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| Science & Technology |
| Green Myths and Hard Realities: Sri Lanka as a Warning |
| 2022-08-06 |
| [Mises] With Sri Lanka’s short-lived green revolution of 2021 having quickly devolved into a real revolution just one year later, complete with the ouster of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s incompetent and authoritarian government this past week, now is a good time to hammer home not only why the effort failed, but why so-called ESG (environmental, social, and governance) policies and the green energy movement more generally are hopeless and destructive wastes of time. First, facing financial difficulties largely the result of taking on heaps of Chinese loans for projects of questionable or outright nonexistent value, Rajapaksa’s government abruptly informed its overwhelmingly agricultural society that its farmers would no longer be allowed to use the petrochemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides that made feeding the population of tens of millions possible. Forced to go organic, Rajapaksa, suddenly the darling of Western environmentalists everywhere, watched as his countrymen fell quickly into starvation and poverty. Twenty percent drop-offs in the production of rice and tea, the country’s staples, led to inflation of over 50 percent and to nine out of every ten Sri Lankan families skipping meals each day. While no economy or society could have been expected to handle such a food-supply-disrupting decree without immense suffering, let alone a poor and civil-war-wracked state like Sri Lanka, the truth is that modern life as we know it is simply not possible without fossil fuels and their byproducts. With congressional Republicans and Democratic senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema virtually all that stands in the way of the United States pursuing similarly misguided policies, the facts about the hopeless inadequacies of green energy and ESG-related policies need to be made clear. Related: Sri Lanka: 2022-07-29 Lanka arrests protest leaders, extends emergency laws Sri Lanka: 2022-07-28 Canada's Trudeau Declares War on Fertilizer, Following the Footsteps of Sri Lanka Sri Lanka: 2022-07-22 Good Morning Related: ESG: 2022-07-25 MOB shakedown of corporate America ESG: 2022-07-15 'Hunter every time he buys crack and hookers': Elon Musk mocks president's son with meme of man with six GoPros on his head after laptop leaks of Biden with prostitutes and cocaine ESG: 2022-07-07 Young George Dunnett builds 'tiny home' in village of Kinneswood |
| Posted by:DooDahMan |