Friday, October 10, 2014

Energy Policy and Poverty - At the Crossroads

Recently, I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Judith Curry speak at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's first annual At the Crossroads Energy and Climate Policy Summit in Houston.  Dr. Curry has an op-ed in Friday's Wall Street Journal. Some of her credentials are at the bottom of the article: Ms. Curry, a professor and former chairwoman of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the president of Climate Forecast Applications NetworkShe points out that the numbers do not add up in the arguments in the climate change alarmists' rhetoric.

Here is a good introduction to the information now available from that summit on the TPPF website:



It is not an exaggeration to call most of the policy demands and emotional rhetoric coming from the wealthy and unaffected simply snake oil.  Wealthy liberals like Al Gore, formerly career politicians, jumped on this bandwagon in the early stages not out of some kind of need to save the world but out of pure greed.  Many have become even more wealthy from actions taken that have now been proven contrary to not only common sense but also to basic statistics. 

Bad policy decisions - especially many of the arbitrary mandates promoted by policy makers - are literally killing poor people.  How's that for alarmist reaction?  By making electricity more expensive in hopes of discouraging use of power, the poor suffer.  Think of African villages with no power source.  Without a cheap source of energy - namely electricity - there is common place shortened life spans and no hope for a better future.  

Electricity lifts people out of poverty.  It gets no simpler than that. 

You can listen to Dr. Curry's presentation to the Summit HERE. 

Other presentations are available now on the website, too.  It is worth your time to get the real facts on the subject.





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