Nigel Lawson
The Economics and Politics of Climate Change
An Appeal To Reason
It is well established, for example, from historical accounts, that a thousand
years ago, well before the onset of industrialisation, there was – at least in
Europe – what has become known as the medieval warm period, when
temperatures were probably at least as high as, if not higher than, they are
today. Going back even further, during the Roman empire, it may have been even
warmer. There is archaeological evidence that in Roman Britain, vineyards
existed on a commercial scale at least as far north as Northamptonshire.
More recently, during the 17th and early 18th centuries, there was what has
become known as the little ice age, when the Thames was regularly frozen over
in winter, and substantial ice fairs held on the frozen river – immortalised in
colourful prints produced at the time – became a popular attraction...
It is important to bear in mind that, whatever climate alarmists like to make out,
what we are confronted with, even on the Hadley Centre/IPCC hypothesis, is
the probability of very gradual change over a large number of years. And this is
something to which it is eminently practicable to adapt. This points to the first and most important part of the answer to the question of
what we should do about the threat of global warming: adapt to it.
There are at least three reasons why adaptation is far and away the most costeffective approach.
The first is that many of the feared harmful consequences of climate change,
such as coastal flooding in low-lying areas, are not new problems, but simply the
exacerbation of existing ones; so that addressing these will bring benefits even if
there is no further global warming at all...
If we are going to take out an insurance policy against the remote risk of a
warming-induced climate disaster then it needs to be both affordable and
effective. The conventional front-runner, a substantial enhancement of the
Kyoto approach of curbing carbon dioxide emissions satisfies neither of these
requirements. It is not affordable, in the sense that the people of Europe – to
whom Kyoto largely applies – are not prepared to make the sacrifices in terms of
the drastic change in lifestyle required, and it is ineffective, since the major
nations of the developing world – quite apart from the United States – are, for
good reason, not prepared to join the party.
The notion that if we in the UK are prepared to set an example, then the rest of
the world will follow, is reminiscent of the old unilateralist CND argument that
if we in the UK abandoned nuclear weapons, then the Soviet Union and the
United States would follow suit, and just as far-fetched...
It could not be a worse time to abandon our own traditions of reason and
tolerance, and to embrace instead the irrationality and intolerance of ecofundamentalism, where reasoned questioning of its mantras is regarded as a
form of blasphemy. There is no greater threat to the people of this planet than
the retreat from reason we see all around us today.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/12/thatcher_economist_dehypes_cli.html
Turning to the "immense" folly of any attempt to exclude the major developing countries from the Kyoto process, Nigel Lawson highlights the case of China. "China alone last year embarked on a programme of building 562 large coal-fired power stations by 2012 - that is, a new coal-fired power station every five days for seven years." He identifies the shocking reality that: "China is adding the equivalent of Britain's entire power-generating capacity each year." And this is without considering the effect of similar development in India and Brazil.
The logic should be plain to all, he asserts: "If carbon dioxide emissions in Europe are reduced only to see them further increased in China, there is no net reduction in global emission at all." In his understated ‘Lordly' tone we can still glean his concern at the current media-induced hysteria: "The extent of ill-informed wishful thinking on this issue is hard to exaggerate."
Lamenting the "regrettable arrogance and intolerance of the Royal Society" he sees that "the uncertainty surrounding the complex issue of climate change is immense and the scope for honest differences of view considerable." And how "in a world of inevitably finite resources" spending large sums to guard against "theoretical danger" would be unjustified, especially as the "evidence that (warming) will accelerate to disastrous levels is, to say the least, unconvincing."
