By Steve Levy
Hey, Bill Gates, welcome back to the world of sanity and common sense.
We’re very happy to see that you have reversed your previous hysterical position that climate change was an existential threat that was going to lead to worldwide catastrophe within the next decade.
We can’t forget U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Astoria) claiming that the world was going to end in 12 years if we didn’t spend trillions of dollars to reverse the tides.
Dire predictions came from self-interested advocates, such as Al Gore, who, in his 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth, predicted that, by now, London would be underwater, and the polar ice caps would have melted.
We heard from so-called national experts who were so confident that the ice caps at a Montana national park would be melted by 2020 that they made such a proclamation on a sign posted at the foothills of the mountains back in 2005. They embarrassingly had to remove the sign when, in fact, a quick look showed that the ice caps were still there.
Then there were the so-called experts who predicted that the Great Barrier Reef was going to disappear by now. But the reality is that the reef is actually growing.
Then there were those who said that climate deaths were going to be off the charts when, in fact, the number of climate-related deaths today are 90% lower than they were 100 years ago.
There are many reasons why Gates and his fellow travelers, such as Greta Thunberg, Al Gore, John Kerry, the UN Secretary General, 95% of academia and three-fourths of the Democratic party and their friends in the media hyped up this hysterical claim that we were all going to die due to changing temperatures.
The biggest reason for the hysterical exaggerations is the power that it brings those who claim to be the saviors.
Global elitists loved to tell the unwashed populace that they were about to die so that they, the elites, could jump in to save the day.
There are only two things that the elites ask in return from the public. The first is to allow the elites to take trillions of dollars in revenue out of the pockets of the average folks, and secondly, to allow the elites to tell the unwashed what products they can buy, what car they can drive, what temperature they can keep their thermostat at, etc.
Ultimately, by scaring the public to death, the Democratic party and the elites were able to justify raising trillions in new taxes that could then be dolled out to their favorite nonprofit groups, otherwise known as non-government groups (NGOs), to help save the world.
There’s only one problem with those expenditures. They did nothing to curb the world’s carbon levels. In fact, since this hysteria kicked in a decade ago, carbon emissions worldwide continue to climb while the cost to provide basic energy needs for the average person has soared and the NGOs and their board members grew richer and richer.
So, it’s been a double whammy — way higher electric rates leading to a lower standard of living, without accomplishing a darn thing to avoid a rise in temperatures.
The idea of saving the world is what motivated egotists such as Gore, Kerry and Gates. Gore and Kerry didn’t want their obituaries to lead with their presidential campaign losses. They wanted to be cited as humanitarians who literally saved the world from destruction.
Mega billionaires such as Gates have a guilty streak for hoarding more money than some countries’ GDPs. Appearing to be out there saving the world deflects the ire of the “blame the rich” Marxists over to the other billionaires who allegedly aren’t as caring. (It’s the “eat me last” concept.
So thanks, Mr. Gates, for finally coming to the realization that the trillions that we squandered to unsuccessfully cool the planet in an attempt to save the world could have been more strategically placed into practical items, such as better sanitation, healthcare and water access for billions of impoverished people around the world.
This is something conservative, and even some rational environmentalists, such as Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus, have been saying for years.
This is not to say global warming is a hoax. The world temperatures are indeed going up and it’s logical to suggest that it’s related to industrialization and particulates accumulating in the atmosphere. But it’s ridiculous to suggest that we’re all going to die in 10 years or that we should bankrupt western democracies to pretend to fix the problem, while the problem gets worse because our geopolitical enemies in China continue to pollute unabated with no economic consequences.
The warming is real, but it’s not all negative. We’ve had record food harvesting over the last several years. Higher temperatures can be countered with more air conditioning in these developing areas. Fewer people are dying from cold weather, which usually kills far more people than hot weather.
It is good that we’re recognizing that the climate is changing and that we should address it. But perhaps we’re finally gathering some sanity to understand that we can do this successfully over decades, not simply a few years. We will need to continue using fossil fuels (especially cleaner natural gas) in the short term as a bridge to clean alternatives as they become more productive.
We don’t need to stop growing. We need a Manhattan Project endeavor to develop alternative energy that is affordable and generates enough power to keep the lights on.
So Mr. Gates, welcome back to the side that cherishes sanity and practicality over emotion. Just wish you could have gotten here before you lent your support and credibility to the hysterical self-serving extremists who unnecessarily placed huge burdens on the poor and working-class people around the world.