As US President Barack Obama tries to green the US by slapping limits on carbon emissions, Congress on Wednesday was told to ignore his plan because climate change does not exist.
“The right response to the non-problem of global warming is to have the courage to do nothing,” said British aristocrat Lord Christopher Walter Monckton, a leading proponent of the “climate change is myth” movement.
The Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley argued before the Energy and Environment Subcommittee that for 14 years, contrary to broadly accepted scientific beliefs, “there has been no statistically significant global warming.”
The House hearing, titled “Adaptation Policies in Climate Legislation,” discussed ways to address Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal in his US$3.55 trillion budget plan, presented to Congress last month.
Obama’s proposal would limit emissions of greenhouse gases for manufacturers, and permit companies to trade the right to pollute to other firms — a similar cap-and-trade system to the European model.
The moves are now subject of intense political opposition in Congress, notably from lawmakers representing US states heavily invested in energy production through fossil fuels.
“Adaptation is at present unnecessary,” said Lord Monckton at the hearing. “Mitigation is always unnecessary. It is also disproportionately expensive.”
Addressing the hearing on the “balanced Biblical view” for environment and development issues, Pastor Calvin Beisner — national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance, a coalition of clergy, theologians and religious leaders — questioned proposed efforts to combat climate change.
“I am convinced that policies meant to reduce alleged carbon dioxide-induced global warming will be destructive,” he said.
“The Biblical world view sees Earth and its ecosystems as the effect of a wise God’s creation and ... therefore robust, resilient, and self regulating, like the product of any good engineer,” Beisner said.
Beisner argued that policies to reduce carbon emissions would destroy jobs and be prohibitively expensive.
“The truth is that no alternative fuels can compete at present with fossil fuels for price,” he said.
Congressman Joe Barton, from Texas, said that “mankind always adapts,” and that “adaptation to shifts in temperature is not that difficult.”
Facing down the non-believers, an array of government agency representatives and environmental organizations described the mounting threats to humanity from devastating climate change.
Tom Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stressed mitigation would not suffice.
“While increased mitigation measures will likely reduce the need for future adaptation, the United States and the world will continue to experience changing climate conditions and resulting impacts,” he said.
President of National Wildlife Federation, Larry Schweiger, urged lawmakers to back moves to tackle climate change, telling them that the US “must invest now in safeguarding the natural world from the inevitable impacts of global warming.”
Recalling the report from the Nobel Prize-winning UN intergovernmental panel on climate change, Schweiger warned that due to cataclysmic climate change, “in the lifetime of a child born today, 20 to 30 percent of the world’s plant and animal species will be on the brink of extinction, if we don’t take action now.”
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS