STOCKHOLM Sept. 24 (EIRNS)—That was the headline of Svenska Dagbladet Sunday, Sept. 22 about NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, who on Sept. 25 will go to the International Space Station to spend six months. Jessica Meir, who is both a Swedish and American citizen, as her mother was born in Sweden, was featured with a picture on half the first page and four full pages. In the same issue, Greta Thunberg, the Friday global climate demonstrations and the UN Climate Youth Summit were covered in only a total of one and half pages.
The article about Jessica Meir is inspirational, in the same way as Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her “International Call to Youth: The Age of Reason Is in the Stars!” far above the current climate debate.
In the same Svenska Dagbladet issue, an op-ed by Bjorn Lomborg, of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, attempts to find some middle ground for anthropogenic climate change in the wake of the emotional excesses by Thunberg and the associated youth movement. He refutes any danger of an immediate climate crisis. He cites the IPCC that there is no evidence for any increasing flooding, drought, or hurricanes, and writes that “furthermore the scientists mean that anthropogenic global warming cannot likely be connected to any of these extreme weather phenomena.”
Lomborg claims that the reason for the “exaggerations, currently worse than ever” is the failure of the climate treaties over the past 30 years. He asks, “What is behind this blown-up rhetoric?” His answer is that it is the extreme costs of the measures advocated in the Paris Accord: $1-2 trillions per year. The people behind those proposals seem to believe, that the only way to get achieve its goals “is to scare the life out of people.” Lomborg warns, it will “threaten damaging the credibility of science” and is “doomed to fail as a political strategy,” as the cost will lead to street protests like the Yellow Vests in France and protest voting like in Australia, Brazil and the Philippines. He points to a new poll in the U.S. where “seven out ten Americans would vote against climate costs as low as $120 per year.” Lomborg proposes “a more cost-effective and pragmatic middle ground” approach, putting money into more research on green energy to reduce costs, making it cheaper to use than coal or oil. Lomborg’s solution still gives no room for real development.
