Poverty and the Environment

Western recession and UN promotion of green energy will also increase poverty in the third world

Letters to the Editor | Comments | March 28, 2016

Desperately poor people focus on feeding their family and have no spare energy to support secondary concerns such as the environment. Destitute societies also see large families as free labour and old-age insurance. Thus poverty inevitably produces growing populations and environmental degradation. The industrial revolution, powered by abundant reliable energy from coal, oil and gas, provided rural labourers with better-paying jobs in industry and government. With kerosene tractors, iron ploughs and no draught horses to feed, farmers had more food to sell. Food prices fell, cities grew, and society supported more culture, conservation and welfare. With increasing prosperity western families became smaller, reducing birth-rates below replacement levels thus moderating population pressure on the environment.

Today’s green policies are reversing these centuries of progress. They are restricting mining, farming, forestry, fishing and heavy industry by delaying approvals, denying access to land, increasing taxes and the dole, and making electricity more costly and unreliable. These policies destroy industry, savings and jobs. Chronic unemployment undermines the ability to support arts, environment, welfare and overseas aid. Green charities like the climate industry will also suffer. Western recession and UN promotion of green energy will also increase poverty in the third world where swelling populations will further degrade their environment. Societies are becoming angry. Today’s Green Shirts will produce tomorrow’s Dark Age. Viv Forbes, Rosewood, Qld, Australia

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Viv Forbes——Bio and Archives

Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, has spent his life working in exploration, mining, farming, infrastructure, financial analysis and political commentary. He has worked for government departments, private companies and now works as a private contractor and farmer.

Viv has also been a guest writer for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Business Queensland and mining newspapers. He was awarded the “Australian Adam Smith Award for Services to the Free Society” in 1988, and has written widely on political, technical and economic subjects.