Climate Alarmism

Davos

Beginning on January 16th, global leaders including politicians, celebrities, billionaires, businessmen, academics, and some of the most influential people in the world gathered at the home of the World Economic Forum’s headquarters located in Davos, Switzerland. The World Economic Forum, led by its chairman and founder Klaus Schwab is essentially a union organization comprised of the most powerful leaders in the world including Bill Gates, Justin Trudeau, George Soros, Donald Trump, UK’s current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, UK’s former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, and countless other recognizable and influential people. In 2020 there were a total of over 3,000 attendees. At these summits, the members discuss the relevant global issues of the day and put together plans on how to counteract these issues and strategies for the implementation of their all-curative solutions. Undoubtedly, one of the main points of emphasis, led by WEF members Al Gore and Greta Thunberg, has been the topic of climate change. This, despite the irony of over 150 private planes being flown to the event. In an unhinged statement from climate activist Al Gore, “The rest of us have to reform the international institutions so that the people of this world can say we are now in charge of our own destiny, we’re gonna save the future and give people hope, we can do it and remember, political will is itself a renewable resource.” Gore, according to a recent Daily Mail report has “Made $330M with climate alarmism” and has “Set up a green investment firm now worth $36BN that pays him $2M a month” is undoubtedly incentivized by the climate alarmism empire that he has built, but how legitimate are his apocalyptic claims?

Sometime last year, after seeing all of “The Science’ing” going on during the covid-era, such as the statement made by our institutional leaders that the vaccine will stop the acquisition and transmission of Covid-19 despite knowing that’s not how viruses or actual science works (Viruses replicate and evolve, evading protecting, basic virology 101), I decided to go down the rabbit hole of another bold scientific assertion, climate science and the insistence that we’re in the midst of an existential crisis. Upon doing so, I absorbed information from all sides of the debate, ranging from we’re on the brink of “The Day After Tomorrow” to “It’s snowing outside, climate change isn’t real” and everything in between. With a healthy skepticism toward every outlet of information I encountered, I came to find environmental activist Bjorn Lomborg to have the most comprehensive approach. It is in Lomborg’s breadth of perspective consisting of climate science, geopolitics, economics, experience, and common sense that led me to find him to be the most credible and have the best put-forth perspective.

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg

In 2004, Time magazine named Dr. Bjorn Lomborg to the list of the “100 Most Influential People.” Lomborg was appointed to the position of the director of the Environmental Assessment Institute by the Prime Minister of Denmark and since has gone on to become President of the Copenhagen Consensus climate organization and was recently named a Traveling Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Scandinavian countries, including Denmark, are the most forward-thinking on climate matters, less inhibited by the petty politics we have here. I came across Dr. Lomborg through YouTube and then I decided to purchase his most recent book, “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts The Poor, and Fails to Fix The Climate.” I found his perspective to be refreshing because it pulls from the same scientific reports that the UN and the rest of the global leaders evaluate while cutting through the politics and ulterior motives that our leaders often possess. As a climate expert, he acknowledges the legitimacy of climate change while evaluating the effects of real-world application of the commonly proposed climate policies. Unless indicated otherwise, all of the scientific information and opinions are directly from Lomborg’s book where he pulls scientific information from expansive studies. The quotes cited below give insight into his opinion on the legitimacy of a warming climate.

“Recently, the media has informed us that humanity has just a decade left to rescue the planet, making 2030 the deadline to save civilization. And therefore we must radically transform every major economy to end fossil fuel use, reduce carbon emissions to zero, and establish a totally renewable basis for all economic activity.” “Climate change is real. It is caused predominantly by carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels and we should tackle it intelligently. But to do that, we need to stop exaggerating, stop arguing that it is now or never, and stop thinking climate is the only thing that matters.”

“We need to take a collective deep breath and understand what climate change is and isn’t. It is not a huge asteroid hurtling toward earth, where we need to stop everything else and mobilize the entire global economy to ward off the end of the world. It is indeed a long-term chronic condition like diabetes–a problem that needs attention and focus, but one that we can live with. And while we manage it, we can live our lives and address the many other challenges that ultimately will matter much more for the future.”

Alarmism

A 2019 poll conducted by The Washington Post found that three-quarters of all Americans think climate change is a crisis or major problem. Another poll conducted globally found that half of the world’s population believes climate change likely will end the human race and 4 out of ten people believe global warming will lead to mankind’s extinction. In the words of Dr. Lomborg, The WaPo poll found that “Of American children ages thirteen to seventeen, 57% feel afraid about climate change, 52 percent feel angry, and 42 percent feel guilty. A 2012 academic study of children ages ten to twelve from three schools in Denver found that 82% expressed fear, sadness, and anger when discussing their feelings about the environment, and a majority of the children shared apocalyptic views about the future of the planet. It is telling that for 70 percent of the children, television, news, and movies were central to forming their terrified views. Ten-year-old Miguel says about the future: “There won’t be as many countries anymore because of global warming, because I hear on like the Discovery Channel and science channels like in three years the world might flood from the heat getting too much.” These findings, if valid nationwide, suggest that more than ten million American children are terrified of climate change.”

With the constant inundation of articles, books, shows, newscasts, and movies, it is no wonder we as a society are beginning to feel that we are on the brink of extinction. However, as Lomgborg puts it, ‘This is not what the science tells us. It’s what politics tells us.” As the United Nations climate panel put it, “For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers [such as] changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socioeconomic development.” According to Lomborg, “WE ARE NOT on the brink of imminent extinction, In fact, quite the opposite. The rhetoric of impending doom belies an absolutely essential point: in almost every way we can measure, life on earth is better now than it was at any time in history.” The examples Lomborg cites include the fact that since 1900, we have more than doubled our life expectancy, health inequality has diminished significantly, higher agricultural yields have drastically slashed global hunger, and rich countries are preserving forests and reforesting. Since 1990 alone, 2.6 billion more people gained access to improved water sources bringing the global total to 91%. Additionally, despite the fact that when you turn on the news all we see is violence, we’re living in the most peaceful time in the history of the world. Lomborg attributes this in large part to the growth of free markets around the world, “Many of these improvements have come about because we have gotten richer, both as individuals and as nations. Over the past thirty years, the average global income per person has almost doubled.” While we’re hellbent to deconstruct the implementation of free markets, it is responsible for the improvement in quality of life throughout the entire world. As U2’s lead singer and activist Bono begrudgingly puts it, “I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I know now that’s not true. The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism.”

Much of the media and governmental fear-mongering surrounding climate change is centered around politics, not science. Ratings and subscriptions for news outlets skyrocket when they stimulate the strongest human emotional response, fear. This creates an incentive structure to exaggerate and distort reality. When you hear sentiments such as, “Scientists are all in consensus on climate change” this is often misleading on a couple of fronts. Yes, climate scientists are universal in recognizing that the global temperature is increasing, this is objectively observable data. However, where this is disputed among climate scientists is the degree to which the rate of global temperature increase can be attributed to human influence. When, for example, you see “Climate report shows we have 7 years to end carbon emissions or the planet is done for” what the media omits is the cherry-picked data that they are referring to. Within the climate reports, such as the one evaluated by the U.N. conducted by the IPCC, the reports have a range of scenarios and outcomes varying from “Most likely” to “Least likely.” Because funding for these climate reports comes from those most incentivized to ring the bells of doom, and funding for climate research that departs from the “proper political orthodoxy” is extremely difficult, the reports include incredibly unlikely climate scenarios, these are the scenarios that are seized upon by the media and politicians. According to Bjorn, “Basic climate findings have remained remarkably consistent over the last 20 years. Scientists agree that global warming is mostly caused by humans, and there has been little change in the impacts they project for temperature and sea level rise.”

So what does the actual science, and not “The Science,” tell us?

Thomas Dolby

First, the cause of the human-induced element of climate change, is “Carbon dioxide gas leads to global warming because it lets in the sun’s heat but blocks some of the earth’s heat from escaping and therefore a bit like a greenhouse, it warms us up.” Due to the industrialization of developed countries and the currently developing countries around the world, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere has nearly tripled within the last half-century. According to the data expressed by Lomborg, since 1750 the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 40%.

The data indicates that by 2100 the global average temperature will “Increase to 7.4 degrees Fahrenheit higher than it was in pre-industrial times.” This is obviously not good and requires action, so what shall we do? In examining and discussing the policies advocated for frequently by environmental activists and politicians, Lomborg says through what the data indicates (the same data observed by the UN Climate Panel), if rich-developed countries all around the world completely curtail ALL emissions immediately, the global temperature would continue to rise by 6.7 degrees Fahrenheit than in pre-industrial times by 2100. If the entire industrialized world stopped all carbon emissions today, there would only be a difference of roughly 0.8 degrees than if we did absolutely nothing to curb emissions. Here in the U.S., ”A complete halt of fossil fuels from today onward would only reduce our temperature by about 0.33 degrees Fahrenheit in 2100.”

Alternative Energy Sources

The result of shutting down all carbon emissions would entail the collapse of society and millions upon millions of deaths due to the loss of the cheapest forms of energy, the fossil fuel energy sources that countries run on. Food production combined with absolutely every single thing that we use during any given day produces carbon emissions in its production, distribution, and use. Is the goal of “Ending all carbon emissions by 2030” worth millions of global deaths in order to reduce the rise in temperature by 0.8 degrees at the end of the century? And so comes the push for alternative energy sources such as wind and solar. While the idea of “Using the gifts of nature” such as wind and the sun is great in theory, the real-world application would be much different. For one, the cost. The same Washington Post poll that found three-quarters of Americans believe climate change is a crisis or major problem, found that a majority of that three-quarters were unwilling to spend even $24 a year to fix it. The commonly proposed policy solutions would cost “many thousands or even tens of thousands per person per year.” Are you willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a problem that you can’t see and won’t affect you in your lifetime when Americans have a hard enough time putting food on the table and paying their bills? On the energy production front, let’s take a look at solar. Outside of the expensive cost to purchase a solar panel, it will only provide enough electricity for a light and a cell phone charge at night when the sun is not out. This means no running appliances, how will your food stay fresh and a person be able to do anything at night with such limited energy access? With wind turbines, society is forced to simply shut down in the absence of wind. In addition to the immense cost and carbon emissions produced for the production of wind and solar energy are the issues of storing and distributing the energy. Additionally, there will be a needed source of backup energy for when there is no wind and sun, this backup source will run on fossil fuels.

A recent article from The Telegraph in the U.K. discussed the logistical and environmental issues associated with alternative energy producers. The “Move to renewable energy sources will require an unprecedented surge in the extraction of precious minerals from the earth. Whether it’s lithium and cobalt for batteries, or rare earth elements used for magnets that power wind turbines and electric car motors, we simply can’t make the green technologies we need without them.” “A typical offshore wind turbine requires 13 times more minerals than a gas-fired power plant for each megawatt capacity.” Due to the global demand, researchers project the cost of the needed critical minerals will soar by over 500%. The only way to bring down the cost of anything is to increase the supply, to be able to do this with alternative energy materials it would mean an explosion of mining that would inevitably lead to “Ravaging landscapes, polluting water supplies, and desolating crops.” The mining of the minerals will entail slave labor such as what is already taking place in Africa in the mining of cobalt. Another inhibiting factor comes from the geopolitical front with China holding many of the cards including its ownership of many of the mineral mines and control of the supply chain.

