Opinion

BERDAN: Climate Zealots Love Doomsday Talk, But Reject Actual Solutions

(Photo by Matthias Nareyek/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)

Rich Berdan Contributor
Font Size:

COP27 opened in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt with the tiring end-of-the-world doomsday rhetoric from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres: “We are in the fight for our lives … our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible … we are on a highway to climate hell”. He added, “Humanity has a choice, cooperate or perish. It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact or a Collective Suicide Pact”. His solution? Force developed countries to pay reparations to developing ones affected by “climate change.” So one might add “a loss of Sovereignty Pact too” by relinquishing power to these climate zealots. 

Ask people in developed nations whether they are concerned with climate change. People can’t afford the 30% cost increase to heat their homes or fill their vehicles with enough gas to get to work. Then add food inflation, supply-chain crises and a carbon tax on consumer items. No wonder people must choose between food, medicine, and heat. Some are turning to burning dirtier coal and wood to weather energy blackouts this winter. The most obvious and immediate fallout from the past decade of climate action and unreliable green energy by governments is just beginning to come home to roost.  

The summit left questions regarding who will pay for the climate justice fund, how much, who will receive our personal taxes, and how will the down payment be deployed. One might ask why some 400 private jets spewing carbon lined the airports in Egypt, where attendees ate lavishly in an air-conditioned luxury resort town, could not have sailed or biked to the summit in tents or just go remote and donate the savings into their justice fund. It can be extrapolated that the Summit will emit well over 100,000 metric tons of greenhouse gasses.    

The summiteers came away with no deal to phase out or eliminate fossil fuels, hinging their hopes on their science requiring mankind to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees – a reference to the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to cut man-made carbon dioxide to net-zero by 2050. In all reality, only a handful of countries are keeping their promises and attaining their climate plan. If the 1.5-degree target is even a proven fact, some estimates would require global emissions to be cut 43% by 2030 where we are currently on track to dip by 1%. A reduction of this amount would tailspin the world into economic collapse resulting in wars, famine, deforestation, and societal failure and even the near-extermination of humans.          

Scientists, politicians, and celebrities have given many prophetic end-of-the-world climate dates, claiming we have a limited number of years remaining. Most famously was former US Vice President Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” which convinced moviegoers the world was warming because of human activity. The movie cited food crop failures, rising CO2 concentrations, and catastrophic super-hurricanes. Gore, himself, predicted in 2009 there would be a 75% chance that the ice in the Arctic could vanish within 5-7 years.  

These predictions all fell well short. Seventeen years following the movie, new technology and smart farming has resulted in bountiful harvests and super-sized hurricanes have not materialized although there has been significantly more collateral damage with the increasing number of homes and communities built along the coastal waters. CO2 concentrates have increased but not near the modeling, and the Arctic ice has not disappeared. We do know for sure that Gore got very rich by selling this impending climate apocalypse.  

There is no denying the climate has ebbed and changed over time, for a variety of reasons mostly unrelated to man Perhaps man-made actions have marginally impacted the climate relative to the big players like volcanoes, solar flares, and forest fires. But who’s to say we could not ebb back into the big freeze that we found ourselves in during the 70’s. 

In February 2022, the Fraser Institute in Canada took an in-depth look at the doomsday predictions from climate models provided by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – widely considered the authority on climate matters. The IPCC determines the number of years to the catastrophic tipping points on models of greenhouse gasses, atmospheric warming, and ecological impact. According to the Fraser Institute, the IPCC’s periodic assessments are flawed scenarios not based on real data. They stated that with each passing year, there are discrepancies from the IPCC projected climate warming exceeding actual observations over the past 35 years.  

One cannot overlook the IPCC’s funding coming from governments who leverage the data in their political pursuits while disregarding opposing scientific positions who do not fall under the umbrella of the IPCC as climate terrorists or deniers. 

Yet there is little interest in actual solutions. Why not collaborate on nuclear energy and natural gas and get the world off dirtier coal and wood? But instead we spend millions on solar farms, which require massive swaths of cleared land to erect mineral-laden panels made from scorched earth mining that eventually become a non-degradable hazard when decommissioned after a 20-year life span.  Aside from ground species being wiped out, tens of thousands of birds are igniting in midair as they fly overhead the garage-size mirrors. Workers call them “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from their incineration.  

It is unrealistic to believe the world will stop using fossil fuels and their bi-products and lubricants over the next few centuries. Mandating EVs without the required charging infrastructure and the massive amounts of energy required to power millions of chargers could result in grid-failing blackouts when people crank up the A/C. Just look at California.

Rather than claiming the planet is in the emergency room with a decade to live and denying opposing voices as a political insurgency, would it not be more advantageous to win the hearts and minds of both competing visions of climate responsibility by producing the cleanest, most reliable, and most affordable energy on the planet? We have a choice to see through the political rhetoric to stamp out fossil fuels, and support cleaner and diverse energy with greener technology where the energy industry is not under the knife and unwilling to invest in a future where people do not suffer and can afford to live a better life. 

 

Rich Berdan is a freelance writer based out of Detroit, MI.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.