Gory science or Gory politics?
- This column was first published on 8 October 2007 in Maverick, a South African business magazine. The rest of the magazine is much better, so if you’d like to subscribe, simply contact them via e-mail.
Why does Al Gore bang the climate change drum? Because he’s a scientist, certain that his theory is true? Or because he’s a politician, and scary predictions have always persuaded people to put their faith in the ability of the prophets to save them from doom?
You don’t bet on uncertainty if you’re a politician. So if climate change and its causes are uncertain, what exactly is it that Al Gore betting on?
When Paul Ehrlich warned about the coming population explosion in 1968, he said it would lead to mass starvation by the mid-1970s. “Nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate,” he wrote. But death rates had already been in decline in both the rich and poor world, for 100 years, and have continued declining since.
Moreover, fertility rates had long been going down in the rich world, and a similar decline had already begun in the developing world too. It is now estimated that global population, far from rising uncontrollably as Ehrlich predicted, will never exceed 10 billion. He warned about a crisis that was already being addressed, naturally.
In 1998, the UN compared the Y2K problem to the impact of an earth-asteroid collision, which “demands worldwide strategic mobilisation…similar to the effort required by World War II.”
So Y2K required food rationing, confiscatory taxes, central planning and martial law? It’s unsurprising that this is what an organisation of governments would promote. When the new millennium arrived, the UN said: “The governments…can congratulate themselves for passing the Y2K challenge.”
The only problem is that the governments did nothing. Well, not much. Of the total US spend on Y2K, the US government’s contribution amounted to about five percent. The problem was already in hand when the dire warnings of a “meltdown of civilisation” (I kid you not) were rife. People aren’t stupid.
