Christiana’s nightmare – for the rest of us
By Craig Rucker
This week, as United Nations luminaries gather in Doha, Qatar, for the 18th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, the self-described “daughter of a revolutionary,” has presented her goals. The most important is a massive transfer of wealth – $100 billion a year – from soon-to-be formerly rich Europeans and Americans to UN bureaucrats who claim to represent the world’s “developing” nations and Earth’s poorest citizens.
This astonishing concept is beyond surreal. It contends that the world already has enough wealth; that the developing world cannot or ought not generate any new wealth, certainly not from hydrocarbons, but rather should be content with receiving transfer payments monitored by the UN bureaucracy; and that the industrialized world should be put in an economic straitjacket, and yet charged $1 trillion per decade for climate change reparations and mitigation – on the premise that its carbon dioxide emissions have supplanted the many natural forces that caused extensive and repeated climate changes for eons.
Coupled with the underlying premise that wealth transfers are the only way to combat alleged planet-threatening, manmade global warming, is it any wonder that the entire Doha conference is like a bad dream (or horror movie)? Or that this ridiculous saga is taking place in the nation that boasts the world’s highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions?
Of course, the UN’s objective in Doha extends far beyond wealth transfers. It seeks a total restructuring of world political power, energy systems and economies – with the UN on top and nation states bowing before its ministers, just as a newly elected President Obama bowed before his eminence, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Just imagine: The gilded Lilliputians have gathered in Doha to strip the giants of their wealth, and oddly enough the giants (the EU and USA) are willing to be stripped naked, but only (apparently) if the emerging economic powers (including China and India) will follow suit and set their own economy-strangling carbon-cutting targets. We are witnessing Mutually Assured Destruction all over again! Except, of course, that China and very likely India will opt out of this charade, laughing all the way to the bank at this grand farce.
Despite 16 years of stable planetary temperatures, and growing evidence that prior projections of rapid warming were based on faulty modeling and outright disinformation, the mainstream media continue to hype the global warming cataclysm talking points.
Associated Press “reporter” Karl Ritter, for example, said the Doha battle “between the rich and the poor” is over “efforts to reach a deal to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2° C, compared to preindustrial times” – when Earth was emerging from the Little Ice Age. He cited a recent World Bank “projection” of an up to 4° C rise by 2100. Even worse, New York Times reporter James Atlas, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, warned that the Big Apple will likely sink beneath the sea in the next 50 to 200 years.
Both predictions must have been buried somewhere in Nostradamus or the Mayan calendar.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Energy Information Administration in 2011 forecast a 53% jump in world energy demand from 2008 levels by 2035. And the International Energy Agency predicted that the U.S. will be the world leader in natural gas production by 2015 and oil production by 2020, with Canada not far behind.
More to the point, despite Figueres’ blathering about increased investments in and reduced costs of “clean” energy, the fact is that oil, natural gas and, yes, even coal, will furnish much (if not most) of this expanding demand for energy. Expensive, subsidized, land-hungry, wildlife-killing, food-price-hiking “renewable” energy will remain a small niche player for decades to come.
It is not surprising that the bureaucrats at Doha are focusing on rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, given their catastrophic worldview that somehow fails to incorporate real economic progress for developing world citizens. They apparently see nothing wrong with the fact that most of the fossil energy production in Africa, for example, has contributed virtually nothing to constructing functional power grids, truck-worthy highways, or even air traffic routing that bolster trade, build local economies, lift families out of poverty, and help eliminate the wood and dung burning that kills millions from lung infections.
Instead, the energy is shipped overseas, to countries that don’t have enough indigenous energy – or to the United States, which refuses to develop its own vast hydrocarbon deposits.
And no wonder. Fossil fuel fired power plants in Africa do not fit the “Clean Development Mechanism” model that the UN devised – and foisted on poor countries – to enable rich nations to dump “clean energy” projects on the poor, while maintaining their own comparatively extravagant lifestyles and purchasing indulgences (carbon credits) to assuage their guilt.
Aside from the fact that someone (Al Gore, international bankers and their kin) will make a killing off any carbon trading schemes – and that the UN bureaucracy is seeking to pad its own employment rolls and pocketbooks – the sad reality is that none of the shenanigans at Doha (or at any previous or future UNFCCC dog and pony show) is likely to improve the well-being of the billions of humans in so-called developing countries one whit.
These people need cheap, reliable, abundant energy and the infrastructure it can support, in order to climb out of abject poverty, lengthen life spans grossly shortened by disease and malnutrition, and terminate the tyranny of neo-colonialists who, in the name of “preventing climate change,” continue to rule over them with iron fists.
