Whales were slaughtered for lamp oil; forests were cleared for firewood, mine props, building materials, roofing shingles and sailing masts; London (“The Big Smoke”) and Pittsburgh (“The Smoky City”) were smothered in smog from open fires, charcoal kilns and iron smelters; horses powered public and military transport and city streets were layered with horse manure.

In the era before coal, oil and electricity, the environment suffered greatly.

Then came the hydro-carbon revolution. Kerosene lamps saved the whales and coal-powered steam engines delivered electricity (clean-coal-by-wire) to the cities – and much of the sulphurous smogs disappeared. Coke from coal replaced wood charcoal to make iron and steel. Steel and concrete saved the forests and trucks and railways allowed the farmland, which once fed millions of horses, to produce food for humans.

Not one of these boons for humans AND the environment was driven by a UN resolution or funded by statutory levies on consumers, or subsidies from taxpayers. None were mandated in a government energy plan.

The anti-human, anti-industry policies of the Global Greens are now reversing all that progress.

A key event occurred in 2006 when a leading left-wing politician, Al Gore, invented the Global Warming Industry. Despite a finding by a British High Court judge that his movie “The Inconvenient Truth” contained nine key scientific errors, it is still shown in schools. This has misled students and teachers and created spreading circles of damage to jobs, industry and the cost and reliability of electricity. It also created the fake industries of climate hysteria and green activism.

The Green Piglets were born, and the environment and the economy suffered.