Category: Environmentalism
Last week, Lord Nigel Lawson delivered a lecture to the Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment at the University of Bath in the UK, and given it is seven years since he was in New Zealand and we last featured his analysis of the state of climate change, we wanted to provide NZCPR readers with an update.
There is something odd about the global warming debate — or the climate change debate, as we are now expected to call it, since global warming has for the time being come to a halt. But I have never in my life experienced the extremes of personal hostility, vituperation and vilification which I — along with other dissenters, of course — have received for my views on global warming and global warming policies.
When did anyone last hear officials and professionals talking enthusiastically about the social and economic benefits resulting from the subdivision of land to create secure, clean and tradeable title? Indeed, any Regional or District plan is likely to include a long list of the potential problems caused by subdivision, but will mention few, if any, of the benefits.
There has been no global warming for the past 16 years. In spite of increasing levels of human emissions of carbon dioxide, world wide global temperatures stopped rising in 1998. Essentially, this means that the dire predictions that the world is headed for a climate catastrophe if mankind keeps on producing carbon dioxide, is not credible.
“Climate Change” has become an important international topic - one might almost say religion. It began life as “Global Warming”. So very many people, including politicians and “news people”, appear to have been overwhelmed by it, and have led others to believe, and follow the doctrine. However, the cost of “Combating Carbon” has been extremely high, and the debt and economic consequences are being passed on to present citizens, and, worse still, to future generations, including all our grandchildren.
The organisation spearheading the protest action against deep sea oil exploration in New Zealand waters is Greenpeace - a large multi-national corporation with 28 offices around the world, and a presence in over 40 countries. In its 2012 annual report, Greenpeace International claims to have almost 24 million supporters assisting it in environmental activism, and an income of $447 million.
The recent kerfuffle about Anadarko and its drilling in our EEZ off the South Waikato coast has stirred a veritable pot of misunderstanding and confusion with regard to exactly what environmental approvals are needed for such a venture, and from whom – largely arising from a knowledge vacuum created by Government and the oil industry, but also from deliberately misleading political interests.
We all know that in the media business, sensation sells. Advocacy groups like Greenpeace have long taken advantage of this by peddling scare stories - the world is running out of oil or food or trees, polar bears are dying out, the earth is becoming overpopulated, or melting glaciers are flooding the planet. Regrettably not enough people understand the need for scepticism over such reports.
Climate change has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. This is not some barmy, right-wing fantasy; it is the consensus of expert opinion. Yet almost nobody seems to know this.
Last week the United Nations spin machine went into overdrive as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a summary of its latest assessment of the state of the climate. The Summary for Policy Makers was prepared by politicians and bureaucrats representing the governments of many countries that have invested vast amounts of taxpayers’ money into projects designed to stop man-made global warming.
Loading ...
