Global warming activists’ arguments are for the rich and ignore harm to the poor, according to one CNBC host.
CNBC “Street Signs” co-anchor Brian Sullivan said on March 21 that climate activists constantly push for a shift to renewable energy, but they often forget the impact to poor communities and energy prices.
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Sullivan and other CNBC anchors interviewed historian Rupert Darwall on “Squawk Box,” who explained the negative economict impact green policies have had on European economies in particular.
Sullivan called the climate activists’ position a “rich people argument about global warming.”
“Most people in the world are just trying to eat everyday, you know, and get to work and not go broke on their gas bills,” he said.
Sullivan said of the people who live near his own relatives in rural Virginia: the “price of gasoline impacts them dramatically. These people mostly are looking for the cheapest hydrocarbon.”
His comments were part of a discussion with Darwall about the economic problems of climate activism in developing economies worldwide. Darwall, who used to work with the British Treasury, wrote “The Age of Global Warming” about the politics and history of the global warming movement.
Darwall said that policies like regulation in favor of renewable energy, is futile and has dangerous economic ramifications.
“What the proponents of global warming forget is that the big developing economies have been against anything that fetters their growth and raising their people out of poverty,” he said.
Darwall noted that Europe’s focus on renewable energy, especially in Germany, “have pushed the German economy into the hands of Putin” because the switch to wind and solar made them dependent on weather. That dependency has resulted in a reliance on natural gas from Russia. He explored that argument further in a March 20 Wall Street Journal editorial.
