The clash between President Donald Trump (aged 73) and Prophetess Greta Thunberg (aged 17) at Davos symbolises the silliness of our age.
The setting was perfect for such folly: an exclusive meeting of the rich and famous in a staggeringly expensive Swiss resort where the world’s elite gather every year to speak pompous nonsense. I’m impressed that President Ramaphosa and Prime Minister Johnson chose not to go. Good for them.
Trump and Thunberg chose to go. Trump probably used the occasion to deliver an early election campaign speech, and as a diversion from the absurd impeachment process – which Democrat leaders regard as ‘sad, solemn, sober, serious and sombre’ when the TV cameras are on, and with smiling delight when they are off. Thunberg used it to enhance her fame and importance.
The two have much in common. Both are rich and arrogant, and both love the limelight. (In Thunberg’s case, you can blame her egotism on her youth; most teenagers long for fame.) Both come from successful countries that are prosperous because of capitalism, high growth and fossil fuels. Sweden’s wealth is based on efficient capitalist companies and the fact that she successfully used coal and oil to develop her economy (which now includes fine nuclear power stations). Both are ignorant about climate science.
In Trump’s case, he has some very good science advisors but doesn’t listen to them. Dr William Happer, who worked briefly for Trump’s administration but has now left, could have told Trump that CO2 is a wonderful, life-giving gas whose rise is doing nothing but good, and is greening the planet. (There is a good interview with Happer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHCCE-sw_Sc.) Instead Trump relies on instincts, but in this case his instincts are correct: rising CO2 is not causing dangerous climate change.
Most of Trump’s speech was a boast about how well the United States is doing under his presidency. He also boasted about his good relations with other world leaders. In words that surely came from him and not his speech writers, he said of President Xi-Jinping, ‘He’s for China, I’m for America, but apart from that we love each other.’ His closing remarks about the healthy state of the environment and the reasons for optimism were all true, and well chosen. He made a pointed remark about how his administration was going to improve the management of trees and forests. It was apt and topical.
Both California and Australia have recently experienced very damaging forest/bush fires. In both cases, the blame must be on bad forest management and not on ‘climate change’. Australia has had worse bush fires in the past, such as the 1939 fire in Victoria, which killed 71 people. She has also had hotter weather in the past. But this latest fire was tragic enough and largely unnecessary. It could have been prevented by proper forest/bush management: controlled burns, clearing old wood, providing access roads and in general reducing the massive fuel load that caused so much destruction when the inevitable spark occurred. The greens refused these measures – and now blame ‘climate change’!
Greta Thunberg is being used (willingly) by the gigantic financial and ideological interests who make lots of money by promoting climate alarm. She has been indoctrinated by bogus ‘scientists’ who feed her the nonsense that we must stop CO2 emissions. Where Trump benefits by optimism, she benefits by pessimism. She would never have gained fame if she had left school and announced that the last decade was the best one for human welfare in the history of mankind.
There is a very dangerous side to Thunberg’s attacks on economic growth and her appeals to forsake fossil fuels. Europe and America are rich and clean thanks to fossil fuels. Africa is poor and hungry and suffering environmental degradation because of the lack of clean, safe, cheap energy, which fossil fuels can best bring. Because they don’t have electricity (from coal power stations, say), poor Africans chop down forests for charcoal or firewood. (Solar and wind are just expensive, useless luxuries for Africa.) Because they don’t have modern agriculture, they kill wildlife for food or to stop it eating their pitiful subsistence crops. Greta Thunberg, unknowingly I’m sure, is campaigning to keep them in poverty. Trump’s policies could lift them out of poverty while protecting their environment.
Down the ages, pessimism has always had wide appeal and those who predict disaster are always going to make more headlines than those who predict happiness. Trump, who is often wrong, was quite right when he said at Davos: ‘To embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse.’
Where problems are real, we must admit to them and try to overcome them. But when they are not real, we must brush them aside. Dangerous man-made climate change is not a real problem. Let’s concentrate on real problems, and in South Africa we’ve got enough of those.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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