Having pursued the science, economics and politics of climate change, he turns to a fourth social issue. One, he believes, is driving the less-than-scientific and aggressively un-reasoning approach that marks current alarmist intolerance. "It is not difficult to understand...the appeal of the conventional climate change wisdom. Throughout the ages something deep in man's psyche has made him receptive to ‘the end is nigh' apocalyptic warnings." Lawson believes we, as individuals, "imbued with a sense of guilt and a sense of sin" and he notes how easily we convert this into a sense of "collective guilt and collective sin"
This in turn spawns a "new religion of Eco-fundamentalism" whose "new priests are scientists (well rewarded with research grants) rather than the clerics of established religions". But this new religion "presents dangers on at least three levels":
Governments of Europe pursuing policies fired by anti-Americanism
a profound hostility to capitalism and the market economy, and, most dangerous of all,
the abandonment of our traditions of reason and tolerance.
The irrationality and intolerance of Eco-fundamentalism, says Lawson, regards the "questioning of its mantras" as "a form of blasphemy." And he concludes with an apocalyptic vision of his own - and one far more devastating in its consequences than Climate Change: "There is no greater threat to the people of this planet than the retreat from reason we see all around us today."
Climate alarmists are increasingly at the vanguard of Lawson's "retreat from reason". The debate on climate change is, sadly, fast becoming as much about the right to free speech as much a discussion on the issues. As Francisco de Goya once warned: "The sleep of reason brings forth monsters" - a pestilence of national economy-eating Eco-taxes, for instance.
We were concerned, we faced the darkness, we had nothing to lose and yet the sky buckled above us, ready to collapse. The urgency, the sense of purpose, the black afflictions of our own souls, whipped and driven through storms and upheaval, darkness, darkness, that's all that can be felt in the clatter of hooves. The ancient village squares, shrouded in fog, moss clinging to the damp stone, was all part of a psyche that had been transported into a different realm and on the other side of the planet.
Very avante garde, he grimaced at the squawking sounds coming from the ABC's Classic FM, where the radio had been stuck for some days. The clashing sound of struggling violins sat oddly with the otherwise tranquil rural scene. Who's Avante Garde? Phillip, the neighbour, asked. Whoever he is, he's making quite a racket, he responded. The smell of burning wood. The collapse of reason. The mystery of the future. The strangling nature of climate hysteria. It just got worse. And worse, the spiralling freedom, the awful darkness of his soul, their own tears plastered on the damp rock, the cries of a different world, imparted not with hope but the cold of eternal winter.
He saw the goblins laughing as he rode past. He saw the same spirits which had watched his ancestors, saw their disdain. You will never be rich, you will never be master, one said. And another, ordering: live a long and happy life. Insensitive, rock hard, frozen in his own fear and his inherited attitudes, a strong darkness took over them, a warm tide of belief. But this salvation would never be offered to him. He could not believe, and the longer he lived the less he believed. There wasn't anything that was going to take him away. He would stand, frozen in these remote spiritual villages, and watch these worlds condemn his own.
Don't believe, you can't believe, the obesity epidemic, the coming wave of global warming. Anyone with apocalyptic tendencies is in paradise, for all around are dire predictions of the impact of climate change. Unlike the masses, his first instinct was not to believe, because so many other belief systems had failed him so profoundly. A child of the seventies, which in Australia, thanks to its isolation, mixed with a certain magical fervour from the 1960s the rest of the world experienced. All that looked so quaint now, and his own children couldn't believe the stupidity of the hippies, their dreadful music, their dreadful clothes. Their dreadful drugs.
Yet he was driven, he embraced the philosophies like a monk in search of God and faith and reason, like a young man seeking to find what it was to best revolve his life around. The solutions were ephemeral, and each wave, era, generation, each change of tide, wiped away everything that had been before. ZPG had been all the rave at university - Zero Population Growth, as if this was the greatest threat faced by mankind. Now it's impending droughts and increased cyclones and rising sea levels - and abject confusion because clicks away in the cyber world we now all inhabit, was the reverse, a thorough rebuttal of all that was being preached.
