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Climate Change Hurts the Poor: But Not the Way You Think It Does

by Richard Eldred
29 October 2023 1:00 PM

In a rare instance of mainstream media sanity regarding climate policy, Tilak Doshi, writing for Forbes, underscores how climate policies affect the most vulnerable, especially in Africa, unintentionally worsening their situation by limiting access to clean energy and water. Here’s an excerpt:

‘Climate impacts hit the world’s poor the hardest’. By sheer dint of repetition in countless ‘expert’ reports and mass media articles, this line in the climate change narrative has become a truism. According to the International Monetary Fund, “by hitting the poorest hardest, climate change risks both increasing existing economic inequalities and causing people to fall into poverty”. The World Economic Forum states that “the lowest income countries produce one-tenth of emissions, but are the most heavily impacted by climate change”.

It would seem straightforward that resolving the ‘climate change’ problem would serve the poor the most, given that they are the hardest hit. But, by a tragic turn of irony, moves to ‘fight climate change’ are precisely what is hurting the poor most. It is not ‘climate change’ but the policies adopted in response to it that are the problem afflicting the poor the most.

‘Fighting climate change’ – which for most Western politicians and policy makers means achieving the “Net Zero [carbon emissions] by 2050” policy target of the UN Paris Agreement – has thus also become a fight for the world’s most poor and vulnerable. That the climate industrial complex claims the interests of the world’s poor within its ‘Net Zero’ agenda is a powerful lever in public relations.

The call to ‘save the planet’ includes, by definition, ensuring the welfare of the world’s poor. But making the fight even more so about helping ‘the most vulnerable’ gives the narrative of ‘fighting climate change’ a philanthropic edge. Philanthropy is universally admired, like Mother Theresa. It is a particularly attractive hobby for the rich who have made their fortune and want to ‘give back’ to society. Thus, Bill Gates’s or Michael Bloomberg’s self-proclaimed philanthropic interests in the global poor, public health and climate change. …

In 2019, out of the world total of almost 760 million people without access to electricity, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for almost 590 million or approximately 78%. Without electricity or clean fuels such as natural gas, keeping warm (or cool), getting drinking water, cooking food cleanly and getting enough light to read after the sun sets is not possible. …

It has always been the poor that have been affected by the weather throughout human history. With dilapidated housing, inadequate clothing, and poor nutrition, they are naturally those who are most vulnerable to the vagaries of nature. Before modern industrial civilisation could provide electricity and clean fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to most of the population, being able to heat (or cool) the home, to cook food without polluting indoors and to maintain adequate shelter against extreme weather (like storms, hurricanes, floods, etc.) was a daunting challenge for the world’s poor.

By describing ‘weather’ as ‘climate change’, policy emphasis is put on mitigation rather than adaptation to reduce the impacts of future climate change on human welfare. The implicit assumption behind mitigation is that greenhouse gases are the primary driver of climate change and trying to ‘fight climate change’ by reducing GHGs should be the overriding priority for policymakers from Germany to South Africa. Governments should shun using fossil fuels and multilateral development agencies including the World Bank have long since stopped supporting investments in fossil fuel projects in developing countries. …

If the first sleight of hand is to call ‘weather’ events as ‘climate change’, a second is to treat ‘renewable energy’ as a ready and viable (‘cheaper and cleaner’) substitute for fossil fuels. The most critical factual assertion of the policy push for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions is that of the plunging costs of wind, solar and battery technologies. These technologies, it is asserted, can rapidly replace fossil fuels which currently account for over 80% of the world’s primary energy supply. This assertion undergirds the entire edifice of claims by ‘Net Zero’ advocates such the IMF, the WEF, the IEA and the World Bank regarding the ‘Net Zero’ future. Take away the supposed cheap and effective ‘renewable energy’ offered by the wind, solar and battery technologies, and green policy advocacy collapses into the rubbish heap of history.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: AfricaClimate changeClimate JournalismClimate PolicyNet ZeroVulnerable

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9 Comments
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stewart
stewart
1 year ago

People who say they want to make the world a better.place or want to dedicate.their lives to helping others or any crap like that make me puke.

If you can go through life without being an asshole or just doing your decent best not to harm others you are doing really well.

Helping others if they ask, fine.

Anything else, you’re covering up for something dark.

87
0
Monro
Monro
1 year ago

‘What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts.’

Melinda Gates

This statement was, of course, made in regard to lockdowns.

But it might equally well have been made in regard to nut zero.

Where is the cost benefit analysis?

And why has it not been acknowledged that the suggested adverse climatic effects of CO2 are unevidenced?

Last edited 1 year ago by Monro
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stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  Monro

If that statement by Melinda Gates was made at all sincerely, she would realise she and her husband are completely unfit to wield the sort of power they have, close down their foundation and stop meddling all together in the lives of millions of others.

To not realise that making everyone stay at home for weeks would have terrible economic consequences is to have a level of stupidity that isn’t even remotely believable. In them at least.

62
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Baldrick
Baldrick
1 year ago
Reply to  Monro

I think the closest that comes to a cost benefit analysis is Bjorn Lomberg’s False Alarm, and alot of what he says is based on work by William Nordhaus at Yale University. Not saying he is correct- alot of what is being said is an economic prediction which could well be guess work. But at least he makes an effort. But one interesting thing is that one of the best scenarios in terms of wealth is that if the world cooperates and continues to use fossil fuels! If a country is wealthier it can better adapt to climate change (man made or not). In addition third world countries will need fossil fuels to get out of poverty- there isn’t currently any alternative -something i think is currently correct, and most people here would agree on.

14
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varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  Baldrick

Good comment, but when you say Lomborg is “guessing”, then ofcourse so is the pronouncements from the IPPC guesses, and so are all the computer models full of assumptions guesses, and those models have so far not just been wrong but have been VERY wrong. It is not a guess however to say that wealthier countries can deal better with any changes to climate that may occur. And ironically the only way they can become wealthy is by using the very fossil fuels that are alleged to be causing the climate problem. But where the economics of Lomborg etc come in is by using cost/benefit analysis. It is much much cheaper to adapt to any changes in climate than to spend trillions on inferior technologies that will only lower standards of living and prosperity.

1
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Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago

If I I ever think I have my own affairs in such a good state that I feel able to help others, then I must be able to answer “yes” to all three of the following questions:

1. Have they asked me for help?
2. Do I believe they need the help for which they have asked?
3. Do I believe I am able to help?

There are obvious exceptions; if a person is lying motionless and bleeding in the middle of the road road, I will not be asking Question 1. But I will always be very careful when trying to help – it’s all too easy to make things a whole lot worse.

I owe “society” nothing, save not to be a burden on it, nor to introduce anyone who becomes a burden on it.

Last edited 1 year ago by Marcus Aurelius knew
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varmint
varmint
1 year ago

Telling poor people in poor countries to leave their coal oil and gas in the ground and fobbing them off with some money for turbines and some solar panels is what keeps them miserable and poor. No one sitting in a mud hut burning dung for cooking and heating that damages their lungs has even heard of “global warming”. No one dying of preventable diseases and after a short life of back breaking labour has the desire to reduce their “carbon footprint”. ———They are at the level of basic survival. Their dream is to DEVELOP. There is only one way they can do that and that is by using the same fuels as we did —Coal Oil and gas. But the politics of the situation (Sustainable Development) insists that billions of the world’s poor cannot have the same standard of living as the wealthy west because fossil fuels are not plentiful enough and are a finite resource. So all over the western world we are bombarded with scare stories about a climate apocalypse that is not supported by any science at all, that seeks to take away our use of fossil fuels and fob us off with wind and sun, and the west then sends climate “aid” to poor countries. This aid is not to protect them from dangerous changes to climate, because none of that is actually occurring.—— The aid is to force them to leave the coal and oil in the ground and accept wind and sun. But when we in the west do this what we are really telling poor people is that they cannot have electricity, and that is a diabolical disgrace.

7
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wokeman
wokeman
1 year ago

Never met an activist socialist who wasn’t a giant see you next Tuesday. They always have totally inadequate personal lives too, anyone happy to poke Cherie Blair all their life is clearly an utterly inadequate human being.

4
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago

Standard of living, well being and life expectancy are directly tied to the availability and price of ENERGY. ———GREEN policies like NET ZERO, and SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT seek to take away energy that is both affordable and available.(fossil fuels) It is to be replaced with unaffordable less available energy (wind and sun)——-This can only lead to one thing—-impoverishment, and that is what we are already seeing in the wealthy west, but it will have an even greater effect on poorer people in the poorest countries where about 1 billion still do not have electricity. ——-No one who preaches to us about the climate, whether that be eco socialist governments, the King, The Pope, popstars or silly people who glue themselves to the road imagine for one second what it must be like to have no electricity. They turn the narrative into one that insists more storms or floods etc will cause big problems for these poor people. But if they were wealthy they would have no problem dealing with any changes to climate, and ironically the only way they can do that is by using COAL OIL and GAS, which absurd climate policies are denying them.

2
0

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