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U.S. Secretary John Kerry listens carefully to opening statements on February 24, 2016 as he prepares for his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Foreign Operations on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. [State Department photo]
Over the past decade, the global elite’s obsession with climate change has taken away from the many other major problems facing the planet—shown most dramatically by the invasion of Ukraine. The West European leaders ought to have spent the past decade diversifying and expanding shale oil instead of closing down nuclear plants and becoming too dependent on Russia. They have failed to pay attention to the war in Syria.
The greatest challenge facing humanity today is lifting the majority of the world from poverty. This can only be achieved by providing reliable, comprehensive energy sources to poor countries. This is how the world’s richest countries became successful and it is how China lifted nearly a billion from poverty. Yet, while the world’s rich countries are overwhelmingly powered by fossil fuels, the elite worked hard to make those energy sources both more expensive and Less available for the world’s poorest.
We are still recovering right now from the worst pandemic of the century. Global economic concerns include inflation, supply shortfalls, and perhaps even recession. While the most vulnerable are already facing food crises, autocracies continue to assert their authority. Tuberculosis, malaria, and malnutrition—each effectively handled in the rich world—still claim millions of lives each year across poor countries.
But major donors and organizations for development have shifted to climate solutions. One month after Ukraine was invaded, the head of the United Nations—an organization focused on ensuring world peace—was instead Warning about “Climate catastrophe,” and the “Mutually assured destruction” that fossil fuel ‘addiction’ could cause.
It would be an exaggeration to say that while real threats were mounting, the world’s rich were tinkering with solar panels and banning plastic straws. It is only a slight exaggeration.
How has the elite managed to get it so wrong? One reason is that the media has long portrayed climate change’s impacts as terrible. Today, almost every natural disaster routinely gets blamed on the climate crisis, with every new hurricane held up as another exhibit of man’s folly. Yet, hurricanes killed Many Continue reading people in the past. A major Scientific paper from last month documents “decreasing trends” in global hurricane frequency and strength. The data shows that the world saw fewer hurricanes last year than in previous years. Never before in the satellite era, and their combined strength was one of the Lowest.
The true impact of climate change is far more complex. The UN climate panel is made up of scientists Finds a warmer world will mean fewer (good) but stronger (worse) hurricanes. The global warming will cause more damage (bad), but it will also increase the world’s wealth and resilience. Relative damages will continue to fallJust slightly slower. This is a serious problem that we should not ignore. It is not a catastrophe, however. Global climate destruction in percent of GDP continues to decline, and climate disaster deaths continue to increase Dropped 99 percent in a century.
For the best sense of what to really expect from a warming planet, we should turn to the damage estimates from the models used by President Joe Biden’s administration, and President Obama’s before that to set climate policy. This research reveals that the entire global cost of climate change—not just to economies, but in every sense—will be equivalent to GDP will suffer a less than 4 percent hit by the end of the century.
Remember to use the UN’s own estimates the average person in 2100 will be 450 percent richer than today. Global warming means he will ‘only’ 434 percent of the rich. That is a problem, but—contrary to the histrionics—far from catastrophic.
A narrow focus on climate targets is detrimental to the future prosperity of wealthy countries. Already, the world spends more than Half a trillion dollars annually on climate policies while rich-world government spending on innovation in areas such as healthcare, space, defense, agriculture, and science has been In recent decades, the percentage of GDP that has fallen has been declining. That investment underpins our future growth. Together with a stagnant or declining education performance, rich world income has Fast stalled this century. Compare this to China, which has seen innovation spending increase by 50%, education improving rapidly, and average incomes increasing fivefold since 2000.
Alarmingly, despite our extraordinary focus, we are failing to even solve climate change. Last year, the largest CO₂ emissions ever.
Earlier this year, the world’s elite gathered for the World Economic Forum and were asked to name “the most severe risks on a global scale over the next ten years.” They absurdly chose “climate action failure”—right before Russia started bombing Chernobyl and Kyiv.
The world has Many challengesThese are not the only ones that get the most media coverage. Climate needs to be addressed more effectively funding R&D in green energy sources, so they eventually outcompete fossil fuels. We must confront authoritarian expansionism in Ukraine, and elsewhere. To ensure long-term prosperity, we need more affordable energy, better education and more innovation. To overcome the elitist hyperbole about climate change, we need to regain our perspective.
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