Investor’s Business Daily posted an article yesterday about climate change scientists and the alarmism that seems to follow people who talk about climate change.
That article states:
If they were honest, the climate alarmists would admit that they are not working feverishly to hold down global temperatures — they would acknowledge that they are instead consumed with the goal of holding down capitalism and establishing a global welfare state.
Have doubts? Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.
So what is the goal of environmental policy?
“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.
For those who want to believe that maybe Edenhofer just misspoke and doesn’t really mean that, consider that a little more than five years ago he also said that “the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”
Mad as they are, Edenhofer’s comments are nevertheless consistent with other alarmists who have spilled the movement’s dirty secret. Last year, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, made a similar statement.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said in anticipation of last year’s Paris climate summit.
“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”
Please note that Cristiana Figueres, when talking about the Convention on Climate Change, was not talking about climate–she was talking about economic development. Naomi Klein has written a book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.”
The article notes:
“What if global warming isn’t only a crisis?” Klein asks in a preview of a documentary inspired by her book. “What if it’s the best chance we’re ever going to get to build a better world?”
In her mind, the world has to “change, or be changed” because an “economic system” — meaning free-market capitalism — has caused environmental “wreckage.”
The problem with the thinking that free-market capitalism is the cause of poverty is that it ignores some very obvious things and also ignores history. Because of the Charters they carried with them when they settled America, both the Pilgrims and the Jamestown settlers were committed to a communal economy. The land was held and farmed in common–there was not individual ownership and farming of land. That lasted until the first harvest, when the leaders realized that no one was working very hard and, particularly in New England, there was not enough food. When the Pilgrims instituted land ownership and individual farming where farmers sold and bartered crops, the harvest increased noticeably. Free-market capitalism understands some very basic facts about human nature–people work harder when they are rewarded for their work and if people receive benefits for not working hard, they don’t work hard. If people receive benefits for not working at all, they tend not to work.
Global warming or climate change is nothing more than a scheme to redistribute wealth and to bring the governments of the world under the control of the United Nations. Since the United Nations has lost its way and no longer supports freedom, I am not convinced that is a good idea.