Terence Corcoran, Financial Post
Never before has a Canadian politician challenged the hitherto saintly protectors of the environment in such direct language
Through most of 2011, Canadian energy officials in politics and industry watched with bewildered helplessness and some shock as Washington allowed environmentalists to seize control of TransCanada’s $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline issue. They stood by aghast as President Barack Obama, a captive of U.S. green activists and Hollywood movie stars, caved in to political pressure and postponed a decision to approve the project, a potential economic bonanza that promised to deliver thousands of jobs to Americans and billions of barrels of Canadian oil sands production to Texas.
No such green hijacking is going to take place in Canada, at least not without an official fight. On the eve of hearings, which begin Tuesday in Kitimat, B.C., into the $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline - to carry the same oil sands production from Alberta to the West Coast and on to China - the Harper government clearly aims to do what Barack Obama cannot or will not do in America, namely stand up to the growth-killing professional green movement. See more here.
Wind Power: Unreliable, Costly & Ineffective
Europe’s focus on wind power is crippling British energy users with additional costs as it is not a cost-effective way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a report has found.
The EU has directed governments to generate 15 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020, leading many to focus on wind. But wind power is unreliable and requires back-up gas power stations to maintain a consistent electricity supply, the Civitas think-tank study found.
It means energy users pay twice - once for the ‘window-dressing’ of renewables and again for fossil fuels the energy sector continues to rely on. The study, written by economist Ruth Lea, uses Government-commissioned estimates of the cost of electricity generation to calculate the most cost-effective technologies.
Gas-fired power is the most cost-effective in the short term, while nuclear power stations become the most cost-efficient in the medium term, more than twice as cost-effective as wind. The report concludes: ‘Wind power is expensive and yet is not effective in cutting CO2 emissions.
‘If it were not for the renewables targets, wind power would not even be entertained as a cost-effective way of generating electricity or cutting emissions. The renewables target should be renegotiated with the EU.’
The study attacks Government claims that wind power is one of the more cost-effective means of generating power. In fact, it says, it is ‘unreliable and requires conventional back-up capacity’.
The report also says wind power, backed by conventional gas-fired generation, can emit more CO2 than the most effective gas turbines running alone.
By Alan Caruba
To understand how the Environmental Protection Agency operates, one must first understand that it lies all the time. Its “estimates” are bogus. Its claims of lives saved are bogus.
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It thrives on scare-mongering to a public that is science-challenged, but the science remains and the EPA must be challenged to save the nation from the loss of the energy it needs to function. It must be challenged to unleash the huge economic benefits of energy resources - coal, oil, and natural gas - that can reverse our present economic decline.
The latest outrage is the MACT rule - an acronym for “maximum achievable control technology” intended to reduce mercury emissions and other trace gases. The rule is 1,117 pages long. Its purpose is to shut down coal-fired power plants that generate over fifty percent of all the electricity used daily in the United States of America.
The value of the total benefits asserted by the EPA is alleged to be $6 million. Not billion, but million. The MACT rule would force 14.7 gigawatts - enough power for more than eleven million households - to be “retired” from the power grip in the 2014-15 period when the rules take effect.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works says, “The economic analysis of the Obama EPA’s MACT paints a bleak picture for economic recovery as it will cost $11 billion to implement, increase electricity rates for every American, and, along with the Cross-State rule, destroy nearly 1.4 million jobs.”
MACT is all about mercury in the environment of the nation. On May 25, 2011, the Wall Street Journal published a brief opinion piece by Willie Soon, a natural scientist at Harvard, co-authored by Paul Driessen, a senior policy advisor for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. It was titled “The Myth of Killer Mercury.”
Here are a few of the facts it offered.
“Mercury has always existed naturally in the Earth’s environment. A 2009 study found mercury deposits in Antarctic ice across 650,000 years.”
“Mercury is found in air, water, rocks, soil and trees, which absorb it from the environment.”
There is “200,000,000 tons of mercury naturally present in seawater” that “has never posed a danger to any living thing.”
“U.S. forest fires emit at least 44 tons (of mercury) per year; cremation of human remains discharges 26 tons; Chinese power plants eject 400 tons; and volcanoes, subsea vents, geysers and other sources spew out 9,000-10,000 additional tons per year.”
