The world needs People Day more than Earth Day

Al Gore is redirecting his efforts to Africa, benefiting the Climate Cabal but hurting its poor

Paul Driessen

Al Gore recently announced that he is refocusing his climate and energy efforts from the United States to the international arena, especially Africa. Like President Obama, he wants Africa to “leapfrog dirty fossil fuels” and have wind and solar energy power industries, businesses, communications, transportation, and modern healthcare and living standards.

Mr. Gore believes momentum on Net Zero climate action and renewables is “unstoppable.” Despite the Trump Administration removing the USA from the Paris climate pact and systematically reversing Obama-Biden Era climate and energy policies.

Despite the absence of even one community anywhere on Earth having been able to meet its electricity needs solely with intermittent, weather-dependent, land- and resource-intensive wind and solar energy.

Despite coal, oil and natural gas still providing 82% of total global energy needs and 100% of enormous petrochemical requirements. Despite China’s electricity generation alone emitting 2.5 times more carbon dioxide than the USA, and nearly one-third of the global total.

Despite millions of Europeans being made jobless and sent into energy poverty by climate-centric policies.

Despite hurricanes and tornados, floods and droughts not increasing in frequency or intensity in decades, and the number of people killed by weather and other natural disasters plummeting 90% since 1900.

Mr. Gore’s policies definitely benefit himself and the Industrial-Political Climate Complex. He certainly won’t move to Africa or give up his energy-gobbling Nashville or oceanside Montecito homes, or his SUVs, private jet travel or climate cash. But his pronouncements would certainly roll back industrialized-nation living standards and relegate poor nation aspirations to irrelevance.

In fact, they’re highly reminiscent of Obama science advisor John Holdren’s plan to de-develop and de-industrialize the West, and then tell poor nations how much development they will be “permitted” to have.

“Once the United States has clearly started on the path of [de-developing and] cleaning up its own mess,” Holdren wrote, “it can then turn its attention to the problems of the de–development of the other [developed countries] … and ecologically feasible development of the [under-developed countries].”

That’s why, this Earth Day, people everywhere – especially Africa’s and the world’s impoverished, malnourished, energy-deprived citizens – should observe People Day … and emphasize the energy and other resources people everywhere need to enjoy decent lives and safeguard our planet from the ravages that all-renewable energy would inflict. 

Sub-Sahara Africa’s population has increased by nearly 500,000,000 since Gore’s 2005 “Inconvenient Truth” and over 1,000,000,000 since 1960 – to 1.3 billion today.

Excluding South Africa (64,000,000 people using 3,200 kWh of electricity per person per year), the average Sub-Sahara African gets a barely detectable 180 kWh annually. Compare that to average annual electricity consumption rates per capita in Europe (6,500 kWh) and the United States (13,000 kWh).

In starker terms, nearly 1.3 billion Africans have access to a trifling 1.4% of the electricity that an average American uses every year. That means the average Sub-Sahara African has electricity 20 minutes a day, 141 minutes a week, 123 hours (out of 8,760) per year – sporadically, at totally unpredictable times … for a few minutes or hours at a time.

Bringing abundant, reliable, affordable electricity to this vast region (3.2 times larger than the Lower 48 USA) will require trillions of dollars – that should be spent on power generation systems that can actually do the job: coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydroelectric and perhaps some geothermal.

Right now, however, many African governments refuse to develop their vast coal and natural gas deposits to generate electricity. Their officials still fear and kowtow to Al Gore, UN and European pressure, and the catechism of climate cataclysm – while raking huge sums into private bank accounts from “climate reparation” and renewable energy grants.

Worse, European financial institutions, the World Bank and other lenders still refuse to finance fossil fuel development or fossil fuel electricity generation. Even pre-Trump Obama and Biden USAID (US Agency for International Development) programs “put the climate crisis at the center of U.S. foreign policy and national security,” and focused on compelling aid recipients to “transition” from fossil to wind and solar.

Thankfully, change is in the air. African people and their leaders increasingly recognize that coal, oil and gas not only fuel electricity generation, vehicles, cooking, heating and other necessities. Developing and selling those resources also generates billions in revenue that can be used to finance more energy and economic development – without having to beg ideological institutions for handouts, submit to their demands and restrictions, or remain mired in poverty, disease, dependency and despondency.

Following the example of China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam in driving hard toward modernity, Niger, Senegal and Côte D’Ivoire are leading the way in Africa. Guyana is doing likewise on the north coast of South America, even as Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro seeks ways to seize its oil fields. They’re all poised to ride oil booms, while South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and other African nations are breaking away from domineering, climate-obsessed banks and NGOs, using coal to chart their own courses.

These countries are also beginning to realize that “clean, green, renewable, sustainable, affordable” wind and solar power reflects none of those concepts.

An African “clean energy transition” would require hundreds of thousands of wind turbines, tens of millions of solar panels and hundreds of thousands of miles of transmission lines sprawling across tens of millions of acres of Africa’s magnificent scenic areas and wildlife habitats.

Their massive raw material requirements would mean mining at scales unprecedented in history, much of it by countries, companies and artisanal miners that pay little attention to workplace safety, air and water pollution, mined land reclamation or other standards, in Africa or anywhere else.

The installations, mines, waste dumps, and toxic waters and materials would destroy more habitats, starving, poisoning and killing still more of Africa’s unique fish, birds and wildlife.

Most of the manufacturing of wind turbines, solar panels, transformers, vehicle and grid-scale backup batteries, and other equipment would be conducted far from Africa, largely in China – resulting in still more global pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, while providing few employment opportunities or other benefits to Africa.

Africa would end up destroying Africa to save it from climate catastrophes that exist only in headlines, computer-models, and Al Gore’s fertile imagination. It would generate still pitiful amounts of expensive electricity only 25-30% of the year, as unpredictably as today.

I helped organize the very first (1970) Earth Day on my college campus, when the United States and other industrialized countries still faced serious air and water pollution problems. Since then, America and much of the world have enacted laws and regulations, changed public and corporate attitudes about the environment, developed and installed amazing technologies, and cleaned up their air, water and land – while generating previously unknown and unimaginable health and prosperity.

Africa can and should do likewise. A vital first step is focusing on People Day and energy technologies that can actually turn their dreams into reality – instead of fanciful systems that destroy environmental treasures to “solve” exaggerated and imaginary climate crises.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate change and human rights issues.