A death sentence for tens of millions

ESSEN, GERMANY – On the concourse piano at the Gare du Nord in Paris, I played "Armada Perdida,"the haunting marche funèbre written by Tomás Luis de Victoria, the great Spanish counter-Reformation composer, to honor the 15,000 of his gallant countrymen who died when the fleet of Philip V of Spain was lost in a succession of violent storms off the coast of Scotland in the equinoctial gales of 1588.

Once it was clear to me, taking the voices in the dismal, crony-capitalist-sponsored sheds at Le Bourget private airfield, that the annual U.N. Christmas climate pantomime would follow its usual meticulously choreographed Nuremberg-rally course, I saw no point in waiting for the now-traditional by-popular-demand one-night extension of this freak-show, the ritual announcement of "success" in achieving a Solomon Binding agreement or the luvvies' mwa-mwa hugging and junketing at the cast party in the fleshpots of the red-light district surrounding the Folies Bergère.

I bowed my head in mourning for the annual tens of millions whom these thousands of gibbering, custard-faced monsters in crumpled suits, living it up on lavish expense accounts paid for by you and me, had carelessly, callously condemned to an unnecessary, untimely, unconsidered, unnoticed, unreported, unforgivable death.

After pouring out my sorrow in music, I joined the transcontinental train to Essen in the heart of Germany's once-throbbing Ruhr Valley, where the roaring furnaces of the once-great steel industry are falling silent one by one.

There, at a high-level conference of professors, doctors of science and world-class climate-change researchers organized by the European Institute for Climate and Energy, I heard a steel-industry expert quietly, unemotionally describe the catastrophic effect that Angela Merkel's Energiewende was having on the industry he loved.

The doubling and tripling of electricity prices in the name of saving the planet from global warming that has been conspicuous by its absence for almost two decades is driving Germany's greatest industry to India and China, where CO2 emissions per ton of steel are far greater than they were in the West. Like every aspect of climate policy worldwide, this one is mad.

I asked the speaker what steps could be taken to bring the insane, scientifically illiterate politicians of the New World Order to their senses. The German audience applauded, for they cannot bear to see Europe's economic powerhouse fall silent. The speaker, very close to tears, could not bring himself to answer.

Angela Merkel is chiefly responsible for the 25,000 useless windmills and 1.4 million costly, environment-destroying solar panels that Germany's savage, industry-destroying power-price hikes have spawned.

An energy expert at the conference told us that the entire power output of these monstrosities could have been supplied by a few dozen marine diesel engines, whose combined CO2 emissions would actually have been lower than those of the spinning-reserve generators that back up the so-called "renewables" at night and when the wind does not blow.

Merkel comes from East Germany. When she first became chancellor, an eminent surgeon from Düsseldorf told me she and her backers, a shadowy group of bankers, were intent on destroying Germany's economy, she to pay back the West for winning the Cold War, they to profit by Germany's collapse.

I thought at the time that he was overstating the case. Now I am not so sure.

Back in Paris, how could they bring themselves to celebrate, these bloodless, totalitarian haters of their fellow men, when they had condemned what may yet prove to be hundreds of millions to death?

Many in China and India and nearly all the people of Africa have no electric power. Some 1.2-1.4 billion of our fellow-men cannot so much as turn on a light, let alone keep food and medicines fresh in the fridge, access the Internet, heat or cool their homes, or run anything like a modern, competitive business.

Those without electricity typically die 20 or 30 years before those who, like us, can – for now – take it for granted. Since there are 1,400 million of them, it is not difficult to calculate that some 10-20 million a year are dying because the prancing profiteers of Paris, instead of spending the modest sums that could give everyone cheap, clean, continuous, fossil-fueled power within a decade, have dedicated themselves to squandering trillions of other people's money on pointlessly trashing the economies of the West.

The exemption granted by Mr. Obama to China on his visit to Peking last December remains in place. China, which has been under-reporting its CO2 emissions by a sixth, will be emitting half of all manmade CO2 worldwide within 20 years. India, too, and all other under-developed countries, will not reduce her CO2 emissions, and rightly not.

For the fastest and surest way to lift the poorest populations out of poverty and thus to stabilize them and hence to minimize the total environmental impact of man is to give them coal-fired power at once. So, notwithstanding 21 years of futile negotiations and expensive partying, global CO2 emissions will continue to rise at the business-as-usual rate predicted by the U.N.'s climate panel in its first report a quarter of a century ago.

The Paris party-goers have decreed, Canute-like, that global warming will not be allowed to rise by more than 1 degree above today's temperature. They need not have bothered: for, as I demonstrated to the Essen conference, the panel's own methods and data show quite clearly that there will be only half a degree of warming by 2100, though with characteristic and fraudulent mendacity it says there will be 2.2 degrees' warming.

On the concourse behind the fine, Classical façade at the Gare du Nord, I had chosen my music carefully. For Victoria's funeral march for the men of the lost Armada is not wholly mournful. Behind the stately Spanish rhythm that would eventually cross the Atlantic to Cuba with the conquistadors, there to be speeded up as the Habanera, there runs a hint of dawning hope. My recording of "Armada Perdida"with the Fiddles o' the Hielan's in the rich resonance of Dunkeld Cathedral is here:

Paris is the grubby high-tide mark on the sides of the bath of dirty water that is the climate scam. The continuing failure of global temperature to rise at anything like the predicted rate will soon awaken even the dull intellects of the global classe politique to the fact that they have been fooled.

Unfolding events will pull out the plug and the water will drain away, leaving nothing but a film of scum behind. Within 10 years, this silly treaty process will have been forgotten. And perhaps the world will rediscover its conscience, mourn the tens of millions whom the environmental socialists' hatred of humanity has killed, and move fast to give every nation on Earth enough coal-fired power to keep the lights on and the citizens alive until a ripe old age.

For the Paris agreement is not legally binding. The secession clause for which I have long argued was included in the text as Article 28. Any state party to the agreement has the right to give a year's notice and spring free of all obligations without any penalty at all. One by one, the nations of the world will awaken from the eco-fascists' dream and set themselves free. The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

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