“Since our power plants account for less than 0.5% of all the mercury in the air we breathe, eliminating every milligram of it will do nothing about the other 99.5% in our atmosphere.”
This is the same EPA “logic” that insists on reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere when all life on Earth depends on it as plant food for all vegetation. More CO2 mean more crops for humans and livestock, healthier forests and jungles, and food for the Earth’s wildlife population.
In a foreword to “Regulators Gone Wild: How the EPA is Ruining American Industry”, Dr. Jay Lehr, the Science Director of The Heartland Institute, wrote, “This administration is pushing an unprecedented radical environmental agenda.”
The EPA, along with major environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and others, have engaged for decades in a massive propaganda effort to convince Americans they are imperiled by the nation’s air and water. It is a lie. As the author of “Regulators Gone Wild”, Rich Trzupeck notes, “Though our world is actually cleaner than ever, most Americans are convinced it is dirtier.”
“Toxicity,” wrote Trzupeck, “is a matter of dose, as sober scientists have observed since ancient times. A particular compound may kill you if you drink it, but a few parts per billion of the same compound can have no effect at all…one can find toxic air pollutants in the parts-per-billion level in human breath.”
The EPA’s latest rule, which will no doubt be subject to lawsuits, is a killer MACT. It is not about mercury or other trace gases. It is about deliberately depriving the nation of energy which in turn means less jobs, less growth, and a third world lifestyle being imposed on Americans by the radical environmentalists inside the Obama administration.
Remember that when you are in the election booth on November 6, 2012.
See also Dr Charles Battig WSJ editorial here.
By James Taylor, Forbes
If you found it difficult this year to save enough money to purchase Christmas gifts for your loved ones, just wait until 2012. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency yesterday announced new mercury restrictions on coal power plants that will impose anywhere from $10 billion (EPA’s estimate) to $200 billion (third-party estimates) in new costs on energy production. On a per household basis, that imposes anywhere from $100 to $2,000 in additional energy costs on the average U.S. household each and every year.
Although the new restrictions do not take effect until 2015, energy providers will have to take immediate action to meet the deadline. U.S. electricity prices have already increased by nearly 50 percent during the past decade, and EPA’s new restrictions will merely accelerate that trend. Start taking still more money out of next year’s Christmas envelope and transfer it over to the monthly electricity envelope.
Despite the high costs, perhaps the new restrictions would make sense if the United States faced a severe and worsening environmental mercury problem. Exactly the opposite is the case.
EPA reports that mercury emissions in the United States have declined by approximately 60% since 1990. The dramatic reduction in mercury emissions is consistent with the reduction in air pollution across the board. EPA reports that emissions of the Six Principal Pollutants it monitors have decreased by 67% since 1980. This trend will continue even without EPA’s new mercury restrictions, as natural gas continues to claim an ever-greater share of electricity output in the nation. Natural gas power is dramatically cleaner than coal power and cuts most emissions by 80 to 100 percent. Natural gas cuts mercury emissions by more than 90% in relation to coal.
Still further, there would be little reason for concern even if the dramatic and ongoing decline in mercury and other emissions were not already taking place. As scientist Willie Soon summarized in a Wall Street Journal article earlier this year, “To build its case against mercury, the EPA systematically ignored evidence and clinical studies that contradict its regulatory agenda, which is to punish hydrocarbon use.”
Soon presented more than 80 pages of research supporting his article, documenting that environmental mercury levels in the United States are far from being a serious health threat. Soon demonstrated how EPA conducted no original research and cherry-picked available studies to present the bleakest possible picture regarding environmental mercury and human health. In doing so, EPA relied on the studies with glaring scientific flaws while ignoring much more credible studies showing no serious health risks.
Given the long-term improvement in our nation’s air quality and the steep price of the new restrictions, the timing and rationale of EPA’s decision seem rather curious. However, environmental activist groups have long since abandoned sound science and cost-benefit analyses in their war on conventional energy. Oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro-power are the enemy. Anything short of wind and solar power, with a very few minor exceptions, are to be fought at all costs. And even wind and solar power are mere bridges to a future where energy usage is restricted to our most basic needs.
