Great Reset
Climate expert warns against extreme ‘weather porn’ from alarmists pushing ‘draconian’ policies
From LifeSiteNews
Bjorn Lomborg, author and president of the Copenhagen Consensus, continues to call attention to the extreme measures being demanded by climate change activists and politicians.
A climate expert has taken aim against what he calls “weather porn” – images and stories meant to convey a false impression that the world is on the brink of cataclysmic climate disaster – in order to force unnecessary policy changes by governments across the globe that will destroy prosperity and kill, not save, human lives.
In a series of recent opinion pieces and social media posts, Bjorn Lomborg, author, president of the Copenhagen Consensus, and a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, continues to call attention to the extreme measures being demanded by climate change activists and politicians who seek to inflict policies that are far more harmful than helpful.
“Watching the news, you get the sense that climate change is making the planet unlivable. We are bombarded with images of floods, droughts, storms and wildfires,” wrote Lomborg in his recent newsletter. “But this impression is wildly misleading and makes it harder to get climate change policy right. Data show climate-related events like floods, droughts, storms and wildfires aren’t killing more people.”
“Quite the contrary. Over the past decade, climate-related disasters have killed 98% fewer people than a century ago,” said Lomborg. “If we want to achieve fewer disaster deaths, we should promote prosperity, adaptation, and resilience. But when we are inundated with ‘weather porn’ and miss the fact that deaths have dropped precipitously, we end up focusing on the least effective policies first.”
‘Six billion deaths in less than a year’
In an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Lomborg described what would happen if climate alarmists were to suddenly get their way:
The world still gets four-fifths of its energy from fossil fuels, because renewable sources rarely provide good alternatives. Half the world’s population entirely depends on food grown with synthetic fertilizer produced almost entirely by natural gas. If we rapidly ceased using fossil fuels, four billion people would suddenly be without food.
Add the billions of people dependent on fossil-fuel heating in the winter, along with our dependence on fossil fuels for steel, cement, plastics and transportation, and it is no wonder that one recent estimate by economist Neil Record showed an abrupt end to fossil fuel use would cause six billion deaths in less than a year.
Global elites have made it clear that they have judged the world to be vastly overpopulated, and have set for themselves a goal of reducing the world’s total population to just 500 million people. An “abrupt end to fossil fuel use” would come very close to achieving their utopian anti-human goal.
“Why is the environmental movement stewarded over by murderous, human-hating wackos who desire to see billions of people die?” asked James Corbett of the Corbett Report last month.
Not mincing words, Corbett continued: “Because the conservation movement (and all of the mainstream environmental organizations that grew out of that movement) was pioneered by murderous, human-hating eugenicists and funded by the eugenicist royals who wanted to keep their beautiful natural vistas clear of the riff-raff scurrying around beneath them.”
“Why do nation after nation appear to be in a race to the bottom, implementing policies that will actively hinder the productivity of their own populations and making it more and more difficult for those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder to eke out a subsistence living on the corporate-governmental fascist plantation that we call the developed world?” wondered Corbett.
“And why is it now increasingly in vogue for governments to offer “medically assisted dying” as their “solution” to the strain and stress of this deliberately degraded world? Because those same governments are stewarded over by elitist eugenicists who hate you and want you dead.”
‘Follow the science’ obscures truth, allows for the promotion of dangerous policies
Lomborg has said that the constant refrain of “follow the science” allows politicians to “obscure and avoid responsibility for lopsided climate-policy trade-offs.”
“More than one million people die in traffic accidents globally each year. Overnight, governments could solve this entirely man-made problem by reducing speed limits everywhere to 3 miles an hour, but we’d laugh any politician who suggested it out of office,” wrote Lomborg in his WSJ piece.
“It would be absurd to focus solely on lives saved if the cost would be economic and societal destruction,” said the climate expert. “Yet politicians widely employ the same one-sided reasoning in the name of fighting climate change. It’s simply a matter, they say, of ‘following the science.’”
Draconian net-zero climate policies are, according to Lomborg, prohibitively costly.
Recent peer-reviewed climate-economic research shows the total cost “will average $27 trillion each year across the century, reaching $60 trillion a year in 2100.”
“Net zero is more than seven times as costly as the climate problem it tries to address,” yet this is precisely what the Biden administration is hoping to achieve by 2050.
Outgoing U.S. climate chief John Kerry, one of the chief purveyors of “weather porn,” suggested recently that if climate change is not quickly addressed, we face planetary destruction “beyond comprehension.”
UN climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell issued a similarly ominous if not shrill warning on X this week: “We have two years to save the world,” and therefore, “starting now, we need a quantum leap in climate finance [and] Bold new national climate plans by all nations.”
Lomborg fired back on X, dismissing the UN climate honcho’s hyperbolic claims.
