Links tagged “development”

Secretary Yellen speaks to viliagers in Chongwe, Zambia. Photo: Hans Nichols/Axios

UK Guardian: "The US’s transition to electric vehicles could require three times as much lithium as is currently produced for the entire global market, causing needless water shortages, Indigenous land grabs, and ecosystem destruction inside and outside its borders, new research finds. It warns that unless the US’s dependence on cars in towns and cities falls drastically, the transition to lithium battery-powered electric vehicles by 2050 will deepen global environmental and social inequalities linked to mining – and may even jeopardize the 1.5C global heating target."

Edward Ring: "Environmentalism, which once challenged corporate power, is now its useful puppet." "Transitioned to the point where today it serves as a front for plutocrats, relying on a big lie to sustain its momentum." ... "The essence of environmentalism today is to control and ration the energy supply on which human civilization depends. Since every amenity of civilization uses energy, this control and rationing extends to every human activity. It is a recipe for total control over every individual, every business, and every nation in the world."

"In the name of protecting the environment and fighting climate change, California has declared war on its own people. The state’s policymakers have neglected a once remarkable water infrastructure and as a result, millions of acres of the most productive farmland on earth are being turned into a dust bowl, driving thousands of farm operations out of business and destroying the livelihoods that sustained millions of people. They have reduced the timber industry to less than one-quarter the size it was as recently as the 1990s. They have declared war on oil and gas, banning most new drilling and tightening restrictions on existing wells." ... 'The push for energy efficiency at the expense of health or affordability." ... "There is no economic activity, anywhere, that doesn’t create greenhouse gas. Make it impossible for all but the wealthiest corporations to comply with the new edicts, and you roll up the world."

"Climate alarmism is tyranny with green wrapping, delivered with terror."

JOURNAL ARTICLE: Energy Saving May Kill: Evidence from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

"After the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, Japan gradually shut down all of its nuclear power plants, causing a countrywide power shortage...The government paid particular attention to reducing the usage of air conditioning because it is the largest contributor to residential electricity consumption in Japan."

Co-author Guojun He, the director of research at EPIC-China and an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong. “But climate change is already upon us and encouraging less use of air conditioning or other means of adapting to extreme temperatures can kill people living right now."

Jesse Watters Primetime - Fox News Channel - Broadcast January 16, 2023

Morano: "Wokeism has invaded their lives and propagandized them on climate change. We have kids out there who believe that you need to defund the police or abolish the police -- that those issues are one of the causes of climate change. Kids are being told by professors -- one at the University of Rhode Island -- that the scientific data is racist. They're being told by NASA scientists that white supremacy is the cause of climate change. These kids aren't being taught how to think anymore. They're being taught to be afraid, and they're being propagandized to be climate activists. And that's what even Leonardo DiCaprio is on record saying. 'We have to get kids young' to turn them into these climate activists who will then sue the government for not ensuring they have a safe climate." ...

"If you are worried that there is a climate emergency, which these kids are, the way to solve it is the exact opposite of the climate agenda or Green New Deal. It's wealth, technology, and innovation. That is the way forward."

Tendayi Achiume, who’s finishing up her tenure as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, told The Guardian that “green solutions […] are being implemented at the expense of racially and ethnically marginalised groups and Indigenous peoples.”

"The rush towards sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels, including electric cars and renewable energy, was creating what Achiume described as 'green sacrifice zones', where already marginalised groups were exposed to environmental harms from the extraction of the very minerals needed for green tech."

Rich countries have committed to increase international aid for biodiversity to $20bn annually by 2025, rising to $30bn by 2030, so as to help countries in the Global South with their efforts to conserve the world's remaining biodiversity 'hotspots', which are largely clustered in developing economies.