Christian Group: Climate Change Policy is Dead End for Poor

The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation launched an educational campaign entitled “The Road to Paris: A Dead End for the Poor” calling on an end to the fight against Climate Change.

E. Calvin Beisner, founder and national spokesperson for the group, told Caffeinated Thoughts in an email, “UN leaders and President Obama hope to reach a binding global agreement to fight global warming at the upcoming UN climate summit in Paris in late November and early December. Such an agreement will bring great harm to the world’s poor by depriving them of access to abundant, affordable, reliable energy, especially electricity—without which no society can rise out of poverty. It will also harm poor and low-income people in America and other developed countries by raising energy prices and reducing employment.”

Part of the educational campaign will include a series of 35 videos on their YouTube channel. New videos will be posted every Monday,Wednesday, and Friday from now through December 4.  The first four are live and you can watch those below:

The YouTube videos and a documentary they will show at the Heritage Foundation on October 20th feature interviews with 31 outstanding scholars (listed below) in climate science; energy, environmental, and developmental economics; theology, philosophy, and ethics; public policy; and related fields. They provide the scientific evidence that human activity is not causing dangerous global warming, explain how policies to fight global warming will harm everyone, especially the poor, reveal how fighting global warming contributes to sex-selection abortion and human trafficking, and apply Christian theological and ethical principles to decisions about climate and energy policy.

They also launched a petition that reads:

The computer climate models that are the only reason for fears of dangerous, manmade global warming have proven wrong. They predict warming at twice the rate actually observed since the 1970s, and they failed to predict the complete absence of warming since January 1997. There remains, therefore, no good reason for the fears.

It follows that policies to fight global warming fight a non-problem. They waste trillions of dollars needed instead to help the world’s poor meet much more urgent needs. In developed countries they slow, stop, or reverse economic growth, destroy jobs, and raise energy costs, harming everyone—especially the poor and elderly. And, by depriving developing nations of the abundant, affordable, reliable energy they need to rise and stay out of poverty, they would condemn them to more generations of poverty, disease, suffering, and death.

Therefore we petition President Obama, Congress, our governors, our state legislatures, and county and city governments to repeal all policies previously adopted to fight global warming and not to adopt new ones (such as the currently proposed “Clean Power Plan”), and we petition President Obama and the United States Senate to refrain from embracing any global treaty or agreement to limit carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming.

Note: I have signed and I encourage you to do the same.

Underlying the videos and petition are a major study and two open letters:

• A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor 2014: The Case against Harmful Climate Policies Gets Stronger, co-authored by David R. Legates, Ph.D., Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, and G. Cornelis van Kooten, Ph.D., Professor of Economics and Research Chair in Environmental Studies and Climate, University of Victoria, BC, Canada
• An Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change, released in April before the issuance of the papal environmental encyclical Laudato Si’ and signed by over 500 individuals, including over 200 scholars in relevant fields.
• An Open Letter on Climate Change to the People, their Local Representatives, the State Legislatures and Governors, the Congress, and the President of the United States of America, signed so far by over 300 scholars, leaders, and others.

