The $16 Trillion Climate Tab — And The Poor Got Left In The Dark

Environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg recently calculated that across the globe, governments have spent at least $16 trillion feeding the climate change industrial complex. [some emphasis, links added]

And for what?

Arguably, not a single life has been or will be saved by this shameful and colossal misallocation of human resources.

The war on safe and abundant fossil fuels has cost countless lives in poor countries and made those countries poorer by blocking affordable energy.

Since the global warming crusade started some 30 years ago, the temperature of the planet has not been altered by one-tenth of a degree — as even the alarmists will admit.

In other words, $16 trillion has been spent — a lot of people got very, very rich off the government largesse — but there is not a penny of measurable payoff.

But it’s much worse than that. In economics, there is a concept called opportunity cost: What could we have done with $16 trillion to make the world better off?

What if the $16 trillion had been spent on clean water for poor countries? Preventing avoidable deaths from diseases like malaria? Building schools in African villages to end illiteracy? Bringing reliable and affordable electric power to the more than 1 billion people who still lack access? Curing cancer?

Many millions of lives could have been saved.

We could have lifted millions more out of poverty. The benefits of speeding up the race for a cure for cancer could have added tens of millions of additional years of life, with an economic value in the tens of trillions of dollars.

Instead, we effectively poured $16 trillion down the drain.

For this reason, it is important that we identify the green “climate change” derangement syndrome as perhaps the most inhumane political movement in history.

Read rest at Epoch Times