Dying to Save the Planet

Here is a story that will warm your cold American heart. Now that Swedish truant Greta Thunberg has invaded my neighborhood, to lead the march against the changing climate, Daniel Greenfield of the Sultan Knish blog, reports on how woke Western Europeans are tackling global warming. Or better, how they are literally dying to save the planet. Call it human sacrifice, if you like, because that is what it is.

Greenfield has performed a useful study. At a time when temperatures are rising in Western Europe, not for the first time, the question arises: how many air conditioners do these woke environmentally aware countries have? You know these countries. They are horrified that President Trump withdrew from the Paris climate accord. They are hellbent on doing business with the murderous ayatollah’s in Iran. And yet, when it comes to saving the lives of their own citizens by installing air conditioners… they are against.

One understands that nations around the world signed the Paris climate accord. One also understands that the accord exempts a nation like China from doing anything about its pollution for another dozen or so years. If you think that China will wake up one day and decide to comply by the accord, you have been smoking the wrong cigarettes.

One understands that Western Europeans are the only group stupid enough to comply by its terms… regardless of the consequences. It should not be too surprising that Europe is breaking apart, between Brexit and the rest, and between Western and Eastern European attitudes toward migrants.

Anyway, in practical terms, being a good environmentalist means militating against air conditioning.

Greenfield explains:

If environmentalists ruled the world, air conditioning wouldn’t exist. And there’s a place like that.

90% of American households have air conditioning. As do 86% of South Koreans, 82% of Australians, 60% of Chinese, 16% of Brazilians and Mexicans, 9% of Indonesians and less than 5% of Europeans.

A higher percentage of Indian households have air conditioning than their former British colonial rulers.

Rich and poor nations around the world are installing air conditioning. But not Western European nations. Beginning with Paris:

Temperatures in Paris hit 108.6 degrees. Desperate Frenchmen dived into the fountains of the City of Lights with their clothes on. Parisian authorities announced that they were deploying heat wave management plan orange, level three, which meant setting up foggers in public parks and distributing heat wave kits. The kits consist of leaflets telling people to go to libraries which have air conditioning.

France24, the country’s state-owned television network, advised people suffering from temperatures rising as high as 110 degrees to take cold showers and stick their feet in saucepans of cold water.

The French are a hearty bunch. They combat global warming by sticking their feet in cold water. Do they remember the heat wave of 2003?

A 2003 heat wave killed 15,000 people in France. And, in response, the authorities have deployed Chalex, a database of vulnerable people who will get a call offering them cooling advice.

The advice consists of taking cold showers and sticking their feet in saucepans of cold water.

Desperate Frenchmen trying to get into any body of water they can have led to a 30% rise in drownings. The dozens of people dead are casualties of the environmentalist hatred of air conditioners.

Only 5% of French households have air conditioning. Even in response to the crisis, the authorities are only deploying temporary air conditioning to kindergartens.

Most of the 15,000 people who died during the 2003 heat wave were elderly. Thus, the deaths reduced the cost of the French version of Medicare. Look on the bright side. 

And now there’s Germany, a country that is so woke that it rejects the environmental contamination produced by air conditioners:

The 2003 heat wave killed 7,000 people in Germany. And, today, only 3% of German households have air conditioning. Germany’s Ministry of the Environment refused to back air conditioning as a response to global warming.

Temperatures in Dusseldorf hit 105 degrees. Officials in Dusseldorf had recently rejected proposals to install air conditioning systems because they’re bad for the environment.

The climate action head at Germany’s Institute for Applied Ecology explained that air conditioning wouldn't work because there's not much wind during heat waves, and the country can't end reliance on coal and run air conditioners at the same time. You can have air conditioners or save the planet.

But not both.

Greta Thunberg has found an audience of people who are stupid enough to die to save the planet. 

And then there are the Once-Great Britons:

The 2003 heat wave killed 2,000 Brits. The current heat wave has led to London being placed on a Level 3 health watch. But air conditioning in the UK still hovers at 3% of households. And every summer, the local media lectures Brits on the evils of air conditioning.

Every heat wave is treated as a compelling argument for reducing power to save the planet. The heat and its accompanying misery are treated as heralds of a global warming apocalypse. Soon, we are told, it’ll be hot all the time, the waters will rise, the icebergs will melt, and life will perish from the earth.

Countries around the world are not following the Western European example. Duh! I would note that they do not want to have much to do with Western European politics either:

China has 569 million installed air conditioners. More than any other country in the world. South Korea has 59 million air conditioners. That’s more than France, Germany and the UK combined.

Europe’s sacrifice is not only senseless, it’s also meaningless.

Vietnam has become a booming market for air conditioners. 17% of Vietnamese households now have one. Indonesia is leading its own boom in air conditioning. As is much of Asia and the Middle East.

Europe can go on letting its people die for the environment, but it won’t make any difference.

Just as Niall Ferguson mentioned in his London Times column yesterday, environmentalism is a pagan cult. Greenfield makes the same point:

While the rest of the world is cooling off, Europe is in thrall to a pagan pseudoscientific cult.

Its tenets insist that the planet is a living entity, but fail to understand its true implications. The climate is part of a living entity which changes on a timescale that challenges human understanding. For a thousand years of recorded history, Europe has undergone alternate warming and cooling periods. The Medieval Climate Anomaly was an example of how complicated those cyclical changes could be.

A heat wave isn’t proof that we’ve sinned against Mother Earth by heating and cooling our homes. It’s a reminder that the environment operates on an inescapable scale that is vaster than human beings.

We can cut down forests and build dams. But so can beavers. We cannot change the climate.

Will woke Americans give up their air conditioners on the word of a high school student truant? Or better, on the word of a certifiable imbecile, become member of the United States Congress. By the way, if you wanted to devalue democracy you could not do much better than to elect candidates like the Squad. 

Today, New York is the home of the Green New Deal which believes in following Europe’s trends. If New York adopts Europe’s environmentalism, it will discover what living in 1896 really felt like.

Environmentalists have killed thousands of Europeans. They can kill thousands of Americans too.

We might, however, hope that the environmental imbeciles decide that Americans should give up their air conditioners. What would happen to their movement then?