By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times.
Last week, thirteen members of the House of Representatives introduced a resolution “recognizing the disparate impact of climate change on women.” The resolution implied that man-made climate change was responsible for impacts on global women, stating “food insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health.” But the resolution ignores the real tragedy, the tragedy of misguided policies to combat climate change.
Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, has guided world governments since 1992.
That year, 41 nations and the European Community signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. The FCCC called for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to prevent dangerous global warming. For 21 years, world leaders have argued about how and when to reduce emissions. Today, 192 of 193 heads of state say they believe in man-made warming and most are pursing policies to try to stop climate change.
But, rather than beneficial, efforts to “fight” man-made climate change actually injure people in developing nations. The ideology of Climatism demands that nations forego the use of fossil fuel, use less energy, and force use of expensive or unreliable wind, solar, or biofuel alternatives. Poverty, lack of jobs, and lack of modern energy foster prostitution in developing nations. Climate change from emissions of carbon dioxide, a trace gas in our atmosphere, is a negligible factor.
The United Nations has long criticized the use of “unsustainable energy.” In a 2010 report on Asia, the UN warned, “Asia-Pacific countries must undergo structural adjustment to make key policy changes needed to switch their development mode…Most member countries have followed the industrial model of developed countries, which is the root cause of climate change. This traditional industrial development model results in an unsustainable energy consumption pattern.” The paper says nations must “pursue a low carbon development path” and skip a “growth path heavily reliant on pollutants.” The report goes on to question whether televisions, computers, and networking through the internet are necessary activities.
Yet, world economies remain overwhelmingly based on hydrocarbons. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2010 hydrocarbons provided 81 percent of the world’s energy, while wind and solar provided less than 1 percent. Denying hydrocarbon energy to developing nations is foolish and destructive policy.
The Equator Principles are ten principles for lending by international banks that work to the detriment of poor nations. Under pressure from environmental groups, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and 76 other banks in 32 countries adopted the Principles. These principles demand that banks lend in an “environmentally and socially responsible manner,” which sounds good. But a top objective of the Equator Principles is “to promote the reduction of emissions that contribute to climate change.” Lending capital is restricted for coal mines, oil refineries, and other hydrocarbon projects desperately needed to build the economies of developing nations.
At the same time, the theory of man-made warming appears increasingly shaky. Hundreds of studies show that Earth was warmer 1,000 years ago than it is today. Water vapor, not carbon dioxide, is Earth’s dominant greenhouse gas. Arctic sea ice recently reached a 30-year low, but Antarctic Sea ice is near a 30-year high. More than double the polar bears roam the Arctic today than in 1960. History shows that droughts, floods, and storms are neither more frequent nor more severe than in past decades. Sea levels are rising at only about 7‒8 inches per century. Global temperatures have not risen for more than ten years, contrary to predictions by the leading climate models.
The tragedy of Climatism is a misuse of resources on a vast scale. Over $250 billion is spent each year in a futile effort to decarbonize―twice global foreign aid. The world spent over $1 trillion in the last ten years and is on track to spend another trillion in the next four years in a fight against a climate change phantom.
At the same time, real life-and-death problems need to be addressed. According to United Nations figures, 25,000 people die from hunger-related issues each day. More than one billion people try to survive on less than $1.25 per day. Two and one-half billion lack adequate sanitation, 1.4 billion lack electricity, and almost one billion lack clean drinking water. Every year, two million die from AIDS. Almost one million die from tuberculosis. Malaria, pneumonia, and diarrheal diseases kill millions more.
Suppose we reallocate the billions spent in the foolish fight against global warming toward solving the real problems of humankind?
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
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NOTE: This book was the subject of a book burning photo-op at San Jose State University
– Anthony
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“Over $250 billion is spent each year in a futile effort to decarbonize―twice global foreign aid.”
Wow. Thanks for putting the travesty in such sharp perspective. It truly is madness.
Absolutely brilliant post, lacking only reference to carbon greening of the planet, (Matt Ridley), & human/domestic animals pushing back deserts, (Allan Savory).
Thanks Steve goreham & Anthony.
I never realised how much climatism is a religion till I saw those two PHDs book burning.
These bozos really have a talent for shooting themselves in the foot. 🙂
I’m so sick and tied of the guilt trip laid on by the UN and liberals I want to puke. Maybe if the UN actually confronted the dictators, thugs, and megalomaniacs sitting in its own chambers then their own women in their own countries would have a fighting chance at life. Maybe grow food instead of buying guns and more palaces, expensive toys then you might get somewhere. To even attempt to blame climate for this garbage is utter nonsense. In my opinion NGOs are the world most useless humans ever to have lived. Ancient civilizations had the common sense to try and feed their peoples.
In the UK’s local elections the UKIP anti AGW made biggest advance while Liberals strongly pro AGW got severely battered by voters.
Ergo: the AGW is a turn off.
This really sums it up. Excellent post, Steve. 21 years is way too long for politicians to have bags over their heads. If they don’t wake up soon, they are going to have mob fury to contend with and that won’t be pretty. 21 years is a whole generation where nothing except foolish green policy has caused, and is causing the very destruction the greens claim to fear.
I’ve never known a group to so fight waking up!
I have just checked my 1969 book on deserts on something I long ago read and remember, and sure enough I found the passage:
“Among Bushmen there is no formal marriage ceremony. At the age of eleven or twelve the boys and girls find their partners and settle down like married couples anywhere.”
So if we can get CO2 back down to safe 1969 levels…
Slowly you may be coming around to my position, Anthony. No words I can speak or type are adequate to describe these vile people. They are killers of innocent children (see DDT) and poor across the world. I would not be me if I did not SPEAK OUT!!!!!!
Excellent article. It’s something alarmists and progressives don’t want to hear, because it reveals the tunnel vision of their elitist perspective. That position denies progress to large populations who desperately need more energy, not less and it takes resources away from research into developing economically viable, less carbon intensive energy . They are hurting people and the chances of long term control over C02 emissions that they claim to be be so concerned about as well.
These people are vile. Women are already turning to “sex work” due to economic poverty right now due to govn’t and corporate corruption, let alone any minute risk due to man-made climate change!
It is a low, low, low blow to exploit women like this. Women rights organizations should complain loudly.
I will say, though, that there are times when it does seem there is indeed a conspiracy, a conspiracy to completely discredit the political “left” by having them commit with insane fervor to the most improbable, ludicrous, and inappropriate causes.
While the UK, Germany et. al. are going into coal in a big new way. This con is aimed at keeping coal and oil out of the hands of the poor and needy so hypocritical rich Western nations can conserve oil and coal for THEIR future use. Greens have just been useful for governments in this regard.
I see Africa on the map with few lights. Deprive them of fossil fuels and they will burn more of the above ground fuel called trees. Even in Germany they have been stealing wood from the forests this past winter because power costs are so high. If rich Germans feel the need to do this then what do you expect Africans to do???? Expect accelerated deforestation and the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Here are some numbers and info for Africa:
PS
Jo Nova takes on AR5’s attempt to hide the embarrassing missing hotspot.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/04/ipcc-plays-hot-spot-hidey-games-in-ar5-denies-28-million-weather-balloons-work-properly/
stan stendera says: May 3, 2013 at 12:55 am
No words I can speak or type are adequate to describe these vile people. They are killers of innocent children (see DDT)
——————
How many times must this garbage be corrected
DDT is not banned
Mosquitos are becoming more DDT resistant.
DDT also causes mosuitos to be come resistant to other attacks.
see:
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/rachel-carsonddt-hoaxing-from-the-ayn-rand-institute/
So global warming causes prostitution? Don’t we refer to prostitution as ” the oldest profession”?
The spectre of CAGW has been the basis for reworking the economies of the developed West into government directed at the state, local, and federal levels coupled to Big Business. In the US because we do have a Constitution that supposedly prevents this kind of collusion, this 21st Century vision is actually being touted as a “new vision for intergovernmental relations in America’s federal system.” Macro Industrial Policy at the federal level and divvying up among cronies at the local is no way to prosper. But it is being pursued in earnest anyway.
Why? Because it is the vision for a political economy of the Left that CAGW supposedly makes necessary. If you are unsure take a look at the new economics institute site or the Living Cities vision just for starters. Or the Center for a Steady State Economy. Just this morning I got a blurb on a presentation by the Dean of Stern Business School at NYU, Peter Blair Henry, touting his book Turnaround and the need for the First World to emulate the pragmatic policies of the developing economies of China, India, and Brazil.
Dirigiste economies with a Corporatist oligarchy. Check out the Campus Initiative at NEI above to see pressure on the Economics departments to teach the New Economics theories.
We are falling into a world where facts are ignored in favor of aspirational theories and models to reorganize society towards a collectivist approach. Because the public sector and the politically connected prefer it that way. Living at our expense instead of having to create a product or service people voluntarily want to buy.
It is so dangerous now to see either Climate Change or education as stand-alone, good faith issues or sectors.
Trillions? Pah! The Powers That Be ensure that huge amounts of the people’s wealth is squandered. all. the. time. Catastrophe this, and bubble that, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
If we plebs were to have that wealth (that we earned) then we would just waste it on ‘stuff’. Not just put it into charities (hit hard since 2008) or spend it on conservation and our environment (which faltered as carbon became demonic, co-incidentally) but also help our fellow man in the second/third world to raise themselves to our levels of comfort.
We absolutely cannot have that old chap – it devalues our superiority complexes/mansions/classic cars/antiques/art collections/offshore bank accounts/land and property and means that ‘they’ would be able to afford champagne and steak for breakfast like what us superior types have. This would not do, so we must turn a blind eye to the political class and the gamblers as they turn treasure into smoke. It suits us and we can always make a few dollars in the confusion.
“Jimbo says:
May 3, 2013 at 3:14 am
I see Africa on the map with few lights. Deprive them of fossil fuels and they will burn more of the above ground fuel called trees.”
Correct. That little splash of light in eastern Africa, near the Horn of Africa is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A city of about 8 million and growing daily. Many do not have nor can afford the sorts of energy sources we can, such as electricity. Most can barely afford to eat every day. Most rely on charcoal for cooking, which would you believe, is banned by the Govn’t. So people resort to what they can best do, source energy from wood for heating and cooking.
“Suppose we reallocate the billions spent in the foolish fight against global warming toward solving the real problems of humankind?”
What would happen first is that all of the doomsayers, the pseudo-scientists, and the climate apparatchiks in governments around the world would suddenly lose the ability to scam a percentage off all the billions that are being sent their way currently.
Understand that motivation and you can understand why the entire climatist elite is *desperate* to make sure that all of this money keeps flowing through them. If the money stops, they’ll lose their piece of the action, This is the key to climatism – it is legalized fraud, with a veneer of faux do-gooder morality that allows the thieves to pretend that they are wonderful, wonderful, people. But they’re not – they’re just liars and thieves who’s lives depend on keeping the scam going.
Although they really shouldn’t be so worried; I’m sure people with their qualifications would have no trouble at all finding a top flight job in either the food service or housekeeping industries..
A.D. Everard says:
May 3, 2013 at 12:46 am
This really sums it up. Excellent post, Steve. 21 years is way too long for politicians to have bags over their heads. If they don’t wake up soon, they are going to have mob fury to contend with and that won’t be pretty. 21 years is a whole generation where nothing except foolish green policy has caused, and is causing the very destruction the greens claim to fear.
I’ve never known a group to so fight waking up!
You are making a mistake if you believe that the politicians have bags over their heads – they are using this to gain and retain power over people who have no energy resources; and that includes western countries which have like the US and the UK started decommissioning old working power plants to be replaced by nothing but wind.
It is not environmentalists doing this. Subsidy farming using windmills kills large numbers of birds and bats and is also an extremely inefficient supply of energy. The subsidy driven market in biofuels has resulted in thousands of square miles of virgin rain forest being destroyed (all those pictures of endangered orangutans) for palm oil plantations and the price of corn rising and shortages – the US is importing corn from Brazil.
Companies and Joe public are persuaded by tax breaks to purchase electric vehicles and the costs of power and fuels increased by surcharges, regulations and taxes persuading the use of small underpowered vehicles and reduce long distance travel.
All the items emphasized in bold in the paragraphs above are imposts by politicians. Imposts that allow the politicians to increase their hold on the governance of countries and increase dependency by reduction of the capability of populations and entire countries to become independent wealth creators.
“If they don’t wake up soon, they are going to have mob fury to contend with and that won’t be pretty.”
