It’s a mad, mad world when it comes to climate
THE author of 1984, George Orwell, proving how insightful and prescient he was, argues “some ideas are so stupid, only intellectuals believe in them”.
The floods and overflowing dams around Sydney prove the climate activist Tim Flannery must have been in la-la land when arguing global warming would inevitably lead to droughts and empty dams.
Ever-increasing energy prices and the dangers of blackouts caused by closing power stations sourced by coal and gas and relying on unreliable and intermittent wind and solar power is another example of alarmist academics getting it wrong.
A podcast released by Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas featuring a Professor from New York University, Dr Matthew Liao, and his solution to global warming proves, yet again, how many academics must be living in an alternate universe. Dr Liao’s presentation argues urgent and immediate action must be taken as “it is too late to prevent human-induced climate change” and too risky to employ “mitigation through techniques of geo-engineering like giant space mirrors or seeding the oceans with iron to prompt carbon-absorbing algal blooms”.
As a result, given the urgency of the problem, Dr Liao suggests a ground-breaking solution guaranteed to solve the problem of humans infecting the Gaia and causing such destruction.
Dr Liao suggests: “So, why not address the source of the problem and engineer humans to reduce our environmental impact and adapt? Genetic engineering could make us smaller or reduce our appetite for meat. Doses of Oxytocin could make us more sympathetic and co-operative. Such possibilities are criticised as extreme but are they more so than re-engineering the planet?” Much like Jonathan Swift’s fictitious Academy Of Lagado, where scientists work to extract sunlight out of cucumbers and turn human excrement back into food, Dr Liao’s idea to reduce the carbon footprint by employing genetic engineering and drugs to make people smaller and easy to control appears laughable and beyond reason.
At the same time, given the strategies addressing climate change and the global Covid-19 pandemic recommended by bodies like the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organisation, it’s wrong to dismiss Dr Liao’s idea as unrealistic and implausible. Across the globe, there are more and more examples of governments embarking on mad crazy ideas to reduce carbon emissions, improve the environment and save citizens from Covid-19 and its variants based on so-called reputable and rational scientific advice.
The New Zealand Government, even though the county’s contribution to global emissions is only 0.17 per cent compared to China’s 30 per cent and America’s 14 per cent, plans to tax cows and sheep burping and thus penalise one of New Zealand’s most important agricultural industries.
One of the reasons Sri Lanka is now an economic basket case and where there are food riots is because the government, on the advice of scientific experts, banned synthetic fertilisers and pesticides and made farmers go organic. Domestic rice production fell 20 per cent in months and now rice has to be imported at great cost.
Farmers in the Netherlands, who recently blockaded roads with hundreds of tractors as a protest, are facing similar pressures by government to reduce fertilisers and cut back on livestock based on dodgy scientific advice arguing, unless immediate action is taken, the world is facing a climate apocalypse.