Who
is
James Delingpole?:
Good evening
ladies and gentlemen; Guten Abend meine Damen und Herren. May I say how
grateful I am to Staffan Wennberg and the World Taxpayers Associations
for inviting me to speak in Berlin. This is my first time here since
1978.
I was a schoolboy then. I learned my first German: “Was trinken wir?
Schultheiss Bier.” Now I’m grown up and married with children even
older than I was then. Yesterday I went on a tour and I couldn’t help
noticing there seem to have been one or two changes.
Now
compare and contrast the global warming industry – which I call a
Potemkin industry – because that’s what it is: a fraud; a sham; a
conspiracy against the taxpayer.
Do you want to have a guess how much that industry would be worth if it
weren’t for all the money funnelled into it via government grants and
taxpayer levies and subsidies and regulatory capture?
Pretty close to zero, I’d say.
When I last came I have to confess that the Wall was the highlight of
my trip. So echt Cold War. So Spy Who Came In From The Cold!
I remember taking the U-bahn underneath the wall, passing through the
East German side, and seeing empty grey platforms where the train never
stopped, and lurking in the shadows grim looking guards with machine
guns.
And you know how they say: “If you’re not a communist by the time
you’re 18 then you’re heartless and if you’re not a capitalist by the
time you’re 40 then you’re brainless.”?
Well I’m afraid I skipped that first stage and went straight to the
second. All it took was that little glimpse of East Germany – a place
so horrible that if you tried to escape they would shoot you with
machine guns – to give me an abiding preference for free markets. Small
Government. And low taxes.
[....]
Last year Climate Change Business Journal – calculated that the total
annual spend on the climate change industry is $1.5 trillion a year.
All those carbon traders, climate researchers, renewables and biofuels
experts, environment correspondents, professors of climate science at
the University of East Anglia and the Potsdam Institute, sustainability
officers on local councils, and so on, add up the cost of their grants
and salaries – and $1.5 trillion per year is the ballpark figure you
reach.
So what does $1.5 trillion look like in a global economic context?
Well, it’s roughly the amount we spend every year on the online
shopping industry.
$1.5 trillion on the global warming industry; $1.5 trillion on the
online shopping industry.
But there’s a key difference between these two industries.
One exists to provide buyers and sellers what they want – to their
mutual benefit; the other is a sham.
[FULL]
