The Patriot Post® · Glasgow Climate Summit Sets Emissions Record

The UN’s latest climate change confab ended this past weekend after two weeks of bloviating that produced little in the way of significant action. COP26 is in the books, and it seems to have concluded with minimal economic damage.

Yet it’s worth noting that the gathering of global elites and climate activists exposed the brazen hypocrisy of the summit, with around 102,500 metric tons of CO₂ emissions generated by attendees, more than doubling the emission numbers from the last UN climate summit back in 2019 in Madrid, Spain. With all the talk about the “need to act,” one would think these global elites would at least make an effort to appear to act like they believe their own rhetoric.

But no, they’ll jump into their private jets and fly off to their next “important” gathering as they congratulate themselves for bringing greater awareness to the imminent threat that is climate change. Never mind it’s an imminent threat that continues to fail to emerge. We all must be browbeaten into accepting The Science™.

Speaking of science, why is increasing carbon always viewed as objectively negative? Is it possible that the increasing levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere may also present some positives for the planet? This is the argument made by Heritage Foundation chief statistician Kevin Dayaratna, who observes that increasing carbon dioxide emissions have also resulted in a “greening of the planet.”

At the 14th International Climate Change Conference, a gathering of scientists, economists, and academics from around the world who met this past October, Dayaratna challenged the UN’s catastrophic climate change paradigm. “Regardless of one's predictions on the extent of human influence on climate change,” he noted, “commonly proffered solutions by lawmakers here, such as carbon taxes and ‘cap and trade,’ will have no meaningful impact on altering the climate anyway, as we’ve demonstrated in prior Heritage Foundation research.”

However, Dayaratna does point out that what climate change is negatively impacting are lawmakers’ responses, which are almost always against positive economic growth. In reality, “the benefits of CO2 may outweigh the damages,” he contends. “In fact, when more realistic assumptions about how sensitive the climate is to carbon dioxide emissions are plugged into the climate models, many of the damages disappear from the forecasts.” So, is global warming by definition a bad thing? He answers, “CO2 in the atmosphere can increase agricultural productivity.” That in turn feeds more people, which is just one example of how climate change can benefit humans.

Furthermore, as these global elitists have just set a new record in carbon emissions with their latest climate confab, their hypocrisy is actually and ironically helping to green the planet. And that, too, is not a bad thing.