Climate change: is there anything it can’t do?

The answer is no, since there is no such thing as truth or facts, only the Narrative™.

According to the World Health Organization, climate change is the underlying cause for an uptick in low birthweight, high birthweight, and stillborn infants.

The WHO, famous for its accurate and timely advice on the origins, treatment, and precautions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, is advising us all to make radical changes to our economies and our lifestyles in order to address the climate crisis.

Climate change is “linked to premature births, stillbirths and even abnormal gestational weight and size,” reports Australia’s state media @abcnews pic.twitter.com/dK7mPJYIkk

— Rebekah Barnett (@dystopian_DU) January 29, 2024

The WHO, who seem not quite to understand that human beings developed and live in warmer equatorial regions, is very worried that global warming is a huge problem.

Our changing climate may compromise the health of our babies before they’ve even exited the womb.

There’s growing evidence extreme temperatures and natural disasters are linked to premature births, stillbirths and even abnormal gestational weight and size in many parts of the world — including Australia.

And with global temperatures on the up and up, and natural disasters becoming more frequent, the World Health Organization (WHO) says mothers and their babies are in danger.

“Climate change is a growing threat to maternal, newborn and child health that can no longer be ignored,” the WHO says.

Inaction could even mean we lose some of the hard-won advances for maternal and newborn survival we’ve made in recent decades.

But the capacity for expectant mothers, particularly the most marginalised, to shield themselves from environmental stressors is pretty limited.

And considering Australia is one of the developed countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, experts say we need large-scale interventions now.

The WHO hasn’t quite noticed, it appears, that there has been a massive migration in places like the United States from cooler to warmer regions and that humans, as a rule, don’t seem to like living in cooler places. If you look at where humans settled as we moved out of Africa, something stands out: people didn’t move to northern regions until they had to.

Where did civilization begin? The fertile crescent is located in present-day Iraq. (Go figure). Civilization spread around the Mediterranean. Hmm.

Now, let us assume that there are indeed some minor correlations between man-made increases in temperatures and changes in birth outcomes. The question arises about what steps we can take to improve health incomes for infants. Does spending $5 trillion a year on reducing CO2, or are there more efficient ways to reduce poor outcomes? Such as improved nutrition, better living conditions, more education, or a whole host of other changes?

Obviously yes. Despite the fact that John Kerry and company want to completely upend our economy, there is no possible way that we couldn’t improve outcomes for people by spending resources far more wisely. Increased lifespans and prosperity are highly correlated–just look at human lifespans and infant mortality rates pre- and post- fossil fuel use and it is obvious that high energy consumption economies are far better off than poorer ones.

Not that there is anything to this correlation. Obviously heat stress, like any other kind of physiological stress, can have health effects. But has anyone noticed that the places in the world with the highest birth rates are not in the temperate regions?

All this is to say that the WHO is full of crap, as usual. The premise is wrong because the study on which it is based is hopelessly compromised–income and education have a much higher correlation with infant health than heat–and even if true the proposed solution of making everybody vastly poorer is exactly the wrong thing to do. Increasing wealth and adapting to changes would be cheaper and more effective than upending the world economy.

Whatever they are, the WHO is not filled with idiots. They know this. What they are doing is starting with the conclusion that the elites should run the world economy and do as they will, and working their way backward to find excuses to make it so.

Transitioning to “sustainable” energy when and if it becomes economically practical is a fine idea, but that time is not now. Increasing the wealth of the poorer regions of the world could save millions of lives, and doing that requires cheap and reliable energy.

In other words, fossil fuels.