businesses and individuals under the laws of these United States of America.

We will work tirelessly to implement this Declaration of Mineral Independence, at the federal, state and local level, to ensure the continued freedom and prosperity of this Great Nation.

___________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of many articles on the environment. Ann Bridges is the Silicon Valley-based author of “Rare Mettle” and co-author of  “ Groundbreaking! America’s New Quest for Mineral Independence.”