Appeasement backfires as climate campaigners attack planting trees

The Greenie love of trees was just a convenient fiction

Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is championing a proposal to show the GOP is serious about climate change, but climate activists are already trashing the proposal as weak and misguided. McCarthy’s proposal illustrates the trap awaiting Republican policymakers who believe they should assert there is a climate crisis while proposing alternate, watered-down solutions to the Green New Deal and other Democrat-supported proposals.

As reported by Fox News (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-looks-to-counter-green-new-deal-with-climate-change-proposals), McCarthy’s plan focuses on three prongs. The first prong entails planting trees throughout the country. This is in accordance with the global Trillion Trees Initiative launched last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The second prong calls for doubling “investment” in “clean” air research and providing tax credits for companies that export low-emissions technologies.

The third prong focuses on conservation and sending American tax dollars to countries responsible for plastic pollution.

Regarding the first prong, The Verge website is already attacking the tree-planting plan as ineffective and counterproductive (https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/31/21115862/davos-1-trillion-trees-controversy-world-economic-forum-campaign). According to a January 31 article by The Verge, “[D]ozens of scientists have warned that planting all those trees could potentially cause more harm than good. Others point to another solution with a more proven track record and that might be more deserving of global support — empowering the people who live in and safeguard forests already.”

“Tree-planting started really trending in 2019, when a study published in the journal Science caused a commotion,” the article asserted. “It claimed that planting a trillion trees could capture more than a third of all the greenhouse gases humans have released since the industrial revolution. After the initial media blitz rallied excitement for the seemingly simple climate solution, a group of 46 scientists, including [Forrest Fleischman, who teaches natural resources policy at the University of Minnesota], responded to the study with their critique.”

The article continued, “‘Headlines around the world declared tree planting to be the best solution to climate change,’ lead author of the critique Joseph Veldman said in a statement at the time. ‘We now know those headlines were wrong.’ Veldman argued that planting trees where they don’t belong can harm ecosystems, make wildfires worse, and even exacerbate global warming. His critique made the case that the amount of carbon the study said 1 trillion trees could sequester was about five times too large. The study also considered planting trees on savannas and grasslands, where planting non-native trees could cause problems for local species. Planting trees on snowy terrain that once reflected the sun could even turn those places into dark patches that actually absorb heat.”

Other websites allied with the Environmental Left have also been critical of climate plans focused on planting trees. A Vice article is titled, “Planting ‘Billions of Trees’ Isn’t Going to Stop Climate Change” (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xgymg/planting-billions-of-trees-isnt-going-to-stop-climate-change). “Trying to Plant a Trillion Trees Won’t Solve Anything,” claims a Wired headline (https://www.wired.com/story/trees-regenerative-agriculture-climate-change/). “Republicans’ Climate Change Plan Is Big Oil’s Climate Change Plan,” claims a New Republic headline (https://newrepublic.com/article/156269/republicans-climate-change-plan-big-oils-climate-change-plan).

GOP climate appeasers put themselves in a political box with no escape route. After publicly supporting speculative, dubious assertions of a climate crisis, they are accused by the Climate Establishment of proposing half-baked measures that do little to mitigate rising temperatures. And once they have stated that climate change is a serious problem – indeed a crisisj – they will be boxed into supporting virtually anything the Environmental Left proposes. After all, if the GOP joins alarmists asserting climate change is an existential crisis that is the greatest-ever threat to human civilization, the public will demand the most immediate and far-reaching responses. There is no proposal too far-reaching if we are facing a climate apocalypse, and Republicans will be politically destroyed for proposing anything less.

Ultimately, Republicans should stand true to the science, which provides overwhelming evidence that we are not facing a climate crisis.

It is also worth noting how McCarthy’s other two areas of focus completely sell out conservative principles and the Republican Party base.

Regarding McCarthy’s second prong, the federal government already gives more source-specific taxpayer subsidies to wind power than all conventional energy sources combined (see Table 3 and 4 at https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf). The federal government does the same for solar power. How is raising taxes to double subsidies to already heavily subsidized wind and solar power a conservative idea?

Regarding McCarthy’s third prong, China is the country most responsible for plastic pollution, especially in the world’s oceans (https://www.plasticethics.com/home/2019/3/17/the-countries-polluting-the-oceans-the-most-with-plastic-waste). So the GOP’s climate change solution is to raise taxes again to send billions and billions of dollars to China to reward them for their plastic pollution? And how does cleaning up China’s plastic pollution have any impact on global temperatures?

Republican policymakers be warned: playing the Green New Deal-Lite game is a political game you cannot win.

SOURCE







Green racism: Environmentalists’ loathing of the masses is most destructive in the developing world

Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate has accused the media of racism after she was cropped out of a photograph circulated by the AP news agency.