In the meantime, if global warming can justify shutting down coal power plants, then play up global warming fears. If flimsy mercury studies can justify shutting down coal power plants, then play up mercury fears. And if mercury emissions are already in rapid decline anyway, keep claiming our nation’s air quality keeps getting worse and hope that the truth doesn’t get out.
Merry Christmas, now give us more of your money.
By:Anthony J. Sadar
In his 2004 bestseller, “State of Fear,” the late Michael Crichton introduced a skeptical climate science character, Professor Hoffman, who said:
“I study the ecology of thought.... And how it has led to a State of Fear.” The professor went on to explain that the government practices “social control [which is] best managed through fear.”
After the U.N. packed up yet another global climate conference earlier this month, the perpetual state of fearful climate science came to mind. The fear this time is based on the current talking points from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that human-induced climate change is manifested in “extreme weather events.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is already exploiting this alarming message in a creative way. The EPA is preparing guidelines on reducing indoor air pollutants because people are expected to spend more time indoors due to the increased amount of severe weather resulting from climate change.
The pushing of this atmospheric angst is like operating a shady business or practicing an earth-first religion. An “authoritative” consortium such as the U.N.’s IPCC identifies an urgent condition (severe weather is caused by anthropogenic global warming), solutions are proposed (altering lifestyles, shuttering coal-fired power plants), services are offered (education, research, consulting, trading-companies for carbon credits), and oversight/enforcement is “required” (national and international bureaucracies).
Everyone seems to be cashing in on the doomsday predictions, from private companies and academic institutions to governments with their expanding power and work force.
Everybody wins ... well, not quite. The big losers are, as usual, the ones stuck paying the bill—the middle-class taxpayers, plus the world’s poor, who manage to get by-passed in massive wealth-transfer schemes. And certainly scientific practice itself ultimately loses.
The concept of one international, authoritative group assembled to be “the final word” on an emerging complex issue like climate change is arbitrary and arrogant, besides being somewhat foreign to authentic scientific practice, especially when the leaders of the group are promoting political agendas.
This arrangement also invites corruption, as dominant personalities and their ideas and agendas frequently emerge and are imposed upon group members.
For an excellent, in-depth example of this, see the just-released IPCC expose by investigative journalist Donna Laframboise titled, “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.”
Laframboise notes that it is “both peculiar and ironic that an organization that so vigorously claims to represent a worldwide scientific consensus has systematically ‘disappeared’ so many consensus views held by so many different kinds of researchers.”
She discovered that the IPCC “ignores the consensus among hurricane experts that there is no discernible link to global warming. It ignores the consensus among those who study natural disasters that there is no relationship between human greenhouse gas emissions and the rising cost of these disasters.
It ignores the consensus among bona fide malaria experts that global warming has not caused malaria to spread.” Laframboise concludes that in each case “the IPCC substitutes its own version of reality.” A version that “makes global warming appear more frightening than genuine experts believe the available evidence indicates.”
To prop-up this IPCC science-by-committee fear-mongering, those who know nothing about atmospheric science (like politicians, actors and PR spin doctors), but fawn over IPCC proclamations are unleashed to push the human climate change hypothesis, while those who are intimate with the field (like workaday practitioners in climatology and meteorology), but skeptical of IPCC assertions are ridiculed for being “global-warming deniers.”
Many of us with years of real-world experience in atmospheric science would agree that, ideally, the practice of such science is about freedom to creatively combine fundamental scientific knowledge with individual skills and perspective to aid the evaluation of natural conditions.
In this way, the advancement of the field can occur for the benefit of both people and the planet. But, over the past few decades, by maintaining a state of fear, climate science has deviated from this ideal, damaging an honorable scientific profession. And that is truly scary.
Anthony J. Sadar is a certified consulting meteorologist specializing in air-pollution issues and primary author of Environmental Risk Communication: Principles and Practices for Industry (CRC Press/Lewis Publishers, 2000).
By Alan Caruba
The 17th United Nations conference on climate change, i.e. global warming, has concluded in Durban, South Africa, coincidently the site of UN human rights conferences that were entirely devoted to attacking the right of Israel to exist. I am sure Durban is lovely place to visit, but the city fathers should consider withdrawing the welcome mat before it becomes inexorably identified with hoaxes and hatred.
Reams have been written about the Durban conference, among which is a report by Lord Christopher Monckton that identifies its various objectives, chief of which is to ensure that billions flow into the United Nations. Suffice to say it was a by-product of World War II in the same fashion that the League of Nations was a by-product of World War I. The latter failed and the former has metastasized into a monster sucking up billions from member nations without materially contributing to world peace or much else.
The Reformation came about in Europe when Luther and others had the temerity to point out that the Roman Catholic Church had become a sinkhole of corruption and immorality. The outcome for the church was a return to its original purpose of propagating Christianity and piety. The transition, however, took a couple of hundred years. One can only hope that it does not take that long to rid the world of the United Nations, a giant bureaucracy whose hypocrisy and lust of global power over sovereign nations knows no limits.
As I am want to say - repeatedly - there is NO global warming and carbon dioxide (CO2) poses NO threat to the planet’s climate, nor plays any significant role - if any - in its natural variability. Reducing CO2 is one of the all-time idiotic ideas and it is the key to the Kyoto Protocols promulgated in 1997. In all the UN climate conferences since then, the effort has been to enrich and empower the UN bureaucracy that keeps loudly saying we’re all doomed.
Lord Christopher Monckton points out that the planet has not been warming (it goes through cycles of warming and cooling) “for two decades”, adding that there has bee “no recent “sea-level rise, no new record Arctic ice-melt, fewer hurricanes than at almost any time in thirty years, (and) no Pacific atolls disappearing beneath the waves.”
The many UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports have been masterpieces of obfuscation and outright lies. As Peter C. Glover, a longtime observer of the IPCC and commentator on climate change claims, recently noted, ‘“Most damaging of all, the week before the summit, it was revealed that an upcoming UN IPCC report due in February would state ‘climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability’” He defined climate variability as “We have’’t a clue what the climate will do.” And rightfully so!
Recently, my friend Dr. William Gray, an esteemed meteorologist, and his colleague, Phil Klotzbach, went public saying that their efforts over the years to predict the number of hurricanes in the year ahead since 1992 was a complete bust. That kind of academic honesty is very commendable. And, in the case of the yelping pack of so-called global warming “scientists”, very rare.
In October, the Science and Public Policy Institute published Dr. Gray’s report, “Gross Errors in the IPCC-AR4 Report Regarding Past & Future Changes in Global Tropical Cyclone Activity.” Suffice to say, it ripped the IPCC claims to shreds and is testimony to why the IPCC is an utterly corrupt generator of the global warming hoax.
At the conclusion of the recent IPCC Durban conference, Canada made it known it would no longer be a party to the Kyoto Protocols, while Russia and Japan made it known they will ignore any extension. China essentially said it intends to ignore them. The U.S. never was a party to the Protocols, the U.S. Senate having unanimously rejected them despite Al Gore’s protests. He was Vice President at the time.
The United Nations is the definition of corruption, of evil.
There are many reasons for the U.S. to stop its funding of the United Nations, but the enormous waste and harm done by its environmental program may well top the list.
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Merry Christmas from Alan Caruba.
By Christopher Pala
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, Dec 15, 2011 (IPS) - Global warming will melt far less of the glaciers of Central Asia than of those in other mountain ranges, shielding the people who depend on them for water from the effects of climate change for several decades at least, scientists say.
The mountains in and around the Himalayas are so high, unlike in the Andes, the Alps or the Rockies, that even in summer, temperatures remain below freezing point and most of the glaciers don’t melt away at all, Richard Armstrong, a geographer at Colorado University’s National Snow and Ice Centre, tells IPS.
“It doesn’t make much difference if it gets a little warmer up there because it’s still far below zero.”
Glaciers are rivers of ice fed by snowfall at the top. As they flow downhill to warmer temperatures, they eventually melt, providing water in summer, when rainfall is usually lowest.
Since the end of the two-centuries-long Little Ice Age in 1850, the terminus point of most glaciers has been slowly retreating uphill. That retreat accelerated since gases like carbon dioxide emitted by coal burning and cars have been accumulating in the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect that has raised global temperatures on average by half a degree Celsius in the past 30 years.