The politicians know this too. So we see The Second Amendment being threatened and the Department of Homeland Security buying two billion hollow point rounds
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/.
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2013/02/20/why-do-cops-use-hollow-point-bullets
It is not the politicians who have bags over their heads
Have we declared war upon our selves? Consider this quote in the context of the climate fraud. It speaks volumes.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953
34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 – 1969)
“Transactional sex” due to climate change is called….
“Turning Warm-ageddon Tricks”
CO2 is also constantly expanding the lexicon….
Whenever a quacking politician says things like “save the planet”, “save the children”, “save the women”, or “save the grandchildren”, the correct translation is that the politician has no vision of the TRUTH, nor the ability to address and correct real problems.
Indeed. Climatism (a word I like, and will probably use from now on, replacing Warmism or Alarmism) is responsible for many of the very same things it tries to pin on “manmade climate change”, and has likely been responsible for lower living standards and millions of deaths worldwide. It is both supremely ironic and a moral outrage.
And the tragedy just goes on elsewhere:
“Meet The Millionaires And Billionaires Suddenly Buying Tons Of Land In Africa”
Oakland Institute just completed the most thorough investigative report on who’s buying land in Africa we’ve seen yet: “Hedge Funds Grabbing Land in Africa,” as BBC called it.
As commodities prices rise and inflation picks up, the OI made the report public, they say, because the number of investors buying up land in Africa concerns them.
For obvious reasons, there isn’t much out there about who’s buying what and how much in Africa. But what OI has discovered is a small number of investors paying sometimes nothing for large plots of land in some African countries.
The lease deals are arranged between seemingly corrupt African leaders, reportedly without disclosing the details to the members of the communities that will be displaced because of the land development, and investors such as hedge fund managers.
The end result — beating villagers, digging up their cemeteries, and taking over land that villagers have lived on for centuries — looks a lot like a less cruel version of what history tells us colonizing Americans did when they ousted the Indians, according to this one report anyway.
http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-millionaires-and-billionaires-buying-land-in-africa-2011-6?op=1%23ixzz24qi5ZL7W
But this landgrab by the rich is in no way restricted to Africa only:
“Slideshow: Who’s behind the landgrabs?”
Every day there are new stories of companies buying up farmlands. Malaysian palm oil giants buying up lands for plantations in West Africa. Wall Street bankers taking over cattle ranches in Brazil. Saudi businessmen signing land deals in the Philippines. The latest dataset on land grabs claims that 10 million hectares of land have been grabbed by foreign companies on average every year since 2007.
The result is that a small number of people are taking over more and more of the world’s farmlands, and the water that goes with it, leaving everyone else with less, or none at all. As the world plunges deeper into a food crisis, these new farmland lords will hold sway over who gets to eat and who doesn’t and who profits and who perishes within the food system.
The global farmland grab is only happening because people are pursuing it. The number of land grabbers is small, in contrast with the high number of people displaced by their actions. They are mostly men, often with experience working with agribusiness companies or banks. Some of them sit at high-levels of government and intergovernmental agencies, and sometimes at the highest levels. They operate out of the big financial centres of the world and often get together at farmland investor meetings, whether in Singapore, Zanzibar or New York City.
We think it might help the debate over land grabs to pull back the curtain a little on who these people are. So we’ve pieced together a slide show that tells about some of those who have been actively pursuing or supporting farmland grabs. It’s an emblematic set of land grabbers, not a comprehensive one. Knowing who’s invovled can also help us in pressuring the land grabbers to stop. Each landgrabber profile indicates who his or her friends are and provides resources for those who want further information or to pursue actions.
Download the slideshow in PDF (5.6 MB) or a text version in PDF (713 KB).
http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4576-slideshow-who-s-behind-the-land-grabs
There appears to be a direct co-relation between energy consumption per head and standard of living, the green delusion that a high standard of living can be maintained with a decreasing energy consumption is no more than religious dogma. With the exception of Nuclear solar and hydro which produced 9% of the worlds energy, all the rest comes subject to the immutable laws of chemistry and physics. A secondary co-relation of a measure of standard of living is directly related to the cost of the energy used. Every move so far to force more production to solar wind etc has seen a rapid increase the cost of energy from those sources.
check, just wondering what magic word I said to get kicked into moderation.