I have escaped this rather depressing election campaign by retreating to my home in la France profonde — to be precise, in Armagnac, in the heart of Gascony. My only outing, from which I have just returned, was a brief visit to New York, travelling there and back in the giant Airbus 380. The purpose of the trip was to drum up US support for the thinktank I founded in 2009, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and its campaigning arm, the Global Warming Policy Forum, in the company of our outstanding director, Benny Peiser. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, the GWPF has a global reach, and its international influence is growing. Moreover, unlike the US thinktanks involved in the climate change issues, we also (to use the American expression) reach across the aisle: we are rigorously non-partisan, and in that sense non-political. It was a hectic schedule of meetings and speeches, and a relief to get back each night to the civilised comfort of the determinedly old-fashioned oak-panelled Harvard Club.
The visit was a timely one, given the UN conference to be held at Paris later this year with the objective of agreeing a successor to the lapsed Kyoto decarbonisation agreement, this time on a genuinely global basis, involving China, India, and the rest of the developing world. Of course, it is complete madness. The burning of fossil fuels has had three consequences. First, it has provided — and for the foreseeable future will continue to provide — the cheapest and most reliable source of energy, which in turn has raised living standards immeasurably, enabling a substantial reduction in poverty, with its attendant evils of malnutrition, preventable disease and premature death. Its abandonment would be hugely harmful to the world’s poor.
Second, by releasing additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it has had a well-attested and measurable effect in stimulating plant growth, greening the planet and improving its biosphere to the benefit of human and animal life in general.
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