United Nations bureaucrats are much like our local civil servants. They are allowed to create all kinds of goofy policies including climate change, hoist them on us ordinary people and not pay any price when such policies damage people’s livelihoods.
The high priests of environmental conservation think that the mere act of talking endlessly about climate and green energy makes them morally superior. So if you question their climate fear mongering antics and the viability of so called green solutions, they label you a denier. These are highly sanctimonious people who revel in asking us the great unwashed, to learn to follow science apparently because that is what guides them. However when it comes to climate change, the science is now made to follow the politically driven agenda. If this were a scientific issue as we are often told it is, then technology should decide greenhouse emission targets but instead we have politicians and rabid environmentalists overseeing that process. It is getting to be totalitarianism and tolerance on steroids.
However it is not all doom and gloom. It looks as though we have pockets of international leaders who are prepared to stand their ground and do the right things for their economies. News coming of Australia this week, is that their Resources Minister, Keith Pitt, driven by the imperative to keep his economy internationally competitive and thereby preserve jobs, put the United Nations Adviser on climate change, Selwin Hart, in his place. He stated that the Australian government was in no hurry to abandon coal and those who mine it. In a direct swipe at UN types such as Hart , he said the following regarding coal “The future of this crucial industry will be decided by the Australian Government, not a foreign body that wants to shut it down costing thousands of jobs and billions of export dollars for our economy,”
This was after Selwin Hart, the UN climate change czar, called on Australia to fast track efforts to eliminate coal by 2030 lest it damages the economy. As proof that these UN bureaucrats indeed live in their own little universe and not the real world, they have urged OECD member states including Australia to phase out coal by 2030. That is nine years from now! How they expect Australia to phase out coal in nine years falls in the realm of fantasy.
The UN climate change czar was also pretty dismissive of concerns about job losses because the Australia’s coal industry employs only 2 % of the work force. The biggest trouble with that line of thinking is that 2% in absolute numbers is a big deal. It is about 50 000 jobs and an additional 120 000 indirect jobs. And according to a statement issued by Keith Pitt’s office, between May and July this year, Australia’s coal exports soared by 26% to reach $9.3 billion. Make that approximately P 102 billion and you begin to see that we are talking about real money in the real world.
This boldness by Australian government in bucking the environmental trend is instructive for Botswana and its coal reserves. Do we given in to coal phobia and douse job creation prospects or stand resolute like Pitt and his current boss Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The latter once had environmentalists losing their minds when he brought a piece of coal to parliament and touted the opposition benches saying: “This is coal. Don’t be afraid! Don’t be scared! Won’t hurt you. Won’t hurt you,” In a similar vein coal won’t hurt us in Botswana. We have a duty to produce affordable energy and create jobs. China, India and Indonesia for example, are surging ahead with coal production. China produces 50% of the world’s annual production, followed by India at 10% and Indonesia at 7 %.
The UN is not going to help us in the production of affordable energy. They are ideologically wedded to unaffordable renewables. It is their sacrament.
