Thank you for coming to this important event. I am here today not only as a representative of CORE, the civil rights organization that James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were working for when they were brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1964. I’m also here as an Eagle Scout, outdoorsman, Earth Day organizer – and former Sierra Club member and environmental activist.

I say former, because (based on long personal experience) I have concluded that today’s environmental movement is too focused on distant, theoretical problems like global warming … pays too little attention to real, immediate, life-or-death dangers that threaten billions of people … and fails to recognize the harmful effects that its policy prescriptions often have on America’s and the world’s poorest people.

All of us are obligated to be stewards of the Earth and resources that God gave us. We must use them wisely to meet human needs … safeguard wildlife and environmental values … base our decisions on sound moral, theological, scientific and economic principles … and strike the proper balance when confronted by conflicting claims and needs. How should we apply these basic principles?

Few would deny that our planet is warming, as it has been for most of the past 150 years since the Little Ice Age ended. If recent trends continue – and there is no shift to a cooling trend like the one that dominated between 1942 and 1975 – the Earth will warm about another degree or two by the end of this century. It’s equally clear that humans have altered the Earth’s ecology in many areas, and exerted some mostly local influences on our climate.

However, this is very different from saying that we are facing imminent global climate change of dangerous or catastrophic proportions. It is also very different from saying that humans are now the primary cause of climate change – or that actions like the Kyoto Protocol can somehow stabilize a planetary climate that since the dawn of time has been anything but stable, because of natural forces that we understand poorly and over which we have no control.

There is no evidence to support theories of catastrophic climate change. The vast majority of scientists do not support these theories – nor do the vast majority of computer models. Indeed, models aren’t evidence at all. They’re simply imperfect reflections of our imperfect understanding of highly complex atmospheric, oceanic, solar and celestial processes that determine our constantly changing climate.

That brings me to several concerns that ought to be uppermost in our minds. However, they often receive little attention, certainly not by climate change activists like James Hansen and Robert Kennedy, Jr. – and almost never by news media activists like the Washington Post, Time magazine or Vanity Fair.

Even ardent climate alarmists now acknowledge that the Kyoto treaty would keep global temperatures from rising a mere 0.2 degrees less by 2050 than if we continue with business as usual.

Stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions and (theoretically) global climate would require 40 Kyoto Protocols – each one more restrictive than its predecessors –atmospheric scientist Jerry Mahlman says. Consider the implications.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, just the first Kyoto treaty could cost the United States up to $348 billion in 2012 alone.

A report prepared for a coalition of minority business groups concluded that Kyoto could cost 1.3 million jobs in US Black and Hispanic communities in 2012. Nearly 100,000 minority businesses could be forced to close nationwide.

Average minority family incomes could plummet by $2,000 or more, the report said – and poor families could be forced to pay a much larger portion of this reduced income for food, transportation, heating, air conditioning and every other product or service they need.

Economic output in states with large minority populations could plunge by at least $5 billion. State tax revenues could fall by billions of dollars a year, making less money available for welfare and unemployment benefits, precisely when those benefits are most needed.

The International Council for Capital Formation has calculated that meeting Kyoto commitments by 2010 would increase energy costs by as much as 40 percent, cause real gross domestic product to shrink by over 2 percent a year, and eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs in Italy, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom. Europe’s poor would also be especially hard hit.

It’s easy to understand why Prime Minister Tony Blair – once one of the foremost champions of Kyoto – has altered his stance, and now says Britain cannot afford to sacrifice its economic future and global competitiveness, to comply with the climate treaty.

He realizes that British citizens will be hammered by soaring energy and consumer prices – and that jobs will migrate overseas, to China, India, Brazil and dozens of other countries that are not obligated by Kyoto to reduce energy use or pollution. That’s exactly what would happen to the United States, too.
What’s hard to understand is why US activists and politicians are pushing so hard to enact economy-killing regulations precisely when signatory nations are backing away from Kyoto – or simply admitting that they are way above their Kyoto targets and cannot possibly reduce their current emissions by 15, 20 or even 25 percent, to meet those targets.

And that’s all just for Kyoto One, which only requires a 2 or 3 percent reduction in global emissions. Can anyone here imagine what it will be like under Kyoto Two or Twenty or Forty – which will require that we cut our planetary emissions by 60 to 80 percent below their 1990 levels, according to the United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change?

For impoverished Third World countries, the situation is far more dire.

Anyone who’s seen “The Lion King” knows there is a Circle of Life. For humans, it means access to electricity, disease prevention, clean water and nutrition. All are essential, and all are inter-connected.

But there is also a Circle of Death. It connects policies that perpetuate poverty, disease, malnutrition and early death – by denying people access to life-saving technologies …

By trying to protect people in wealthy countries from distant, conjectural risks – while prolonging or increasing very real, immediate risks to people in poor countries …

And by twisting common definitions of ethics, morality, social responsibility and compassion for the poor – to justify global warming agendas.

