S3 E25 COP29 Climate Hoax - How to Save the Giraffes

COP29 the annual world global warming meeting,  has just completed.  Better named “Climate Hoax 29”, with its completion the leaders of all the deadbeat nations of the world are lining up to speak their piece.   What do they have to say?  They are disappointed that the West won’t give them more than the three hundred billion dollars promised every year.  They claim they deserve it, because they are victims of climate change.

In this podcast we’ll look at the three countries featured in the New York Times and see what their real and obvious problems are. Hint: climate didn’t cause it.  More money won’t fix it.

Commentary on trending issues brought to you with a moderate perspective.

Transcript

The Tenth Man: [00:00:00] Climate Hoax 29 has just completed and the deadbeat nations of the world are unhappy with their 300 billion dollar gift. Why we should give them a lump of coal instead, today, on the Tenth Man.

Yes, that's a literal lump of coal. You'd be surprised how many of the world's problems could be solved by sending a shipload of coal to the right places. We'll talk about one of those places today as we cover some of the countries who are complaining about their 300 billion dollars per year being gifted to them by us, the so called developed nations.

This is all because of the climate change [00:01:00] hoax, and by hoax, we don't mean that Everything about climate change theory is a hoax. But we do mean the idea that you and I need to pay more taxes and stop the way we live and live some other way in order to support some United Nations program that supposedly solves the problem and lets other countries off the hook.

Well, that part is a hoax. So the climate change summit met in Baku. Azerbaijan. And the main theme of the summit is how could the developed countries help the undeveloped countries? And of course that means sending money. Uh, first question is who's developed? Because when they say developed countries, that doesn't mean China and it doesn't mean the Saudis.

And of course, one has a very large economy and the other one has a lot of money. [00:02:00] So that's the first controversy. But what the assumption is that we, developed countries, are guilty of producing all the CO2. They call us the biggest polluters. Now one of the benefits of being technically a senior citizen is that you can remember back before all this, when pollution meant something that was toxic, something that was caustic, something that actually did harm.

You can remember when it was an actual joke, when people said, Well, these, uh, green people, before you know it, they're going to claim that carbon dioxide is a polluter. And that was said as a joke, as something outrageous. But it's like things that you see on The Simpsons, things that we think was outrageous, and it eventually becomes true.

Because when you think about it, CO2 is what we exhale. How can that be considered a pollutant? CO2 is what plants live on. How can it be considered [00:03:00] a pollutant? But they consider us to be polluters, especially the U. S. and China. But the problem with that philosophy or that theory or that statement is that they're saying the U.

S. and China are the biggest polluters sheerly on the number of absolute tons of CO2 emitted. But the problem is that both countries are quite populous, China is the largest country on earth by population. So wouldn't it make more sense to say we're biggest polluters if we're polluting more per capita?

Or even being more precise, sure the U. S. is a big polluter because it has the largest economy in the world. So a better measure would be CO2 per dollar of GDP. So why don't they use that figure? It's not as if that number doesn't exist. It does exist. You can go look it up. And what you'll find if you look at countries in terms of how much CO2 per [00:04:00] GDP dollar they emit, the worst in the world is not capitalist.

It is very industrial. The worst in the world is North Korea. Take note, Democrats, that the worst country in the world for emissions is the one. Communist paradise that exists: North Korea. 

It's a very interesting list because if you look at among the best in the world, I think it's number six is Switzerland, clearly a developed nation, clearly a wealthy nation, but it's very low. So why would Switzerland be low? Well, it has a large economy, but its economy is based on finance and technology, and those sources don't typically emit a lot of emissions.

Looking at China, because China and the U. S. are being held up as the worst polluters, China is the 17th worst, 17th worst in emissions per dollar of [00:05:00] GDP, where the United States is way down on 49th. Doesn't sound that great, but for our , fellow former colonials, we are better than Canada and Australia, which are also in about that range.

So you have to look at other factors. So what are some of the factors? Well, as we said, Switzerland, they have finance and technology used to be Swiss watches. Then it became other instruments and now it's technology. China is higher because they're also a big country. They have a large economy and they also burn a lot of coal.

So that makes them much worse than the U S what's the USA Canada and Australia. What's our excuse for not being as good as say Switzerland . Well, it's because we are all food producers. The world has to eat. And the U. S.,

Canada, Australia, we help to feed the world. Producing food requires you to burn diesel, requires you to [00:06:00] both make and use fertilizer, and those things are going to contribute to carbon emissions. So if you're a net food importer, you're going to be offloading your carbon emissions to another country who does.

Another one, a big carbon emitter, is production of cement, Portland cement, to make concrete. Countries, in all the countries we've named, China, US, Canada, other Western countries produce cement. And not just Western countries, but they produce cement. So these numbers will distort it because if you need to use cement, you're going to have to buy it

and it has to be produced somewhere. Now, as the summit wrapped up and the countries were awarded their 300 billion dollars, And we're talking about the article in the New York Times, and there were three countries which complained. There were probably many more, but the three that were noted in the Times article were Bolivia, Fiji, and Nigeria.

So let's just examine [00:07:00] those countries and see what do they have to complain about.

 So looking at Bolivia, what kind of country is this? Well, it's a country that's very rich in minerals. They could be mining and exporting tin, silver. Their unfortunate history includes half of its land being taken away by their neighbors. So Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, Chile, and Argentina have all taken up large swaths of Bolivian land.

In the process, this turned Bolivia from a coastal country to a landlocked country. So they have no access to the coast, no access to the Pacific Ocean. In spite of that, they do have a navy which operates on Lake Titicaca, where they used to go to war with Peru. And, also operates on the [00:08:00] rivers, and they do hope someday to get 

their coast back. So there is a festering problem. , there's this resentment that they want access to the ocean. 

Over the years, Bolivia has been socialist. It's been a dictatorship. They've had multiple coups d'etat, including one in 2024. They haven't had very good, uh, rights for the native population, for the Indians. A big part of their economy is the export of cocaine. So, giving problems to other countries. If you look at this, and this is just a thumbnail sketch of their history, what problem in Bolivia would be fixed by your sending them more money?

And to be specific, what climate problem would be fixed by sending Bolivia more money? Little sidebar, we'll talk about neighboring Panama also complained. In Panama, most of their [00:09:00] economy comes from ship traffic through the Panama Canal. So a lot of big ships burning a lot of diesel fuel, moving stuff around, and yet with all the CO2 emissions that that represents, they're expanding the Panama Canal.

Next is Fiji, an island in the South Pacific. Thousands of miles from anywhere. Like Bolivia, it's had a succession of unstable governments and its main industry is travel. So airline travel, airplanes, burning kerosene. Now, uh, COPE 26 back in 2021, there was a commitment made to reduce travel emissions, but there's been no results so far.

But I think when they want to reduce travel emissions, they just want to make the airplanes fly on Kool Aid or something, but that's not going to happen. Now, if they were looking at the U S or the [00:10:00] other developed countries, they'd be saying, change your lifestyle. So just stop traveling or reduce it. But. go online you'll see that Fiji is still advertising travel to their country. It's a little bit like the tobacco companies in the 1970s.

Everybody knows we should reduce travel but the companies are still advertising its consumption. Maybe like the tobacco companies they should have to ban travel advertising or have some reduction plans like, uh, stay in your own hemisphere. If you live in New York and want to see some warm weather, you could fly down south to Argentina or to Cancun, something like that.

You don't have to go to Fiji. Unfortunately for Fiji, I don't know if there's any major population centers directly north of them. But a good philosophy would be just stay in your own hemisphere if you want to travel. Just travel north and south. You don't need to travel east and west to get better weather.

And there's a side benefit, no jet [00:11:00] lag. So, I think we've solved that problem, and Fiji doesn't need any money. Now the second big source of income in Fiji is remittances. Remittances means money sent home from workers who go to another country and work there. Well, that's a little bit of cheating because there are thousands of Fijians who go to work in Australia and New Zealand and then those countries get the rap for producing CO2 when Fiji is supposedly pure.

And that's not even counting the 3, 000 mile commute they're making to get to work.

And the word for this is hypocrisy.

Finally we'll talk about Nigeria. Now Nigeria is the strangest one on the list because Nigeria is a major oil producer. [00:12:00] Azerbaijan, where the COPE meeting was held, a major petroleum producer as well, Nigeria has been exporting oil for years, and contributing to the use of fossil fuels. Yet, they're complaining about not getting enough money from the West.

And you really have to raise an eyebrow there. How is it they're an oil producer, yet they're not a developed country? It's because the oil use there is not benefiting the people. And if you look at the list of carbon production per dollar of GDP, Nigeria actually ranks very low.

So with a relatively low GDP, GDP, they still have a low carbon footprint. This is because the oil production benefits a very few, making them very wealthy, while the majority of the population is poor, living at a subsistence level. There are very few [00:13:00] consumers. There is very little consumption. Therefore, very little CO2 production.

This is where we come to the comments about the lump of coal. If you leave Lagos, Nigeria and travel out into the country, you'll find how most of the people live in very humble dwellings cooking over a charcoal fire . There is currently a charcoal boom in Africa. Nigeria is part of Africa's charcoal boom. Africa is a huge continent, and all over Africa, in one country after another, people are cutting down the trees and burning them into charcoal. That is, they cut the trees up, put them into a retort, some sort of vessel, build a fire under them, so they're burning some of the trees in order to turn the rest of the tree into charcoal.

Then they haul the charcoal around and sell it, and [00:14:00] the producers and the sellers of charcoal are making a living that way. Now why would they do this in Nigeria? Nigeria has oil. Well, again, the oil is being exported, but beyond that, they say, well, charcoal is traditional. We're used to cooking over charcoal, so that's what we're going to do.

So it seems that in Africa, you don't need to change your way of life in order to save the planet because it's your tradition. In November of 2024, president Joe Biden of the US declared several species of giraffe endangered because they're going extinct.

And this is a headline that is really true of the populations have plummeted. Some species have dropped 40 percent since the 1990s. Some, even more. And as usual, everything's blamed on the West. So by Biden [00:15:00] declaring them endangered, now that means that they're going to discourage importation of giraffe products.

And of course, people are condemning what they call trophy hunting of giraffes. But of course, hunting of wild animals only occurs where it's legal and where they are abundant. And there are several, you'd be surprised how many species of giraffe there are. 

But it's not the west's fault because whenever animal populations go into decline, it's because of one of two things, loss of habitat or loss of their food sources? In this case, it's a combination of both. All over Africa, they're cutting down, especially the acacia trees, and that's what the giraffes eat.

They've done so much cutting of these trees that now there are islands of trees so the giraffes can't cross between these islands so that there's interbreeding and a loss of genetic diversity. All of this caused by burning [00:16:00] charcoal.

To solve this problem, we should send all these countries a shipload of coal. We have plenty of coal. You're going to burn carbon either way. . Charcoal actually has more carbon per unit than coal does because coal has some impurities in it. But, you're going to burn the same amount of carbon, produce the same amount of CO2 per unit of heat, whether it's coal or charcoal, either one. Now, if the Africans were burning trees in a sustainable way, replacing the trees they burned, it would be okay.

In fact, the Climatarian Church would say it is sustainable because they're burning trees. But unlike charcoal in the U. S. or other countries where it's used for grilling, African charcoal is made from trees, not from waste. U. S. charcoal is made from sawdust and other wood products from the construction process.

[00:17:00] We're cutting down trees and turning them into houses, not cutting them down and burning some trees to turn other trees into charcoal. And the U. S. plants more trees than it cuts, unlike the so called developing world where they practice slash and burn agriculture, or they find a tree, cut it down, destroy it, and move on. Now anybody can figure this out, it's no mystery, no secret. So why don't we do this, because the climatarians will say anything to keep you from burning coal is why.

Burning coal is taboo, it's anathema to use a religious term, because climatology is a religion. And the taboo against burning coal is an irrational . religious belief that in this case would help save the planet and definitely save the [00:18:00] giraffes. These deadbeat nations, they don't need our money. They just need to live sensibly.

They need to adopt our ways. There's no reason they can't live the way we do. Instead, this year, the world also celebrated the discovery of our oldest ancestor, Lucy, the skeleton discovered in Africa in 1974. Africa has had 3 million years to teach us how to be stewards of the planet. So why should nations that are only a couple hundred years old be working in slavery for them?

And we haven't even talked about the plastic of the oceans, which, COPE 29 is going to be, that's going to be their next study in hypocrisy. As you may know, 90 percent of the plastic that goes into the oceans comes from just 10 rivers. And None of them are in Europe or Australia, Canada, or the U S. [00:19:00] So your switching to paper straws from plastic drinking straws is not going to save a turtle from the hypocrisy of Fiji's air travel and guest workers to the revolutions in Bolivia, to the raping of the environment in Nigeria, money won't solve the problems in these countries.

Becoming a developed country requires mainly that you just act like a developed country. Thank you for listening.