Guest essay by Eric Worrall

A draft UN IPCC climate report suggests poor people suffering “multidimensional” poverty will be hit worst by climate change – so lets make everyone rich.

Leaked draft summary of UN special report on 1.5C climate goal – in full Published on 13/02/2018, 10:34am Read the draft summary for policymakers of the most important climate science report of the year, on the challenge of holding global warming to 1.5C By Megan Darby Climate Home News is one of the world’s most trusted independent sources of climate politics news. Sign up for our newsletter. What are the impacts of 1.5C global warming, compared to 2C? What would it take to limit temperature rise to that level? What are the trade-offs with sustainable development goals? These are the questions to be addressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in a special report due to be finalised in September 2018. …

Read more (includes a full copy of the draft report): http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/02/13/leaked-draft-summary-un-special-report-1-5c-climate-goal-full/

Most of the report is fairly boring, containing references to post 2020 climate action (yet more evidence global climate cycles are aligned to US Presidential Election Cycles), and pushing long discredited nonsense about a warmer climate change exacerbating the spread of diseases like Malaria and Dengue Fever; Malaria used to be a deadly problem in Northern Russia, during the Little Ice Age.

But one paragraph particularly caught my eye;

… Globally, the poorest people are projected to experience the impacts of 1.5C global warming predominantly through increased food prices, food insecurity and hunger, income losses, lost livelihood opportunities, adverse health impacts and populations displacements. Such impacts can occur, for instance, from increased heat stress and other extreme events, such as flooding, with over 100 million people projected to go into poverty through impacts on agriculture and food prices (limited evidence, medium agreement) …

Read more: http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/02/13/leaked-draft-summary-un-special-report-1-5c-climate-goal-full/

Even if this is true, which I doubt, the solution to easing the lives of people impacted by “climate” is mechanised, fossil fuel powered goodness.

I recently experienced the advantages of mechanised agriculture in a tropical climate in the middle of a heatwave (picture at the top of the page). I didn’t get ill from heat stress, because my gasoline powered lawn mower did most of the work. You don’t need expensive equipment to make a difference, even small, simple tools – gasoline chainsaws, miniature tractors, hand operated lawn mowers, hand operated rotavators – can make a huge difference to the physical effort required to perform simple agricultural tasks.

The worst thing you could do for people at the bottom of the poverty ladder is to implement some of the lunatic green policies making the rounds, to force additional costs on them. Back in 2008, green policies triggered mass starvation and riots in poor countries, as Western efforts to turn food into biofuel pushed food prices out of reach of the world’s poorest people.

Regardless of what happens to the climate in the future, and the climate will change regardless of what we do, the solution to poverty is pragmatism, capitalism and wealth creation. Always has been, always will be.

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