By now, everyone knows that “global warming” or “climate change” or “weird weather” is nothing but a smokescreen for those like Figueres and Obama, who view economic growth as either evil or environmentally intolerable – and thus think taking from the rich and giving to bureaucrats who claim to represent the poor will even things out, and is the highest and best thing we can do.
A far better agenda for Doha would be encouraging the emergence of genuine leadership in the world’s poor nations (and its rich nations), to foster energy generation and infrastructure building, and unleash entrepreneurial instincts and wealth creation that truly enrich the lives and fortunes of their people.
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Craig Rucker is executive director of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)
This article originally appeared in the National Journal, in its Energy Experts Blog on climate change, December 4, 2012.
“By now, everyone knows that “global warming” or “climate change” or “weird weather” is nothing but a smokescreen for those like Figueres and Obama, who view economic growth as either evil or environmentally intolerable ”
That may be true of Figueres, but I’m sure Obama has other pressures and is well in step with those who control wealth and select presidents.
If you could steer clear of snide party politics you article would have more credibility.
It’s so frustrating that although I, as a science teacher, have every reason to try to get my students to understand the laws of thermodynamics regarding the finite amount of energy and matter in the universe, it unfortunately seems the economics teachers are doing the same.
Bill Whittle did a good job blowing this out of the water here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkXI-MNSb8Q That whole series is excellent (as is everything he puts out).
The UK minister for climate change has just arrived in Doha with £2bn to give to developing countries for green energy projects. Of course this is all borrowed money that our grandchildren will end up paying for. The same day the Chancellor of the Exchequer admits that goverment’s borrowing is out of control and the deficit target has now had to be extended. Even the UN couldn,t make a bigger cock up.
Silver Ralph: . Do you really think that the world would have any shortages if the world population was just 100 million?
I suggest you google ‘famine ancient world.’
I’ve just finished reading a book where the main character is a history teacher. He bangs on about: ‘…history is important: the past informs the present’
Reading this post brings that home to me inasmuch as our forefathers were slow to react to the rise of Third Reich in the ’30s (and anyone invoking Godwin ‘cos I said that can take a running jump). We are now in similar circumstances and the Green Reich is trying to have its way with our democracy. They have a model, called the EU, on which to base their plans. They think the EU has been a success because the people have not risen – yet. But believe me, and I hear this more often than not these days, it will all end in tears (and, most sadly, other bodily fluids).
Why do we continue to fund the UN? It is time for this corrupt organization to be discarded.
Inhofe Video Message for UN Climate Conference:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=704a64c3-c4b6-0747-65d9-b2d6e8ebe36f
“Of course, the focus of this year’s global warming conference – like all the conferences before – is not the environment. It’s about one thing: spreading the wealth around”
TEN TIMES WORSE or
TWO SOLYNDRAS/DAY IN THE US
Craig,
You are a big optimist.
Unfortunately, the UNFCCC plan calls for $1 trillion/YEAR not $1 trillion/DECADE
See the preparatory “ambition raising” meeting in Bonn
http://unfccc.int/files/documentation/submissions_from_parties/adp/application/pdf/adp1_wschina_21052012.pdf
That would translate to $1 billion/day in the US alone.
Or, two Solyndras/day, inflation adjusted, for the foreseeable future.
Silver Ralph says:
December 6, 2012 at 5:35 am
By definition, the Earth’s resources are indeed finite. Or do you see an infinite inner-Earth that nobody else can see??
I simply cannot understand these cries that population control is somehow evil and undesireable. All of our pressures on energy supplies, land and food shortages, water shortages etc: etc: are caused by rampant overpopulation. Do you really think that the world would have any shortages if the world population was just 100 million? No, precisely. Do you think our roads, railways and airports would be jammed to capacity if the world population was lowered by 80%? No, precisely.
The world needs to alleviate this grave threat to its resources and environment, especially if the Third World want to consume on the scale that the West does. And that can only be achieved through sensible population controlls. Or do you think that humans should have the same population strategy as the lemmings were reputed to have – run out of resources and then jump off a cliff.
And what is wrong with controlling a population? Just give me one good reason why we should not. In fact, how dare mankind call itself civilised if we cannot control our populations, and rely on starvation and disease to do the reductions for us. What, I ask you, is civilised about that?
OK. No problem at all Ralph.
I will pay to castrate you, your children (if any), and your parents and all of your family members and in-laws, relatives, and their families and their descendents. What doctor’s office do you want to use? Do you want anesthetics, or can we do it the old-fashioned way by cutting any or all of your heads off with a somewhat sharpened metallic object?
Or can I just throw you and your family and your neighbors in an unheated train with locked wooden doors and take you to Siberia between 1860 and 1986? Poland between 1939 and 1986? Cambodia in 1973-76? Red China in the early 1960? The Ukraine in 1932-1941? Where do you want to be buried as a “living sacrifice” and good example of “sustainable” life for the rest of us
Strange … lots of presos being issued by the Scare-istas just now. Coinkydinky?
Back in the 1950’s came the bomb shelter, and there were sign posted everywhere leading to the nearest. That’s been abandoned unless you are the current white house resident. Now it’s take your wealth because you don’t deserve it and it’s because you’re at fault for spoiling the climate. As the “how to catch a wild pig” expands its grip, there will be no where to hide or run to shelter oneself from this creeping increasing acceptance of global unified control. It’s obvious elections don’t work, and what idiots appointed these demons to be incharge and have their way?
“By now, everyone knows that “global warming” or “climate change” or “weird weather” is nothing but a smokescreen for those like Figueres and Obama, who view economic growth as either evil or environmentally intolerable – and thus think taking from the rich and giving to bureaucrats who claim to represent the poor will even things out, and is the highest and best thing we can do.”
Once upon a time we had a word for belief systems similar to Figueres’. The word was ‘communist’. In the case of Figueres, “daughter of a revolutionary,” we can modify that to ‘Che communist’ or ‘romantic communist’. Too bad that Political Correctness has deprived us of a word that conveys so clearly the lust for control over everyone.
Never mind the problem or issue, the solution is ALWAYS a global government with unlimited control over life and business.
What could possibly go wrong?
RACookPE1978 says:December 6, 2012 at 9:06 am…..to silver ralph (‘population controller’ – which according to the Outer Mongolian OED means ‘mass murderer’)
I think that nailed what I wanted to say. Well done.
The UN needs to be starved of funding until it drops dead.
WOW !!! 100 billion is such a BIG number it is frightening.
Oh wait a minute….. that is like 15 cents per person per day I can afford that
The most important is a massive transfer of wealth – $100 billion a year – from soon-to-be formerly rich Europeans and Americans to UN bureaucrats who claim to represent the world’s “developing” nations and Earth’s poorest citizens.
Who they actually represent is rich western bankers. Rockefeller, Schiff, Baruch, Oppenheimer, Rothschild…. The Gores and Bushes are just lowly errand boys. Although Karina Gore did marry a Schiff!!
The fact that carbon credits are too be traded on Wall St tells you exactly who is behind this scam.
Re: Silver Ralph @ur momisugly 0535:
“The world needs to alleviate this grave threat to its resources and environment, especially if the Third World want to consume on the scale that the West does. And that can only be achieved through sensible population controlls. Or do you think that humans should have the same population strategy as the lemmings were reputed to have – run out of resources and then jump off a cliff.”
While resources on this planet are somewhat limited, the brainpower necessary to put it to ever more efficient use is limited only by our total population. In this way more people = more and better solutions as human ingenuity and creativity are the Ultimate and inexhaustible natural resource (per Julian Simon). Of course, should we get regularly off planet there is an entire solar system out there to exploit – which will also require more people.
Julian Simon wrote a pair of books describing the concept entitled “The Ultimate Resource” and “The Ultimate Resource II.” They are well worth your while to read. Online version of II can be found at the link to follow. Cheers –
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/?3e3ea140
Re Silver Ralph, sure it keeps circling back to Eugenics. If you feel your #1 problem is as stated, do your bit and stop living. Thats easy ain’t it?
from wikipedia
Reading this it is hard to say what sort of revolutionary Figueres was, exactly, but he looks like a populist copy of FDR. However, FDR had to work through existing institutions of our Republic which moderated his behavior; whereas; Figueres had no such limitation. Americans know the mythology of FDR and the 1930s; they rarely know the whole truth. Note here that Wikipedia claims the FDRs programs help lift the U.S. out of its economic slump… They did nothing of the sort. They were effectively Hoover’s programs only bigger, and what they did was to provide relief to individuals, but at the expense of maintaining the economic slump. The “slump” known as the Great Depression did not actually end until the late 1940s with massive investment into capital goods for producing consumer goods–World War II not withstanding.
One only has to look up former Presidential Scientific Czar – back in 1965 called Advisors – Gordon J. F. MacDonald and read the chapter he wrote in the book “Unless Peace Comes” which he titled “How To Wreck The Environment” to realize the long standing plan to take down America and much of the world by weather warfare. He wrote rather than atomic bombs they would use covert (secret) weather warfare of floods, droughts, earthquakes, tsunamis and the like and also wrote about using frequencies to control the brain. He even wrote how how weather is princially effected: “Indeed, climate is primarily determined by the balance between the incoming short-wave from the Sun (principally light) and the loss of outgoing long-wave radiation (principally heat). ”
Definitely worth reading and printing off for your records.
A quick link to Gordon MacDonald’s chapter on weather manipulation in which he titled “How To Wreck The Environment: http://watch.pair.com/weather-modification.html#wreck