For instance, Time magazine, astronomer James Hansen, and self-styled climate experts George Clooney and Julia Roberts worry that the world’s poor will be harmed by rising seas, disease, storms, floods, droughts and malnutrition – allegedly caused by global warming.

However, the supposed link between these problems and global warming is pure speculation. There’s not a shred of actual evidence to back it up. There has been less than a half degree of warming since 1940 – hardly enough to cause the disasters that some are trying to link to climate change.

And it is often the very policies they promote that actually represent the greatest threats to the world’s poor.

Over 2 billion of the world’s people still do not have electricity – for lights and refrigeration in their homes … for hospitals and clinics … for schools, shops, offices and factories … for wastewater treatment and other modern technologies that we often take for granted.

Over 2-1/2 billion do not have access to basic sanitation.

Over 3 billion struggle to survive on less than $700 per year.

Indoor pollution from their wood and dung fires causes 4 million deaths a year from tuberculosis and other lung infections. Unsafe water and spoiled food cause intestinal diseases that kill another 6 million people annually.

More than a half billion people get malaria every year, and up to 2 billion die from it. 80 percent of them live in Africa, and over half are children.

Worldwide, 800 million people are chronically undernourished. More than 200 million children suffer from Vitamin A Deficiency. Five hundred thousand children go blind from it every year, and 5 million die each year from malnutrition and starvation.

Unlike the hypothetical future deaths forecast from global warming, these deaths are real, and they are already occurring.

Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity would improve air and water quality, reduce lung and intestinal diseases, and generate jobs and prosperity. But because of misplaced concerns – and convoluted ethical analyses – access to energy in poor countries continues to be only a dream.

Danish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg has calculated that the global cost of complying with the first Kyoto Protocol could be as much as $1 trillion a year. That’s almost five times more than the cost of providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation.

But if that money is spent on illusory climate change prevention – and developed country economies head south as a result – there will no money for water, sanitation and other foreign aid programs. There will be little demand for Third World products and agricultural produce.

Poor countries will remain poverty stricken and unable to adapt to or cope with natural and other disasters.
The near absence of electricity also means people will continue to cut down trees and destroy wildlife habitats, to get the fuel they need for basic subsistence.

And yet these poor countries are told they mustn’t build coal or gas-fired electrical power plants, because rich First World countries are concerned about global warming.

They must not build hydroelectric power plants, because that would dam up good kayaking rivers. And they must never build nuclear power plants, because other international NGOs oppose nuclear power.

Even eco-tourism is under assault – because jet travel to wildlife and scenic areas in Africa, Asia and Latin America results in greenhouse gas emissions that alarmists say will cause catastrophic global warming.
Environmental activists tell poor countries, “If there is going to be electricity, it should be small, decentralized and solar powered” – or generated by a few wind turbines.

However, these technologies simply cannot provide sufficient, reliable, affordable energy for modern homes, societies and economies. Nor are they very eco-friendly.

A single 555-megaWatt gas-fired power plant in California generates more electricity per year than do all 13,000 of that state’s wind turbines. The gas-fired plant occupies just 15 acres. The 300-foot tall wind turbines impact 106,000 acres … destroy scenic vistas … and kill tens of thousands of birds and bats every year – to provide expensive, tax-subsidized, intermittent, insufficient electricity.

Access to insecticides would dramatically reduce malaria.

In fact, just spraying tiny amounts of DDT on the inside walls of mud-and-thatch or cinder-block homes, just twice a year, keeps 90 percent of mosquitoes from even entering. It also irritates any that do come in, so they rarely bite. No other insecticide – at any price – does that. Of course, it also kills those that land on walls. Used this way, virtually no DDT even reaches the environment. But the results are astounding.

Within two years of starting DDT programs, South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia and Swaziland slashed their malaria rates by 75 percent. With fewer people getting sick, they were able to get scarce ACT drugs to nearly all victims, and cut rates even further.

But environmentalists vehemently oppose insecticides – especially DDT. They emphasize all kinds of far-fetched risks from using insecticides – and ignore the very real, life-threatening risks that those insecticides could prevent.

They promote bed nets, which might bring a 20 percent reduction in malaria disease and death rates. They talk about malaria vaccines, which won’t be a reality for at least another decade.

To deflect criticism over their inhumane policies, they try to blame rising malaria rates on global warming, arguing that those rates began climbing just about the time when global temperatures began rising a few tenths of a degree.

They rarely even mention the real reason for the unconscionable malaria rates. It’s because environmentalist pressure resulted in a US and global ban on DDT during the 1970s, and a shift away from malaria control programs that work – and toward programs that simply do not work.

Access to biotechnology would improve nutrition.

Biotechnology can fortify plants with vitamins, to reduce malnutrition and blindness. It can produce crops that grow better in saline and nutrient-poor soils … fight off insects … replace crops that have been devastated by viruses … eliminate dangerous fungal contaminants … and produce more food from less acreage, so that less wildlife habitat must be plowed under to feed growing populations.

