Monday, September 21, 2009

Why The Green Movement Is Doomed

The U.N. is calling for a great conclave of world leaders in which Ban Ki Moon will presumably attempt to convert the lot of them, or at least a majority, to the notion that unless the world ceases using fire, in any form at all, we're all doomed.
There's only one or two small problems with the thinking behind this:

"We can get a successful outcome from Copenhagen. It is achievable, but at the moment it's in the balance," said John Ashton, Britain's climate change envoy. "We need to close the gaps."

Those gaps grew over the summer. There is what Ashton called the "ambition gap" – the failure of leaders of the big polluting countries to sign on to the deep emissions cuts needed. Then there is the "finance gap" – the failure of industrialised states to come up with a package on how to compensate poor countries that will suffer the most devastating consequences.

The ambition gap involves convincing the leaders of developed countries, such as the U.S., G.B. and Japan, that it would be more noble to reduce their countries carbon footprints to the level of environmental models as Zimbabwe, or Kazakhstan. This involves reducing the national GDP to those levels as well, as reducing CO2 output is another way of saying "reduce your use of fire, in all forms".

The other problem is that the environmental paragons know good and well where the foreign aid, technology imports, and in many cases, food aid come from and are not anxious to see the sources dry up.

The "greenies" are the people who have been opposed to the use of fire ever since it was first introduced. I remember when fire was introduced, and anticipated that it would soon make possible the introduction of other advanced technologies, such as sliced bread. I had also hoped that it would allow us to eliminate those low-brow Luddites from the village down the river who opposed the use of fire, but alas, they're still with us.

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