Battling Against Wealth Increases

The truth has finally come out. Officially. Greens think more wealth is a bad idea.

Environmental campaigners, citing government-commissioned research, have said that the UK's claimed carbon emissions figures are "a big lie". The analysis adds carbon burdens associated with offshore manufactures, shipping and aviation to the UK total, and - according to the activists - shows that economic growth and carbon emissions are inextricably linked, and that the UK is actually responsible for much more greenhouse gas than it admits.

John Barrett, one of the authors of the reports by the Stockholm Environment Institute at York (SEI-Y) for the government and campaign group WWF*, was quoted by the BBC today:

"We are constantly battling against increases of wealth... There's a very fundamental problem here that no one really wants to talk about."

I believe that is going to make greens really popular with the poor people of Britain and the rest of the world.

I do think he has a point though. Have a look at this chart. A country's wealth correlates very well with its CO2 output. Except for a few resource extraction countries like Bahrain and Libya which actually put out more CO2 per dollar of wealth than average.

Next the greens will be telling us that poverty is good for people. That not is going to sell well. Not well at all.

Update:

Commenter lkdemott has this to add:

"Next the greens will be telling us that poverty is good for people."

With one small change, I think most greens will agree with the statement:

"Next the greens will be telling us that poverty is good for other people."

Cross Posted at Classical Values