OPINION:
It’s that time of year again. Another holiday season and another United Nations climate conference is getting under way in some remote corner of the world.
The good news for those of us skeptical of global warming fear-mongering is that the chance of U.N. delegates now gathered in Durban, South Africa, agreeing to a revamped global warming treaty is slim. The bad news is that much remains at stake.
Global warming has become the ultimate means for anyone lacking a beneficial product or service to cash in and realize their dreams of wealth through government subsidies and mandates. With the Kyoto Protocol set to expire in 2012, carbon speculators are not about to let their billions (and hoped-for trillions) slip away without a fight.
Pity the poor carbon traders who could end up having to search for productive employment in the middle of a recession they helped worsen. Pity also the alternative-energy speculators. The public, which wants the lights to stay on, is beginning to realize that energy generation has to be about power, not freebies. Certainly don’t forget the researchers, climate campaigners and Third World bureaucrats, all of whom have developed an unhealthy sense of entitlement to the productive-world’s tax dollars.
The climate powers that be may wish for a treaty, but they aim to keep the cash flowing by any means necessary. They now seek smaller agreements, which are especially helpful to bypass the U.S. Senate. For instance, the U.N.’s REDD program has Western speculators buying land in developing nations in the name of forestry but, in reality, these are schemes that cash in on huge subsidy payments - eco-imperialism at its worst. U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretary Christiana Figueres recently expressed hope to expand the U.N. “Green Climate Fund” from $100 billion to $400 billion. At a recent conference in Bonn, one developing-world delegate, upon learning an attendee was an American, wanted only to know, “When are you going to send us our money?”
Not convenient for those hoping to hustle through a new treaty, a huge, new batch of 5,000 emails recently has been disclosed in what has been dubbed “Climategate 2.0.” These emails are giving the public a shockingly candid look at the machinations of the high priests of global warming - revealing an insular cadre of climate scientists coordinating efforts to place advocacy ahead of science, stifle dissent and conceal any information that detracts from a preconceived, ideologically driven, global-warming narrative.
With the science sullied and unsettled and warming policies ineffective, economically devastating and subject to the worst kind of looting of tax dollars, it’s time the United Nations call an immediate halt to climate propagandizing, throw the profiteers out of the tent and enter into a new era of balance, fairness and good sense. In the meantime, there is absolutely no reason to adopt any new climate treaties or agreements in Durban.
Craig Rucker is executive director of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.
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