Bearly True
While waiting in a doctor’s office last week, I came across this article in the January 30/February 6 edition of Time: “How India Became the Most Important Country in the Climate Fight”. The article noted the difference between the poor state of Jharkhand, in east India, that mines coal (bad) — and Rajasthan, a state in northwestern India, that has wind turbines and solar panels (good). As an indication of Jharkhand’s badness, the article says this:
India will soon be the most important country in the climate change effort … India contributes 7% of the emissions that cause global warming today.
Got that? Countries are important to the climate-change effort, whatever climate change is and whatever that effort is. And global warming is such a given — the science is so settled — that India can be justly blamed for seven percent of it. Done. Not a question to be found. Not a shred of skepticism or curiosity. What we do have, of course, is science. And all of it is settled.
Given the badness of Jharkhand in particular, and of India in general, what’s to be done? The article is as glad you asked that question as it is you didn’t ask any other, more pointed, logical, and objective questions. Here’s its answer:
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates India needs $1.4 trillion in additional investment in coming decades to align its energy system with global climate targets; that will very likely require reforms at international lenders like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to facilitate the flow of money.
Yep. It’s all about the flow of money. And for poor countries like India and its poorest states like Jharkhand, where is that money going to flow from? Do you have a mirror handy? That’s right. Thanks to globalization, organizations like the IEA, the IMF, and the World Bank, the money’s going to flow from you and me in the form of new national and global regulations and their attendant individual taxes. And those regulations and taxes won’t care at all about your household budget, making your ends meet, or the obscenely inflated economy in which you’re trying to make those ends meet.
Ain’t feeling good grand?
The Bear Facts
Speaking of feeling bad, we all remember our heartstrings being de-tuned and all but severed by the National Geographic video of a seemingly starving polar bear, don’t we? Jon Miltimore, author of “The Myth That the Polar Bear Population Is Declining” does. And he calls bullshit on it:
The video, shot by photographers Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier … sparked outcry over the decimation of polar bears due to global warming … scientists accused National Geographic of “being loose with the facts.” There was no evidence, many pointed out, that the bear’s condition was the result of climate change … Mittermeier admitted as much a year later. “I can’t say that this bear was starving because of climate change,” she wrote in National Geographic.
Well, then. Under those circumstances, we can forgive Miltimore for using the word, myth. He didn’t mean myth. He meant fallacy. The notion that myth and fallacy mean the same thing is a fallacy. But since Miltimore also went on to make this point, we can definitely cut him some slack:
That picture of a single starving bear arguably did more to advance the issue of climate change than any white paper or IPCC report could have. Unfortunately … The State of the Polar Report 2018 put the new global mid-point estimate [of the polar bear population] at more than 30,000 … the estimate is the highest since the polar bear became internationally protected in 1973.
Ooh. That, as a former boss of mine whom we dubbed Queen of the Malaprop would have said, is a flaw in the ointment. And it’s definitely a crimp in the narrative that’s been packaged and sold to us for decades now about anthropogenic global warming, climate change, the indiscriminate decimation of the polar-bear population, and our culpability in all of it, isn’t it? Ouch!
I Know One Place Where It’s Really Warm
It really is kind of a letdown that even the venerable National Geographic is in on the scam. Or maybe it isn’t. If you have a product to sell — as with a magazine, a television network, and a political agenda as National Geographic surely does — messages like everything is pretty much okay, people aren’t going to affect the climate of a dynamic organism like an entire planet, and don’t you have better things to do like taking care of yourself and each other? aren’t going to bring home the bacon (sorry, the plant-based pork substitute).
Ralph Waldo Emerson knew who we should trust. In “Self-Reliance”, he wrote:
God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
It’s been suggested to me on occasion that even God reads National Geographic. Call me skeptical, but I suspect he knows better. At the very least, he’s likely to take Commandment eight or nine, depending on your religious tradition, a little more seriously than National Geographic or your more pedestrian peddlers of political posturing do: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”
I’ve never been neighbors with National Geographic or a polar bear; although, I did cross paths with Al Gore once. It was Monday, January 21st, 2008. I was in the airport in Milwaukee to catch a flight home from a series of client meetings. The wind off Lake Michigan was gusting in excess of 60 miles per hour that day. The temperature was at least minus four degrees Fahrenheit, and the windchill was minus ridiculous. Big Al was in town to give a speech about global warming at Lambeau Field. Nobody showed up.
All of that notwithstanding, I have to call shenanigans on National Geographic, global warming, climate change, the IPCC, the IEA, the IMF, the World Bank, and all their attendant global wealth-redistribution schemes purported to set everything right with the planet. And I have to hope there’s a special place in Hell for Big Al and his exploitative political ilk.
You should, too.
Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/
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