Or continue to let the world’s elites set policies that lead to poverty and murder?
President Trump withdrew the United States from 66 international organizations, arguing that they were wasteful and a threat to American sovereignty, freedom, and prosperity. The most important is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is the basis of treaties and policies for the “climate crisis.”
He also withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, vetoed the United States’ participation in the 2025 COP30 climate change conference, and reversed several costly regulations based on claims of a “climate crisis.”
Dozens of banks have withdrawn from the Net Zero Banking Alliance. At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, climate action, renewable energy and sustainable development received little attention from the wealthy politicians, businesses and financial elites who attend the WEF.
(However, it is quite possible that the WEF is simply going into stealth mode and using its concept of “financialization of nature” to “treat ecosystems as assets” and dollarize them, setting the stage for the “international community” or the United Nations to replace local, state, and national decision-making on development.)
Bill Gates now says climate change is not a crisis and the world should focus on improving the livelihoods, health care and living standards of the poorest people, especially on ensuring they have the abundant, reliable and affordable energy that only coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear can provide.
Despite these trends, Western Europe continues to commit economic suicide. More precisely, its elites are committing economic and practical murder against the poor and working class.
But at the same time, China, India, Indonesia, and other recently impoverished developing countries are increasing their use of fossil fuels to lift millions or even billions of people out of poverty, disease, and despair. Countries in Africa and elsewhere are eager to follow suit, telling the West to reverse its climate change scolding.
Winter Storm Fern caused dozens of deaths across the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people were without power for hours or days. The main cause was ice breaking on power lines during several days of extremely cold weather.
Yet nearly 750 million people in poor countries still lack access to electricity each year, including 600 million in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Billions more have minimal and sporadic access. They survive permanent or rolling power outages.
Not just dozens, but millions of people die each year. This is due to indoor air pollution from having to burn wood, charcoal, grass, and feces because there is no natural gas, propane, or electricity for cooking or heating. They lack electricity, water treatment, and refrigeration, which can introduce bacteria and parasites into their water and food. Substandard clinics and hospitals lack electricity, clean water, adequate vaccines and antibiotics, and even window screens, causing malaria and other diseases.
In short, we are being robbed of energy, sound governance, a vibrant economy, and jobs. And instead of meeting needs, global attention is focused on the “climate crisis” and “eliminating the world of fossil fuels.”
Equally abhorrent is that traditional news media, academia, and “human rights advocates” largely ignore these basic needs while constantly bashing the United States, Israel, and Western culture.
So do the world’s financial institutions, including the World Bank and various multilateral development banks such as the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and even the African Development Bank.
These remind me of St. Augustine. Embrace and encourage development. However, there aren’t many of them yet, and they don’t use fossil fuels. In fact, most of them still refuse to fund only wind, solar, and other “renewable energy” projects. With their self-righteous morality and faux concern for human suffering, they impose carbon colonialism, poverty, disease, and death on poor families.
In 2015, President Obama launched the Power Africa Initiative, telling African audiences it was an opportunity to “leap past dirty energy and move to clean energy now.”
For a time, the African Development Bank appeared to have broken away from this crowd, expressing modest support for coal and gas power generation. “Africa must use what it has to develop its energy sector,” AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina said in 2017. renewable energy and the continent’s vast coal, oil and gas resources, most of which are untapped or exported.
Ignoring fossil fuels is unsustainable, intolerable and immoral. The same absurd reality is that the annual per capita electricity consumption in Africa (excluding South Africa) is approximately 660 kWh, while the average in Europe is 6,000 kWh and in the United States 12,500 kWh.
Thankfully, more and more countries are breaking free from the shackles of the “progressive” West. However, since 2017, the AfDB has stopped funding new coal projects and restricted oil and gas drilling and production. Abundant, reliable, and affordable baseload electricity for Africa appears to have once again given way to climate politics, but the shifting global trends initiated by President Trump could change the game once again.
But on the other hand, China, India, and other countries now recognize that coal and hydrocarbons are a prerequisite for prosperity, jobs, health, and political and strategic power.
As energy and science researcher Vijay Jayaraj recently pointed out, 460 coal-fired power plants are under construction around the world, another 500 have been approved or will soon be approved, and another 260 new coal-fired power plants could be announced soon. Oil and gas are also gaining importance as fuels and raw materials. Wind and solar are additive, but cannot replace coal, hydrocarbon, or nuclear power.
The majority of coal-fired power plants are in China and India, while Indonesia and other countries are also drilling and mining to build reliable power plants to provide affordable electricity, secure supply lines, and move away from dependence on foreign supplies.
They are also following the path that Europe, the United States, and other countries have taken to become developed and wealthy. Every investment in new electricity creates industry, jobs, tax revenue and more money for future investments. Free enterprise financing, invention, inspiration, sweat, and production, along with essential and unstifling government regulation, remain the fastest and surest means of progress.
Simply put, the world doesn’t need a “miracle of prosperity.” The anti-miraculous tragedy of continued poverty needs to be eradicated. There is no reason why poverty should continue or why prosperity cannot be found everywhere.
Books, courses, and the Internet allow all politicians and citizens to learn what technologies are available, what they have achieved, and how to achieve health and prosperity.
These resources also bear witness to the failures of countries in Europe and elsewhere whose misguided dedication to climate change and renewable energy ideologies has pushed living standards back 50 to 100 years, leaving populations energy deprived, unemployed, and dead without adequate heating, air conditioning, or even nutritious food.
You might call this the reverse Midas effect. Everything touched by people concerned about climate change turns into lead, leading to lead poisoning, developmental delays, learning and behavioral problems, memory impairment, and even comas and death. Both in people and in nations.
Governments and institutions must support the fundamental human right of access to abundant, reliable and affordable energy to support modern living standards. It’s not free, but you can access that energy. They must stop funding the WEF, the United Nations, the World Bank, and other institutions that often disparage the United States and only support the kind of health and living standards that wind and solar power can provide.
Paul Driessen is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and the author of books and articles on energy, climate change, economic development, and human rights.
Editor’s note: Do you like Town Hall’s conservative coverage of the radical left and the woke media? Support our work so we can keep telling the truth.
Join Townhall VIP and get 60% off your membership when you use promo code FIGHT.
