THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 210, October 31, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE REAL CLIMATE CHANGE CATASTROPHE:
Misguided Energy Policies Are Harming the World's Poor
By Paul K. Driessen
POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM VERSUS THE IMPOVERISHED NATIONS: ENERGY POLICIES PUSHED BY POLITICAL
ENVIRONMENTALISTS & THE IMPACT OF THESE POLICIES ON THE THIRD WORLD -- CLIMATE CHANGE ALARMISTS &
OTHER RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS SEEK TO TO BLOCK TECHNOLOGICAL & ECONOMIC PROGRESS IN THIRD WORLD
COUNTRIES -- CRITICAL DECISIONS REGARDING TECHNOLOGICAL & ECONOMIC ADVANCEMENT SHOULD BE LEFT TO THOSE
WHO MUST LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES OF DECISIONS THAT AFFECT THEIR ACCESS TO ENERGY, HEALTH, HOPE,
OPPORTUNITY, & PROSPERITY
FULL STORY:
Our planet is again warming slightly, and the weather keeps taking unexpected turns. Many scientists say this is hardly
unprecedented, cause for alarm, or proof that humans are now the dominant factor in climate change. Others disagree
strongly, and point to every snowstorm, hurricane, deluge, or drought as proof that urgent action is needed to avoid
imminent climate catastrophe.
Britain’s Royal Society wants ExxonMobil to further squelch debate, by ending its funding of researchers who say natural
forces are the primary factor in climate change. (The Society didn’t mention the $250,000 award that scientist James
Hansen received from Teresa Heinz-Kerry for insisting that humans are the cause.) Others have threatened climate
alarmism skeptics with “Nuremberg-style war crimes trials.”
“Socially responsible” investor services refuse to recommend corporations they deem insufficiently sensitive on climate
change. Companies have brought climate activists into their board rooms, lobbied Congress for climate and ethanol
legislation, and retooled to produce new product lines they hope will boost tax subsidies, profits, and favorable PR.
Meanwhile, headlines hype every scary scenario.
Asserting “the science is settled” ignores the debate that still rages. Proclaiming that “climate change is real” ignores
Earth’s constant natural warming and cooling cycles and its naturally occurring weather anomalies. Most important, our
current knowledge simply does not justify imposing inhumane policies on the world’s poorest citizens.
Four times, mile-thick ice sheets smothered Europe and North America. A thousand years ago, Vikings raised crops and
cattle in Greenland, while Britons grew grapes in England. Four centuries later, the Norsemen were frozen out, Europe was
gripped in a Little Ice Age, and priests performed exorcisms on glaciers advancing toward Swiss villages. The globe
warmed in the period from 1850 from 1940, cooled for the next 35 years, then warmed slightly again.
Detroit experienced six snowstorms in April, 1868, frosts in August, 1869, a 98-degree heat wave in June, 1874, and
ice-free lakes in January, 1877. Wisconsin’s record high of 114 degrees Fahrenheit in July, 1936, was followed five years
later by a record July low of 46. In 1980, five years after Newsweek’s “new little ice age” cover story, Washington,
D.C., endured 67 days above 90 degrees.
Studies by National Academy of Sciences, NOAA, Danish, and other scientists raise additional inconvenient truths that
contradict catastrophic climate change hypotheses and computer models. The Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in
the past 25 years. The “hockey stick” temperature graph (which claimed 1990-2000 was the hottest decade in 1000 years)
broke under scrutiny.
The sun’s radiant heat and cosmic ray levels affect planetary warming and cooling and cloud formation more strongly
than most climate alarmists and models acknowledge. Contrary to 2005 assertions and predictions, interior Greenland and
Antarctica are gaining ice mass, not losing it; Gulf Stream circulation has not slowed; and the U.S.A. is yet to be hit by a
major hurricane in 2006.
All in all, nothing suggests that predominantly human influences have suddenly supplanted the natural forces that clearly
caused climate and weather cycles in past centuries. Yet, many still demand immediate action to prevent future climate
change. Few appreciate how costly (and futile) such actions would be.
Government and private studies calculate that the Kyoto Protocol would cost the U.S.A. up to $348 billion in 2012, and
average American families would pay an extra $2,700 annually for energy and consumer goods. In U.S. minority
communities, concludes another, the climate treaty would destroy 1.3 million jobs and “substantially affect” standards of
living.
Globally, Kyoto carries a $1 trillion annual price tag, in regulatory bills, higher energy costs and lost productivity,
according to economist Bjorn Lomborg. That’s several times what it would cost to provide the world with clean drinking
water and sanitation – which would prevent millions of deaths annually from intestinal diseases.
Over 2 billion of the Earth’s citizens – including 95% of Africans – still do not have electricity. That means no lights,
refrigerators, stoves, radios, televisions or computers; no modern homes, hospitals, schools, offices or factories. Instead,
people breathe polluted smoke from wood and dung fires, and die by the millions from lung diseases.
The world should be rushing to their aid. Instead, in the name of preventing hypothetical climate change,
environmentalists and rich countries oppose fossil fuel power plants in poor countries. To “protect wild rivers,” they
obstruct hydroelectric projects. On the ground that it is “inherently dangerous,” they resist nuclear power. In short, they
are telling a third of the world’s people:
“You cannot have modern, healthy, industrialized societies. Your
only option is trivial amounts of expensive, unreliable electricity
from wind and solar. To safeguard the world from speculative risks
that we are concerned about, you must endure life-threatening
dangers that perpetuate poverty, disease, and childhood death in
your destitute nations.”
To top it off, just as thousands of delegates and environmental activists are about to board CO2-emitting jetliners to attend the 2006
global warming confab in Kenya, the European Union has proposed taxes on imports from India and other poor
nations that are exempt from Kyoto. The EU claims the exemption gives poor countries an “unfair trade advantage” over
EU countries that are struggling to meet even their initial treaty commitments. (Some have increased CO2 emissions by
20-50% since 1990, despite signing the treaty.)
Others are blaming malaria and malnutrition on climate change, to deflect well-founded charges that their callous
opposition to insecticides and biotechnology is killing more African babies.
For nearly everyone – especially the world’s poor – it will be all pain, and no gain. Even perfect compliance with the
Kyoto Protocol would result in Earth’s temperature being only 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit less by 2050 than if we did little
or nothing. Assuming humans really are the culprits, actually controlling theoretical global temperature increases would
require 40 Kyoto treaties, each one imposing greater government control over energy use and prices, over emissions,
and over housing, transportation, heating, cooling, and manufacturing decisions.
Alarmists demand that we handcuff modern economies in order to promote solutions that won’t solve a problem which
extensive evidence suggests is moderate, manageable, and primarily natural in origin.
Infinitely worse, they use faulty models, extreme what-if scenarios, and exaggerated fears of climate cataclysm to justify
depriving Earth’s most impoverished citizens of electricity, water purification, and other modern technologies that would
improve and save countless lives.
That is unconscionable and immoral. It is the real climate change catastrophe.
Truly ethical and socially responsible policies would foster robust debate about costs, benefits, models, and every other
aspect of climate change – and ensure rapid technological and economic advancement (including modern pollution
controls) in Third World countries.
Such policies would leave critical development decisions not to climate alarmists, but, instead, to the real stakeholders –
those who must live with the consequences of decisions that affect their access to energy, health, hope, opportunity,
and prosperity.
© 2006 Paul K. Driessen
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Science, Ethics, & Human Health
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality, the Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, and the
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, which can be
obtained at www.Eco-Imperialism.com. Email: pdriessen@cox.net --- Telephone:
(703) 698-6171
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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