Environmentalism

CO2 is plant food. This is not a metaphor — it is photosynthesis. Plants absorb CO2 and convert it to sugar and oxygen. Every plant, every tree, every blade of grass runs on CO2. During the last ice age (20,000 years ago), atmospheric CO2 dropped to 180 ppm — just 30 ppm above the threshold (~150 ppm) where C3 plants can no longer photosynthesize. That is 95% of all plant species. Earth was 30 ppm from the death of most plant life. Current levels (420 ppm) are in the bottom 10% of Earth’s geological history. Plants evolved in 1000–4000 ppm. Commercial greenhouses run at 800–1200 ppm because plants grow 30–50% faster. NASA satellite data (2000–2017) shows 5% global greening, concentrated in arid regions, driven ~70% by CO2 fertilization. The Sahel is measurably greener. Calling CO2 a pollutant is like calling water a poison because you can drown.

The “97%” figure (Cook et al., 2013) measured whether papers agreed that humans contribute to warming — not whether warming is catastrophic, not whether current policies are correct, and not whether the proposed solutions work. Most sceptics also agree humans contribute some warming. The number says nothing about sensitivity, timelines, tipping points, or policy. “The science is settled” is itself anti-scientific — science is never settled, by definition. It advances by falsification, not consensus. Galileo was a minority of one. Plate tectonics was “fringe” until the 1960s. Ulcers were “caused by stress” until Barry Marshall drank H. pylori and proved the consensus wrong. Invoking consensus to shut down questioning is not science. It is authority wearing a lab coat.

Reduce emissions by what method? Nuclear power produces zero emissions and powers entire countries (France: 70% nuclear, among the lowest emissions in Europe). Environmentalist organisations campaigned for decades to shut down nuclear plants. Germany closed its nuclear fleet and replaced it with coal and Russian gas. Emissions went up. If the goal were actually reducing emissions, environmentalism would be the world’s loudest advocate for nuclear. It is the opposite. This tells you the goal is not emissions reduction. The goal is de-industrialisation. Emissions are the justification, not the concern.

Fossil fuels lifted 90% of humanity out of absolute poverty in 200 years. Before coal, people heated homes by burning forests. Before oil, they lit lamps with whale blubber. Before gas, they cooked over dung fires that killed millions annually from indoor air pollution (the WHO estimates 3.2 million deaths per year from household air pollution, predominantly in countries that lack access to modern fuels). Fossil fuels did not destroy the environment — they replaced far more destructive energy sources. The goal is not to go back. The goal is to go forward: nuclear, then fusion, then whatever comes next. But “forward” requires cheap energy and industrial civilisation, both of which mainstream environmentalism opposes.

Every crop you eat has been genetically modified by humans for 12,000 years. Ancient maize was a grass with tiny kernels. Ancient bananas were full of seeds. Wheat is a hybrid of three wild grasses that would never cross in nature. Selective breeding IS genetic modification — just slower and less precise. Modern GMO techniques (CRISPR, gene insertion) do the same thing with surgical accuracy instead of generations of guesswork. Golden Rice adds beta-carotene (vitamin A) to rice. Vitamin A deficiency kills 250,000–500,000 children per year and blinds twice as many. Greenpeace campaigned against Golden Rice for over a decade. Patrick Moore, Greenpeace’s co-founder, left the organisation partly over this. In his words: “They are anti-human.” The Nobel laureate Richard Roberts organised 150+ Nobel Prize winners to sign a letter condemning Greenpeace’s opposition to Golden Rice as a “crime against humanity.”

Species go extinct. This has happened continuously for 3.8 billion years. Five mass extinctions wiped out 70–96% of all species, long before humans existed. Are humans causing some extinctions? Yes — primarily through habitat destruction, which is worst in the poorest countries where people clear forest for farmland because they have no alternative. The solution is not less development but more: industrial agriculture produces more food on less land. A farmer with a tractor and fertiliser feeds hundreds from the same land that subsistence farming required to feed one family. Rich countries are reforesting. Poor countries are deforesting. Make them rich and the forests come back. The extinction narrative is used to justify blocking development in countries that desperately need it — condemning the poorest humans to poverty in the name of species most environmentalists cannot name.

Wind and solar are intermittent — they produce energy when the wind blows and the sun shines, not when you need it. Storage at grid scale does not exist at viable cost. Germany’s Energiewende (energy transition) spent over €500 billion and emissions barely fell because intermittent renewables needed gas backup. Meanwhile France (nuclear) has roughly one-tenth the emissions per kWh at lower cost. Renewables have a role — but claiming they can replace baseload power is engineering fantasy, not policy. The math does not work without nuclear, and mainstream environmentalism opposes nuclear. This is not a plan. It is a religion with solar panels as prayer wheels.

The most environmentally devastated places on Earth are socialist: the Aral Sea (Soviet irrigation policy drained it to a desert), Chernobyl (Soviet reactor design with no containment), the Yangtze (Chinese industrial policy), Norilsk (Soviet nickel smelting turned an entire region toxic). When the state owns everything, there is no one to sue, no property right to defend, no incentive to preserve. Capitalism creates environmental destruction when property rights are weak — when someone can pollute your river because no one owns the river. The solution is stronger property rights, not state ownership. An owner protects what is theirs. A bureaucrat protects what advances their career.

You are free to consume less. That is your choice and it creates no victim. But imposing simplicity on others — through carbon taxes, flight bans, meat restrictions, energy rationing — is coercion. It creates victims: the family that can’t heat their home, the farmer whose fertiliser is taxed, the developing nation told it cannot industrialise. The people promoting “simple living” overwhelmingly live in wealthy countries that already industrialised. Telling Africa it cannot build coal plants while Europe burns gas is not moral leadership. It is pulling up the ladder. The dictionary defines this clearly: taking what belongs to another — including their opportunity to develop — without consent is harm.

Climate-related deaths have fallen by over 95% in the past century — from roughly 500,000 per year in the 1920s to under 15,000 per year now — despite warming. Why? Technology: better buildings, early warning systems, irrigation, air conditioning, flood defences. All products of industrial civilisation and cheap energy. The number one predictor of climate resilience is wealth. Rich countries survive hurricanes. Poor countries are devastated by them. Every policy that makes energy expensive or slows development increases climate vulnerability. Adaptation through prosperity works. Poverty through restriction kills. The data is unambiguous: more CO2 correlates with fewer climate deaths, because the same civilisation that produces CO2 also produces the technology that saves lives.

Greenpeace had revenue of €380 million in 2022. The Sierra Club: $150 million. WWF: over $1 billion. The “no profit motive” claim is false — these are billion-dollar enterprises whose revenue depends on public fear. A solved environmental problem is a funding crisis. That is why nuclear (which would solve emissions overnight) is opposed: it would eliminate the problem that justifies the organisation’s existence. Patrick Moore, Greenpeace co-founder, left in 1986 because the organisation had been “taken over by political activists who used environmental rhetoric to cloak agendas that had more to do with anti-capitalism than ecology.” He was there. He watched it happen. Follow the money — even when the money wears a green logo.

Future generations will inherit the cleanest air in two centuries, the largest forests in a century (in developed countries), technologies that would seem miraculous to our grandparents, and an atmosphere with enough CO2 for plants to thrive. What they will not inherit, if the de-growth movement succeeds, is the industrial capacity to adapt to whatever changes come. Every generation in human history has been richer, healthier, and longer-lived than the one before — because each generation built on the tools and energy of the previous one. The greatest cruelty to future generations would be dismantling the engine of progress in the name of an ideology that has never produced a single watt of power, grown a single bushel of grain, or cured a single disease.