The original photo shows Nakate alongside other young climate activists, including Greta Thunberg, at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The cropped version leaves only the white activists in frame. ‘You didn’t just erase a photo. You erased a continent’, tweeted Nakate, alongside a comparison of the two photos.

The AP has removed the cropped version from its wire service, though it insists there was no ‘ill intent’ behind its edit. Nevertheless, the incident provides a fitting metaphor for the environmental movement which really does ‘erase’ the developing world and the people in it – often in the nastiest ways imaginable.

A handful of environmentalists have started to notice that the climate movement, despite claiming to speak on behalf of the global South (apparently most at risk from the ‘climate emergency’), is overwhelmingly white and middle class. In 2015, Craig Bennett, the then head of Friends of the Earth, told the Independent on Sunday that the green movement had to escape its ‘white, middle-class ghetto’.

More recently, some Guardian pieces have drawn attention to Extinction Rebellion’s ‘race problem’ and lack of diversity. But critiques largely raise questions about tactics and image. Some reactionary tendencies within the green movement are identified but these critiques from sympathisers fail to acknowledge the broader context of green misanthropy.

Environmentalists fundamentally do not like human beings. The most charitable defence you could make of environmentalists is that they are ‘equal opportunities’ misanthropes. When David Attenborough, arguably the world’s most famous environmentalist, says that humanity is a ‘plague on the earth’ because of our large carbon footprint, he is expressing that misanthropy. It is a view embedded in nearly all global-facing Western institutions, from the UN and the World Economic Forum to foreign-aid agencies and NGOs.

Last week, the primatologist and official UN ‘Mesenger of Peace’ Jane Goodall told the global super-rich at Davos that all the environmental issues we talk about ‘wouldn’t be a problem if there was the size of the population that there was 500 years ago’. The global population was estimated to be around 500million in the 1500s. Today, there are around 7.8 billion people on earth – several billion too many, according to the Goodall view.

If people are perceived as an inherent ‘problem’ merely because they have been born, it is unsurprising that environmentalists’ attention then turns to the global South where population is expanding most rapidly.

Both Goodall and Attenborough have fronted campaigns to discourage Africans from giving birth. Both are also patrons of Population Matters, formerly the Optimum Population Trust. At one point, between 2013 and 2014, the charity took such a hard line on population growth that it said that not only was the planet too full, but Britain was full, too – or our population levels were ‘unsustainable’, to use the eco-euphemism. It called for a ‘net zero’ immigration policy and for all Syrian refugees to be banned from coming to Britain. (All references to immigration have since been deleted from its website.)

Another anti-natalist project is Thriving Together, a UN-backed campaign involving over 150 NGOs. The organisers say that family planning is necessary, not to promote women’s choice, as is the case in the West, but to ‘respond to conservation challenges’. ‘Reducing population growth’ can ‘arrest the huge losses of biodiversity’, apparently. Thriving Together’s efforts target specifically ‘poor rural communities in developing nations’. As Ella Whelan put it on spiked, this was essentially ‘prioritising beetles over black people’.

At last year’s Davos, in an interview with Prince William, Attenborough complained that Africa was no longer the ‘Garden of Eden’ it used to be when he first visited in the 1970s. ‘The human population was only a third of the size it was today’, he added, seemingly lamenting the destructive presence of African people in Africa.

And it’s not just Africa. Attenborough has also expressed qualified support for China’s infamously brutal one-child policy. Yes, state-enforced sterilisation produced many ‘personal tragedies’, he admitted, but without it ‘there would be several million more mouths in the world than there are now’.

In 2012, it was revealed that British foreign aid was being used to fund forced sterilisations in India. Documents from the Department for International Development argued that forced population control could help in the fight against climate change, even if it raised ‘complex human rights and ethical issues’. You don’t say. Because doctors and officials were given bonuses for each operation they performed, they would frequently operate on unsuspecting people under false pretences. Pregnant women were forced to miscarry and many people died from botched operations.

In the environmental mindset, human beings are reduced to their most base, animalistic behaviours: feeding and fucking. In fact, the comparison with animals is unfair. Animal lives are valued by environmentalists in a way human lives are not.

In order to conserve wildlife, some animal-conservation charities have effectively decided to cull humans instead. Last year, a Buzzfeed investigation uncovered the links between the World Wildlife Fund and paramilitary forces. The WWF provided paramilitaries with weapons. Locals ‘have been whipped with belts, attacked with machetes, beaten unconscious with bamboo sticks, sexually assaulted, shot, and murdered by WWF-supported anti-poaching units’ across the world, according to documents seen by Buzzfeed. WWF field workers signed off on proposals to kill trespassers in the Kaziranga nature park in India. Dozens were killed in the name of saving the rhino. Many of the victims of these paramilitaries are not even poachers. One was a 12-year-old girl, killed alongside two other indigenous women as they gathered tree bark in Bardiya National Park, Nepal.

Worse still, the integrity of plants seems to take precedence over human life. Environmental NGOs like Greenpeace have long been campaigning against genetically modified foods. Their campaigning and lobbying have been successful in preventing GMOs from reaching the developing world where they are most needed.

Golden Rice, for instance, was developed more than 20 years ago to counter blindness and other diseases caused by Vitamin A deficiency, which is common in developing countries. According to science writer Ed Regis, had Golden Rice been allowed to grow, ‘millions of lives would not have been lost to malnutrition, and millions of children would not have gone blind’. Greenpeace’s opposition was ‘especially persistent, vocal, and extreme’, writes Regis, ‘perhaps because Golden Rice was a GM crop that had so much going for it’. Greenpeace insists the wonder food is ‘environmentally irresponsible’. Even under pressure from over 100 Nobel laureates, Greenpeace continues to oppose Golden Rice.

The environmentalist elevation of the ‘planet’ and nature goes hand-in-hand with an ugly, debased view of the human. When environmental ideology is dominant among global institutions, capitalist elites and Western NGOs, the needs, aspirations and even lives of the people in the developing world barely get a look in.

SOURCE






10 Big Schools Pressured To Ditch Fossil Fuels Over Climate Change

fossil fuel protestersAt an annual conference, student body presidents from each of the Big 10 schools unanimously agreed to a resolution calling on those institutions to divest from fossil fuels.

According to the Climate Action Movement, a student, faculty, and alumni group at the University of Michigan calling on the university to work toward carbon neutrality, the student government leaders agreed to the resolution on January 26.


“This Resolution marks the first instance in which students of a collegiate conference have collectively demanded fossil fuel divestment from their member institutions,” the group noted, acknowledging that the Big 10 schools have a combined 520,000 currently-enrolled students and another 5.7 million alumni who are still alive.

It noted similar actions by the University of California system, as well as Harvard and Yale students.

The University of Michigan student government led the effort in passing the resolution, in which the “Big 10 Student Body Presidents collectively acknowledge the severity of climate change” and “will hereby advocate that their respective institutions commit to ceasing all further investments in the fossil fuel industry…in FY2020” and “call on the leadership of their respective institutions to commit to research and action towards future divestment from the fossil fuel industry in FY2020.”

It’s unclear whether any of the Big 10 schools will actually divest from fossil fuels.

UMich President Mark Schlissel, in a statement to the Michigan Daily, said, “the fact that both CSG and then collectively the equivalent bodies all across the Big Ten made a statement about this, I think is important. I think we have to, you know, hear the student voice and you know, respect it and try to understand it.”

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Sadiq Khan’s delusions of greenness

His pledge to make London carbon-neutral ignores the issues that really matter to Londoners.

In his latest effort to pander to the woke brigade, London mayor Sadiq Khan has pledged, if re-elected later this year, to make London carbon-neutral by 2030.

In the eyes of many a Londoner, Khan’s tenure as mayor has been an abject failure. His entire leadership has been focused on PR, and the image of London as a brand, rather than addressing the everyday problems the city faces. His latest campaign commitment to make London carbon-neutral by 2030 follows that very same path.

It is difficult to fathom who this policy will actually benefit. Khan’s introduction of the ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) charge has already sparked a backlash, with a consortium of minicab drivers taking City Hall to court over this emissions tax. The ULEZ is estimated to line city coffers with a cool £1.4million a week in revenue from PCO drivers alone.

Making London carbon-neutral would have a catastrophic impact on workers and businesses operating in the city. After all, there are 120,000 PCO drivers, 21,000 black-cab drivers and tens of thousands of van drivers who support the day-to-day running of London businesses. The vast majority of these drivers use diesel or petrol-powered vehicles. Questions have to be raised as to how they would work in a carbon-neutral city.

The ramifications of this clearly rushed policy wouldn’t only stop there. How would it work in relation to the diesel-powered trains that ferry commuters into Euston, King’s Cross St Pancras and Waterloo on a daily basis? It is estimated that the daytime population of London balloons by 300,000 people (excluding tourists), many of whom go on to work in the capital’s financial-services sector.

Our financial-services sector was built on one thing – deregulation. London is a city of opportunity and Khan’s environmental policy will only lead to the bureaucratic suppression of the very entrepreneurialism that makes London what it is today.

Let’s be clear: there is an issue with a changing climate, and concerns have been raised about the quality of air in central London. Both problems can be addressed with sensible policy. But Khan’s kneejerk policy, with an arbitrary 10-year lead time, would require a drastic overhaul of London’s transport infrastructure. It would cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds to achieve and, let’s face it, the jury is still out over the extent to which there actually is a ‘climate emergency’.