How we got here he would never know. How the confusion that was gripping the country's psyche, the cost of an emissions trading scheme, the cost of not acting, the verifiability of climate change, had the world stopped warming in 1998, like so many said? Was the grip of climate change and global warming a passing hysteria, or something more profound, more noble. Was it really the moral challenge of the age, or a convenient means of licensing and controlling capitalism yet further? Did we sink into the grip of corruption, because there was no certainty, because the only possibility was denial, retreat, a low energy future alone on a farm, the chooks and the pigs our own future hope? He didn't know the answer, and so, despite all his scepticism, he kept the petrol tank on the car full, waiting for the end of days, for peak oil, for our own noble path through conflicting beliefs.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world-youth-day/help-save-the-world/2008/07/13/1215887451535.html
TEN kilometres above the earth, the Pope delivered a message to the people of Sydney: the world is God's creation and humanity needs to safeguard it against the ravages of climate change.
His message, unexpected and delivered in Italian, called for a spiritual response to the environmental crisis and asked Catholics - especially young people - to find "a way of living, a style of life that eases the problems caused to the environment".
"We need to rediscover our earth in the face of our God and creator and to re-find our responsibilities in front of our maker and the creatures of the earth he has placed in our hands in trust," he said.
"We need to reawaken our conscience … I want to give impulse to rediscovering our responsibilities and to finding an ethical way to change our way of life and ways to respond to these great challenges."
As the Pope's jet emerged from heavy grey cloud and landed at Richmond RAAF base at 3pm yesterday, adults and young pilgrims beeped and waved from paddocks, and even high in trees. Cameras flashed in cars and Australian and Italian flags waved in the breeze.
Pope Benedict, the spiritual leader of 5 million Australian Catholics and 1 billion worldwide, arrived to rejuvenate the faith in Australia. He brought with him an apology to the faithful for sexual abuse by priests.
He did not kiss the tarmac as Pope John Paul II did during his visit in 1995 to beatify Mary MacKillop. Instead, after his 23-hour flight from Rome, the longest foreign trip of his papacy, he briskly descended the stairs of his aircraft, Shepherd I.
He was greeted by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, the Premier, Morris Iemma, and the Deputy Premier, John Watkins, whose two governments have committed $160 million to staging World Youth Day.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24015672-662,00.html
PENNY Wong has assured businesses they will not face a GST-style red tape tangle when the Rudd Government introduces its planned emissions trading scheme (ETS) to tackle climate change.
The Climate Change Minister revealed yesterday only the 1000 biggest polluters of the business world - such as power companies - would have to purchase emissions permits under the system, The Australian reports.
But she also insisted the ETS, the subject of a green paper to be released on Wednesday, would encompass the entire economy.
Senator Wong's comments came as the Make Poverty History movement called for the Government to create a new migration category for climate change refugees - Pacific Island residents whose homes are likely to be inundated by rising sea levels.
The Climate Institute think tank also released a report warning that Australia needed to do much more on energy efficiency to maximise its response to climate change.
Senator Wong's long-awaited green paper will give the first real indication of the detail of the Government's ETS plan and will come less than a fortnight after its climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, released a draft report recommending a comprehensive scheme to begin in 2010.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=596866
Big Brother host Kyle Sandilands says he is glad the controversial series has been axed.
Speaking on his morning radio show, Sandilands expressed relief after the Ten Network confirmed the reality TV staple would not continue into a ninth season.
"To tell you the truth I don't care," Sandilands said on 2DayFM this morning.
"I'm happy. That's six months of my life I get back."
The shock jock said he told the show's producers two weeks ago he would not be back next year, after illness kept him out of the host’s chair for a fortnight.
"I told them I could never do it again," he said. "It was a rant. I was swearing. Somewhere in there you could decipher that I wasn't coming back."
Co-host Jackie O said the decision to axe Big Brother was a "money thing" because it was one of the most expensive shows to produce.
She and Sandilands took over the hosting duties this year from Gretel Killeen, who had been with the show since its premiere in 2001.
No comments:
Post a Comment