Gore’s human sacrifices
Though the possible set of inconvenient puns has been utterly exhausted in the last few days, if you haven’t seen it yet, Bjørn Lomborg’s commentary on the subject of Al Gore’s Peace Prize is worth reading. Notably:
The number of hungry people depends much less on climate than on demographics and income. Extremely expensive cuts in carbon emissions could mean more malnourished people. If our goal is to fight malnutrition, policies like getting nutrients to those who need them are 5,000 times more effective at saving lives than spending billions of dollars cutting carbon emissions.
Likewise, global warming will probably slightly increase malaria, but CO2 reductions will be far less effective at fighting this disease than mosquito nets and medication, which can cheaply save 850,000 lives every year. By contrast, the expensive Kyoto Protocol will prevent just 1,400 deaths from malaria each year.
While we worry about the far-off effects of climate change, we do nothing to deal with issues facing the planet today. This year, malnutrition will kill almost 4 million people. About 3 million lives will be lost to HIV/AIDS, and 2 ½ million people will die because of indoor and outdoor air pollution. A lack of micronutrients and clean drinking water will claim 2 million lives each.
With attention and money in scarce supply, we should first tackle the problems with the best solutions, doing the most good throughout the century. If we focus on solving today’s problems, we will leave communities strengthened, economies more vibrant, and infrastructures more robust. This will enable these societies to deal much better with future problems - including global warming. Committing to massive cuts in carbon emissions will leave future generations poorer and less able to adapt to challenges.
In Michael Crichton’s memorable metaphor of environmentalism as religion, Gore is the high priest, preaching fire and brimstone unless we repent our sins. We are the chanting supplicants, and in our fear and panic we are regressing to human sacrifice to appease an angry Gaia.
Hello…
I do agree with some points, and I like the main idea exposed here, but you thinck too much of the short time.
I do not believe the earth climate change is totally our fault we are just amplifying what is a natural cycle, but i also do not believe that kyoto protocol is useless, on top of that your evaluation lack one thing, yeah we could spend all that money on those things you so nicely noted down, but will it really help?
That’s the question my friend!
Look at greenpeace they thinck they do good but mostly they do wrong on the long term.
You say we are driven by panic, well i shall say you are driven by anger or any other feeling close to that, thus your point of view is just as bad as the kyoto protocol’s point of view.
To summarize: we can’t know what the futur reserves, and we should just live, trying to use money for the sake of keeping this earth as diverse as possible by that i mean preserve if not give back some room for nature, and make sure the human survive and most importantly not always bother about people at the other side of the world if in the first place we are not the reason of they’re disaster, cause we most f the time just make it worse.
JP JAGER.
ps: keep on the good work;) i like your critical way of thincking;)