Keeping the Poor Impoverished

We are just now entering the age of industrialization, newly elected President Rodrigo Duterte said recently, explaining why the Philippines will not ratify the Paris climate accords. “Now that we’re developing, you will impose a limit? That’s absurd. It’s being imposed upon us by the industrialized countries. They think they can dictate our destiny.”

More developing nations are taking the same stance – and rightly so. They increasingly understand that fossil fuels are needed to modernize, industrialize, and decrease poverty, malnutrition and disease. Many supported the 2015 Paris climate treaty for three reasons.

They are not required to reduce their oil, natural gas and coal use, economic development and greenhouse gas emissions, because doing so would prevent them from improving their people’s living standards.

They want the free technology transfers and trillions of dollars in climate “adaptation, mitigation and reparation” funds that now-wealthy nations promised to pay for alleged climate transgressions. But they now know those promises won’t be kept – especially by countries that absurdly insist on slashing their energy use, economic growth and job creation, while developing countries surge ahead.

Climate has always changed. It is far better to have energy, technology, modern housing and wealth to adapt to, survive, recover from and even thrive amid inevitable warming, cooling and weather events, than to forego these abilities (on the absurd assumption that humans can control climate and weather) – and be forced to confront nature’s onslaughts the way previous generations had to.

The November 7-18 Marrakech, Morocco UN climate conference (COP-22) thus promises to be a lot of hot air, just like its predecessors. Officially, its goal is to accelerate GHG emission reductions, “brainstorm” with government and business leaders to achieve “new levels of cooperation and technology sharing” (and subsidies), and embrace “urgent action” to help African and small island nations survive the supposed ravages of manmade droughts and rising seas.

The true purposes are to pressure industrialized nations to end most fossil fuel use by 2050; intentionally replace free enterprise capitalism with a “more equitable” system; “more fairly” redistribute the world’s wealth and natural resources; and ensure that poor countries develop “sustainably” and not “too much” – all under the direction and control of UN agencies and environmentalist pressure groups.

We might ask: Replace capitalism with what exactly? Dictatorial UN socialism? Redistribute what wealth exactly? After we’ve hobbled developed countries’ energy use, job creation and wealth creation, what will be left? As poor countries get rich, do you UN bureaucrats intend to take and redistribute their wealth to “less fortunate” nations that still fail to use fossil fuels or get rid of their kleptocratic leaders?

Africans are not endangered by manmade climate change. They are threatened by the same droughts and storms they have confronted for millennia, and by the same corrupt leaders who line their own pockets with climate and foreign aid cash, while doing nothing for their people and nothing to modernize their countries. Africa certainly does not need yet more callous corruption dictating its future.

Pacific islanders likewise face no greater perils from seas rising at seven inches per century, than they have from seas that rose 400 feet since the last Ice Age glaciers melted, and their coral islands kept pace with those ocean levels – unless they too fail to use fossil fuel (and nuclear) power to modernize.

The Morocco-Paris-Bali-Rio manmade climate chaos mantra may protect people and planet from climate hobgoblins conjured up by garbage in-garbage out computer models. But it will perpetuate energy and economic poverty, imposed on powerless populations by eco-imperialist US, EU and UN functionaries.

Sustainability precepts demand that we somehow predict future technologies – and ensure that today’s resource needs “will not compromise” the completely unpredictable energy and raw material needs that those unpredictable technologies will introduce. They require that we safeguard the assumed needs of future generations, even when it means ignoring or compromising the needs of currentgenerations – including the needs, aspirations, health and welfare of the world’s poorest people.

Resource depletion claims routinely fail to account for hydraulic fracturing and other new technologies that increase energy and mineral supplies, reduce their costs – or decrease the need for previously essential commodities, as fiber optic cables reduced the need for copper.

Precautionary principles say we must focus on the risks of using chemicals, fossil fuels and other technologies – but never on the risks of not using them. We are required to emphasize minor, alleged, manageable, exaggerated or fabricated risks that a technology might cause, but ignore the risks it would reduce or prevent.

Because of illusory risks from biotechnology, we are to banish GMO Golden Rice and bananas that are rich in beta-carotene (which humans can convert into Vitamin A), and continue letting millions of children go blind or die. We are to accept millions more deaths from malaria, Zika, dengue, yellow fever and other diseases, because of imagined dangers of using DDT and insecticides. Must we also accept millions of cancer deaths, because of risks associated with radiation and chemo therapies?

Over the past three decades, fossil fuels helped 1.3 billion more people get electricity and escape deadly energy and economic poverty – over 830 million because of coal. China connected 99% of its population to the grid, also mostly with coal, enabling its average citizens to be ten times richer and live 32 years longer than five decades previously.

But another 1.2 billion people (the US, Canadian, Mexican and European populations combined) still do not have electricity. Another 2 billion have electrical power only sporadically and unpredictably and must still cook and heat with wood, charcoal and animal dung. Hundreds of millions get horribly sick and five million die every year from lung and intestinal diseases, due to breathing smoke from open fires and not having refrigeration, clean water and safe food. Because of climate “risks,” we are to let this continue.

Of course, as a young black California mother reminded me a few years ago, eco-imperialism is not just a developing country issue. It is a global problem. “Because of their paranoid fear of sprawl,” LaTonya told me, “elitist eco-imperialists employ endless regulations and restrictions that prevent upwardly-mobile people of color from improving their lot in life. Only we, the wealthy and privileged, they seem to insist, can live in nice homes and safe neighborhoods, have good jobs and enjoy modern lifestyles.”

These attitudes, mantras, ideologies and policies are callous, immoral, eco-imperialistic and genocidal. They inflict unconscionable crimes against humanity on the poorest among us. They must no longer be tolerated.

Rich nations used fossil fuels to advance science, create wondrous technologies beyond previous generations’ wildest imaginings, eradicate killer diseases, increase life expectancy from 46 in 1900 to 78 today, and give even poor families better living standards than kings and queens enjoyed a century ago.

Instead of holding poor nations and billions of less fortunate people back still more decades, we are ethically bound to do everything we can to encourage and assist them to throw off their shackles, and join us among the world’s wealthy, healthy, technologically advanced nations.

Wealth is, at its most fundamental level, measured by how much energy you can command. The more energy you have access to the richer you are, individually, as a business, as a society.

This effort to make energy less available, less reliable, and more expensive is at a level of societal insanity comparable to that which overwhelmed the Xhosa in 1856 when the prophetess of doom, Nongqawuse, convinced them that salvation lay in destroying all their cattle and crops. It did not turn out well for them then. It will not turn out well now.

Turning our backs on cheap, plentiful energy from any source is just as bad a move.

The wealthy elite desire to remain mega wealthy IN CONTRAST to the rest of the world, so allowing the rest of the world’s population enjoy the luxuries of abundant and well stored food, clean water, comfortable shelter, etc. they (rich Al Gore and Co.) came up with a scam to “handle” the redistribution of wealth at a 90% commission rate and outlaw the affordable technology that enables a better part of the globe to keep out of the stone age.

It’s not living well, but the visible contrast to the rest of the world (the peasants) that the rich elite desire.

Wealth is, at its most fundamental level, measured by how much energy you can command. The more energy you have access to the richer you are, individually, as a business, as a society.

Well said.

If we could get liberal ignoramuses to think clearly and realistically understand the alternative life they would lead if their Green Dream of eliminating consumption of the so called fossil fuels comes to pass most of them would instantly change course.

There isn't one aspect of modern life that isn't dependent on abundant, affordable energy.

And most of that is derived from the 'fossil fuels'.

The only reasonable alternative, in terms of capacity and output, is nuclear power and the Greenies hate that even more than burning petroleum and coal.

Even the manufacturing and construction of their beloved windmills and solar plants is mostly dependent on the power derived from petroleum and coal.

Without fossil fuel we would regress back to a lifestyle without trains, planes, cars, trucks and powered ships.

A life where the sources of energy were man himself along with horses, oxen, mules, water wheels and sailboats.

No more TV, iPods, cel phones, electric lights and refrigeration.

We wouldn't even have steam ships and steam locomotives because they don't want us to burn wood. And how would they heat their cave dwellings and log cabins?

And in addition to the loss of energy production there are all the products manufactured from petroleum as the raw material that would disappear from our lives!

I can save the world and unlike everyone who has no clue how to do it, I have a plan, know how much it is going to cost and know how long it will take. It is bulletproof and simple and the left cannot pan it because their solution of “give me money” is not a solution.

Here is my plan and keep in mind, parts of this are intended to be ridiculous only because it takes away the lefts argument.

1. Calculate how many trees need to be planted to offset the carbon being put into the environment. Trees can include fruit bearers which will create a new food supply.

2. To plant these trees, we need water. The new Carlsbad desalination facility going into production in California will provide 50 million gallons of fresh clean water daily. Build 100 of these facilities along the African coastlines and run infrastructure inland. That will be 5 Billion (with a capital B) gallons of clean water produced daily.

3. Desalination facilities need power. Alternative power supplies (wind, solar, hydro) can be built along with these facilities. Extra power generated can be moved inland as part of the infrastructure project.

4. The water desalination facilities will create new economies where fruits, vegetables, animals and other resources can be created and exported. Countries within Africa will be pulled out of poverty which has been the goal of the UN for generations.

Now the ridiculous. At 5 billion gallons a day, the earth will no longer face massive flooding due to oceans rising. It offsets the glacial melt the left say will kill us all. Salt removed is mixed with sea water and returned to the ocean. In addition, a project like this with alternative energy as its main power supply fits in with the lefts alternative energy strategy.

How is this paid for? Credits against the future economies that will be created due to this massive project. Time to build it? Let’s get aggressive and build 20 per year. This beats the envirowhackos plan of 30 years.

One last caveat. In order to participate, the government cannot be communist or sharia based. Its constitution must guarantee the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of every citizen.

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