Official: it’s the money, not the environment

Ottmar Edenhofer

From the Global Warming Policy Foundation comes news of an interview that should sweep the world, finally destroy the credibility of the tireless seekers for truth in the ponderous committees of the IPCC and confirm forever the transmogrification of the great climate change prevention movement into the “economic-justice-for-every-corner-of-the-earth-for-their-own-good-socialist-expansion-brigade”.

This interview contains the sinister confession from a senior IPCC official that climate policy has almost nothing to do any more with environmental protection. He also passes on the alarming information that the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economic conference during which the redistribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.

It’s quite amazing what can happen to our future plans when we’re not consulted about them. Who is this man?

Ottmar Edenhofer is Professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University Berlin. He is also Co-Chair of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC which won the Nobel Peace Price in 2007. Ottmar Edenhofer is deputy-director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He has been a Lead Author for the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC since 2004.

In an interview with Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 14 November 2010 (reported by the Global Warming Policy Foundation), the erudite Professor Edenhofer said:

First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy any more, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

This is the nub of the “watermelon” philosophy, much mentioned by our beloved Dellers (James Delingpole, he who is right about everything). The environmental movement is teeming with these ex-communists or their natural sympathisers who have latched on to everything green as providing the outlet they crave for saving the world with. If you can save it with an outlet.

So through all their schemes runs the familiar thread of “make everything the same”. Nobody should stand out. Large incomes are an affront to the lifestyles of the poor and unknown. Trust us, we will take your excess wealth, give it to others and make you happy.

But at the outset of the interview Edenhofer gives an honest analysis. First, he sets out the problem:

So far economic growth has gone hand in hand with the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. One percent growth means one percent more emissions. The historic memory of mankind remembers: In order to get rich one has to burn coal, oil or gas and therefore the emerging economies fear CO2 emission limits.

And to drive home the importance of hydrocarbons:

But the industrialised countries, particularly, have a system that relies almost exclusively on fossil fuels. There is no historical precedent and no region in the world that has decoupled its economic growth from emissions. Thus, you cannot expect that India or China will regard CO2 emissions reductions as a great idea.

Got the idea? We can’t do without them. But:

That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there.

Now he enlightens us; now we can stop our petty anxieties about the climate:

Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet – and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the two-degree target.

Not a word about the pain we must suffer in losing what he shows quite clearly at the outset we cannot do without. Not a word about the destruction of our productive capacity. Not a word, in a word, about the failure of our modern society to be modern. That’s an important thing to neglect. I mean it’s too important a thing to neglect. But that’s too big a thought to think.

But go and read the interview, there’s a lot more, some of it oddly out of phase. Snippets:

The people here in Europe have the grotesque idea that shopping in the bio food store or electric cars will solve the problem.

There must be penalties and incentives: global CO2 tariffs and technology transfer.

I would accept responsibility for the period since 1995 because we know since then, what is causing the greenhouse effect. To extend the responsibility to the industrial revolution is not ethically justified.

It’s a shame. Since the science arguments for man-made global warming are all but destroyed, it’s been tempting to think the fight might be over.

But with nut-cases like this running the UN and the IPCC, no matter how well-meaning, we cannot take our eyes off them for a moment.

Am I right or am I left?

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7 Thoughts on “Official: it’s the money, not the environment

  1. Scary, isn’t it! But at least their agenda is now out on the table and in plain sight where we can see that it has nothing to do with ‘saving the world’ or anything remotely connected with the atmosphere or warming. It is Marxism, simple and evil, which failed wherever it was tried and whoever it was tried on, but like a vampire, keeps getting up from its grave eager to suck all the money from us evil industrial-economy Westerners and ‘redistribute’ that money to people like their noble ‘Marxist freedom fighter’ Mugabe and his fellow thugs who have impoverished their own nations while enriching themselves.
    And does the average journo working in the MSM do anything to reveal this calumny – nah, too lazy, too keen on a quiet and well-rewarded job; there’s all this stuff for cutting and pasting that keeps on arriving from Greenpeace, WWF and other alarmist purveyors of junk science. Nah, its probly more than me job’s worth to think.
    ‘Jobsworth’ is right!

  2. Andy on 23/11/2010 at 10:17 am said:

    Rich west?

    EMU and EU “close to collapse”, according to a commentator on Radio NZ this morning.

    The UN had better get in quick while there is still a functioning world economy left.

  3. Richard C (NZ) on 23/11/2010 at 10:30 am said:

    Genuine environmentalists should realize now that this is diverting resources from real pollution mitigation efforts.

    Also I recommend subscribing to this blog via Google Reader rss comments feed above. 20 comments in expanded view, 60 in list view – brilliant, opens comment in new tab.

    (Similar comment in spam queue so maybe this will go through)

  4. Richard C (NZ) on 23/11/2010 at 12:01 pm said:

    It is clear now, that climatologists using the sub-standard science of AGW were merely useful idiots to the totalitarian cause except for the likes of James Hansen et al that know full well the big pseudo-green world governance picture.

    When we look at the most thorough AGW debunkings at the core of the issue (radiation) we find physicists i.e. people who know a great deal more about radiation than climatologists.

    The engineers from Lockheed’s Advanced Design and Skunk Works new a bit about physics and it was they that produced the F-117 Stealth Fighter working with these concepts:-

    * Diffraction
    * Radar absorption
    * traveling waves; surface propagation and re-radiation
    * multiple scattering and diffusion

    http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Stealth

    http://www.f117reunion.org/f117_history.htm

    So how do climatologists deal with radiation “scattering” for example? They don’t. The T&F energy budget portrays energy in it’s various forms as nice clean vectors with arrowheads but radiation does not behave like that in the real world.

    A stealth fighter designed by climatologists using the science of AGW would look like a blimp.

    But now there’s no point debunking AGW science anymore because the truth has been exposed to plain view. It’s not about science or physics or environmental concerns; that charade was merely a vehicle for UN Agenda 21, globally centralized control, socialist wealth re-distribution and de-industrialization of advanced economies. Carbon, innocent of any wrong doing, is the Trojan horse.

    Anyone now under any delusion that reducing carbon footprints is environmentally altruistic really needs to take a long hard look at the totalitarian aspirations of the CAGW promoters now that we finally get some truth from Professor Dr Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and senior IPCC official.

    It is no coincidence that this man is a German. History shows us the mindset of many of his countrymen and now “climate science deniers” are the new Jews that must be branded and exterminated (we have proof for anyone wishing to question this statement).

  5. Pingback: Climate Conversation Group » Resistance to climate scam thriving

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