Goklany: An Irrelevant Europe - Best for the World?

Cato-at-liberty » An Irrelevant Europe - Best for the World?

It has abandoned scientific inquiry, relying instead on mantras such as the “science is settled.” Having abandoned science, it now relies on superstition, manifested in the notion of a global-warming-triggered apocalypse of Biblical proportions if average temperatures exceeds 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels — an apocalypse complete with death, disease, pestilence, droughts, famines and floods. Not only is there no evidence for this, this superstition persists despite the current reality that more Europeans die in winter than in summer, Europe’s long history of misery and want during cold periods and plenty during warm eras, and that even as media coverage of extreme weather events becomes more compelling and ubiquitous, globally the deaths and death rates from such events are in long term decline. If Europe had spent a fraction of the resources in adapting to climate change as it did on complying with the futile, but politically-correct Kyoto Protocol, it might have reduced by thousands the death toll of its 2003 heat wave.

Europe is now on the verge of abandoning the quest for technological progress, preferring instead to be ruled by the so-called precautionary principle which, as applied by Europe, actually increases human misery and death. It does this by discouraging, if not vetoing, new and safer technologies that could displace older and less safe technologies on the grounds that “safer” is not good enough — it has to be absolutely safe.

The precautionary principle was used to justify relinquishing its use of DDT, which was easy, because Europe had already conquered malaria...