This past year Germany had to learn a hard lesson on the issues associated with reliance on foreign adversaries and investment in green energy sources. Prior to the war in Ukraine, Germany had to import roughly 20% of its energy from Russia, naturally, once the war started, its access to Russian oil was cut off. Due to the brilliant decision by German leadership including Angela Merkle’s decision to close the last nuclear power plant in the country, they were left with an energy crisis since wind and solar are inefficient and unreliable. To ensure that Germany had enough energy to get through the winter, the country was forced to resurrect more than 20 coal-fired power plants. Since 2010, Germany has spent $400B only to reduce their fossil fuel use from 79% to 77%. The German government’s decision to virtue signal how “Environmentally conscious” they are to the world by relying on ineffective alternative energy sources resulted in an energy crisis, skyrocketed energy costs for their citizens, and the pumping of the more environmentally harmful coal emissions into the atmosphere.

There is an inherent trade-off that comes along with the development of poor countries in the form of emissions, “As development takes place, countries move away from agriculture and toward manufacturing, effectively increasing carbon emissions. Economic growth means that poverty is massively reduced, but at the same time drives environmental problems like global warming.” “Rise in global GDP has lifted over a half a billion people out of poverty with the last few decades and reduced malnutrition by about 50% in the last 30 years.” Those that advocate for environmentalism overhauls are often the biggest critics of the global income inequality experienced by poor and underdeveloped nations. If you eliminate carbon emissions through fossil fuels, the cheapest form of energy, you will effectively eliminate any and all progress made by developing countries such as that of Nigeria, Ethiopia, and India. A lifetime of crippling poverty and hunger for countries denied the right to progress through industrialization including in the realm of food production for countries reproducing at a far higher rate than that of the developed world. “We had our fun with the planet, now none for you.” While we need to address the looming threat of rising global temperature, it should not come at the direct expense of forced poverty resulting in millions of lives lost, there is a significant correlation between a falling GDP and an increase in mortality rates. A study published in the Journal of Health Economics found for every 1% drop in GDP, the mortality rate within a society increases by 0.4%.

Weather Disasters

Every single time we see a fire in California or a hurricane in Florida we are immediately inundated with, “This is a result of global warming, we need to end all carbon emissions by 2030.” Politicians and the media never let a catastrophe go to waste. Using data, primarily drawn from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s climate scientists that are top scientists from around the world and produce reports that are considered the “Gold standard”, Lomborg examined the trends of natural disasters caused by the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to find that the messages we’re told are often greatly overstated. “We’re told, and people believe, that terrible floods and terrifying droughts are getting worse and worse every year. Wrong. Extreme weather events have stayed the same and even declined over the past century.”

When it comes to droughts, the scientists found that they have decreased in totality saying, “There is low confidence in attributing changes in drought over global land areas since the mid-20th century to human influence.” According to Lomborg, “Evidence also shows that globally, the number of consecutive dry days has been declining for the last ninety years.”

When it comes to flooding, the “World’s best scientists worked together to examine evidence linking flooding and climate change, they could not find enough proof to even determine whether flooding was getting better or worse.”

On the matter of hurricanes, the UN’s climate scientists looked at the evidence and concluded that globally, hurricanes are not getting more frequent. They find “No significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency.” The climate scientists said that there is “Low confidence in attributing change in hurricane activity to human interference.” Dr. Lomborg points to a 2018 study that found there is no increasing trend in frequency or intensity in continental U.S. landfalling hurricanes, the trend actually shows a slight decline.

