Environmental Policies Deprive the Poor of Abundant, Affordable Energy

"If we project what the world will be like 10 years from now without innovation in health, education, energy, or food, the picture is quite bleak. We will have to increase the price of energy to reduce consumption, and the poor will suffer from both this higher cost and the effects of climate change. In food we will have big shortages because we won’t have enough land to feed the world’s growing population and support its richer diet. However, I am optimistic that innovations will allow us to avoid these bleak outcomes. In the United States, advances in online learning and new ways to help teachers improve will make a great education more accessible than ever. With vaccines, drugs, and other improvements, health in poor countries will continue to get better, and people will choose to have smaller families. With better seeds, training, and access to markets, farmers in poor countries will be able to grow more food. The world will find clean ways to produce electricity at a lower cost, and more people will lift themselves out of poverty. Melinda and I see our foundation’s key role as investing in innovations that would not otherwise be funded. This draws not only on our backgrounds in technology but also on the foundation’s size and ability to take a long-term view and take large risks on new approaches." - 2010 Annual Letter from Bill Gates

A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor (Excerpt)

December 3, 2009

Cornwall Alliance - An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science, and Economics of Global Warming

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The world is in the grip of an idea: that burning fossil fuels to provide affordable, abundant energy is causing global warming that will be so dangerous that we must stop it by reducing our use of fossil fuels, no matter the cost.

Is that idea true?

We believe not.

We believe that idea--we'll call it "global warming alarmism"--fails the tests of theology, science, and economics. It rests on poor theology, with a worldview of the Earth and its climate system contrary to that taught in the Bible. It rests on poor science that confuses theory with observation, computer models with reality, and model results with evidence, all while ignoring the lessons of climate history. It rests on poor economics, failing to do reasonable cost/benefit analysis, ignoring or underestimating the costs of reducing fossil fuel use while exaggerating the benefits.

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And it bears fruit in unethical policy that would:

• destroy millions of jobs.
• cost trillions of dollars in lost economic production.
• slow, stop, or reverse economic growth.
• reduce the standard of living for all but the elite few who are well positioned to benefit from laws that unfairly advantage them at the expense of most businesses and all consumers.
• endanger liberty by putting vast new powers over private, social, and market life in the hands of national and international governments.
• condemn the world's poor to generations of continued misery characterized by rampant disease and premature death.

In return for all these sacrifices, what will the world get? At most a negligible, undetectable reduction in global average temperature a hundred years from now.

Our examination of theology, worldview, and ethics (Chapter One) finds that global warming alarmism wrongly views the Earth and its ecosystems as the fragile product of chance, not the robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting product of God's wise design and powerful sustaining. It rests on and promotes a view of human beings as threats to Earth's flourishing rather than the bearers of God's image, crowned with glory and honor, and given a mandate to act as stewards over the Earth-filling, subduing, and ruling it for God's glory and mankind's benefit. It either wrongly assumes that the environment can flourish only if humanity forfeits economic advance and prosperity or ignores economic impacts altogether. And in its rush to impose draconian reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, it ignores the destructive impact of that policy on the world's poor.

Our examination of the science of global warming (Chapter Two) finds that global warming alarmism wrongly claims that recent temperature changes have been greater and more rapid than those of the past and therefore must be manmade, not natural. It exaggerates the influence of manmade greenhouse gases on global temperature and ignores or underestimates the influence of natural cycles. It mistakenly takes the output of computer climate models as evidence when it is only predictions based on hypotheses that must be tested by observation. It falsely claims overwhelming scientific consensus in favor of the hypothesis of dangerous manmade warming (ignoring tens of thousands of scientists who disagree) and then falsely claims that such consensus proves the hypothesis and justifies policies to fight it. It seeks to intimidate or demonize scientific skeptics rather than welcoming their work as of the very essence of scientific inquiry: putting hypotheses to the test rather than blindly embracing them.

Our examination of the economics of global warming alarmism (Chapter Three) finds that it exaggerates the harms from global warming and ignores or underestimates the benefits not only from warming but also from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. It grossly underestimates the costs and overestimates the benefits of policies meant to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It exaggerates the technical feasibility and underestimates the costs of alternative fuels to replace fossil fuels in providing the abundant, affordable energy necessary for wealth creation and poverty reduction. It ignores the urgent need to provide cleaner energy to the roughly two billion poor in the world whose use of wood and dung as primary cooking and heating fuels causes millions of premature deaths and hundreds of millions of debilitating respiratory diseases every year. It fails to recognize that the slowed economic development resulting from its own policies will cost many times more human lives than would the warming it is meant to avert.