How much water a glacier produces each year is mostly determined by how much snow falls on their upper part, not at what point they end. So far there is no evidence that less snow is falling on their higher parts or that they produce more or less melt water, according to Armstrong and other scientists.
In the first comprehensive study of a part of what is called High Asia, the scientists found that 96 percent of the water that flows down the mountains of Nepal into nine local river basins comes from snow and rain, and only 4 percent from summer glacier melt. Of that 4 percent, says Armstrong, the lead author, only a minuscule proportion comes from the melting away of the end points of the glaciers due to global warming.
Armstrong said there is a lot of misinformation in the public arena regarding glaciers, including reports that glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than anywhere else in the world and that if this rapid melting continues, rivers are on track to first flood and then dry up. “Those reports simply are not true,” says Armstrong. (IPS)
By Steve Milloy
December 12, 2011, JunkScience.com
The Washington Post Fact Checker gave Rick Perry four Pinocchios for his August 17 denunciation of alarmist science. Here’s what we think.
Below is the WashPost Fact Checker’s article - our comments are in bold brackets.
Few scientists would back up Rick Perry’s global warming claims
By Glenn Kessler, Published: December 11
“I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. I think we’re seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.” - Rick Perry, Aug. 17
Perry has firm conservative opinions, but he tends to espouse “facts” that have bounced around in the conservative echo chamber without being vetted for accuracy. Take the question of global warming.
The notion that humans have contributed to climate change has generated increasing skepticism among the American public, especially as proposals to deal with the problem, such as reducing carbon emissions, have come with high costs. But Perry is wrong to say that such skepticism has gained strength among scientists.
To the contrary, various surveys of climate researchers suggest growing acceptance, with as many as 98 percent believing in the concept of man-made climate change. [This “98 percent” claim is not the product of a survey of scientists’ views. It was the result of a dubious analysis that we labeled the Nonsensus”>dubious analysis that we labeled the Nonsensus.] After all, it was first established in 1896 that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could help create a “greenhouse effect.” [Wrong. John Tyndall proved the greenhouse effect in 1959.]
Similar studies have been done by the United States Global Change Research Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among others. Although there are a few skeptics in the field, even they generally do not question that human activity is warming the climate. [No one argues that greenhouse gas emissions don’t contribute to some sort of warming - but the question is to what degree and effect.]
In response to queries, Perry spokesman Mark Miner sent a link to something called the Petition Project, which says it has collected the signatures of 31,487 “American scientists” who agree that there is “no convincing scientific evidence” that human release of greenhouse gases will “cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
But only 9,000 of the signers have a PhD. [How many PhDs would make the list acceptable to Fact Checker?]And few have expertise in climate research. [Not doing climate research doesn’t necessarily disqualify anyone from holding valid views. Most “climate researchers” aren’t atmospheric physicists. And Michael Mann may be a “climate researcher” but he doesn’t seem to have much credibility even with his own side. Check out this and this from the Climategate 2.0 e-mails] Judging from news reports, the number of signers has barely budged from 2008, further undercutting Perry’s claim of a groundswell of opposition. [There are more signatories but the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine hasn’t had the time or resources to update the Petition Project.]
Perry’s spokesmen did not provide any evidence to back up his claim that “a substantial number of scientists… have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” But Perry appears to be referring to hundreds of e-mails that were stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain and then disseminated on the Internet in 2009. One e-mail referred to adding a “trick” to the data, leading climate-change skeptics to say that the information was manipulated. [Fact Checker apparently has yet to familiarize itself with the Climategate 2.0 e-mails. Click here for a start Fact Checker.]
Although Perry said the scientists were manipulating data, five investigations have exonerated the half a dozen or so scientists involved. [These were all whitewashes that did not delve into the substance of the e-mails. See e.g., our coverage of the Penn State investigation.]
So, in contrast to Perry’s statement, there have not been a “substantial number” of scientists who manipulated data. Instead, a handful of them were falsely accused. [There were no accusations proven false. The hockey stick was the result of manipulated data. A substantial number of scientists participated in covering it up -including the National Research Council.]
The Fact Checker awards four Pinocchios for this statement. [Back at ya.]
