OPINION:
Panic is seldom a productive basis for policy. Panic, though, is the consequence of a widely held belief that human beings are wreaking havoc on Earth’s ecosystem. As catastrophe warnings become ever more shrill, it is clear the alarm they engender has played a role in precipitating a modern-world climate war, in Ukraine. If there is a lesson to be learned from the broadening turmoil, it is that unbridled global warmism could prove nearly as deadly as the danger it purports to prevent.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a fresh warning that nations are falling far short of their common goal to restrain global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Simply put, the world is “on a fast track to climate disaster,” said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The 2,800-page report concluded that the planet has three years to cut emissions enough to get back on track. “It’s now or never,” added report co-chair Jim Skea.
The U.N.’s chilling global warming rhetoric has convinced officials in Europe and elsewhere that, yes, the sky is falling, and only the most extreme remedies can save humanity.
Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, mobilized early, cutting its use of emissions-heavy coal in half since 2000 and plans to phase out the other half by 2030. With expensive renewable energy now supplying nearly half of its electricity, Germany is also taking the foolish step of scrapping its emissions-free nuclear power industry.
Germans and their neighbors — with the wise exception of the French — have chosen to rely on Russia to provide an energy bridge to a fossil-fuel-free future. Despite former President Donald Trump’s warning during his presidency about overreliance on an antagonistic source for energy, the Europeans have bought Russian natural gas and oil by the billions of euros.
Nonetheless, the temperature record raises doubts over whether it is the U.N.’s climate predictions that are off-track. Atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration has climbed by 32% since 1958 to 418 parts per million, according to NASA, yet the planet has warmed a single degree in 140 years. It is not unreasonable to wonder whether dire warnings of global warming could prove as faulty as frightening forecasts in 1970 of a coming Ice Age.
“Absolutely nothing in this IPCC report is true,” tweeted Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, who holds a doctorate in ecology. “It is all fake and threatens the existence of civilization, especially the West because the East and the South don’t buy it.”
Fake or not, the West has bought the blueprint for going “green,” and Russian President Vladimir Putin has capitalized on it. Profits from Russian gas and oil sales have purchased the military might that is currently ravaging Ukraine. Some European nations have since vowed to end their energy dependence on Moscow, but the bitter fruits of their folly are already harvested.
U.N. doomsayers have instigated unwise energy policies, giving the modern world a climate war. May there be no more.
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