Josh writes: I don’t think this cartoon needs any words but many thanks to Cumbrian Lad for an inspiring post over on the BishopHill blog.
Matt Ridley’s excellent article on Electricity for Africa is also worth reading – let’s hope Pope Francis reads it.
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Is there a name for the point in a Ponzi scheme when there are no dupes left to invest ?
Matt Ridley’s article deserves wider circulation, not least inside the Vatican before it is too late to save il Papa from a serious error of judgement.
The Catholic Church–or any other church for this matter–has not business making pronouncements on science. It’s not within its domain of expertise.
The above is also true for 1.5 billion people in South Asia and many in Middle and South America. Why do these Green people want the poorest people to pay more for electricity than themselves?
The Catholic Church was the original intellectual bastion of the royal powers. Like today’s intellectuals who ingratiate themselves to power, the Catholic Church provided legitimacy to the crown for the claim of devine right to rule from God. The adherence to the current powers demand for the devine right to rule due to CO2 is only slightly different.
“Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man how to fish, and he eats for life”.
If His Holiness truly is a wealth re-distributionist socialist, the above quote is probably something he has yet to really understand.
In and of itself, poverty isn’t really the problem……it’s the SYMPTOM of a problem. The poor of Africa and elsewhere need the economic development and infrastructure that will enable them to meet their everyday human needs such as energy, food and water, sanitation, adequate shelter, etc. When one uses climate change alarmism as a pretext for global wealth redistribution (and maybe as a facade for caring about the planet), one merely addresses those symptoms of poverty rather than the cause or causes themselves.
The Third World’s poor will forever remain mired in poverty as long as there are people in the world such as His Holiness in positions of power and influence who still insist on thinking in wealth redistribution terms (using scientifically faulty climate change alarmism as a pretext) rather than economic development terms. The U.N. itself is also guilty of this. With environmentalists and their political allies in power blocking the path to fossil fuel power plant construction (and maybe nuke plant construction as well) in the Third World, the future is far from bright for the poor in those nations.
I don’t know….maybe the U.N. and the Vatican ARE involving themselves in economic development in the Third World. If so, they should concentrate more on this and less on wealth redistribution and forget about the scientifically faulty notion of alarming climate change as a pretext for it.
Meaningful environmental protection measures can only happen AFTER basic human needs can be met through economic development, not before them. Until this is well understood, both the poor and the environment in the Third World will continue to suffer.
The cause of poverty is, in most cases, government. Irrespective of the philosophical base, government seems to eventually get into the hands of greedy power hungry folks who prey upon the people.
Perhaps before advocating global income redistribution, the pope should consider a current application of the theme of the movie, “Shoes of the Fisherman.” Sitting on a pile of church wealth amassed from the collection of “widow’s mites” over a millennium and a half while preaching income redistribution sounds a bit insincere.
Real global income equality (Gross World Product of appx. $75 trillion / population of 7.2 billion) yields a “fair share” income of about $10,500. Great step up for a beggar on the streets of Bangladesh, but not so good for even the poorest resident of the US.
I agree with others who posted about water quality and treatment. If one travels from a typical western country auch as Australia, where we have enjoyed the benefits of electricity and water/waste treatment, to Africa there is strong advice given to not drink tap water, only, imported bottled water. Air (Open air fires for heating and cooking, low quality diesel/petrol and poorly maintained engines) and water quality is a real problem in Africa, especially, in the countries I have been to.
Oh, joy. If three topics for the Know Nothings to belch wasn’t enough …
Thank you Josh, brilliant! and thank you for linking to Matt’s post!
Anthony, religion has no place on a blog that purports to be about science. It’s bad enough to see the tinfoil hats and zealots on threads devoted to science.
But the Pope is now embracing “science” to get more public funds for the Church. I say fair game
My long-time friend Tom Harris just sent me his latest, well worth the read:
http://pjmedia.com/blog/catholic-church-fooled-by-un-on-climate-change/
Great article Tom.
The latest time the Catholic Church tried to control the climate, they did so by burning witches during the Little ice Age. It has been estimated that 40,000 to 50,000 innocent people were executed for witchcraft in Europe and the American colonies over several hundred years. This huge addition to the planet’s carbon footprint did little to alter the natural global cooling that destroyed crops and caused widespread starvation.
The latest climate control nonsense from the Vatican will be equally foolish, tragic and ineffective. As you state, the Vatican is condemning the third world to perpetual poverty and servitude through continued energy starvation.
I visited the Vatican in about 1995. As a protest against the Vatican’s climate heresy, I am tossing out all my souvenirs of that visit. I shall especially miss my favorite, my Pope-Soap-on-a Rope, that has lasted without attrition for two decades – a miracle!
Best wishes, Allan 🙂
Typo above:
“The LAST time”
Also a very good article by Matt Ridley – thank you.
http://rationaloptimist.com/blog/electricity-for-africa.aspx
Bjorn Lomborg is a luke-warmist and in that he is almost certainly incorrect – there is no global warming crisis.
Nevertheless, Lomborg is correct in his conclusion – that we need to fight poverty and energy starvation in Africa through the use of sensible energy solutions including fossil fuels – this is a much higher priority than green energy schemes, which are not green and provide little useful energy.