They proclaim a ‘human right’ to ‘clean environment’ but not to reliable energy or better health
About 143 years ago this September 30, the Hearthstone Historic House in my mother’s hometown (Appleton, Wisconsin) became the first home in the world lit by electricity.
Today, few can imagine our lives without plentiful, reliable, affordable electricity – for lights, computers, washers, driers, dishwashers, heating, air conditioning, television, vehicles, hospitals, schools, factories, data centers, artificial intelligence and more, to light, improve and sustain our lives.
And yet nearly 750 million people still have no access to electricity. Billions more have minimal, sporadic access. The vast majority live in Sub-Saharan Africa: 600 million with no electricity; hundreds of millions more with minimal or sporadic power. Many Asians and Latin Americans are similarly deprived. Often, electrification rates are high in cities but extremely low in the countrysides.
Incredibly, across much of Europe, millions of poor and middle-class families are also deprived. Many simply cannot afford electricity prices that have skyrocketed in the wake of coal, gas and nuclear power plant closures, in favor of wind and solar installations.
Other Europeans no longer have jobs, because factories and entire industries cannot afford those prices, closed down and sent their jobs to China and other coal-based-electricity nations. Still others are being told by climate-obsessed pressure group, media and political elites to light, heat and cool only one room, wear more sweaters, and appreciate electricity when it’s available, not gripe about its cost or absence.
Europe refuses to frack for oil and gas … but imports Russian fuels, thereby sustaining Putin’s war on Ukraine’s citizens and civilian infrastructure.
Several US states have also imposed Euro-style electricity rates, rolling or recurring blackouts, and economic disruption in the name of saving the planet from climate calamities.
Leading, applauding and demanding this insanity are the United Nations, European Union, International Court of Justice (ICJ), multilateral anti-development banks, non-governmental organizations and even the now-defunct USAID. They harp about climate emergencies, demand that countries switch to “clean” energy, and refuse to approve or finance fossil fuel projects even for Africa.
The ICJ recently asserted that people have a “human right” to a “clean, healthy, sustainable environment”– which to the court means no impacts from fossil-fuel-driven climate change. It said nothing about rights to reliable and affordable energy, modern healthcare or decent living standards.
These proclamations and policies carry serious and often lethal consequences, especially for the world’s poorest people. They excuse and justify policies that effectively keep families and nations mired in poverty, squalor, joblessness, disease and malnutrition.
The ICJ-defined right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment also ignores the reality that “clean energy” requires extensive mining and minerals processing, using fossil fuels and resulting in extensive toxic land, air and water pollution. Much of this dirty work is done in the poor families’ own backyards (because the elites want no mining or processing in their fiefdoms), and much of it involves child and slave labor, no or substandard workplace safety rules, and rampant land and habitat desecration.
The subsequent wind, solar and transmission installations impact hundreds of times more crop, habitat and scenic lands than coal or gas power plants that generate electricity in far greater quantities, far more reliably, far less expensively.
In India’s Thar Desert, next to Pakistan, native species are being sacrificed on the climate crisis and clean energy altar. Solar panels already blanket over 200 square miles; more than 2.5 million trees have been cut down to install them; and another 14,000 square miles of habitat (almost equal to Switzerland or half of South Carolina) could be clear cut for more panels, Vijay Jayaraj reports.
Even ponds that once attracted pelicans and a dozen other species are covered with solar panels. Numerous other wild species are also struggling to survive as their habitats are destroyed. Cleaning and cooling the panels already requires the equivalent of 300,000 people’s drinking water needs every week.
This destruction is happening all over the world. The ICJ still insists wind and solar power foster “clean, healthy, sustainable, climate friendly” economies – and ignores the privation it perpetuates.
The limited, intermittent, unpredictable electricity from Climate Cabal-approved generators guarantees that the world’s still-impoverished people will never have the appliances we take for granted. They mayeventually have cell phones and laptops, a few lights, dorm-room refrigerators, and jobs maintaining “renewable” power systems.
However, they will never enjoy the modern healthcare, homes and living standards that require 24/7/365 coal, gas, nuclear or hydroelectric power.
So before we let the Climate Industrial Complex inflict its lies, ideologies and policies on people who’ve never had an opportunity to enjoy – much less reject – the marvels of modern civilization, let’s ask those folks if they’re okay with that version of a “clean, sustainable” future. With giving up their aspirations for the lives and wonders they see in movies and magazines.
Let’s find out whether they’ve had a chance to speak with their European counterparts, and inquire about how Europe’s automotive, glass, pharmaceutical and other industries are faring. How many workers still have jobs. How many companies have moved their operations to China, India or other faraway locales. How much they enjoy living under the costs and restrictions imposed by EU politicians and bureaucrats.
Eastern Europeans weren’t overjoyed to exchange six years under the Nazis for 50 years under the benevolent people’s republics of the Soviet Union. Poor families in Africa, Asia and Latin America might not equally unexcited about the prospect of swapping their current daily grinds for the minimally better lives envisioned for them by would-be global ruling elites.
Perhaps they will no longer have to live in mud-and-thatch huts, carry water from distant wells, cook over wood and dung fires that infect women and their babies with lung diseases, drink parasite-infected water and eat spoiled food, suffer from malaria and other insect-borne diseases, be treated in antiquated hospitals that don’t even have window screens, and die decades before they should.
But how much better will their lives be under policies imposed by elites who decide their fates after flying private jets from one of their mansions to the next 5-star UN-sanctioned climate or economic conference?
The world’s poor don’t just have a human right to truly clean, healthy, sustainable environments. They have a right to enjoy the benefits of affordable 24/7 electricity, well-paid jobs, and all the modern appliances, healthcare, homes, prosperity and 6,000+ products made from petrochemicals that most people in industrialized nations already enjoy.
And do so without being guilted and conned by phony claims that aspiring to such energy and lives will bring worsening storms and inundations from rising seas, more forest fires, stressed blood supplies and other catastrophes conjured up by climate grifters and their political, academic and media allies.
Poor and developing nations need to band together, finance their own energy infrastructure, development, health and prosperity – and tell the carbon colonialists to take a hike.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death, and other books and articles on energy, climate change, economic development and human rights.
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