The truly awful result of Al Gore-hysteria is that Western European nations and the unhappily misinformed American public are making the poorest nations, in Africa and the Far East, pay for our folly.
Mr. Driessen writes:
Now, just as thousands of delegates and activist are about to board CO2-emitting jetliners to attend the next global warming confab in Kenya, the European Union wants to tax imports from poor nations that are exempt from Kyoto. The EU claims the exemption gives poor countries an “unfair trade advantage” over EU countries that are struggling to meet their initial treaty commitments. (Some have increased CO2 emissions by 20-50 percent since 1990, despite signing the treaty.)
For most people—especially the world’s poor—it will be all pain, and no gain. Even perfect compliance with the Kyoto Protocol would result in Earth’s temperature being only 0.2 degrees less by 2050 than if we did little or nothing. Assuming humans really are the culprits, actually controlling theoretical global temperature increases would require 40 Kyoto treaties—each one more costly and restrictive than its predecessors.
It’s bad enough to handcuff modern economies, to promote solutions that won’t solve a problem that extensive evidence suggests is moderate, manageable and primarily natural in origin.
It is infinitely worse to use unproven hypotheses about climate cataclysm to justify depriving Earth’s most impoverished citizens of electricity, water purification and other modern technologies that would improve and save countless lives.
That is unconscionable and immoral. It is the real climate catastrophe.
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