U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon admitted Wednesday in a new report that the U.N.’s proposals to curb global warming will cost “up to” $20 trillion.
He also mentions that the transition to a “sustainable energy trajectory” will be hardest on the world’s poor.
Beware when bureaucrats use phrases like “up to” and start showing concern for the disadvantaged. It invariably means the figure they’ve given you is a starting point and they’re itching to use your money for someone else’s benefit, minus a comfortable percentage off the top for expenses.
The entire U.S. economy is about $13 trillion per year. One might think, therefore, after bankrupting a couple of modern industrial countries, the U.N. might have something to show for it.
But that effort would only get part way to the target of lowering greenhouse emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels. Some scientists have estimated that to actually halt warming — halt, not reverse — would require the world to go back to 1920s levels of emissions.
But surely, while we’re reducing emissions, the world’s brains will be taking energy production into the future, right?
There are plans to develop biofuels, windmills and solar energy. In other words, we will drastically raise the price of food while creating less power intermittently.
Common sense also suggests we will greatly lower our standard of living, probably damage our health and generally weaken our ability as a nation to respond to natural disasters or man-made disasters such as, oh I don’t know, a war with crazed terrorists who will be using powerful oil-fueled technologies to kill us.
The U.N. report was issued in preparation for a two-day global warming “debate” planned for February. (Debate meaning participants will debate how much to stick it to the U.S., not debate the dubious science behind global warming panic.)
A key point of the “debate” will be how to replace the Kyoto Protocols with tougher, nonvoluntary policies. This is what’s known as a power play.
Both the Democrats and Republicans have jumped on the Algorite train, so when we get a new president next year, look for the U.N. to try to assert authority over the United States, with global warming as the pretext. The more successful that effort is, the more we are going to see our rights and lifestyle disappear, regardless of what happens with the climate.
There is no shortage of vultures waiting to feed on the carcass of the Industrial Revolution. Where is the leader who will protect human liberty and lead us into the future?
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