“The real ‘criminals’ are those who use climate fear-mongering to justify fraudulent science and policies that kill, by denying people access to life-saving fossil fuels.”
Contrary to global warming hype, cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to a study that analyzed 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. And contrary to climate models and predictions, recent winters have been long and cold – a far cry from climate alarmist claims that snow and skiing would soon be a thing of the past.
In Britain, many pensioners now ride buses or sit in libraries all day during the winter to stay warm, while others burn used books in stoves, as they are cheaper than coal or wood. Thousands die of hypothermia each winter, because they can no longer afford to heat their homes properly, due to soaring electricity costs under Britain’s climate and renewable energy policies.
In Germany, Greece and other countries, rising energy costs have caused a surge in illegal tree cutting, as desperate families try to stay warm. Hungry, unemployed families are also poaching wildlife. Loggers are cutting down U.S. forests, destroying wildlife habitats and shipping wood pellets to Europe, to provide fuel for generating electricity under laws that reward the use of “renewable” power and prohibit fracking for oil and natural gas. Meanwhile, all over Europe, forests of wind turbines generate unreliable, expensive electricity, while slaughtering millions of its birds and bats.
For what climate or environmental benefit are all these sacrifices being made?
Reality: Fossil Fuels Triumphant
Numerous countries are burning large quantities of coal to generate critically needed electricity. Thus atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will continue to climb, even if the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia end their fossil fuel use, ruin their economies and dramatically lower their living standards. And as always, Earth’s climate will continue to change, with or without the aid of all that carbon dioxide.
Japan is building new coal-fired power plants to replace its nuclear fleet – and financing coal power in India and Bangladesh. It notes that modern high-efficiency units burn coal with less pollution and fewer carbon dioxide emissions than older plants – and stresses the importance of helping impoverished countries get reliable, affordable electricity to create jobs, improve living standards and save lives.
China, India, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, the Balkans and other countries are also building coal-fueled power plants at a steady clip. And Russia says it will “comply” with any new treaty primarily by emphasizing CO2 reductions due to absorption by its vast forests.
At this rate, the United States will soon be one of only a few nations that strangle their economies and imperil people’s health and welfare in the name of stopping climate change.
Ignoring Inconvenient Realities
The EPA, IPCC, White House and EU deliberately and studiously ignore all these inconvenient realities. They do not want to discuss the countless ways their actions adversely affect people’s lives, livelihoods, living standards and life spans.
In fact, their deceptions and decisions hurt people to a far greater degree than manmade climate change possibly could, especially when their decrees deny people access to the abundant, reliable, affordable electricity and motor fuels that make modern lives, technologies and living standards possible.
That means the entire “permissible” discussion of climate change, fossil fuels and renewable energy is incomplete, dishonest, fraudulent, and destructive to people and the environment. And yet, many poor countries still say they intend to sign a new climate treaty in Paris.
Why on Earth would they want to do that? Several reasons come to mind.
(1) Under the proposed treaty, over the coming decades, developed countries will be required to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in cash … and hundreds of billions in free technology … to poor and rapidly developing countries, including China, Brazil, India and Indonesia.
(2) The United States, Canada, Europe and other developed nations – FRCs, or Formerly Rich Countries – will also be required to slash their fossil fuel use, reduce their international competiveness, and hobble their economies, job creation, living standards, health and welfare. Developing countries will be under no such constraints.
(3) The proposed Paris accord is no longer a climate issue, if it ever was. Christiana Figueres, the UN’s chief climate change official, says the IPCC’s goal is not to save the world from ecological calamity. It is to rein in or destroy capitalism. The UN’s unelected bureaucrats, she says, are undertaking “probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the global [capitalist] economic development model.”
Ottmar Edendorfer, another high-ranking IPCC official, put it this way: “Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection. The next world climate summit is actually an economy summit, during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”
This means the summit could give government officials and environmental activists the power to eliminate fossil fuels, control businesses and national economies, and tell families what living standards they will be permitted to enjoy, under climate and “sustainability” guidelines. Meanwhile, the ruling elites will live and travel lavishly, á la the Soviet nomenklatura or the Capitol in The Hunger Games.
This is what today passes for climate morality and environmental justice.
Conclusion
In fact, contrary to what Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and others are saying, the real ‘deniers’ are alarmists, who deny the role of powerful natural forces in climate change.
The real ‘racketeers’ are those who want to destroy the scientific method and silence anyone who challenges their claims. The real ‘criminals’ are those who use climate fear-mongering to justify fraudulent science and policies that kill, by denying people access to life-saving fossil fuels.
People everywhere need to understand what is actually going on and what is at stake. Countries, states, communities, companies and citizens need to resist and challenge these immoral, harmful, tyrannical and lethal EPA and IPCC assertions and decrees. Otherwise, the steady economic, technological, health and human progress of the past 150 years will come to a grinding halt, sacrificed in the name of “sustainability,” “climate stabilization” and wealth redistribution.
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Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow; author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death; and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: Saving the World from the Save-the-Earth Money Machine.