WUWT
"So I find it both reprehensible and incomprehensible when those of us who are in the 1% of the global 1%, like President Obama and Secretary Chu, blithely talk of doubling the price of gasoline and sending the cost of electricity skyrocketing as though there were no negative results from that, as though it wouldn’t cause widespread suffering, as though cheap energy weren’t the best friend of the poor. What Chu and Obama propose are crazy plans, they are ivory-tower schemes of people who are totally out of touch with the realities faced by the poor of the world, whether inside the US or out. ......Despite the historical warming, there is no sign of any historical increase in weather extremes of any kind. Given two degrees C of historical warming with no increase in extreme events or catastrophes, why should I expect such an increase in some hypothetical future warming?
So I’m sorry, but I am totally unwilling to trade inexpensive energy today, which is the real actual salvation of the poor today, for some imagined possible slight reduction in the temperature fifty years from now. That is one of the worst trades that I can imagine, exchanging current suffering for a promise of a slight reduction in temperatures in the year 2050.
Finally, for those who think that these quotes and ideas of Chu and Obama only affect the US, nothing could be further from the truth. Sadly, the policies are being exported and imposed, both by force and by persuasion, on the poorer countries of the world. To take just one example, pressure on the World Bank from the western countries and NGOs is denying financing to coal-fired plants in countries like India with coal resources. So the poor of India are denied inexpensive coal-fired electricity, they end up paying the price for the western one-percenters’ guilt and fear ridden fantasies about what might happen fifty years in the misty future."
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