The world’s leaders are gathered in Paris for COP 21—a conference they hope will bring about a binding agreement to reduce CO2 emissions across the globe, and save the planet from—something.
The predictions of doom change so often, who can remember the most recent?
Since the last 20 conferences haven’t been successful, I doubt this one will be either. And since the earth hasn’t been destroyed by any of the many deadlines we have passed, I’m not too concerned.
What is truly concerning is the utter lack of reasoned discourse, and attention to consequences.
The rhetoric is constant, “the world is going to be destroyed, climate change is more dangerous than Islamic terrorism, anyone who doesn’t blindly follow the crowd, and support whatever policies and whatever amounts of money the big wigs deem necessary is a dangerous fool.”
How dare you think for yourself!
Let’s talk facts for a minute.
There has been no global warming in almost 19 years.
The climate models stink and ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of them show more warming than real world observations—meaning someone went outside and took the temperature and compared that data to the models, and the models were wrong.
The loud voices of climate alarm claimed that 400 ppm (parts per million) of CO2 was a threshold we could not pass, and yet we reached it and nothing bad happened. On the contrary, CO2’s unique impact on plant growth has increased crop yields significantly—meaning more land remains for animal habitat, and less is required to grow food. To learn more about CO2 click here, here, and here.
These are basic facts, and there are many more complicated scientific reasons to ignore the alarmism, yet policy makers are still throwing huge amounts of money at a problem that doesn’t exist. President Obama has even said that he may veto the entire U.S. budget if Congress doesn’t agree to transfer $3 billion to the United Nations Green Climate Fund. $3 billion! And that’s just the first payment!
The consequences of bad climate policies aren’t just monetary. Thousands of people die every year from fuel poverty in developed countries, millions die in developing/not developed countries. Why? Because, in Western countries, governments gave massive subsidies to non-fossil fuel energy companies (lining the pockets of stakeholders in businesses absolutely incapable of existing without government payouts), and energy prices skyrocketed. In the developing world, people die because they have zero access to life-giving abundant, affordable, reliable energy—in large quantities the only affordable sources of which are fossil and nuclear.
So why is President Obama, with many other wealthy, powerful people, so insistent that climate change is real, and requires policies that send hard-earned American (and Western) wealth to the oligarchs of poor countries, while condemning the poor in those countries to continued disease, poverty, darkness, and death?
Why indeed.