The Sell-By Date of “Green” Activism has Expired
Has the public finally had enough of the “green” movement and its annoying, never-ending demands that we sabotage our quality of life for a cause that is based on a manufactured crisis?
Image: Huffington Post
In the U.S. and much of Western Europe, we have seen the results of “green” activism and the incredible amount of wealth thrown at the idea that we must destroy our quality of life in order to save the planet. This notion is playing out in real time in Europe, as energy costs have skyrocketed due to the closing of carbon- and nuclear-generated energy plants in favor of solar and wind. This has led me to wonder if this “green” movement has reached a point where the public has realized that this “save the planet” rhetoric does nothing for the environment and is actually dangerous to human progress?
The Third World Has No Time for “Green” Nonsense
Traveling to Cairo recently, I was struck by the sheer amount of economic activity that Egyptians and their government deemed necessary for recovery from nearly a decade of civil unrest and, through the past two-plus years, pandemic lockdowns. Tourism accounts for nearly 20 percent of Egypt’s economy, thus the re-opening of the country to foreigners is being met with relief and joy. In this context, the need for economic recovery is a much higher priority to Egyptians than adhering to the quality-of-life restrictions demanded by First World “green” activists.
The managing director of our upscale Cairo hotel (very much touting a strong commitment to ESG on their website) made it clear that Egypt will not place “green” burdens on their economy or its population while it is in recovery, and possibly well beyond that point. He was adamant that economic recovery in Egypt was dependent on keeping the tourism industry from “being cut down” by “bad ideas that only hurt our already damaged country.”
The Egyptian government is developing one of the world’s largest solar farms in the world just outside of Aswan, at an estimated cost of $4 billion. The output of the Benban Solar Park is said to deliver electricity to 1 million homes, in a country with over 100 million residents. Other “green” projects are in development in Egypt and other parts of North Africa, potentially covering thousands of square miles of land and re-routing precious water resources to support these projects. Even “green” energy proponents acknowledge the excessive need for land that has already displaced settled populations in areas that have routinely been characterized as “remote” but in fact contain indigenous people with historical and cultural claims on these lands.
Try Telling Poor People They Can’t Have Affordable Energy
But the people persevere, as my wife and I discovered on our journey through India in 2017. Billions of people manage to live their lives in relative harmony with the environment without the expensive and distracting burdens of “green” activism getting in the way of their prosperity. India, which generates 70 percent of its electricity through coal-fired energy plants, has committed to achieving “Net-Zero” carbon emissions by 2047, the country’s 100 year anniversary of independence. It will interesting to see whether three-quarters of India’s population, who live on the equivalent of $300 per month, will voluntarily give up their affordable and efficient gas and propane powered cooking and heating devices in favor of expensive and unreliable solar and wind powered contraptions.
All of this heavy-handed, top-down effort is being applied based on the belief that carbon emissions reduction is the only way the Earth’s population will save itself from the “climate emergency” that is constantly being touted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of the United Nations that has used the overblown, multi-decade threat of climate disaster to push “green” activism solutions for climate issues that have been long proven to be detached from reality.
The IPCC, in a new report Summary for Policymakers, continues to emphasize worst-case climate scenarios that are not likely to exist in the real world. A notorious claim that “current global warming increases are unprecedented in the last 125,000 years” ignores the Holocene period from around 6,000 years ago where there is substantial evidence that temperatures were higher than the present in many parts of the world. This rewriting of Earth’s climate history is a common ploy of the IPCC to bolster its claims that we are in the midst of a “climate crisis.” Anyone familiar with the scientific process can see right through this evidence-free collection of abject nonsense.
What Climate Emergency?
The Clintel Foundation, which published its World Climate Declaration signed by over 1,500 scientists, made the very non-controversial statement that there is no climate emergency and that climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs and not on self-critical science. To follow up on this assertion, Clintel recently released some new research showing that over 40 percent of the IPCC climate scenarios rely on improbable rises in future temperature that even the IPCC believes are of “low likelihood.” And we’re supposed to degrade our quality of life over this?
The climate computer models used in support of these outlandish predictions cannot even accurately calculate PAST climate patterns, yet they are held up as proof of future “climate disaster” as groups like the IPCC rewrite history, ignore prior predictions that were wildly incorrect, and talk right over the fact that we have had no global warming since 2014 (UAH report here).
Anyone paying attention can surmise this: Climate change has become a grand narrative in which human-caused climate change is the dominant cause of societal problems. If we solve the “problem” of burning fossil fuels, then all other societal problems will be solved.
This is nothing more than “bumper sticker” science-ism – using the reputation of science to give authority to politically-manufactured “green” activism that only the First World can afford. Any challenges based in reality, such as solar and wind being intermittent energy sources that cannot be deployed at scale, or that electric vehicles are unaffordable, inefficient, and toxic to the environment – these are wished away with a hand wave.
First World boutique activism does not play well in Third World societies. These societies won’t give up on their affordable energy and the prosperity it creates just so Western climate activists can feel better about themselves. These societies are too busy surviving and improving the quality of their lives, something the First World did over the past 150 years without being harassed by “green” activists and heavy-handed bureaucrats with no accountability for the economic and societal damages they cause.
Lehmann for President 2024.........