“The Great Global Warming Swindle” perpetuates the lie that Global Warming campaigners have been conned by a eugenics group that ultimately want to keep Africa poor!
This nasty attack was used by Durkin to not only call all the world’s climatologist liars, but have the gall to spin an even larger conspiracy theory — that the “Greenie movement” is all about control and geopolitical power, and above all, keeping the poor poor!
An educated response might be, “Pull the other one!” or even “Der!”
For starters, clean energy is becoming economically viable.
Wind is almost as cheap as dirty old coal, and causes far less lung cancer. (Rates of lung cancer in the NSW Hunter Valley are 3 times higher than anywhere else in Australia due to the coal mining and burning there — Tim Flannery).
Global Warming is already killing the poor!
200 thousand people a year are killed by extreme climate events spreading malnutrition, malaria, flooding, and diarrhoeal diseases. (November 2007 Science Talk podcast of Scientific America). In other words there is already a terrible legacy compelling Co2 mitigation on humanitarian grounds. Us “Greenies” are working to help African villages get out of desperate poverty, disease, and disaster by asking the rich first world to clean up its act. Our cars and coal dry up Ethiopian soils and peasant farmers starve. And Durkin suggests that we are trying to keep Africa in the Stone Age? Nice one mate! You and your denial are the real threat to Africa!
Peak oil could devastate the poor
If it gets down to a bidding war with the rich nations, do you really think the poor nations have a chance to buy enough oil to run their agriculture? The nations that wean off fossil fuels first and establish a clean, green economy will have a competitive advantage. Do we really want Africa getting hooked on coal when it will raise rates of lung cancer and other respiratory illness, dry out their continent through Global Warming climate changes, and will ultimately run out? (But not before cooking the planet 3 times over). Peak coal is not as far away as you might think.
Green groups have financial plans to help the poor leapfrog past the fossil fuel age.
The Lighting the Way report toward a sustainable energy future, by the InterAcademy Council Secretariat * starts with an executive summary. The first paragraph reads…
Making the transition to a sustainable energy future is one of the central challenges humankind faces in this century. The concept of energy sustainability encompasses not only the imperative of securing adequate energy to meet future needs, but doing so in a way that (a) is compatible with preserving the underlying integrity of essential natural systems, including averting dangerous climate change; (b) extends basic energy services to the more than 2 billion people worldwide who currently lack access to modern forms of energy; and (c) reduces the security risks and potential for geopolitical conflict that could otherwise arise from an escalating competition for unevenly distributed energy resources.
So there you have it. The very second goal after addressing Global Warming is bringing energy security to all those without any energy in the first place, and the third goal is that eternal quest of the beauty pageant, “World Peace”! Sounds like an awful eugenics conspiracy to me. 😉
But is there any evidence of this spreading through the whole Greenie movement? Surely this is just one idealistic report from a bunch of scientists with no influence on the real world of Greenie campaigners? Well check this out. Greenie activists want carbon trading to fund 3rd development! Far from bankrupting the poorer nations, our first world money would end up building their renewable energy security for them! Check this recent Richard Heinberg article on what happens when Global Warming and Peak Oil get together: Big Melt Meets Big Empty
A growing number of organizations (including the Global Commons Institute, EcoEquity, the Climate Equity Project, Feasta, Just Transition Alliance, The Sky Trust, and Third World Network) contend that the fairest solution would be to allocate annually capped emissions rights globally on an equal per-capita basis; then, if wealthy nations wished to continue using proportionally more fossil fuels, they would have to purchase emissions rights from more parsimonious consumers in poor nations. This would result over time in both a diminishing amount of total emissions (based on the declining trajectory of the annual caps) and an enormous transfer of wealth from the more-industrialized to the less-industrialized nations.
Indeed, a vast new Hydro-electricity dam on the Congo may be funded in this way, generating as much power as 40 nukes! (The United Nations Environment Program states that it might generate 40Gw! so based on an “average nuclear power plant” of about 1GW, that’s 40 nukes. See AFROL news, and this Eskom news which states that the Congo would supply twice the electricity of the Chinese 3 Gorges Dam!)
Right now we are trashing the global climate and affecting Africa’s farming. Back in the “olden days” we were the colonial powers that prospered off their slave labour and natural resources. It seems only right that we help them leapfrog past the fossil fuel stage into a sustainable and attractive “Bright Green” era.
The real shame is that as peak oil hits, first world nations will be so bankrupted that many of these carbon trading schemes will be abandoned as utopian dreams. I expect the Global Warming “Denial Machine” to kick in with vigour as airlines bankrupt, food prices rise, and the Great Depression begins in earnest. Who will care about carbon trading when they’re living in a new Hooverville and can’t feed the kids? That’s when the demand for coal liquefaction will hit in a big way, and we’ll turn a blind eye to Africa starving, as we always have. It’s a crime.
In May 2000 all of the world’s science academies created the IAC to mobilize the best scientists and engineers worldwide to provide high quality advice to international bodies – such as the United Nations and the World Bank – as well as to other institutions.
In a world where science and technology are fundamental to many critical issues – ranging from climate change and genetically modified organisms to the crucial challenge of achieving sustainability – making wise policy decisions has become increasingly dependent on good scientific advice.
The IAC is client-driven and works on a project-by-project basis. It has developed mechanisms and procedures to guarantee the scientific quality of its reports, the policy-relevance of its recommendations and the absence of regional or national bias. The IAC collaborates closely with the InterAcademy Panel, the InterAcademy Medical Panel, the International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences, and the International Council for Science. The IAC Secretariat is hosted by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Eclipse Now 