In a follow-up to the discussion last week: Mark Lynas has another post on the issue of climate policies hurting the poor:

There is a very good reason why hurricanes of an equivalent ferocity kill thousands in a country like Myanmar or Haiti, but only a few dozen at most in the US or Australia. To be poor is to be vulnerable, even in today’s climate. The fact that only ‘climate sceptics’ tend make this point currently is somewhat shameful.

For Lynas to say this is very welcome- and brave- and seems highly significant, particularly as he fingers one of the leading climate change NGOs, Bill McKibben’s 350.org, saying in response to their “India Beyond Coal” day of action:

The costs of poverty – which includes millions of preventable deaths of young children, lack of access to water and sanitation, reduced livelihood prospects, large-scale hunger and malnutrition, and so on… are clearly much greater than the direct costs of coal burning, and this equation probably still holds even when the future damages from climate change are factored in.

In the comments, Barry Woods calls this “heresy” :

what I don’t understand, why Mark hasn’t been called a ‘coal shill’ or ‘climate denier’ yet by the usual suspects… any sceptic, writing this article would have been, as they have been pointing this dilemma out for years (Lomborg being one such voice, though like most sceptics he has never denied climate change, nor that man contributes) c’mon. Mark has favourably cited the GWPF, that’s heresy.

Indeed I was called a “shill for Big Coal” for pointing out the same thing exactly on Mark’s previous post. Another comment points out how the IPCC scenarios are predicated on ongoing economic growth leading to most people coming out of poverty by 2100. Should the poor of today be made to pay for the problem’s of the wealthy of the future?

There is nothing wrong with letting the future rich pay for us poor. It is fundamentally unethical to make the poor of this century pay for the rich of this century by promoting the very expensive alternatives. (“No bread? Let them eat cake”). Just ask yourself: how many lives can we save here and now. The future will take care of itself, it always has.

Once again we have to ask: if there really is such justifiable concern over future global warming, why are current policies so hopelessly ineffective at actually reducing CO2, and seem designed only to keep the poor from having a taste of the energy bonanza we all take for granted?