Official: it’s the money, not the environment

Professor Dr Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and senior IPCC official, is using the global warming scare to engineer a radical, socialist-inspired redistribution of wealth from the rich west to the poor other places; this man has his hands on your world.

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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