Links tagged “development”

Bjorn Lomborg: In the 1920s, almost half a million people were killed by climate-related disasters. In 2021, it was less than 7,000 people. Climate-related disasters kill 99% fewer people than 100 years earlier. ... 

Astonishingly, the UN is misusing data, and its approach has been repeatedly shown to be wrong. Its finding makes for great headlines—but it just isn’t grounded in evidence. When the UN analyzed the number of disaster events, it made a basic error—and one that I’ve called it out for making before: It basically counted all the catastrophes recorded by the most respected international disaster database, showed that they were increasing, and then suggested that the planet must be doomed. The problem is that the documentation of all types of disasters in the 1970s was far patchier than it is today, when anyone with a cellphone can immediately share news of a storm or flood from halfway around the world. That’s why the disaster database’s own experts explicitly warn amateurs not to conclude that an increase in registered disasters equates to more disasters in reality. Reaching such a conclusion “would be incorrect” because the increase really just shows improvements in recording.

"Recycling is a complicated process and is not a sustainable solution to the skyrocketing amount of plastics being made." ... Plastic recycling is far less successful than recycling of other materials. Paper recycling rates are around 66% as of 2020. Glass recycling rates are just over 30%, and cardboard recycling dipped slightly in 2020 to 88.8%."

Robert Bryce: California residential users now pay about 66 percent more for electricity than homeowners in the rest of the U.S. ... The ongoing price hikes are terrible news for low- and middle-income consumers in California, which has the highest poverty rate in the country. At a time of skyrocketing inflation and gasoline prices, many just can't afford to pay; last month, several news outlets reported that more than a quarter of residential customers in San Diego County are behind on their utility payments. 

There's a lesson here for the rest of the United States, not just about how not to run an electric grid, but about who bears the cost of some of the most extreme measures to combat climate change. ... Promoters of renewable energy never tire of claiming that weather-dependent renewables are cheaper than conventional forms of producing electricity. But the ongoing price increases prove those claims are hogwash. ... California should not be attempting to solve the climate change challenge on the backs of the poor.

Marc Morano, a former staffer in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who runs the website Climate Depot, told The Daily Wire that giving billions to the U.N. fund is equivalent to paying leaders of developing nations to keep their citizens poor.

“The U.N. can be expected to give the most money to those leaders of countries willing to keep their citizens locked in backbreaking poverty,” said Morano, author of the book “Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal Is Even Worse Than You Think.” “And forget cheap reliable fossil fuels for the nations in the developing world who need it most, as the U.S. will be imposing only ‘green’ energy on those most in desperate need of energy.”

The socio-economic conditions of energy poverty, which can only be worsened by the forced replacement of fossil fuels with wind and solar, contribute to higher rates of both morbidity and mortality.

Lack of gas for cooking and heating is the major cause of death from indoor air pollution in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) states, “Around 2.6 billion people cook using polluting open fires or simple stoves fueled by kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste).” Around 4 million people among them die annually and many more millions suffer long-lasting illnesses.