In light of all these findings, we conclude that:

• human activity has negligible influence on global temperature,
• the influence is not dangerous,
• there is no need to mandate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and
• environmental and energy policy should remove, not build, obstacles to the abundant, affordable energy necessary to lift the world's poor out of poverty and sustain prosperity for all.

We also gladly join others in embracing An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF CHAPTER ONE:
THEOLOGY, WORLDVIEW, AND ETHICS OF GLOBAL WARMING POLICY

Earth and all its subsystems-of land, sea, and air, living and nonliving-are the good products of the wise design and omnipotent acts of the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable Triune God of the Bible. As such they reveal God's glory. Mankind, created in God's image, is the crown of creation. Human beings have the divine mandate to multiply and to fill, subdue, and rule the Earth, transforming it from wilderness into garden. They act as stewards under God to cultivate and guard what they subdue and rule. Calling them to be His vicegerents over the Earth, God requires obedience to His laws-in Scripture and imprinted in the human conscience-in their stewardship. Although sin, universal among mankind, deeply mars this stewardship, God's redemptive act in Jesus Christ's death on the cross and His instructive activity through Scripture, communicating the nature of creation and human responsibility for it, enable people to create wealth and decrease poverty at the same time that they pursue creation stewardship and, even more important, the true spiritual wealth of knowing their Creator through Jesus Christ.

The Biblical worldview contrasts sharply with the environmentalist worldview-whether secular or religious-in many significant ways. Among these, four are particularly germane:

• Environmentalism sees Earth and its systems as the product of chance and therefore fragile, subject to easy and catastrophic disruption. The Biblical worldview sees Earth and its systems as robust, self-regulating, and self-correcting, not immune to harm but durable.


• Environmentalism sees human beings principally as consumers and polluters who are only quantitatively, not qualitatively, different from other species. The Bible sees people as made in God's image, qualitatively different from all other species, and designed to be producers and stewards who, within a just and free social order, can create more resources than they consume and ensure a clean, healthful, and beautiful environment.


• Environmentalism tends to view nature untouched by human hands as optimal, while the Bible teaches that it can be improved by wise and holy human action.


• Environmentalism tends to substitute subjective, humanist standards of environmental stewardship for the objective, transcendent standards of divine morality.

This Biblical vision anticipates the development of environmentally friendly prosperity through the wise application of knowledge and skill to the raw materials of this world and the just ordering of society. That is, it anticipates the achievement of high levels of economic development and the reduction of poverty along with reductions in resource scarcity, pollution, and other environmental hazards.

The providence and promises of God inform a Christian understanding of creation stewardship, helping to avert irrational or exaggerated fears of catastrophes-fears that are rooted, ultimately, in the loss of faith in God. Those who do trust God are able to assess and respond to risks rationally. God's wisdom, power, and faithfulness justify confidence that Earth's ecosystems are robust and will, by God's providence, accomplish the purposes He set for them.

Sound policymaking requires both moral and prudential (cost/benefit) analysis. In this, a high priority for the church should be the welfare of the poor, since environmental policies often adversely affect them. That is the case with policies intended to reduce global warming by reducing the use of fossil fuels. For example, such fuels are currently the most abundant and affordable alternatives to dirty fuels, like wood and dung, which are now used by two billion people and cause millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of illnesses from respiratory diseases contracted by breathing their smoke. Insisting on the use of more expensive alternative fuels because of global warming fears means depriving the poor of the abundant, affordable energy they need to rise from abject poverty and its attendant miseries. Such policies fail both moral and prudential tests.

Environmental policies the world's poor most need will aim not at reducing global temperature (over which human action has little control) but at reducing specific risks to the poor regardless of temperature: communicable diseases (especially malaria), malnutrition and hunger, and exclusion from worldwide markets by trade restrictions. Money diverted from these goals to fight global warming will be wasted, while the poor will suffer increased and prolonged misery. Overall economic policy toward the poor should focus on promoting economic development, including making low-cost energy available, through which they can lift themselves out of poverty. It should not focus on wealth redistribution, which fosters dependency and slows development. Above all, the poor-and all other persons-need the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone ...