The Smartest People Have Already Spoken About Food and Energy, But Are We Listening?

Apr 18, 2023

I came across this awesome question on Quora the other day:

Would anything actually get done if the world’s smartest people got together and tried to figure out how to stop global warming?

I immediately imagined a room full of white-coated scientists slaving over charts and graphs and drawing up new plans for pocket sized nuclear reactors that would power everything you touched for the next 17 billion years.

Each of these scientists would be hand-picked by each government on earth and sent there to accomplish a specific task. Each of them would be the gold medallists of the science realm - the standard by which all other scientists are measured.

*Cue sound of record player winding down with long scratchy sound at the end*

That kind of fantasy is obviously inspired by a different kind of meeting that happens every year at Davos, Switzerland or at various other high dollar locations around the globe. Hardly a meeting of the brightest minds on the planet, unless of course you were to ask one of them, but there are lots of charts…

I'm not really sure what this questioner had in mind when this question was asked, but it did get me thinking (that's why I love Quora).

So this is what I came up with:

First of all, let's just assume that “stopping global warming” actually refers to saving the humans that live on the earth. At least, I'm really hopeful that's what it means, though there seems to be an abundance of evidence that it may not mean that. Anyway, because I'm that sort of hopeful individual, I'm going to go with that assumption.

If the smartest people in the world got together, I'm sure something would get done. Very likely they'd decide to stop funding this waste of money that is “green technology” and instead endeavor to put that money towards things that would actually make a difference in people's lives. Things like getting electricity to the 50% of people in Africa who don't have it. They'd probably decide that helping them cook their food without burning animal dung in their living rooms and eventually dying of indoor air pollution was worth building a few coal plants near their cities.

They'd probably decide that the 4.5 million people that die of cold every single year would be better served by cheap and plentiful electricity than by intermittent and unreliable solar and wind power. Maybe they'd invest in a hydro dam or something. This could also help them cool their homes in the heat of summer.

They'd also likely surmise that the TRILLIONS of dollars spent on this dream of a transition to a “green economy” would likely be much better spent in providing food to the millions who are starving to death at any given moment. Maybe they would decide to offer support and incentives to our farmers and the industries that supply them. Perhaps they'd make it easy for these master food producers to go and train other potential producers in other parts of the world. You know, the “teach a man to fish” thing. Because remember: “saving the world from global warming” is really about saving people, right? If it's not, that's a problem.

Possibly if these big-brained individuals were feeling particularly feisty, they'd come up with a way to supply parts of Africa with fresh water, or maybe teach certain countries how to dispose of their trash properly so they could actually use the water they have safely.

I'm pretty sure these super smart people could come up with a way to make all this work, and I'll bet they could do it without jetting all around the globe and spending weeks at an all-inclusive resort on the taxpayer's dime. They could probably do it without all the virtue-signals and the preaching that seems to come from this other group.

The sad thing is these people have already spoken. They've spoken by providing cheap, reliable energy that's available to all. Energy that by its very definition is life. They've created technology that can transport this energy anywhere on earth.

These people have developed extremely efficient means of growing and harvesting crops. These technologies (and harvests) continue to improve year over year. In some areas of the world, they've done such a good job at this that several of these countries have the ability and capacity to feed the entire world all on their own.

There are engineers who are working on small modular nuclear reactors right now. In fact, as of May of 2022, Russia now has a 21,000 tonne floating nuclear power plant (basically a nuclear power generating cruise ship) cranking out 300MW of power. Theoretically, this could be parked offshore anywhere in the world.

The only problem with all of this is that there are other people who are also meeting to discuss how they would save the world. These people happen to include many heads of state and many of the super-rich. These people are more beholden to special interest groups and politicians than they are to those previously mentioned unfortunates who are dying by the millions. They also seem much more interested in political power (rather than real, life-giving energy) than anything else.

These individuals of the aforementioned fancy resort crowd love coming up with reasons why these solutions (that are being used all over the world) don't actually work, or if they do work, they're not really worth it because someone might get offended.

These brainiacs believe that nothing is more important than reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs), not even supplying food to the starving or warmth to the freezing.

These true believers of this new green religion will stop at nothing until the whole of mankind has succumbed to their toxic ideologies, whether by choice or by force.

As I mentioned in The Suffering of the World's Poor, this Green religion is the most dangerous kind of religion, because it's a religion that is married to the state and promoted by government. Its most vocal and prominent disciples and evangelists are politicians, celebrities, academics, and media personalities.

Yes, the smartest people who have dedicated their lives to providing food and energy (i.e. life) to the world have already spoken, but are we able to hear them over the din of these others? They are working tirelessly even now in the face of sanctions from their own governments and slanders from media. They continue to accomplish their feats more efficiently, more ingeniously, and more sustainably year over year.

Yes, they have spoken, and indeed they are speaking right now, but are we hearing them? And more importantly, are we even listening?

A New, Green Religion for the Masses