Dr. Jay Lehr
cfact.org
CFACT Senior Science Analyst Jay Lehr has authored more than 1,000 magazine and journal articles and 36 books. Jay’s new book A Hitchhikers Journey Through Climate Change written with Teri Ciccone is now available on Kindle and Amazon.
Shakespeare said it in the play, Julius Cesar. We are surely witnessing this today as evil men and women will pass off our planet, leaving behind hundreds of millions of the Earth’s population in Energy Poverty. The essential value of energy is to allow humans to flourish (1) and enrich their quality of life by multiplying what their limited human abilities can perform independently. However, in this early period of the 21st century, our “designated experts” seized control of the reigns of progress for marching humanity back into the dark ages, ages of dogma, ages of short life expectancy, and gruelling manual work needed to feed their families.
Why and who are these purveyors of darkness? I will name, but a few, and you can add to my short list of these human juggernauts that the poor across the world can only call evil. These experts of the day routinely call for fossil fuel elimination while ignoring the many undeniable benefits for humanity. This is an egregious, irrational, and ennoble evaluation.
In my lifetime, the prime scientist abuser of mankind was and still is Paul Ehrlick, a Stanford-trained award-winning ecologist spending his career teaching that man is a cancer on the planet. His close associate John Holdren had for us the displeasure of serving as Obama’s science director to ensure that no good science would be carried out in his administration,
James Hansen of NASA ultimately caused near bankruptcy of many nations when he stood before the US Congress in 1988 and professed to be 99 per cent certain that humanity was heating our planet to a degree we may not survive.
None is more famous than Al Gore, whose book An Inconvenient Truth established his evil leadership that made the former vice-president a very rich man.
Bill McKibben led the public march to ignorance with his book The End of Nature which was able to bring corporate America closer to economic suicide.
Michael Mann, an academic climate scientist who led the worst people, suing everyone who stood in his way.
And then there is Amory Lovins, who led the charge against fossil fuel, to be replaced by undependable wind and solar power for over 40 years. There is money and power in the positions these people hold without a care for the negative impact on the human conditions.
The strong correlations we see between energy, quality of life and life expectancy have brought India and China a dramatic increase in their standards of living. Not only in China and India but hundreds of millions of people in developing industrial countries are enjoying their first light bulb, refrigerator, clean drinking water and a full stomach. Yet almost every elected official in Washington appears to believe what the press has said over and over for almost half a century. Our government school system failed to teach our children serious science and critical thinking. There is a saying that if you tell a person a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
Billions of people are suffering, and millions are dying due to lack of cost-effective energy while today’s leaders build a dogmatic system calling for fossil fuel elimination. Instead of acknowledging the unique cost-effectiveness of fossil fuels today, these cruel leaders, like the mainstream media, deny the realities of alternatives today claiming petroleum is running out and that China has made a successful conversion away from fossil fuels. All lies. Insisting fossil fuels can easily be replaced by their green energy. Yet the reality is that less than 3% of world’s energy use comes from wind and solar.
Their malevolence worsens when we recognize that their opposition to carbon dioxide emissions does not bring them to support emission-free nuclear power. They imposed onerous regulations, project delays, and lawsuits to cripple further expansion of nuclear power in the US.
There is more large-scale hydroelectric power that could not be greener and more renewable. But again, they stop further development for fear a fish habitat might be affected somehow, someday. How can we not question their evil intent?
Yet they are not effectively building the mining sites and transmission lines for wind, were a conversion actually to take place. They don’t care, they want to bring the nation’s citizenry to its knees, begging for what little energy is left.
People who ignore the many benefits of cost-effective energy to the point that it they can always find a reason to oppose it and ignore energy expertise are dangerous for the terrible decisions that result.
Alex Epstein said it best in his new book Fossil Future:
“Once we see that the knowledge system telling us this conclusion also supports energy elimination polices not just for fossil fuels but also for non CO2-emitting nuclear and hydro-while being indifferent to the “green tyranny” to its supposedly beloved solar and wind, and with no concern for the billions who lack cost effective energy and the billions who could lose it? It is clear that what we are told is not just wrong. It is in fact EVIL. So, join our cause, learn the facts, gain the knowledge, and lose the fear.”
Note 1- Human Flourishing is defined as an effort to achieve self-actualization and fulfillment within the context of a larger community of individuals, each with the right to pursue his or her such efforts.
Note 2: Portions of this article were excerpted from the book FOSSIL FUTURE: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas-Not Less, with permission of the author Alex Epstein and the publisher Portfolio/Penquin. I strongly recommend this book to everyone fighting for the preservation of life in America which has been made possible by our abundance of fossil fuels before the leftist, liberal, progressives and yes communists have attempted to limit the well being of human-kind.
