Energy Reduction = Wealth Reduction (published in New York Post)

In “Global-Warming Hysteria,” Philip Stott states “The real crisis for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich.”

This is true as far as it goes, but it does not go nearly far enough. As economist George Reisman states in his essay “The Toxicity of Environmentalism,” “Energy use, the productivity of labor, and the standard of living are inseparably connected, with the two last entirely dependent on the first.” In other words, reducing energy use and creating wealth (as well as eliminating poverty) are mutually exclusive aims.

 Taken in historical context, the campaign against “global warming” is part of a larger and more fundamental Environmentalist campaign to throttle energy use altogether, a campaign that has effectively eliminated nuclear power and has now set its sights on fossil fuels. As such, it is a campaign to stop, and then turn back, economic progress, and thus stop, and then turn back, the continuous increase in the health, wealth, and well-being of humanity as a whole. It is a tragedy in the making for the twenty-first century, driven by an anti-human ideology that has the potential to make the death and impoverishment caused by Communism seem quaint in comparison.