Part of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly is the ill-advised "Climate Week," and all the horse squeeze that goes with it. This is a playground for the climate scolds, and like the "environmentalists" who rarely if ever spend any time in the actual environment, the climate scolds almost all come from developed, First World nations. That's why they have the luxury of advocating for wasteful "green" energy programs.
Meanwhile, there are many in Third World countries who don't yet have electricity, much less modern sanitation and clean water. If part of the United Nations' mission is to help raise these Third World nations and bring them into the modern world, then the climate agenda can only harm that mission.
This is hypocrisy of the first order. In effect, the UN climate agenda demonstrates a scorn for poor people around the world.
As world leaders and influencers converge for New York’s UN General Assembly and Climate Week, two incompatible visions are about to clash — rich-world elites obsessed with climate change versus developing nations battling poverty, hunger and disease.
Here’s a plain fact the elites refuse to accept: Hundreds of trillions of dollars spent on traditional climate policy can only deliver tiny benefits, but devoting just billions to simple, proven policies can transform lives, alleviate poverty, promote health and boost resilience.
This chasm highlights why most of the world perceives rich virtue-signaling elites as disconnected from reality.
Ay, that's the rub. Here's what this piece gets wrong: Instead of dumping money into ill-advised solar or wind power projects in these nations, why not focus efforts instead on developing clean, reliable generation with oil or natural gas? Why not focus efforts instead on clean water? Why not focus instead on basic sanitation? People living in the Roman Republic in the times of Cato, Cicero, Mark Antony, and Caesar enjoyed cleaner water and better sanitation than many living in sub-Saharan Africa today.
If these poverty-stricken people are to ever be moved into the modern world, then electrification has to be the first step. Providing reliable, affordable electricity makes all the other problems suddenly much more solvable, but the climate scolds' "green" energy schemes don't do that.
This was one of President Trump's main messages in his United Nations Speech, in which he rained fire on the climate-change activists, in and out of the UN.
Read More: A Trump Festivus for the UN
But wait! There's more! It's not bad enough that the claims of the climate scolds fly in the face of not only economics but also physics, but there is ample evidence that the schemes just plain aren't working.
The climate activists flooding New York this week ignore decades of failed summits.
Since 1992’s Rio Earth Summit, the renewable share of global energy has risen just two percentage points, from 12% to 14%, despite the world spending over $14 trillion — mostly on ineffectual subsidies.
On current trends, it will take another four centuries to get to all-renewable energy production.
And even if all unconditional pledges are fully implemented, emissions in 2030 will still be about 19% higher than 2019 levels, the UN predicts.
Yet expect the activists to make bolder, costlier promises, blind to their economic toll and puny impact.
Here's a hint: We will never get to all-renewable energy sources, because they just plain don't work. Indeed, it would be better not to spend this money at all. This is money, we must remember, that comes from the taxpayers of the member nations of the United Nations. We have no vote in this, other than the votes that choose our own government. We have no say in how that money is spent. We have no say in any of this, and the UN still pushes for trillions to be spent on green energy horse squeeze.
People in the Third World don't need renewable energy. They don't need solar panels and windmills that will never, and can never, replace traditional sources. What people in the Third World need are clean water, sanitation, and reliable electricity. These aren't new technologies. These aren't as expensive as the green boondoggles, they are more reliable than the green boondoggles, they don't require the endless expensive maintenance than the green boondoggles.
The United Nations climate agenda has failed. It has failed to address the mild warming trend that the Earth has been enjoying since the Wisconsinan glaciation. It has failed to address the elephant in the room, that China and India are the emissions culprits, and yet the scolds aim their ire at the United States and Europe, probably because China and India would swiftly tell them where to stick it. Worst of all, the United Nations climate agenda has actually been detrimental to people in the Third World who need the tools to move into the modern world, most especially, electricity.
That's why President Trump was absolutely right to call out the hypocrisy of the climate-change advocates in his United Nations address. Let's hope the other leaders were actually paying attention.
