All Americans have heard of the Holocaust, but far fewer have heard of the Holodomor—the man-made terror famine perpetrated against Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of people. The word itself connotes “death by hunger,” “killing by hunger,” or “murder by starvation.” By 1939 and 1940, Ralph Raico reminds us that, “At that point, Hitler had slain his thousands, but Stalin had already slain his millions.”
The New York Times was complicit in covering up and denying the government-caused Holodomor Famine in Ukraine and other related crimes of the Soviet Union. In 1932–33, the Soviet famine killed anywhere from approximately 3.5 to 5 million, even possibly 7 to 10 million people. While it was admittedly difficult to report fully what was occurring in the Soviet Union because of limited information, the close watch of government, and the requirement that the government approve all news stories, many did know much more than they were reporting. They largely had ideological sympathy for the Soviet Union and enjoyed access to power which was guaranteed by favorable reporting.
Despite this, Welsh reporter, Gareth Jones, was able to report on the actual conditions during this time. After his discoveries, Gareth Jones spoke out publicly about his findings of starvation, mass murder, and cannibalism. All these were caused by the forced collectivization of the Soviet government. The New York Evening Post published “Famine Grips Russia Millions Dying. Idle On Rise, Says Briton” on March 29, 1933. A few days later, on March 31, 1933, Walter Duranty—foreign correspondent to the Soviet Union for the New York Times, “Our Man in Moscow”—published his denial of the statements of Jones in his article, “Russians Hungry, but Not Starving.” Even though Duranty and many others knew of the starvation and mass murder, they continued attempts to discredit any such claims. On April 13, 1933, Gareth Jones published “Balance-Sheet of the Five-Year Plan: Article III: Ruin of Russian Agriculture,” for The Financial Times, in which he stated, categorically and truthfully,
What are the causes of the famine? The main reason for the catastrophe in Russian agriculture is the Soviet policy of collectivisation. The prophecy of Paul Scheffer in 1920-30 that collectivisation of agriculture would be the nemesis of Communism has come absolutely true.
Gareth Jones was allowed to have his reply published in The New York Times under the title, “Mr. Jones Replies: Former Secretary of Lloyd George Tells of Observations in Russia” (1933). Jones was not appreciated during his time, even though he was eventually proven right. Even today, many have never heard of the murderous events of the Holodomor. It is also worth noting that Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer was never revoked, even though his reporting was “gravely defective.” Historian Timothy Snyder explains the uniqueness of Gareth Jones in his Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,
The basic facts of mass hunger and death, although sometimes reported in the European and American press, never took on the clarity of an undisputed event. Almost no one claimed that Stalin meant to starve Ukrainians to death; even Adolf Hitler preferred to blame the Marxist system. It was controversial to note that starvation was taking place at all. Gareth Jones did so in a handful of newspaper articles; it seems that he was the only one to do so in English under his own name... Though the journalists knew less than the diplomats, most of them understood that millions were dying from hunger.... Aside from Jones, the only journalist to file serious reports in English was Malcolm Muggeridge, writing anonymously for the Manchester Guardian. He wrote that the famine was “one of the most monstrous crimes in history, so terrible that people in the future will scarcely be able to believe that it happened.” (pp. 55-56, emphasis added)
These are only some of the deaths from Communism.
Deaths from Communism (Black Book of Communism, p. 4)
The Energy Holodomor
A famine is a severe shortage of food relative to the population that is so acute that people are at risk of malnutrition and death from hunger. Intentional famine, of course, is a democidal act of a government by which food is restricted from people in order to starve them to death. This is not simply a failure to provide food—which governments do not do—but prevention of production and exchange, including confiscation and destruction of food or the means to produce food. Historically, the Holodomor—against ethics and economics—took place because of an ideological commitment to central planning. Similarly, today we are unfortunately at the edge of an energy holodomor.
This comparison and framing might seem unreasonable—is it really fair to compare anti-fossil fuel/green climate activists to Stalin’s murder of millions of people through a government-imposed famine? In reality, without exaggeration, the comparison would be unfair to Stalin. Stalin and the Soviet Union—indeed, all the crimes of Communist regimes—killed millions of people, even up to 100 million; forced reduction or elimination of fossil fuels would cause the deaths of billions of people and regression to extreme poverty for whoever remains.
