The recent earthquake in Haiti highlights several things about the climate warming debate that I have issues with.
The earthquake is a bona fide disaster, with tens of thousands of people dead. Global warming is a predicted disaster, with a nebulous “many millions at risk, sometime in the future. But I haven’t figured out at risk of what? Rampant disease? Al Gore mentions AIDS, SARS, Tuberculosis, and dozens of other diseases in his movie – but NONE of them are caused, or promoted in any way whatsoever, by increased carbon dioxide, or even increased temperatures. Increased human crowding, increased sexual promiscuity, increased worldwide travel, increased unsanitary conditions, and breeding hogs, ducks and humans in close proximity, often the same building, yes.  Carbon dioxide and increased temperatures, no. Lowland flooding as oceans rise would kill millions, but the rise is measured in fractions of an inch per year, whereas tides rise and fall sometimes dozens of feet per day, and if people are too stupid to get out of the way of water rising at the rate of a quarter of an inch per year, they truly deserve to die. I have yet to find ONE legitimate disaster caused by AGW – or one that is actually probable that might happen, caused by AGW.  It’s all hand waving and dire general predictions and reminds me seriously of Professor Harold Hill telling the the people of River City they’ve got trouble – and their sons, their daughters caught by the arms of animal instinct– mass-steria! Oh, we got trouble!”
The second issue brought out by the earthquake, is that Haiti is one of the “developing” nations that was begging for support from the “developed” nations, to offset the higher costs that dealing with global warming is predicted to cost in the future, on the theory that the developed nations were further along in their industrialization/modernization, and all Haiti needed was some funding on the side to nudge their development along a little faster so they could take their proper place as a “developed nation” sometime in the future. Does anybody really think that way? Anybody? Anywhere? Haiti – and most of the so-called “developing nations” are not, in fact, developing. They are static, or failing. Their political structures do not encourage or promote development of new wealth (new sources of value), only parasitic sucking of old wealth, or sucking from developed nations, or denuding the environment of any resources. I admit, the United States, and many of its corporations, have gone along with maintaining (and in some cases, setting up) those political structures, and the systems involved in pillaging the resources of an area.  But the myth and paradigm of “developing nations” is by-and-large a fraudulent concept.  Is Haiti “developing?” Is Yemen? North Korea? Burma? Afghanistan? Thailand? Serbia? Bangladesh? Angola? Armenia? Botswana? Cambodia? Cameroon? Chad? Congo? Ghana? Iran? Iraq? Namibia? Nepal? Rwanda? Seychelles? Somalia? The Sudan? Tanzania? Uganda? Uraguay? Zimbabwe? The answer is obviously NO.  And their political systems, or lack thereof, will continue to hold them in the muck of poverty and backwardness until their political structures and cultures are changed. No amount of money aid, no amount of development projects, no amount of infrastructure support dropped onto them from outside will ever get them to be “developed.”  Anymore than pouring federal aid dollars into Detroit will bring that city back to a powerhouse industrial center. Is Detroit a “developing” city? Will it benefit from federal aid “infrastructure” projects? You tell me. The culture of entitlement, corruption and selfishness that has developed in the population of Detroit is poisonous to development, and any business that tries to start in Detroit is hampered by the attitudes of the culture and the governments that it deals with.  Similarly with New Orleans.  The main problem in New Orleans isn’t that it is several feet below sea level and likely to be swamped by any hurricane that comes by, but that it has been, and still is, the city where people not only expect their government to be corrupt, but demand it.  And the costs of doing business in such a city are too great for much development to really occur, and when a hurricane comes by, they discover that the dikes are held together with old newspapers (true) and the legislators have tens of thousands of dollars stashed in their freezers (also true). Which brings us back to Haiti. It also has been notorious for being corrupt for decades, if not centuries. The presidential palace which collapsed, had thrones and bathroom fixtures of solid gold, and the concrete with which it was built was substandard, and despite hundreds of years of experience and building codes to the contrary, not built to withstand any sizeable earthquake.  Thousands of buildings have collapsed onto themselves, and officials are blaming substandard building practices. Tens of thousands of people, possibly hundreds of thousands of people have died. Several years ago, we had an earthquake in Los Angeles comparable to the one in Haiti.  Buildings and highways toppled and sixty seven people died. Now, what caused all the collapses in Haiti? That it is still “developing?” Or that its culture and political structure is, has been, and will remain for the foreseeable future, corrupt?