Biotech crops can also reduce soil erosion, by enabling farmers to use herbicide-tolerant plants and no-till farming methods. And many need fewer pesticides and less water.

“With the old maize, I got 100 bags from my 40 acres,” says South African Richard Sithole. “With Bt maize I get 1,000 bags.” He’s also reduced his pesticide use by 50%, tripled his profits and saved 35 days per season working in fields – mostly spraying pesticides by hand.

But environmental activists oppose biotechnology with almost religious passion – and try to blame crop losses, malnutrition and starvation on global warming.

It would be hilarious, if it weren’t so tragic.

These policies are simply not sustainable. The only thing they sustain is poverty, misery, disease and premature death.

I might be more receptive to assertions by journalists, climate activists and Hollywood celebrities if they were willing to “go native” for even one month – and take their families to live in a state-of-the-art mud hut in malaria-infested rural Africa, under the squalid “indigenous” conditions they extol and perpetuate.

I’d be less dismissive of their views, if they were willing to live without electricity or refrigeration … drink the locals’ contaminated water … breathe polluted smoke from their wood and dung fires … endure swarms of diseased mosquitoes … swelter happily under bed nets, trying to sleep when the temperature in the hut is 95 degrees, and inside the bed net it’s 105 …

And do it all with no bug sprays, pesticides or anti-malaria pills – and prepared to walk 20 miles to the nearest clinic, carrying their sick or dying child with them, when they’re inevitably afflicted with the agonizing fevers and convulsions of acute malaria.

But so far not one has volunteered to do so. That’s another reason I find it so off-putting to be bombarded by alarmist claims and demands that Americans change their lifestyles, especially when the demands come from people like – John and Teresa Heinz Kerry, who have 5 big homes, 3 SUVs, a yacht and a Gulfstream jet …
Barbra Streisand, who spends $22,000 a year watering her lawn and has 5 houses and a 12,000 square foot air-conditioned barn …

Leonardo DeCaprio, who took a private jet to Washington and hopped a limo to the Mall, so he could give an Earth Day speech about greenhouse gases and global warming … and Robert Kennedy, who vigorously opposes wind turbines off “his” Cape Cod coastline – and wanted CORE to pay him $15,000 to participate in a Martin Luther King Day environmental event two years ago.

People from Third World countries are even more offended than I am. As Kenya’s James Shikwati puts it: “Who gave radical environmentalists the right to make choices for Africa’s poor?”
Thankfully, there’s a better way.

The world’s poor don’t need a precautionary principle that protects affluent Americans and Europeans from theoretical or exaggerated risks. They need one that safeguards poor families from the real, immediate, life-threatening risks that confront them every day.

The world’s poor don’t need sustainable development. They need sustained development, and a chance to take what Rabbi Daniel Lapin calls “their rightful place among the Earth’s prosperous people.”

To reach that point, they and we need to abandon the misguided Kyoto Protocol – with its high costs, draconian demands, bureaucratic controls over every facet of our lives, and illusory environmental benefits.
They need to replace the Kyoto treaty with something that will work – something like the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

This forward-thinking approach has already been adopted by Australia, China, India, South Korea, Japan and the United States.

It doesn’t just focus on nations that historically HAVE BEEN the biggest polluters but are now cleaner, healthier, richer and thus able to afford state-of-the-art technology and tougher pollution controls. It also focuses on countries that WILL SOON BECOME the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.

The Partnership emphasizes research and development, innovation, international cooperation and vibrant free markets. It recognizes that humans are not just consumers and polluters, but visionaries, creators and caretakers.

The Asia-Pacific Partnership addresses concerns about our climate and environment by promoting economic development, prosperity, and thus investment in the design and implementation of better, cleaner, more efficient technologies.

It seeks to generate human and technological progress in this century that is every bit as wondrous as what we saw during the twentieth century – when we went from wood and coal, horses and buggies, open sewers and a life expectancy of 45 or 50 years … to the amazing technologies and living standards we see today.

Most important, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate seeks to make those new technologies available to poor developing nations.

In so doing, developed countries will help the world’s poor reduce their reliance on wood and dung, cut pollution, improve their health, and protect wildlife habitats. Their economies will grow, and they will be better able to avert and cope with natural disasters, as greater wealth brings stronger buildings, and better medical, transportation and early warning systems.

The world’s poor will have greater opportunity and hope, more reason to cooperate, less reason to fight and kill each other over land, water, energy and mineral resources that are made ever more scarce by misguided policies that prevent resource development.

This, in my view, is the kind of ethics, prudence, compassion and wise stewardship that God has commanded – and that our public policies ought to reflect.

Thank you.

 

Featured Image Courtesy of Vichaya Kiatying Angsulee/Freedigitalphotos.net