My column on the Gore-Pachauri Nobel prize began by questioning the “knowledge credentials” of the winners. I then went on to add:
Innumerable failures of such government-inspired 'knowledge' have occurred in the recent past – from the central economic planning of 'scientific socialism', and the centralized management of money, banking and credit of 'Keynesianism', all the way down to the 'intelligence' behind the Iraq War. Even the 'population explosion' scare which led to a UN Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) lies totally discredited today. From each of these failures of 'government knowledge', we the people have learnt the hard way that the personnel of government are interested not in our welfare, but in their own. The wiser citizen of today should therefore view the claims of an American politician (that too, a statist Democrat) supported by an unwieldy mass of government-sponsored scientists from all the governments of the world with deep scepticism.
I offered an example of “local warming”:
I was cruising along Delhi's Ring Road, and my dashboard meter reported the outside temperature as 39 degrees Celsius. Inevitably, I was stuck in a huge jam. Within minutes, the temperature zoomed to 49 degrees! Local warming? In my book, if India is to reduce her impact on climate change, she needs to knock her transportation system into shape. Our road surfaces need serious attention. Every Indian street, throughout the length and breadth of this huge sub-continent, is a potholed moonscape. This is how we waste fossil fuels. Funny how TERI, the energy NGO whose boss, the scientist RK Pachauri who heads IPCC, never makes any noises about road surfaces, ever. TERI is headquartered in Delhi, with plush, centrally air-conditioned offices in the swank Habitat Centre – a government-promoted piece of real estate, whose first chairman was none other than our current prime minister, Manmohan Singh.
Yeah. Pachauri and Chacha are buddies. That’s why Chacha has skipped parliament to go to Copenhagen.
Now that climategate has occurred, let us pause to reflect on the Gore-Pachauri-Chacha mindset: they think their The State can fix the climate!
Fatal Conceit?
Adam Smith’s famous “three duties of the sovereign” mentions nothing about the role of State as Weather God. I think all our modern-day sovereigns should read this, citizens too. Note that Adam Smith mentions nothing of a role of State in producing money either. Here are those famous words:
According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.
So build roads, Chacha. And don’t try and play Weather God, just as you have assumed the role of Universal Teacher and Universal Employer, and Central Planner and Central Banker as well. Perform your genuine duties. Or get lost.
But does that mean you believe that global warming is an invention of governments? Surely not. If scientists - independently and without political interference - are able to demonstrate that global warming is indeed a fact and likely to create huge problems for all of us, who do you suggest should direct policy changes? - for surely changes will be inevitable.
ReplyDeleteAnd i don't think you can tell Manmohan Singh to "get lost" - as you so eloquently put it. This is a democracy, much as you might sneer at it.
ReplyDeleteLast week's Open magazine has an interesting point. It said scientists in 1970s were speculating that the earth will enter an Ice Age. This theory fell out and by 1990 we had climate change.
ReplyDeleteNow, in some years, something else will replace climate change.
Life goes on.
@Devil's Advocate: My precise point is that IPCC is a GOVERNMENT panel.
ReplyDeleteFurther, we can ask Chacha to get lost "democratically." We must.
@Debby: Yes, from "ice age cometh" it suddenly became "global warming." Lowers the reputation of science and scientists, of governments, of the UN, and of the Nobel Prize.
Further, Chacha Manmohan LOST the Lok Sabha elections from South Delhi, losing to the BJP's Vijay Malhotra. He entered parliament by the Rajya Sabha by buying support from Assam MLAs with his printed money.
ReplyDeleteGet lost, I say.
global warming might be a fact.the major question is if it is AGW. btw,havent you noticed,the term now is climate-change and not global warming.since the world temp actually stayed constant or reduced in the last decade,climate change has become the catchphrase -an oxymoron if there were any.climate always changes.idiots wanting to stop climate change can go back to their fantasy lands.
ReplyDeletethe naive faith that statists have in a bunch of bureaucrats to solve imaginary problems by blunting the nose of the market ( distorting prices and imposing taxes)makes me want to throw up
basically the oil companies of the west now control less than 3% of reserves and produce less than 10% of the oil in the world - power has shifted from the International Oil Companies (Shell, Exxon etc) to the National Oil Companies (Gazprom, Saudi Aramco etc). And suddenly we are running out of oil - and need to use productive lands to grow plants for energy???? wow!
ReplyDelete