“UN employees have been telling the same stale story for more than half a century: Now, that is right now, we have just a few years to save the world.”
UN employees have been telling the same stale story for more than half a century:
Now, that is right now, we have just a few years to save the worldhttps://t.co/Oz3yOGZUg8
Be a bit more serious, please? pic.twitter.com/hC6Sgu3hWt
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) April 11, 2024
“Some of the most popular climate policies will have costs far greater than climate change itself. When politicians try to shut down discussion with claims that they’re ‘following the science,’” concluded Lomborg in the pages of the WSJ.
“Don’t let them,” he urged.
DEI
University System of Georgia to ban DEI, commit to neutrality, teach Constitution
By
“The basis and determining factor” for employment will be “that the individual possesses the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with the role, and is believed to have the ability to successfully perform the essential functions, responsibilities, and duties associated with the position for which the individual is being considered.”
The University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents has recommended a number of new and revised policies for its institutions, such as a commitment to institutional neutrality, the prohibiting of DEI tactics, and a mandatory education in America’s founding documents.
The University System of Georgia (USG) is made up of Georgia’s 26 public colleges and universities as well as Georgia Archives and the Georgia Public Library Service.
“USG institutions shall remain neutral on social and political issues unless such an issue is directly related to the institution’s core mission,” the board’s proposed revisions read.
“Ideological tests, affirmations, and oaths, including diversity statements,” will be banned from admissions processes and decisions, employment processes and decisions, and institution orientation and training for both students and employees.
“No applicant for admission shall be asked to or required to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about political beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles, as a condition for admission,” the new policy states.
Additionally, USG will hire based on a person’s qualifications and ability.
“The basis and determining factor” for employment will be “that the individual possesses the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with the role, and is believed to have the ability to successfully perform the essential functions, responsibilities, and duties associated with the position for which the individual is being considered.”
Beginning in the 2025-2026 academic year, the school’s civic instruction will require students to study founding American documents among other things.
USG students will learn from the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, as well as the Georgia Constitution and Bill of Rights.
When reached for comment, the Board of Regents told The Center Square that “these proposed updates strengthen USG’s academic communities.”
The recommended policies allow a campus environment “where people have the freedom to share their thoughts and learn from one another through objective scholarship and inquiry,” and “reflect an unyielding obligation to protect freedom, provide quality higher education and promote student success,” the board said.
The board told The Center Square that it proposed strengthening “the requirements for civics instruction” with the inclusion of “foundational primary sources” because of higher education’s duty to students.
Colleges and universities “must prepare [students] to be contributing members of society and to understand the ideals of freedom and democracy that make America so exceptional,” the board said.
As for ditching DEI, the board explained that “equal opportunity and decisions based on merit are fundamental values of USG.”
“The proposed revisions among other things would make clear that student admissions and employee hiring should be based on a person’s qualifications, not his or her beliefs,” the board said.
The Board of Regents also said it wants to “ensure [its] institutions remain neutral on social and political issues while modeling what it looks like to promote viewpoint diversity, create campus cultures where students and faculty engage in civil discourse, and the open exchange of ideas is the norm.”
USG’s Board of Regents recently urged the NCAA to ban transgender-identifying men from participating in women’s sports, in line with the NAIA rules, The Center Square previously reported.
Censorship Industrial Complex
G20’s Online Speech Clampdown Calls Set To Ignite Free Speech Fears
G20 leaders convened in Rio de Janeiro have called for enhanced responsibility and transparency from digital platforms to tackle the growing challenges of “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “hate speech,” and others on their long list of supposed online “harms.”
The summit’s final declaration highlighted the transformative role of digital platforms in global communication but noted the adverse effects of digital content’s rapid spread. It called for increased accountability from platforms to manage speech, which should raise eyebrows among free speech advocates who’ve heard all this before.
We obtained a copy of the declaration for you here.
During the summit, the leaders highlighted the transformative impact of digital platforms in communication and information dissemination across the globe. However, they also alleged negative ramifications of unchecked digital spaces, where “harmful” content can proliferate at an unprecedented pace and scale.
In response, the G20’s final declaration underscored the critical role of digital platforms in ensuring their ecosystems do not become breeding grounds for speech they don’t like.
The declaration states: “We recognize that digital platforms have reshaped the digital ecosystem and online interactions by amplifying information dissemination and facilitating communication within and across geographical boundaries. However, the digitization of the information realm and the accelerated evolution of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), has dramatically impacted the speed, scale, and reach of misinformation and disinformation, hate speech, and other forms of online harms.”
The G20 goes on to say that it emphasizes the “need for digital platforms’ transparency and responsibility in line with relevant policies and applicable legal frameworks and will work with platforms and relevant stakeholders in this regard.”
The declaration even says more measures need to be taken to control what it says is the spread of online misogyny and the need to combat it “online and offline.”
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