Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Global Warming Consensus Alert: Silver Lining Edition
Global Warming Consensus Alert: Silver Lining Edition
Apr 3, 2025 12:26 AM

It turns out that the Chinese were really thinking ahead back in 1979 when they implemented their one child policy. After all, imagine what their carbon emissions would be today if they hadn’t:

The number of births avoided equals the entire population of the United States. Beijing says that fewer people means less demand for energy and lower emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels.

“This is only an illustration of the actions we have taken,” said Su Wei, a senior Foreign Ministry official heading China’s delegation to the 158-nation talks from Aug 27-31.

He told Reuters that Beijing was not arguing that its policy was a model for others to follow in a global drive to avert ever more chaotic weather patterns, droughts, floods, erosion and rising ocean levels.

But avoiding 300 million births “means we averted 1.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2005” based on average world per capital emissions of 4.2 tonnes, he said.

Well thank goodness we dodged that bullet. The link is from Hot Air, which notes that China’s strategy is “brilliant”:

Expect more of this in the future — human rights abusers being criticized by the munity for dubious practices and parrying the thrust with an appeal to the left’s tippy-top-most social virtue.

In a somewhat similar vein, yesterday brought word that all is not well in the world of leftist activism – a conflict is brewing between animal rights activists and the climate change crowd:

According to an interesting piece that ran in yesterday’s New York Times, animal rights groups like PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) argue that being a meat-eating environmentalist–like Al–is an oxymoron… As writer Claudia H. Deutsch points out, the groups pelling ammo to back it up: last November the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization released a startling report revealing that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of bined.

mon thread in these stories? That humans are, simply put, a problem: we consume too much and emit too much in doing so, and if only there were a great deal fewer of us, things would get a lot better. It’s a very static worldview, allowing adherents to make no allowance for technological advances or scientific discoveries that may mitigate or entirely solve the problems that they fret about. In reality, es dangerously close to what Jordan Ballor described as The Matrix Anthropology, which is summed up by the words of Agent Smith, a villain in that film:

I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.

Jordan concludes that post thusly:

es, of course, from a piece of software representing the machines who view humans as essentially batteries and feed the liquidated dead to the living. It is perhaps not the best anthropological foundation to adopt.

Perhaps.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
The FAQs: The Fiscal Cliff Proposals
Now that we know what the fiscal cliff is all about, what are the plans for dealing with it? Below are the four approaches that have been proposed: The Democrats’ Plan Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner offered the White House’s fiscal cliff proposal to Republicans in the last week of November. Although the proposal wasn’t released to the public, news reports say it was basically a reprise of Obama’s most recent budget request and contained the following items: • End the...
Defining Subsidiarity Down
Patrick Brennan graciously noted my engagement with his piece on subsidiarity, charitably calling it “substantive.” He takes issue, however, with my “pace Brennan.” He rightly responds that “the very point of the book to which my chapter is a contribution is a parative’ perspective on subsidiarity.” He continues, “My assigned task in writing the chapter was to tell the what subsidiarity means in Catholic social doctrine, period.” To clarify, it seems to me that Brennan is quite ably articulating and...
The Fountainhead of Bedford Falls
Frank Capra and Ayn Rand are two names not often mentioned together. Yet the cheery director of Capra-corn and the dour novelist who created Objectivism have more mon than you might imagine. Both were immigrants who made their names in Hollywood. Both were screenwriters and employees of the film studio RKO Pictures. And during the last half of the 1940s, both created works of enduring cult appeal, Capra with his filmIt’s a Wonderful Lifeand Rand with her novelThe Fountainhead. The...
How (Not) to Solve the Debt Crisis with Two Trillion Dollar Platinum Coins
At some point everyone has heard an idea being discussed in Washington, D.C. and thought or said, “That’s insane.” Americans generally recognize there is, more often than not, something not quite right about inside-the-Beltway thinking. But to those who have never lived or worked in the D.C. area, let me tell you: You don’t know the half of it. Think of your craziest uncle, the one who when you visit for Thanksgiving has some pet theory about how to fix...
Michael Miller in Legatus Magazine: ‘Community, liberty and freedom’
Acton’s Director of Media, Michael Matheson Miller, discusses the current state of American thought on state, Church, family and liberty in Legatus Magazine. He focuses on the work of two Frenchmen: Alexis de Tocqueville and Jean Jacques Rousseau. Many of the differences can be boiled down to what we mean munity. Rousseau’s vision munity is what the sociologist Robert Nisbet called the munity.” For Rousseau, the two main elements of society are the individual and the state. All other groups...
‘Mary Tyler’ Star: We Need Moore Taxes on the Rich
Celebrated fiscal policy scholar Ed Asner, best known for pretending to be a television news producer on the 1970’s classic The Mary Tyler Moore Show, is the narrator of a new “educational” cartoon produced by a Teachers Union in California called “Tax the Rich.” Where to begin! This video was produced with the intent to indoctrinate children with an anti-capitalistic understanding of everything from levels of taxation to how wealth is created to the relationship between a free-born citizen and...
This Week on AU Online: Lectures on Development and Trade
Poverty, development, and stewardship tend to be topics both of discussion and personal reflection as we are reminded to count our blessings around this time of year. If similar ideas have been on your mind, you may be interested in Globalization, Poverty, and Development, anAU Online lecture series thatexplores the theme of human flourishing and its relation to poverty, globalization, and the Church in the developed world. Join Mr. Brett Elder, a director at Acton Institute and creator of the...
Deck the Halls With Macro Follies
(Via: The American Catholic) ...
‘Act Against Corruption’
Perhaps one of the biggest obstacles to wealth creation in the developing world is corruption. Bribery, rigging of the political process, theft, lack of accountability: all of these lead to instability, bureaucracy, and a lack of incentive to invest. The United Nations has declared today International Anti-Corruption Day in an effort to bring light to this topic and work to prevent it. George Ayittey, Ghanaian economist, explains how massive a problem corruption is for Africa: Imagine, Africa has a begging...
Jazz musician Dave Brubeck: ‘Strengthening man’s vision of God’
Acclaimed and plished, Dave Brubeck died December 5 at the age of 91. He is best known as a poser, who once said Duke Ellington was his mentor. He was known to cancel appearances if his racially-integrated band was asked to leave out non-white members. He was an ambassador of sorts, as well: “Jazz represents freedom, freedom musically and politically,” he says. He notes that his tour “to show how important freedom and democracy are” targeted countries near the then-Soviet...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved