Sunday, October 14, 2018

Global Economic Inequality and Climate Policy

Sometime in the 1970s there began a growing movement for global economic redistribution. These discussions were primarily held in the fields of sociology and political science. Prior to the industrial revolution there was little national economic inequality which is to say that all countries were relatively poor. The industrial revolution changed this and shifted both national wealth and wealth within western and other industrial countries. After World War II, the United States became the manufacturer of the world and the wealth of the United States outstripped that of the rest of the world.

For a more in depth discussion of the issue, I recommend you read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Global Justice. This philosophy was closely tied to the belief that wealth should be more evenly shared across the world and this means having international laws and treaties that would promote the shifting of wealth from wealthy nations to poor nations. In many ways this theory led to the philosophical belief in the importance of "Globalism".

Consider which countries have benefited the most from globalism and when it began and accelerated. After the fall of the Soviet Union manufacturing was primarily shifted from the west to China and India. What do China and India have in common, they had the highest populations in the world. What they also had in common was high poverty. By sending manufacturing to these counties, we effectively were involved in global economic redistribution. This shift had an economic advantage for the wealthy within the west which was that they were able to reduce labor costs, reduce the cost of providing employees with benefits, avoiding environmental requirements, avoiding taxes and reducing the wealth and influence of the middle class in the west. The stated justification for outsourcing jobs overseas was that labor costs were cheaper and the other issues were not addressed. If our leaders said in public what they say in private, the middle class would not have accepted these changes.

As manufacturing was moved to China and India, people in the Midwest who lost their jobs began to get upset. They began fighting against outsourcing and a new explanation emerged for why people in the west had to lower their standard of living, global warming and the need for people in the west to "lower their carbon footprint". The culprit we were told was the burning of fossil fuels and the problem was claimed to be so bad that we needed international agreements to solve it. Agreements that are not voted on by the citizens of the countries that were making these wealth transfers.

The solution we are told is that all countries commit to the Paris Climate Accord. Under the accord nations set their own limits and they are not legally bound to meet retaining the right to change them. Under the agreement China will continue to expand it use of coal burning power plants until 2030, doubling the number of coal burning plants in the meantime. You might ask if CO2 is such a threat then why is China increasing it's coal burning? The answer is that China is seen as an emerging economic power and that they are entitled to "Catch up" economically. Global justice. China is currently the largest producer of CO2 in the world and is looking at doubling its emissions until 2030 while the west is expected to cut their emissions even further. What is the result, this policy basically forces the west to shift even more manufacturing to China, India and other "emerging economies".

By the way, the Nobel Prize for Economics was given to two men for tying climate change to economics. The same two are in favor of an international carbon tax, what a surprise. If you don't believe there is a connection between economic policy and climate policy, you are sadly misinformed.


If you watch the video above on Global Justice, you will discover that they see one option for global justice involves the movement of poor people into wealthy countries. Basically the unfettered migration into Europe and the fight for open borders in the United States is from globalists. 



The IPCC official is OTTMAR EDENHOFER, who was a lead author of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report in 2007. You can finds quotes from him at AZ Quotes. I will leave you with two of his quotes. "First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore."

"Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the worlds resources will be negotiated."