Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about the United Nation‘s suggested solution to climate change. United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres stated that democracy is a poor form a government to solve the problem of global warming–communism works much better.

When you consider some of the problems in communist countries in regard to environmental damage, this statement is ridiculous. We remember Chernobyl. We have seen the pictures of Chinese cities where the smog is so thick people are wearing surgical masks.

On Monday, The Federalist posted an article about communism and its impact on the environment. The article reported:

When the Berlin Wall came down and the Iron Curtain was finally lifted to expose the inner workings of communism to Western eyes, one of the more shocking discoveries was the nightmarish scale of environmental destruction. The statistics for East Germany alone tell a horrific tale: at the time of its reunification with West Germany an estimated 42 percent of moving water and 24 percent of still waters were so polluted that they could not be used to process drinking water, almost half of the country’s lakes were considered dead or dying and unable to sustain fish or other forms of life, and only one-third of industrial sewage along with half of domestic sewage received treatment.

An estimated 44 percent of East German forests were damaged by acid rain — little surprise given that the country produced proportionally more sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and coal dust than any other in the world. In some areas of East Germany the level of air pollution was between eight and twelve times greater than that found in West Germany, and 40 percent of East Germany’s population lived in conditions that would have justified a smog warning across the border. Only one power station in East Germany had the necessary equipment to clean sulphur from emissions.

The article at The Federalist concludes:

There is no society, nor has one ever existed, which featured zero pollution or harm to the environment. The only question is how best to manage it, and which system is best positioned to accomplish this. On that question the answer is surely capitalism, home to the world’s richest countries and cleanest environments. It isn’t even close.

Actually, democracy is not the entire answer. The other part of the answer is private property rights and free enterprise. When people own something, they take better care of it. When it pays to invent a cleaner way of doing something, that method gets invented. When people are oppressed by their government, they don’t have the energy to worry about their environment–they are simply worried about getting enough food to feed their families and enough heat to stay warm. Worry about the environment in a communist country is a luxury that people cannot afford.

To suggest that communism is the solution to the (non-existent) problem of global warming is naive at best. Christiana Figueres’ statement shows how far the United Nations has come from the idea of supporting the concept of freedom for all people. The United Nations has become a reflection of the tin-horn dictators that have taken it over in recent years.