Let Them Eat Solar Panels

Quote of the Day:

In the run-up to the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11, rich countries and development organizations are scrambling to join the fashionable ranks of “climate aid” donors. This effectively means telling the world’s worst-off people, suffering from tuberculosis, malaria or malnutrition, that what they really need isn’t medicine, mosquito nets or micronutrients, but a solar panel. It is terrible news.

–Bjorn Lomborg in “This Child Doesn’t Need a Solar Panel” today’s Wall Street Journal

The picture that accompanies the piece nails it: a little boy in a slum in Mozambique whose prominent ribs show his hunger.

As Marie Antoinette might have said if she were alive today, “Let them eat solar panels.”

The poor in the developing world are going to suffer as the fashionable leaders of western countries divert billions to combat climate change. The poor of theThird World might yearn for vaccinations and treatments for disease and poverty, but what do they know? .

Developed nations are falling over themselves to demonstrate the virtue of their climate conscious elites and to comply with a promise made at the Copenhagen climate conference six years ago to pledge $100 billion a year for climate change projects. The figure was randomly plucked out of thin air, but now it is set in stone, even if it means there is less help for people suffering from malaria, tuberculosis, and other hardships.

So before you jet to the U.N.’s Paris Climate Change Conference next month, consider this from Mr. Lomborg’s article:     

Addressing global warming effectively will require long-term innovation that will make green energy affordable for everyone. Rich countries are in a rush to appear green and generous, and recipient countries are jostling to make sure they receive the funds. But the truth is that climate aid isn’t where rich countries can help the most, and it isn’t what the world’s poorest want or need.