Bush and Howard are wrong on climate change
This editorial makes a good point about the opposition of green groups to the climate agreement the White House favours, which prioritises economic development and quality of life standards, and insists on including China and India, two of the world’s four biggest CO2 emitters, in any deal.
In a sense, [US president George W] Bush and [Australian prime minister John] Howard are calling the bluff of global warming alarmists by insisting that China and India be included in any emissions-reduction effort. They know the enviro-activists’ ultimate goal is not what the green lobby and complicit media have been selling to the public, but rather a crippling of thriving capitalist economies. Braying at a plan that insists on China’s and/or India’s participation exposes their real objective: punishing success.
China and India are by far the world’s worst large polluters, in terms of emissions as a function of economic output. This is the only sensible way to measure it, since it can be justified only in terms of economic benefit. No amount of pollution is a justifiable cost without a commensurate economic benefit. That makes it all the more reasonable for the US and Australia to insist that China and India contribute to any efforts to curb emissions.
Environmentalists accuse Bush and Howard of being disingenuous, and they have a point. The two know full well that global warming is hogwash, yet they support the greens’ measures for large-scale human interference with the fragile, ineffable mystery of life on earth.
But the real reason they’re wrong is far more serious. The leaders also understand that environmental activists are driven by an underlying anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist guilt complex. That their eco-demands will not so much clean up the environment as harm productive countries and curtail economic progress. But if that is true, why argue that green measures should be extended to China and India, two relatively poor countries that have yet to enjoy the full benefits of industrialisation and development? After all, prosperity is how countries earn quality of life, liberty and leisure. Prosperity produces the means to achieve a clean, healthy, enjoyable and productive environment. To solve the problems, including pollution, requires creating wealth, not destroying it.
It is true that successful countries shouldn’t be singled out for attempts to hobble their economies in the name of environmentalism. But Bush and Howard should be arguing against the misguided efforts by greens, not in favour of meting out eco-whippings equally. They should argue against hindering progress, instead of arguing in favour of hindering everyone equally.
