If the history of humanity and economics has taught us anything, it has taught us that a modern, technological lifestyle and the prosperity that brings it about are only possible in a free market, capitalist society. (With the exception of New York City Democrats, it seems, who have not yet absorbed this lesson.) In fact the very term "capalist" is really nonsensical, as there is no "-ism" in capitalism; in its pure form, what we call capitalism is just free people making free decisions about their own resources, skills, assets and abilities, to their own benefit, without interference from intrusive government.
In fact, free, prosperous societies make possible many luxuries that people who live in countries where one has to stand in line for the monthly potato ration can never know. Chief among those is being an "environmental activist," as opposed to being a half-starved peasant whose interaction with the environment is limited to trying to grub some food out of it. That should be a valuable lesson for today's young climate scolds, but it's a fair bet this will be as water off a duck's back.
Facts, though, are stubborn things.
Environmentalism is a privilege only a select few humans throughout history have been able to indulge in. Most humans cared about the environment only in the narrowest sense: Will the land be able to feed me next year? Will it support my family this harvest?
That’s why you never hear about a climate protest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where biomass fuels like wood and animal dung are still important sources of energy. Some of the world’s most polluted cities lie along the Indus Valley in India and Pakistan, two economies that are still very much industrializing. When was the last time Greta Thunberg and her ilk tried to cram down a Green New Deal on Pakistan?
Human material wealth increased dramatically with the ability of societies to produce cheap energy. Developed countries can’t pull the ladder up behind them and discourage using the very resources that made them prosperous in the first place.
This, indeed, is the very heart of the matter, although I would specify not just cheap energy, but cheap, reliable energy, of the sort that climate activists would deny to much of the Third World. The environmentalist left would deprive poverty-stricken countries and people around the world of the very things that could lead them into a more prosperous future: Free markets and cheap, reliable energy.
Even the “poorest” in the United States and Europe reap the benefits of cheap energy. The street lights stay on and social welfare programs are funded by taxes levied on the prosperous. Very few people are living truly subsistence-focused lives. We can afford to think about the distant future, because our immediate future is so secure. But all of this ceases as soon as the lights don’t turn on (like they’ve stopped doing in Spain and South Africa).
Why is this the case?
See Also: The 'Population Bomb' Won't Explode. It Will Fizzle Out.
Politico Debunked Again: No Evidence of Increased Death Due to Climate
Because climate activism is a luxury, a luxury only possible in a wealthy society. And, despite the efforts of leftists everywhere, the United States is still a wealthy society. On a global scale and on the historical scale, the United States enjoys prosperity matched by few nations in history, and it isn't because of the left and their redistribution schemes, it isn't because of politicians playing Santa Claus by promising endless handouts. It's about those few exceptional people who drive innovation, who create jobs, and who build wealth. And for those people, the key to their driving our economy is keeping the government out of the way.
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded, here and there, now and then, are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."
Free markets, free trade, free people, build wealth. Socialism relies on the redistribution of other people's money - it destroys wealth. If any of the scolds' "green" energy schemes, being expensive and impractical, are to be adopted on any scale, it can only be in a free, prosperous nation, like the United States. That's the great irony of the climate change panic being largely a condition found among the political left; in their overweening cognitive dissonance, they are incapable of understanding that the economic policies they champion are the very policies that make their environmental and energy policies even less practical than they already are. And the greater irony is that the "renewable" energy programs they advocate for and would command the world to adopt if they could, being as they are expensive and impractical, would hold the Third World in poverty for perpetuity.
How's that for "compassion?"