The current world population to date is 8.2 billion people (and increasing). Contra Malthus—who wrote that human population would outgrow the food supply (1798)—human population grew from ~1 billion in 1803 to over 8 billion today. Instead of mass starvation, the global standards of living exploded. More people were sustained at a higher standard of living. Ironically, “Malthus announced his pessimistic conclusions just in the era when they were about to be falsified.” Recognizing the importance of institutions that facilitated saving, exchange, production, and capital investment, which led to the Industrial Revolution, we must also appreciate that this population explosion is also largely due to abundant energy, especially fossil fuel energy (i.e., coal, oil, natural gas).
Access to abundant and cheap sources of energy have enabled mechanization, transportation, fertilization, irrigation, and saved time, just to name a few benefits. Fossil fuels enabled the ability to use machines to make humans more productive and efficient, allowed exchange to take place across greater distances because of advances in transportation, advanced farming through fertilization and better irrigation (feeding billions), and intensified the division of labor by saving countless hours of time, which allows people to produce, exchange, and research.
From 1800 to present, there has been a massive increase in fossil fuel empowerment. There is a direct connection between this empowerment and the population increase from 1 billion to 8 billion. While we hear about the viability of “renewables” (e.g., wind, solar, etc.), these so-called alternatives have remained miniscule in terms of energy production, despite massive government subsidies. Renewables can barely supplement, let alone replace, fossil fuel energy that supports billions. This is due to issues of consistency, storage, intermittency, etc.
Global primary energy consumption by source
Climate-related deaths have fallen by 98 percent worldwide over the last century despite increased CO2 emissions. Keep in mind that earlier in history there were fewer people and less reporting of natural disasters. The population has quadrupled since 1900, adding more carbon and greater opportunity for more people to be adversely affected by extreme climate events. An empowered world allows humans to build a more durable, livable world. This has been documented in “Weather and Safety: The Amazing Decline in Deaths from Extreme Weather in an Era of Global Warming, 1900–2010.”
Figure 1.9/5.1: More Fossil Fuels, Fewer Climate-Related Deaths
Global Death and Death Rates Due to Extreme Weather Events (1910-2010)
Air pollution has also decreased despite increased CO2 emissions. There is also a positive trend between economic freedom and environmental performance index.
Figure 1.6: US Air Pollution Goes Down Despite Increasing Fossil Fuel Use
Sources: US EPA National Emissions Inventory (NEI) Air Pollutant Emissions Trends Data
The big picture is that there is a strong positive correlation between fossil-fueled energy and increases in global living standards. Incidence of death from climate is fifty times lower than it was eighty years ago (p. 24). This should be a cause of celebration, but this progress is totally ignored or misattributed, and it is this progress that anti-impact and anti-human green climate activists want to stop, despite the human cost.
Figure 3.1: Fossil Fuel Use and Human Progress: The Big Picture
Sources: Carbon dioxide Information analysis Center Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions Global Annual Time Series (1751 – 2010), update for 2011/12; The Angus Maddison Project, with updates for GDP per capita; World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI)
How do we know that the anti-fossil fuel, anti-impact, green energy proponents are disingenuous in their framing and/or ignorant of the issue? Giving some room for uninformed, zealous “true believers,” we know the framing is disingenuous because they only focus on the risks and negatives and never focus on the empirical positive benefits of fossil fuels, even pretending that there are no positives. Additionally, while some admit that there will be severe trade-offs, many act as if there is literally no downside to retrenchment of fossil fueled energy. Hence, John Kerry,
If the worst-case scenario about climate change, all the worst predictions, if they never materialize, what will be the harm that is done from having made the decision to respond to it? We would actually leave our air cleaner. We would leave our water cleaner. We would actually make our food supply more secure. Our populations would be healthier because of fewer particulates of pollution in the air—less cost to health care. Those are the things that would happen if we happen to be wrong and we responded.
In reality, fossil fuels empower some 95 percent of transportation, 99 percent of synthetic fertilizer production, and make up some 85 percent of the total energy supply. The “green” policies would mean the deaths of billions of people, making Stalin look like an amateur.
Even if there are sincere “true believers” among them, the intentions do not match the results. There were “true believers” among the socialists and Communists too. To many of them, it would be acceptable for billions of people to die to switch to green energy. In fact, given their planet-centric model, billions of people dying or never having been born would be the best case scenario for our “delicate nurturer” Mother Earth. The people who argue that capitalism and freedom only provide “freedom to starve” are, in fact, advocating policies which would impose forced starvation and privation on billions. But remember, they’re the compassionate and empathetic ones!
Stalin killed millions by denying them grain. Modern climate ideologues could kill billions by denying them energy. As Alex Epstein has poignantly reminded us in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, “Fossil fuel energy is the food of food” (p. 83).