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Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
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(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Back in December, the Democratic darling du jour- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez- in reference to her vaunted Green New Deal pie-in-the-sky said it was the next way to “establish economic, social, and racial justice in the United States of America.”  Thenjiwe Harris of the Movement for Black Lives at the “People’s Climate March” in January 2018 had this observation:  “There is no climate justice without racial justice.”  As early as 2016, Greenpeace declared  “Racial and environmental justice are fundamentally linked.”  These are great tag lines and slogans to link climate change to another thing near and dear to the wealth redistribution purveyors- racial justice.

However, this view runs into a brick wall when certain facts enter the equation.  Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that climate change is real and that it is manmade.  Mankind consists NOT just of the corporate white capitalists who seem to the bear the brunt of the Left’s rhetoric when it comes to climate change.  Targeting the West (the developed world) will accomplish nothing IF their real concern is climate change.

For example, in 2012 (and it has gotten worse since) China’s carbon emissions exceeded those of the United States AND the European Union combined!  The bulk of China’s energy needs comes from coal.  When they are not developing coal power plants domestically, they are building them throughout Africa.  When you throw in two other growing countries in terms of both population and their economies- Vietnam and India- the problem is made even worse.

By 2015, it was estimated by the Center for Global Development that 63% of the world’s carbon emissions were caused by non-developed nations, all of whom are non-white and many of whom are not capitalist.  That percentage is likely to increase in the coming decades.  State-driven industrialization- NOT white corporate capitalism- is driving the increase in carbon emissions.  It is not just carbon emissions, but pollution in general.  The World Economic Forum has determined that 90% of the plastic in the ocean originates in just ten rivers- eight in Asia and two in Africa- both hardly bastions of white capitalism.

There are also immigration implications to this phenomena. Immigrants to the United States produce 400% more carbon dioxide in the United States than they would produce in their home countries.  That is because these immigrants, like an American citizen, consume at the American level.  Interestingly, the Sierra Club once was a respectable organization, but changed in the mid-1990’s when they found a wealthy, liberal donor- David Gelbaum.  He threatened that if they ever took an anti-immigrant stance, he would turn off the money.  The Sierra Club has experienced a rapid descent into the Leftist cesspool since then.

Of course, there are also the cries of concern regarding overpopulation, but why is this directed only at Western nations which actually see declining birth rates?  Publications like the Guardian have on several occasions advised its readers that the best way to save the planet is to stop having kids.  NBC News had a report titled, “Science proves kids are bad for the earth; morality suggest we stop having them.”  Even the New York Times has weighed in with articles like, “Would human extinction be a tragedy?”

These magazines are geared towards white, Western populations.  However, these populations are not the ones responsible for the increased carbon emissions nor the problem of population.  In 1950, Africa had one-third the population of Europe.  By 2050, it is estimated to have three times the population of Europe.  Today, there are about 1 billion inhabitants of Africa.  By 2100, it is expected to be over 4 billion!  Even if they consumed a fraction of Western standards, their carbon emissions would exceed that of the remainder of the world.

Western populations are not even replacing themselves.  The birth rate in every European country has declined over the past 20 years, except in Russia.  Voluntary sterilization or adoption of some silly human extinction movement will not save the planet.  The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (yes- they exist) claims that the desire to pass one’s genes to progeny is a “bloodline mentality” linked to racism and that breeding is an ancient remnant of genocide.  One supposes they prefer wholesale human extinction to genocide.

Those statements by black civil rights “leaders,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greenpeace cited at the top of this article are simply more drivel in the climate change debate to justify a redistribution of wealth in the name of racial justice.  Restructuring Western economies through taxes, regulations and a Green New Deal will accomplish absolutely nothing other than the collapse of the Western world.  It will have no effect on carbon emissions since the non-Western world continues to belch out carbon dioxide and exploit African resources.  There will be no environmental benefit.

Real racial and climate justice necessitates that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and others acknowledge that the Western world cannot continue to subsidize a ballooning African population.  It must realize that astronomic Asian consumption and its resulting pollution of various forms is the operative factor.  It must realize that world climate change means just that- the world- not just the industrialized West.  Cloaking it in terms of racial justice makes it no more palatable than the nonsense that comes from the mouth of Al Gore and Tom Steyer.