The Cruelty of Climate Alarmism: Keeping the Poor in the Dark While Western Elites Jet to Virtue-Signalling Lectures, By Paul Walker
The grand theatre of global climate policy: here the script is written by elites in Geneva, Brussels, and The Hague: Fossil fuels are the devil, renewables the salvation, and any deviation spells planetary doom. But as Paul Driessen's September 30, 2025, op-ed skewers, this alarmism, championed by the UN, EU, ICJ, and their "Climate Cabal" allies, has a sinister side effect: Perpetuating poverty for the world's most vulnerable, especially in Africa and other developing regions, while outsourcing the dirtiest work of the "green" transition to their backyards. The ICJ's recent ruling affirming a "human right" to a "clean, healthy, sustainable environment" sounds noble, but it conveniently ignores rights to reliable energy, healthcare, and prosperity, all of which demand fossil fuels for now. Worse, the rush to electric vehicles (EVs) and renewables fuels a toxic mining boom in the Global South, polluting lands and waters so Western eco-elites can cruise to university in Teslas, patting themselves on the back for "saving the planet." It's not just unintended; it's a form of carbon colonialism that demands re-examination before it dooms billions to energy starvation.
The Energy Access Crisis: Alarmism's Poverty Trap
Nearly 750 million people, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa, lack electricity, with billions more enduring sporadic power. Cities might boast high electrification, but rural areas languish, trapping families in mud huts, dung-fire cooking, and preventable diseases like malaria from unpowered hospitals. Climate policies exacerbate this: UN and World Bank funding bans fossil projects, forcing reliance on intermittent wind and solar that can't power factories, AC, or modern appliances.
The ICJ's July 2025 advisory opinion, requested by Vanuatu and backed by small island states, mandates states curb fossil fuels to protect the "climate system," potentially ordering reparations for supposed harms like emissions-driven sea rise. For Africa, this means scrutiny on oil/gas exploration: Countries like Nigeria or Algeria risk "internationally wrongful acts" for licensing projects, even as they battle energy poverty. The court ties this to human rights, life, health, adequate living standards, but skips how fossil bans block the 24/7 power needed for those very rights. Developing nations' pleas for differentiated responsibilities (per Paris Agreement) get lip service, but policies like EU carbon border taxes or UN financing restrictions hit hardest where poverty bites deepest.
Europe's own green zeal offers a preview: Skyrocketing prices from coal/gas phase-outs have shuttered factories, exported jobs to China (a coal giant), and left families shivering in one-room "energy poverty." Africa faces the same without the welfare nets, no fracking allowed, yet Russian imports fund wars. Studies show renewable policies in developing countries often backfire short-term, hiking fossil shares due to intermittency and finance gaps. Universal access by 2030? A pipe dream without fossils bridging the gap.
The Dirty Secret of "Green" Tech: Rare Earth Pollution in the Poor's Backyard
Alarmism's halo slips when you trace EV batteries and wind turbines to their roots: Rare earth elements (REEs) mining, a filthy affair dumped on developing nations. China dominates 60-70% of production, but Africa (e.g., DRC cobalt mines) and Latin America bear the brunt: Open pits spew sulphides, forming acid runoff that poisons streams and groundwater; tailings laced with arsenic, fluorite, and heavy metals contaminate soil, causing "cancer villages" and skeletal fluorosis. In Baotou, China, the REE capital, pollution has turned farmlands toxic, with REEs detected in urine and wastewater, risking worker health and biodiversity.
This isn't "clean": Mining REEs guzzles water (e.g., India's Thar Desert solar farms divert 300,000 people's drinking needs weekly), erodes ecosystems, and emits CO2 rivalling fossil extraction in intensity. Child/slave labour, lax safety, and habitat loss amplify the toll, all to feed woke Western EVs and turbines. While elites ban mining at home (e.g., Sweden's frozen REE project over lake pollution risks), they import the fruits, leaving locals with the sludge. The irony? "Green" tech's land use dwarfs fossils' – solar/wind sprawl clears habitats equivalent to countries, sacrificing species for panels.
Carbon Colonialism: Elites' EVs, Poor's Poison
The "Climate Cabal" – UN/EU/ICJ – preaches from private jets, ignoring how their fossil bans and green mandates export poverty. Africa's 600 million unelectrified suffer most: No financing for gas plants means no jobs, hospitals, or fridges, just dung smoke and disease. Reparations? Small islands sue emitters, but who compensates miners poisoned for our Priuses? Trump rightly blasts UN "brutal" Net Zero; poor nations must unite, fund their own fossils, and boot the hypocrites.
This alarmism isn't saving Earth – it's sacrificing the poor on the altar of elite EVs. Energy abundance now, not woke virtue tomorrow!
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