Blame famine on trade restrictions – not on climate change or lack of foreign aid, says Julian Morris in an opinion article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal Europe.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574474731971741364.html

Which policy to address climate change?

Falsehoods and non-sequiturs abound in discussions of climate change; often they are found together. So, for example, it is frequently asserted that “the science is settled” (a falsehood) and that, therefore, “drastic measures are required to avert catastrophe” (a non sequitur). In this paper, I briefly consider the question of what we know about climate change, before moving on to discuss a range of policy options that might be considered in response to what we know.

LONDON, 9 December — Later this week, government ministers will descend on Poznan, Poland, for the UN’s COP-14 climate meeting. A new report by Prof. Julian Morris, released by a coalition of 50 global civil society groups, presents a stark warning to those ministers contemplating a global cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

Prof. Morris said: ‘A cap on emissions of carbon would do little to protect humanity against the threat of climate change but would drastically increase the threat of global economic catastrophe.’

He continued: ‘For Ministers in Poznan to agree to cap carbon emissions in the near term would be economic lunacy. It would divert resources into “low carbon” technologies and away from more productive uses – thereby slowing economic growth and harming the ability of the poor to address the real problems they face every day, such as diseases, water scarcity and inadequate nutrition.’

Prof. Morris points out that only a few European governments are now pushing strongly for a new global cap and they are doing so because their own policies are causing economic pain. ‘Some European ministers are trying to foist their own flawed climate policies on the rest of the world – in order to spread the pain. For the sakes of humanity, this EU siren song should be ignored,’ he concluded.