Greener on the Other Side: Climate Alarmism—Facts, Not Fear

Interviewees’ Names and Titles

1. Jock Allison, Ph.D., Reproductive Studies
   • Research Scientist (ret.), New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries
2. Timothy F. Ball, Ph.D., Geography
   • Professor of Climatology (ret.), University of Winnipeg
3. William “Matt” Briggs, Ph.D., Mathematical Statistics
   • Statistical Consultant; former Meteorologist, NWS
4. H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., Environmental Ethics
   • Environmental Research Fellow, Heartland Institute; Managing Editor, Environment & Climate News
5. Robert M. Carter, Ph.D., Paleontology
   • Professor and Head of School of Earth Sciences (ret.), James Cook University
6. Walter Cunningham, M.A., Physics; USN Colonel (Ret.)
   • Apollo 7 Astronaut; former Rand Corporation Research Scientist
7. Harold H. Doiron, Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering
   • Chairman, The Right Climate Stuff Research Team; NASA Engineer for Apollo, Skylab, and Space Shuttle
8. Paul Driessen, Esq., J.D.
   • Senior Policy Advisor, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow; Author, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death
9. William M. Gray, Ph.D., Geophysical Sciences
   • Emeritus Professor, Atmospheric Science; Head of Tropical Meteorology Project, Colorado State University
10. Ken Haapala, M.S., Quantitative Economics
    • President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
11. William Happer, Ph.D., Physics
    • Emeritus Professor of Physics, Princeton University; Former Director, Office of Science, Department of Energy
12. Tom Harris, M.Eng. (Mechanical Engineering, Thermofluids)
    • Executive Director, International Climate Science Coalition
13. Kathleen Hartnett-White, M.A., Humanities
    • Distinguished Senior Fellow, Texas Public Policy Foundation; former Chairman, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
14. David Kreutzer, Ph.D., Economics
    • Research Fellow in Energy Economics and Climate Change, Center for Data Analysis, Heritage Foundation
15. David Legates, Ph.D., Climatology
    • Professor of Climatology and Geography, College of Earth, Ocean, & Environment, University of Delaware; Senior Fellow, Cornwall Alliance
16. Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D., Ecological Climatology
    • Director, Center for the Study of Science, Cato Institute; former President, American Association of State Climatologists; former Program Chair, Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society; former Research Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
17. Lord Christopher Monckton, 3^rd Viscount of Brenchley, M.A., Classics; Dip., Journalism
    • Chief Policy Advisor, Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI); former Press Officer, Conservative Central Office, UK, and Policy Advisor to UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
18. Marc Morano, B.A., Political Science
    • Communications Director, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Executive Editor and Chief Correspondent, ClimateDepot.com; former Senior Advisor, Speechwriter, and Climate Researcher for U.S. Sen. James Inhofe
19. Jay Richards, Ph.D., Philosophy and Theology
    • Assistant Research Professor, School of Business and Economics, Catholic University of America; Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute; Executive Editor, The Stream`
20. James H. Rust, Ph.D., Nuclear Engineering
    • Professor of Nuclear Engineering (ret.), Georgia Institute of Technology; Policy Advisor, Heartland Institute
21. Thomas P. Sheahen, Ph.D., Physics
    • Director, Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology; Vice President, Science and Environmental Policy Project; President/CEO, Western Technology, Inc.
22. S. Fred Singer, Ph.D., Physics
    • Emeritus Professor of Environmental Science, University of Virginia; Founder, Science and Environmental Policy Project; founder, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change; former Distinguished Research Professor, Institute for Space Science and Technology; former Chief Scientist, U.S. Department of Transportation; former Vice Chairman, National Advisory Committee for Oceans and Atmosphere; former Deputy Assistant Administrator for Policy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water Quality and Research, U.S. Department of the Interior; founding Dean, School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences, University of Miami; first Director, National Weather Satellite Service; former Director, Center for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Maryland
23. Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D., Meteorology
    • Principal Research Scientist, Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama; U.S. Science Team Leader, Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua Satellite; former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he was co-recipient of NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for global temperature monitoring work with satellites; Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow
24. Leighton Steward, M.S., Geology
    • Chairman, PlantsNeedCO2.org; Chairman, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Southern Methodist University
25. James Taylor, J.D.
    • Vice President for External Relations and Senior Fellow for Environment and Energy Policy, Heartland Institute
26. James Tonkowich, D.Min.
    • Columnist, ReligionToday.com; Former President, Institute on Religion & Democracy
27. G. Cornelis van Kooten, Ph.D., Economics
    • Professor of Economics and Research Chair in Environmental Studies and Climate, University of Victoria
28. Anthony Watts
    • Director and President, IntelliWeather Inc.; Host, WattsUpWithThat.com, “the world’s most viewed climate website”; Broadcast Meteorologist
29. Tom Wysmuller, M.A., Political Science (cand.)
    • Meteorologist and Lecturer on Climate and Climate Change for Colderside.com
30. Elizabeth Yore, Esq., J.D.
    • Child Legal Advocate; Former General Counsel, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, and General Counsel, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
31. Ben Zycher, Ph.D., Economics
    • John G. Searle Chair Resident Scholar on Energy and Environmental Policy, American Enterprise Institute; Senior Fellow, Pacific Research Institute