This is patently another PR stunt by Khan to gain votes. But can Khan be trusted?

Under his tenure as mayor, crime in London has surged across the board. During 2019, there was a 52 per cent rise in knife crime, and a 59 per cent rise in robbery. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the murder rate in the capital reached a 10-year high, with 149 homicides recorded in 2019. Khan blamed government cuts to the police for the rise in crime, despite rejecting the proposed budget amendment from the Conservative group in the London Assembly, which would have reduced Khan’s ever-growing staff budget, and enabled the recruitment of an extra 1,378 police officers.

His track record on the environment is even more laughable. During his 2015 election campaign, he pledged to plant two million trees in London by 2020. Figures show the Greater London Authority has planted just 175,000 trees so far.

If Khan can’t fulfill the simplest of campaign promises, why should Londoners believe he has the ability to oversee a seismic shift to a carbon-neutral city by 2030?

Khan has had his shot with London. And he’s missed. London needs a safe pair of hands. Someone who will focus on sensible policy that will tackle violent crime, build genuinely affordable housing, and be on the side of workers and small businesses alike.

Sadiq Khan is not that man.

SOURCE





‘Heaviest rain in years’ hitting Australia’s east coast

If the drought proved global warming, what does this prove?  Global cooling?

All it proves is that Australian rainfall is mostly very inconvenient. We get a lot of it but it doesn't fall at nicely spaced intervals.  Except in a few areas, it is highly unpredictable.  At the beginning of the bushfire season, the BOM, for instance, predicted that there would be no substantial rain until April or May.

So that must be just a light mist we are having.  Perhaps I am imagining the gutters outside my house running like rivers

As Australian poet Dorothea MacKellar wrote in 1908:


“I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains

Of ragged mountain ranges

Of droughts and flooding rains”


She knew the Australian pattern.  It is a pattern that makes Australia heavily reliant on dams

All we have been seeing lately is typical Australian weather. Global warming has got nothing to do with it


A major rain event is expected to move from southeast Queensland into northeast New South Wales in coming days. Meteorologists predict the rainfall to extinguish the bushfires...

A 2000km stretch of heavy rain has flooded Brisbane and southeast Queensland, causing chaos on the roads, and it’s sweeping down the east coast of Australia.

Flood warnings have been issued for New South Wales and Queensland, with experts fearing an incredible 500mm of rain could be dumped on some areas over eight straight days.

There’s already chaos on the roads in Brisbane — where emergency services are currently responding to two crashes south of the city and a red alert being issued due to flash flooding.

The Department of Transport and Main Roads issued the alert saying, “due to water over the road on Vulture Street, East Brisbane, traffic has been diverted onto Grey Street.

“All approaches from the eastern suburbs experiencing long delays”

Parts of Queensland are forecast to receive 500mm of rain after totals of almost 350mm in less than 24 hours.

The Wide Bay region was hardest hit, with Mount Elliott recorded 342mm between 6pm Tuesday and 1am today.

Meanwhile, the massive wet front is dumping rain on parts of drought-ravaged NSW with authorities concerned heavier downpours in the north of the state could lead to flash flooding.

Collarenebri in NSW’s northwest recorded 45 millimetres in the 24 hours to 9am on Thursday which was the highest total over the past day.

Sky News Weather Chief Meteorologist Tom Saunders said the “heaviest rain in years” is starting to fall across many parts of the NSW coast this morning after lashing southeast Queensland over the past 24 hours.

“This major weather event will continue into the weekend,” he said. “Moisture from this system has been spreading south over the last 24 hours, even reaching the Victorian border.”

Queensland was the first to cop a hammering overnight. Tin Can Bay, in the Gympie Region for example, has already had 300mm of rain.

He said the rain is being caused by a very humid north-easterly air stream that’s “pumping” moisture to inland areas and even providing some “major drought relief” from some stricken towns.

For today and tomorrow, that means the north coast of NSW will be hit with possible flash and river flooding with up to 500mm tipped to hit.

The system is then forecast to veer south and spread over the length of the NSW coast.

Mr Saunders said it should be the wettest week for Sydney since March last year.

The downpour could also mark the heaviest February 24-hour rainfall in Sydney since 2002 – when 130mm of rain was recorded on February 5.

“There’s going to be a huge amount of rain,” he said. “It’s enough to extinguish some of the larger bushfires but not hard enough to fill up the dams, considering how dry the catchment has been.”

As of 11pm last night, there were still 62 fires burning across NSW. The RFS warned the fire season is not over, despite the widespread rain.

In Queensland, the wet weather will persist for the next eight days, with the southeast being the worst hit.

Many areas, particularly the coast, will see well over 100mm of rain over the next seven days.

SOURCE 

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