Folks who live in the great white northland of Minnesota know that summer is a season to be celebrated. The North Star State suffers through long, dark months of brutal cold, snow and ice. It seems at least a small miracle that any living thing can survive a Minnesota winter. But when the sunshine and warmth finally return, it’s delightful to be on the lake or in the garden or on the golf course.
Unfortunately, summer also comes with the hysteria of the left, endlessly pounding the drums of global warming and climate doom. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, recently pronounced, “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived…It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning.”
It seems that this summer the media coverage has especially focused on wildfires. Smoke from Canadian wildfires has often drifted southward into Minnesota, resulting in thick haze and poor air quality.
A similar dynamic prevailed in the eastern United States. For several days, wildfires in the Canadian province of Quebec shrouded New York City in dense, orange smoke. Other large cities, like Philadelphia and Boston were also affected.
Millions of Americans can be forgiven for believing that climate change has quite literally set the world on fire. Such folks would be shocked to learn that that simply isn’t true.
Over the last twenty plus years, satellites have allowed scientists to accurately track the amount of land affected by fires. In the early 2000s, roughly 3% of the world’s surface burned. As the graph below illustrates, this figure has trended downward over the last two decades. According to Bjorn Lomborg, “In 2022, the last year for which there are complete data, the world hit a new record-low of 2.2% burned area. Yet you’ll struggle to find that reported anywhere.”
The leftist media is much like a practiced magician, keeping us focused on one thing while the real action is transpiring somewhere else. They create a false narrative by fixing our attention solely on areas where wildfires are currently raging. Breathless reporters craft apocalyptic scenarios while conveniently ignoring huge swathes of the earth where fires have not been a problem.
Two summers ago, all the emphasis was on wildfires in Australia. Yet those fires only affected limited parts of southeastern Australia, leaving much of the continent-nation unscathed. During the allegedly catastrophic 2019-20 season, only 4% of Australian land burned, substantially decreased from 8% in the early 2000s. This year the percentage will be even lower.
Now it is quite true that in 2023, the amount of land burned in North America is above average. However, globally the amount of land burned is slightly below average. Guess which of these facts gets the most attention?
It’s also true that the earth has slightly warmed over the last 170 years since the end of the Little Ice Age. We should all be thankful for this development; the Little Ice Age was a period of unusual cold resulting in crop failures and widespread famine. Both humans and the planet in general are far better off in today’s warmer world.
There is absolutely no evidence that this slight temperature change has caused an increase in the number of wildfires, or the total amount of land burned. Moreover, despite constant media claims to the contrary, the last half-century has seen no increase in the frequency of worldwide hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods.
When it comes to preventing destructive wildfires, forest management practices have a far, far greater effect than any minor change in temperature.
Unfortunately, over the last century, self-proclaimed “environmentalists” have pushed for a policy of strict fire suppression. This misguided approach results in forests which are too dense, with lots of dry wood and brush building up. When a wildfire does start, it is more likely to burn out of control, becoming a conflagration which threatens people and property.
Improved forest management would alleviate this problem. Logging companies should be allowed to sensibly harvest trees & thereby reduce the density of forests. This approach would allow us to reap greater economic benefits of producing more lumber while reducing the risk of wildfires. Controlled burns and the clearing of underbrush also prevent fuel from building up and causing disaster later on.
Constant climate change catastrophizing in the leftist media has had a disastrous effect on millions of people. Children and young people are especially vulnerable to such propaganda.
A recent study in the journal Nature looked at the effect of climate change awareness on the mental health of 10,000 young people aged 16-25 living in 10 different countries including the United States. An astonishing 59% indicated they were very or extremely worried about climate change. At least 84% were at least moderately worried.
Tragically, these young people reported feelings of “sadness, anxiety, anger, powerlessness, guilt and hopelessness.” Half of those involved in the study reported that such feelings had a negative effect on their daily lives & impaired their level of functioning.
Many young people have been paralyzed by climate fear. Why work hard in school if the world is ending? Why develop relationships, get married or have a family if there is no hope for the future?
Ironically, the truth is that life has never been better for humanity. Since the dawn of the twentieth century, human life expectancy has soared. In 1900, world life expectancy was a paltry 32.0 years. By 2019, this figure had more than doubled, reaching 72.8 years!
People have also achieved far higher standards of living. In 1900, the world’s per capita GDP was only $2,212 (in 2011 dollars). By 2018, this number had risen to $15,212, an increase of 688%!
The amazing rise in human well-being can be primarily attributed to the blessings of the Industrial Revolution, the use of fossil fuels and the spread of free-market capitalism.
Despite almost miraculous progress, the leftist media has managed to plunge an entire generation into a dark miasma of despair.
What is far more destructive to the welfare of humanity is the net zero agenda of the left. No longer is it enough to just reduce carbon emissions; now the left will accept nothing less than their complete elimination! Yet net zero would result in the impoverishment and immiseration of billions of people.
John Kerry is the Biden Administration’s “Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.” The hapless Kerry constantly travels by private jet, emitting more CO2 in a single trip that most of the earth’s inhabitants will produce in a lifetime.
Kerry recently made comments indicating that the Biden Administration and the Democratic Party are eager to target US farmers with harsh climate restrictions. “Agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world,” Kerry bemoaned. (Agriculture in the US accounts for about 10% of emissions.) “We don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution.”
Kerry added, “You just can’t continue to both warm the planet while also expecting to feed it.” This statement is particularly bizarre, because over the last century, as the world has slightly warmed, agricultural production has skyrocketed.
As the chart below demonstrates, the world produced 877 million metric tons of cereals in 1961. By 2021, cereal production had surged to 3.07 billion metric tons, an increase of over 350%!
The amazing growth in worldwide agricultural productivity is the result of several factors. First, slightly warmer temperatures have resulted in longer growing seasons. Second, higher levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have dramatically elevated crop yields. Although carbon dioxide is demonized in the leftist media, this molecule is essential for all life on earth. By the process of photosynthesis, plants convert CO2 & water into sugar & oxygen. Carbon dioxide is quite literally plant food.
Finally, agricultural production has been greatly assisted by the widespread use of fossil fuels. For most of human history, the vast majority of people were subsistence farmers, barely able to raise enough food to feed themselves and their families. Thanks to the miracle of mechanization, farmers in the US (who now comprise less than 2% of the population) feed our entire nation – and much of the world to boot!
Mechanized farming depends on diesel fuel to power tractors and combines. Natural gas is essential for the production of nitrogen-based fertilizers. And fossil fuels also power the pumps which allow farmers to irrigate their crops in drier regions.
The average person living in the United States today enjoys a far better life than any person 100 years ago. We ought to be celebrating this tremendous achievement.
Yet the leftist media is determined to take the miracle of modern-day life and turn it into a dystopian nightmare. Sadly, for the many people who’ve been sucked into these lies, they’ve succeeded.
