Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear- the earth remains, slightly modified…Man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.
-Edward Abbey
The environmentalist movement has a complex and long history. Thomas Malthus wrote a book in 1798 called ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’. 170 years later, Paul Ehrlich would echo Malthus thesis in his book “The Population Bomb”. The book predicted “certain” world starvation by 1975 unless world’s population growth was halted. Ehrich’s first statement in the book reads “The battle to feed all of humanity is over”. Over the next few decades similar warnings were given by so called experts:
The earth was running out of oil, natural gas, base metals, etc.
The O-zone is being depleted.
We heard about global cooling, global warming, climate change, etc.
Senator George Mitchell wrote the book “World on Fire” in 1991.
Lowell Ponte wrote the book “The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun?” in 1976.
Since the internet, there has been a decentralization of information on a scale never before seen in the history of mankind. This allows an individual to make a video like the one below for $0.
30 years ago no one knew about the internet. We can forgive Severn Cullis-Suzuki and her parents. She had no way of knowing she would be a laughing stock three decades later. Greta Thunberg and her parents should know better. This video will be on Youtube forever. Just like Paul Ehrlich and Thomas Malthus, I suspect these two will only be remembered for how wrong they got it.
Vladimir Putin had a level headed response to Greta Thunberg:
I may disappoint you but I don’t share the common excitement about the speech by Greta Thunberg. No one has explained to Greta that the modern world is complex and different and … people in Africa or in many Asian countries want to live at the same wealth level as in Sweden. But when someone is using children and teenagers in personal interests, it only deserves to be condemned. I’m sure that Greta is a kind and very sincere girl. But adults must do everything not to bring teenagers and children into some extreme situations.
Climate change is a very complex subject. I know how hard it is to know something. Therefore, when I hear people speak about climate change, I am amazed they do not even realize that they have not done their homework to comment on the subject. Greta Thunberg does not even know the difference between temperature and heat, but she is given a platform to speak at the UN.
The amazing thing is this. No one believes in the disastrous effects of global warming. How do I know this? If the world was ending in 12 years or governments were going to face financial ruin from climate change than 30 year bond markets would get no bid.
The price of real estate along the coast would be collapsing. Instead we see prices getting more expensive as you get closer to the coast. People would not be moving there, banks would not give 30 year loans and insurance companies would not insure these properties.
This is why I take survey polls about global warming with a grain of salt. Watch what people do, not what they say.