Unforeseen Contingencies

Real Clear Energy has just published an op-ed by Unforeseen Contingencies intrepid chief blogger, Charles N. Steele.  (I guess that makes me a professional journalist, heh!)  I highly recommend it.

Re the IPCC report, one of my students commented directly to me "I'm stunned by how explicitly it recommends 'transfer of wealth' to underveloped societies.  How is this supposed to be accomplished?  Amazing how a 'scientific study' assumes authority to assign responsibility (never to the backwards countries, of course)."

Excellent point.  If we want to understand why some countries are poor, we only have to examine the government of any or all of them - backwards indeed describes them, as well as corrupt. Taxing citizens of rich countries and giving to these governments is a terrible idea. The people at the Katowice climate conference who voted to accept this are either would-be recipients, or would-be tax collectors; they are not the taxpayers they hope to enslave.  Aid to governments entrenches the power-hungry and the corrupt, and undercuts development.

That the IPCC proposes this shows it is not a serious scientific organization.  There's no attempt, not even a half-arsed one, to analyze the effects of these proposed policies.  And there's no scientific economics behind it.  It's a socialist political platform masquerading as environmental sustainability.

Photo: a thing of beauty that makes humans better off.