Primum Non Nocere — Neo-Colonialism?

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Writes Caleb Stewart Rossiter:

Consider the Obama administration’s efforts to avoid fossil-fueled climate catastrophes. While well-intentioned, these efforts to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” gasses did a lot of net harm to the people of the formerly colonized countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Indeed, Obama’s policies were reminiscent of colonialism’s attempt to make these regions producers of raw materials rather than industrial competitors. Obama’s climate alarmists discouraged poor countries from building power plants and modern transmission grids, and instead offered foreign aid to help them stay “off the grid” with small-scale wind and solar projects. The administration also drove up the price of food in poor countries by diverting crops to meet “green” fuels quotas, and stood by while the European Union punished these countries for exporting “carbon-intensive” products. The moral issue here is that the costs of the predicted climate catastrophes are hypothetical, meager, and in the distant future, while the health and economic benefits of fossil-fueled growth for poor countries are real, massive, and available right now.

In terms of health, people need reliable power in their homes, factories, and offices. If they cannot get it from electricity they will get it by burning wood, dung, and charcoal and firing up their personal diesel generators. In Africa, where only 25 percent of homes have reliable electricity and most factories and office suffer from frequent black-outs, the particulate matter emitted by these inefficient energy sources pose a constant crisis in respiratory disease. In terms of economic growth and the increase in life expectancy that it creates, we can simply note that since embracing fossil-fueled capitalism with a vengeance China has nearly eliminated its 20-year gap with the 80-year life expectancy of developed countries, while Africa lags at 59 years.

Here are five steps President Trump can take to stop us from doing harm, and maybe even start us doing some good, in the developing world’s quest for the better and longer life that reliable electric power can bring.

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