World should attack hunger, not global warming

It is probably a fore-drawn conclusion, with Obama as President and liberal Democrat's power strengthened in the U.S. Senate, that the Kyoto treaty will be ratified and vast billions of taxpayer money will be poured into fighting global warming.

Fully implemented, which hasn't and won't happen, the Kyoto accords would lower global warming by three one-hundredths of one degree.

The inconvenient truth is that global cooling is a far bigger threat, according to the most recent scientific data, along with world starvation from not developing agriculture sufficiently in poor countries to feed the teeming masses.

Writing in today's Wall Street Journal weekend edition, Danish scientist and intellectual Bjorn Lomborg points out that while Obama has pledged to spend $150 billion to fight global warming, the same money spent on direct malnutrition policies, immunization against preventable disease, and agricultural research and development, would return 15 to 20 times the good for the world's poor population.

The $150 billion spent on global warming mitigation would return 90 cents on the dollar, at best. Spent the other way, it will return at least 11 times the investment, in benefits.

Lomborg concludes "Change is definitely needed. Focusing on investment in malnutrition and disease could do enourmous good at low cost, brandishing a world where healthier and stronger human beings could take charge of their own lives and deal better with the many challenges of their futures."

The newly ascendant liberals in Washington seem hellbent on a costly "cap and trade" system to mitigate global climate change. It is merely an excuse to raise more billions for bureaucrats to spend. It will raise far more money than Americans would ever stand still for in direct tax increases.

Lomborg, instead, urges a different focus for the upcoming 2009 Copenhagen conference on global warming, that will actually make a difference.

Bet this is the only place you'll read about that.