Have you noticed the subtle change in the title of the current doomsday scenario from global warming to climate change? Do you know why the change was made? It is because the planet quit warming! With respect to the hyperbolic reference to climate change, the only thing the climate does is change! Each and every season, and each and every millennium. I wonder how long it is going to take the average American to wake up and realize that he has been scammed by the green movement?
There is not a scientist alive on this planet who would deny that our planet experiences periodic cataclysmic episodes of extreme cold, referred to as ice ages, followed by periods of comparatively radical global warming. Even Al Gore would admit that these cycles of cooling and warming were happening long before man invented fire, let alone the ubiquitous evil SUV.
What is really going on here? Well, some 30 years ago, for a college political science course I was assigned to read a book published by a think tank called the Club of Rome. The book called for a redistribution of world wealth so that we wouldn’t have this disparity of quality of life between the modern countries and the third world countries that outnumber us.
Nobody answered this call to give up their wealth, so the Club of Rome came up with a better idea and it is all in writing! The Club of Rome gurus hatched a plan to convince the rich countries to lower their standard of living by reducing their economic output. How? By convincing us that we were destroying the planet via our energy consumption.
But, since then, they ran into no small problem. The biggest energy hogs on the horizon are now China and India. They don’t want their people to live in abject poverty and literally in the dark. Neither do the leaders of another 140 countries on the planet. They want to build power plants and they want to have all the stuff that makes life more comfortable but happens to consume power like cars and refrigerators! So, with these up and coming powerhouses balking at restricting their output, the only one left to drink the bulk of the green kool-aid was us, and nobody drank more of it than the citizens of California.
Here in California we passed a law that will cause our energy prices to skyrocket, our energy supplies to dwindle, and our manufacturers to take their jobs out of state. What will we accomplish for the planet in the meantime? Absolutely nothing!
Noted international scholar, Alex Alexiev, has done the math! He informs us that, “The United States’ current emissions of green house gasses are 4.2 gigatons per year, decreasing at a rate of 5 percent per annum. California’s share is some 500 mln tons. China’s emissions are 7.7 gigatons going up at 13 percent per year. Should California decide to eliminate all of its emissions and go back to a hunter-gatherer type of society, the effect would be a one-time, 50 percent reduction of Chinese yearly emissions growth.”
Another way of relating this shift of energy consumption and job production to China? California will soon completely cut itself off from energy produced by coal, whereas China is building a new coal plant every 11 days! And, China is now importing our coal we would otherwise use to power our country’s energy needs!
I am all for reducing pollution, but CO2 is not a pollutant. Humans and nature both produce CO2 emissions, and neither humans or plants can survive without it.
Andy Caldwell is the Executive Director of COLAB and hosts the Andy Caldwell show weekdays from 3-5 p.m. on AM1440.