Enviros to Africa: Stay Poor and Die Early

Further to the point of Scott’s post earlier about the shallow-mindedness of environmentalists, I’ve recently obtained a leaked copy of a draft letter from the usual gang of pecksniffs (Oxfam, Sierra Club, etc) to the U.S. Senate demanding changes to the Electrify Africa Act of 2015, and it is an even worse parody than the witless Sierra Club president before Sen. Cruz.

Oxfam Letter copy

Click to embiggen

The facsimile here is a little small and hard to read, but you can click on it to get a larger image and I think you can make it out. The letter is either ludicrous (such as suggesting Africa power itself with expensive sources like wind and solar that rich nations aren’t deploying at any serious scale) or laughable, such as “conduct a gender assessment at each project to analyze gender differences and inequalities, that will inform best practices for energy project design and implementation.” Cue Monty Python now.

Worth adding that environmentalists have successfully lobbied the World Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation not to fund any hydroelectric dams in Africa (or anywhere else). So environmentalists are against the one proven, scalable, non-carbon source of grid-scale electricity. Africa has lots of hydro potential. And hundreds of millions of people with no electricity at all.

Gee—it’s almost as if environmentalists want Africans to stay poor, hungry, and die early.

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