Environmentalism Exasperating Poverty: Current policies against global warming are generating higher energy costs hurting the poorest in particular. An article by Bjørn Lomborg, published in Nacion, notes that Energy generation using solar and wind power received $6o billion in grants in 2012 alone. This means that the world spent $60 billion more on energy than was necessary. And as the climate benefit achieved amounted to a mere $1.4 billion, this means basically that $58.6 billion of the subsidies was wasted. In addition, a further $19 billion in subsidies was spent on biofuels which basically provide no climate benefit. All that money could have been used to improve health care, hire more teachers, make better roads or reduce taxes. ... The weight of these policies falls squarely on the worlds poor as it is easy for the rich to pay more for the energy they consume. Im always surprised to see well-meaning environmentalists,who are well off economically say, with complete confidence, gas prices need to be doubled or demand that all electricity be generated from costly green sources. In Central America there is a noticeable distortion generated by some uncompromising environmentalist policies, such as not using the geothermal potential of the Costa Rican subsurface areas declared as national parks, when the involvement in terms of atmosphere if that resource were exploited would be minimal. ... The worst part of the cost of climate policies is the burden on developing countries, where three billion people lack access to sources of cheap and abundant energy, perpetuating their poverty. In order to cook and keep warm they have to burn twigs and dung, producing a level of indoor air pollution that causes 3.5 million deaths a year. This is by far the biggest environmental problem in the world Source: Nacion
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 19:47:43 +0000
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