Sunday, December 11, 2011 - By Marc Morano - Climate Depot Exclusive
’The UN is saying to poor countries: ‘Those of you who adopt more anti-prosperity, anti- jobs, and anti-growth policies—under the pretense of environmentalism—we will enrich you’’
DURBAN, South Africa - South African development activist Leon Louw declared the UN’s “Green Climate Fund” nothing more than an attempt by wealthy nations to keep the poor nations from developing.
In an exclusive interview with Climate Depot at the Durban UN climate summit, Louw declared foreign aid or “government to government aid” is simply a way for rich countries to reward poor countries who are “best at causing poverty.” Louw is the Executive Director of South Africa’s Free Market Institute which is considered the “3rd ranked most influential think-tank in Africa.”
“What the government of rich countries are saying to poor countries is: ‘Those of you who are best at causing poverty, we will enrich you, we will give you money,’” Louw told Climate Depot while attending the UN climate summit.
“Government to government aid is a reward for being better than anyone else at causing poverty. Countries that get more government to government aide have lower economic growth rates. Countries with less aid, have higher growth rates. If you subsidize failure you get failure and foreign aid does exactly that. It rewards people for being unsuccessful,” Louw stated.
The Associated Press described the UN climate fund as a method to “distribute tens of billions of dollars a year to poor countries to help them adapt to changing climate conditions and to move toward low-carbon economic growth.”
But Louw, says the UN climate fund will wreak havoc on the developing world’s poor. Louw explained: “The money goes to government and governments spend it on of course on themselves, meaning various government projects, creating bigger departments—bigger bureaucracies, it’s called big bureaucratic capture. They build empires, they build conference centers, and they buy political support. They go and distribute the money to communities where they want support and votes.”
Louw was at the Durban summit to oppose the UN climate fund to poor nations. According to Louw, the entire UN foreign aid process is aimed at keeping the developing world’s poor - poor.
“The money goes to the people who then are better at causing poverty. They can hire more bureaucrats, pass more laws have more regulations. If you are good at causing poverty, we will give you more money to do what you do more of, which is to cause poverty. So they enrich the people who cause poverty, they compliment them on how good they are at causing poverty,” Louw said.
Louw said the entire premise for the UN’s climate fund is an admission that their goal is to keep poor nations poor.
The UN is admitting—this is implicit in the fund—that combating climate change is very costly, especially for poor people, its devastating for poor countries. What the UN is saying is: ‘We want you to indulge our opinion of climate change and if you do so it’s going to cause a great deal of poverty and unemployment in poor counties.’ You cannot, as a poor country, subscribe to the Kyoto Protocol and grow. The two are mutually exclusive,” Louw explained
Louw continued: “So What the rich counties say is ‘don’t worry, we will reward you for again causing poverty, if you adopt our climate policies that will cause poverty.’ That is why there is a UN fund, in other words, they admit it. So having environmental policies causes poverty and they say ‘we will enrich you for doing so, we will reward you for causing poverty.’”
The UN is saying to poor countries: ‘Those of you who adopt more anti-prosperity, anti- jobs, and anti-growth policies, under the pretense of environmentalism, we will enrich you. It doesn’t matter—as long as you cause poverty—we will enrich you.’”
Louw asserts that the developing world does not need the wealthy Western world to achieve riches.
“Poor countries can become rich very quickly, like China, India, and in Africa, Ghana. Ghana, which has moved more than any other country in the world from being un-free to a free economy, is having 12 percent growth. It’s now one of the highest growth counties in the world.
Africa itself, Sub-Saharan, what used to be called black Africa, is now the highest sustained growth region of the world. The highest growth country in the world over the last 30 years is Batswana. So they don’t need the rich countries to help them. All they need is for the rich counties to leave them alone.”
Louw says that if left alone, the developing world can gain wealth and freedom.
“They can actually overtake the rich countries like Hong Kong did. They become richer than the rich countries. China and India are headed that way. So now what the rich counties do is a kind of eco-imperialism. The rich nations say to the poor nations: ‘Now you have to stop growth, you have got to stay poor. If you—the government—manage to keep your country poor, undeveloped and backward, we will then compensate you.’ It is not a compensation for what the rich countries have done, it’s a compensation for the ability of the governments of the poor countries to stop them from becoming rich,” Louw concluded.