It was bound to happen. For decades, climate change has been the golden milking cow for scientists around the world. As the best climate ores have been depleted, the scientific gold diggers have sought new and greener pastures. They seem to have finally found one: wokeness.
Gender Equality
In a new paper in Nature Climate Change, Dr. Jacqueline Lau of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University and WorldFish claims that “gender has a powerful influence on people’s experience of, and resilience to, climate change.”
Contrary to what many people believe, Lau insists that “pursuing gender equality in climate change policy and practice is critical, and decades of experience in development offer lessons for how to do it well.”
By contrast, the Copenhagen Consensus has found that the most crucial factor in adapting to climate change and natural disasters is economic growth. Almost all problems related to the climate are caused by poverty.
Education of girls does play a significant role in transitioning the world’s population from a subsistence lifestyle to a modern economy, but perhaps not in the way that Lau envisions. The leading cause of carbon emissions and stress on natural resources in the world is population growth. As women gain access to education, birth rates drop to sustainable levels. Globally, girls today get almost the same access to school as boys. Therefore, birth rates are dropping fast worldwide. Thus, the most critical gender issue affecting environmental concerns has already been addressed.
Economic Growth
The leading cause of resilience to nature’s forces, whether natural or human-made, is prosperity. During the last century, the risk of dying from floods, droughts, storms, wildfires, or extreme temperatures has fallen by 99% globally, according to OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database.
The increased security for people worldwide is due to better and sturdier houses, drainage systems, flood control, and other forms of infrastructure, all of which are made possible by increased prosperity.
That improved economy has also been the driver for education for both boys and girls, and vaccination programs and clean water save millions of lives. Hundreds of millions of people globally connect to the internet because they can access electricity and mobile phones.
Woke Climate
The transition away from real-world policies relating to carbon emissions and environmental protection to identity politics signals that climate change alone is no longer sufficient to gain access to public research money. Woke ideology has been colonizing everything from mathematics to Mr. Potato Head. It only makes sense to render climate change an issue of gender, race, and other identity grievances.
Given what we know about the woke trend in other disciplines, it is a safe prediction that soon climate change will be attributed to white supremacy, and fossil fuels will be labeled racist and sexist.
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Read more from Caroline Adana.
