Monday, April 16, 2007

10 signs that you're a Moral Idiot

whilst they are all good, number 8 has the most relevance here:

8. You believe we should sign the Kyoto Protocol. Hmmm, you say, why is there a moral aspect to this? If you disagree with me then aren't I just an idiot and not a moral idiot? Good question, I'm glad you asked. A fully implemented Kyoto Protocol (the US and Australia sign, China and India etc are exempt) would cost the world $20 trillion and save 0.1C by 2050 and, if you're wondering, there's not much argument on those figures from either side of the political spectrum. The moral aspect comes into play in that it is completely immoral to spend such a massive sum of money on a completely symbolic project when millions of people in the world currently don't have access to clean drinking water, don't get enough to eat, suffer from diseases that were eradicated in the West decades ago (malaria, polio, cholera etc), live in totalitarian African regimes and have an average life expectancy of about 35. When the environmentalist Bjorn Lomberg gathered representatives from countries affected by these issues and created the Copenhagen Consensus Centre they came out with a report ranking the priority that aid money should be spent (in their case they assigned a hypothetical $50 billion). The first of the climate change issues, the Kyoto Protocol, ranked 27th on their list of 40. If you want to hamstring the US economy (the greatest provider of humanitarian aid on the planet) and transfer money to China and Russia through carbon trading schemes (which is their net effect) while we have a here and now crisis in Africa then your values are inverted and you're a Moral Idiot.

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