Fires, on the other hand, do present a link between rising global temperatures and their frequency. However, a more modest cause and effect than the one we’re led to believe. To quote Lomborg, “So while climate change likely is increasing the amount of land burned by wildfire, and that is something we should take seriously, it does so from a very modest level compared to historic data. Most of the increases globally we’re seeing now has little to do with climate and everything to do with other human activities that we have much more control over.” In California, where every year we are seeing homes and communities up in flames fools us into thinking fires are getting worse, however, this is largely attributed to the fact that the number of homes built in high-risk fire zones has increased from half a million in 1970 to almost seven million in 2020. Bjorn states, “Satellite are showing a 25% reduction globally in the level of devastation caused by fire in burned area over the last 18 years.” “ In total, the global amount of area burned has declined more than 540,000 square miles, from 1.9 million square miles in the early part of the last century to 1.4 million square miles today.”

A statistical point that we do not get exposed to because it does not fit the narrative is the complete falling-off-of-a-cliff rate at which climate-related weather disasters are leading to death. “Climate-related disasters have declined precipitously over the past century. In the 1920s, these disasters killed almost half a million people each year, mostly in large floods and droughts in developing countries. Today the total number of climate-related deaths across the world has declined to fewer than twenty-thousand each year. Over the past hundred years, the number of deaths from these climate-related catastrophes has plummeted by 96%. Remember that over the same time period, the global population has increased fourfold. So the average personal risk of dying in a climate-related disaster has declined by more than 99%.”

Individual Responsibility

While we’re told that we must do our part on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint, it is a great myth of climate activism that individuals can make any sort of significant difference in the reduction of global warming.

From climate activists such as Bill Gates comes the claim that if we remove meat from our diets, we will make an impact on the rising global temperature. The data indicates that “In a rich country, going entirely vegetarian for the rest of your life will reduce your total personal emissions by about 2%.”

The most common claim put forth regarding individual carbon footprint relates to transportation and the push for electric vehicles. On average, a gas-powered vehicle will emit 34 tons of carbon emissions over a 10-year lifetime. While electric vehicles emit zero carbon emissions while they’re being driven, it is when they are not on the roads that they do in fact put carbon into the atmosphere. The source of energy used to produce the electricity needed to charge EVs is largely fossil fuels in addition to the emissions generated during their production. The data indicates that during the same 10-year timeframe, on average, electric vehicles will produce 26 tons of CO2 emissions. The conversion from gas to electric-powered vehicles will only cut emissions by 24% on average per person, leaving three-fourths of emissions in place. However, this is only in areas where there is only fossil fuel energy production. In parts of the U.S. and other places with significant coal-powered electricity, more electric vehicles will equate to more air pollution due to coal being more environmentally harmful than fossil fuels. All of this does not take into account the much higher cost of electric vehicles and the oftentimes tens of thousands of dollars it costs to replace the battery. For context, The International Energy Agency hopes that we can increase the number of EVs on the road from 5 million in 2020 to 130 million by 2030. Aside from the higher cost of the vehicles, also comes the issue of electrical and energy grids that would be unable to accommodate the demand for energy needed to charge the vehicles. But for the sake of argument, let’s say that we achieve the IEA’s unachievable goal of 130 million EVs on the road. It would only cut global emissions by 0.4% by 2030.

When it comes to recycling, a recent investigative report from NPR provided damning insight. The NPR report found that “Industry officials misled the public about the recyclability of plastic even though their own reports showed they knew as early as the 1970s and 1980s that plastic could not be economically recycled.” “The amount of plastic actually turned into new things has fallen to new lows around 5%. That number is expected to drop further as more plastic is produced.” Also, it is now known that the toxicity of plastic actually increases as it is repurposed. According to Lisa Ramsden, the Sr. Plastic Campaigner for Green Peace USA, “More plastic is being produced, and an even smaller percentage of its being recycled.” NPR spoke with Trent Carpenter, the general manager of Southern Oregon Sanitation who stated, “It’s (Plastic) not going to a recycling facility and being recycled. It’s going to a recycling facility and being landfilled someplace else because [you] can’t do anything with that material.”

The idea we’re constantly being beaten over the head with of “You need to do your part by reducing your carbon footprint,” although good in sentiment, does not match the reality of the situation.

Alternative Avenues

At the risk of making this essay just simply a book report, I want to highlight just a few courses of action that Lomborg, and other climate experts that I found to be credible put forth. First, Dr. Lomborg believes that the best path forward entails not relegating the world into poverty through irresponsible climate policy, but instead, making everyone as rich as possible. Research supports the claim that only when a country’s GDP rises above a certain point does the society begin to care about climate change. The reason for this falls along the lines of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, quite simply, a person does not care about the broader world when they are struggling with shelter, food, and disease. “When immediate concerns like hunger and infectious disease are tackled, people start demanding more environmental regulations.” “Higher GDP not only means better social and economic outcomes but also better environmental outcome.” This is evidenced by the current reduction of carbon emissions put into the atmosphere by the U.S. and U.K. This is something that I find curious and inauthentic with someone such as Greta Thunberg and her agenda, why does she, and the activists only ever attack The West and not China?

There is something that is in our nature as human beings that makes us terrible at preparation but remarkable at adaptation. When we see pictures of a map with water covering vast areas of land, what these pictures omit is human intervention. For example, sea levels are rising, at a rate much less than what we’re led to believe and the truth is that if we spent trillions and cut all emissions, they would still rise, only slightly less than if we did nothing. However, with simple human adaptability measures such as the installation of sea walls (Like what has already been done in Scandinavia), the threat of water covering huge swaths of land is effectively eliminated at a cost that is a hundredth of what policymakers and activists are proposing that we do. Dr. Lomborg calls on human adaptability measures to accommodate the changes to the climate that will continue to progress in the future.

A sign of whether or not a climate claim is serious and built-in reality or not is if part of the response involves the expansion of nuclear energy. When we think of nuclear energy we typically think of two things, first Chernobyl, and second, Hiroshima. What we do not consider is that more people die from wind and solar energy than from nuclear sources of energy, simply for falling to their death during the installation of turbines and panels. Chernobyl was a case of the Soviet Union being cheap with their cooling rods designed to stop a nuclear explosion because of their broken socialist economic system. Nuclear energy is an old technology in terms of modern science however at this point, it is the best one that we’ve got and it emits zero carbon emissions. Electric vehicles for example, suddenly make sense when the source of the energy needed to charge them is not fossil fuels or coal, but zero-emission nuclear energy. According to the latest reports, we are at the doorstep of Nuclear Fission, a potentially ground-breaking advent of technology to aid us in our pursuit of zero-emission energy sources.

Another avenue that Bjorn Lomborg is calling for is investment in geoengineering, which, “Mimics natural processes to reduce earth’s temperature.” He points to the example of when Mount Pinatubo volcano erupted in 1991, “About fifteen million tons of sulfur dioxide were pumped into the stratosphere, forming a slight haze that spread around the globe. By reflecting incoming sunlight this haze cooled the earth’s surface by an average of one degree Fahrenheit for eighteen months. Scientists suggest we could replicate such a volcanic effect and cool the world a lot at a very low cost. It could also cool the world very quickly, in a matter of days or weeks.”

While nuclear energy is an improvement for the time being, we need to invest in research and development, finding and improving tomorrow’s technologies. “Top climate economists agree that the best way to combat its (Climate change) negative effect is to invest in green innovation. We should be innovating tomorrow’s technologies rather than erecting today’s inefficient turbines and solar panels. We should explore fusion, fission, water splitting, and more. We can research algae grown on the ocean surface that produces oil. Because the algae converts sunlight and carbon dioxide to oil, burning that oil will not release any new carbon dioxide. Oil algae are far from cost-effective now, but researching this and many other solutions is not only cheap but also offers our best opportunity to find real breakthrough technologies.” “the models show that each dollar invested in green energy research and development (R&D) will avoid $11 of climate damage. This will be hundreds of times more effective than current climate policies.” “While everyone in principle agrees we should be spending much more on R&D, the fraction of rich countries’ GDP actually going into R&D has halved since the 1980s. Why? Because putting up inefficient solar panels makes for good photo ops, and it feels like we’re doing something–funding eggheads is harder to visualize.”

Also advocated for is a progressive carbon tax that will effectively curb emissions while not bringing the entire global economy to a screeching halt.

For anyone interested in learning more about climate, I would highly recommend purchasing Dr. Bjorn Lomborg’s book and watching his videos on YouTube. He is as comprehensibly knowledgeable on the subject as anyone, having ran an environmental group in the most environmentally progressive part of the world and presently running an environmental organization now. Everything that I’ve cited within this piece (including the graphs) are some of the macro-points made by Lomborg where the amount of information within his book (Including alternative climate proposals) is far more comprehensive with more detail and scientific evidence than what I’ve discussed here.

NWO

Sentiments put forth such as those being made in the above video by J. Michael Evans, the President of Alibaba, one of the largest companies in the entire world involving the implementation of a carbon footprint tracker that records, “Where they are traveling, how they are traveling, what are they eating, what they’re consuming on a platform,” operate under the guise of “Safety.” To be fair, J Michael Evans is discussing a consumer app that tracks an individual’s carbon footprint however, considering there isn’t a demand for such an app, who is this tracking information really for? What happens when an individual surpasses the allotted threshold, will those in power simply turn off the energy to our homes? The same global leaders that shut down all of society and the global economy for a virus with well over a 99% rate of survivability, are meeting in Switzerland and discussing the climate-induced global apocalypse and the changes needed that will make covid policy look like a lunch break. All of the data now indicates that the covid lockdowns did absolutely nothing in stopping the spread however it resulted in setting us back in ways we still are not fully aware of, not least of which in the education and development of our children. The methods called for include a complete overhaul of the world economy in the image of the collectivist vision the world economic forum openly advocates for when they plainly state that by 2030, “You will own nothing and be happy.” The proposed solutions put forth would cost trillions, even tens of trillions of dollars every single year, effectively ruining the global economy and forcing millions into poverty and hunger. With the implementation of the global overhaul, it just so happens that all those ringing the bells of the looming apocalypse are those that would end up with all of the power and control, including the control of our access to the energy needed to live our lives. I could be reading too much into it however it feels as though the largest transfer of power and wealth in the history of civilization does not seem wise. Implementation of the policies that are being proposed will result in the loss of individual autonomy and the placing of implicit trust into the hands of a select few. The history of the voluntary (or involuntary) surrendering of individual rights and freedoms into the hands of a concentrated few is long and not good.

I was hoping that a takeaway we would’ve gained through the covid-crisis was not to panic during times of uncertainty and in the process of doing so, hand over implicit trust to those who are incentivized in money and power to take advantage of a crisis. There is something deep within our nature that craves and even demands subjugation, we must fight this urge. Even within complicated matters that are often above our heads such as that of climate change, we need to take a step back, practice logic and reason, and not outsource common sense to “Experts.” Climate change is real and it is a problem that demands our attention, however, a visceral reaction and the abdication of our individual rights under the guise of “Safety” can, and will, create far greater problems for society, our families, and ourselves.

Fixating on scary stories about climate change leads us to make poor decisions. As individuals, we feel compelled to transform our lives, in both minor (not eating meat) and major (foregoing parenthood). As societies, we are making treaties that promise to squander hundreds of trillions of dollars on incredibly inefficient carbon-cutting policies. Overspending on bad climate policies doesn’t just waste money. It means underspending on effective climate policies and underspending on the opportunities we have to improve life for billions of people, now and into the future. That’s not just inefficient. It’s morally wrong. Over the past century, the world has become a better place, thanks to human ingenuity and innovation. Our choice now is whether we want to allow fear to drive our choices, or if we want to use our ingenuity and innovation to make sure that we leave future generations the best world possible.”

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg