Teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg plans to join other youth at the World Economic Forum later this month in Davos, Switzerland, where they will admonish world leaders for providing subsidies to the oil and gas industry, which is responsible, in part, for advancing civilization by providing abundant and affordable energy.
The World Economic Forum website posted a commentary written by Thunberg and other youth activists and published in the Guardian.
“Anything less than immediately ceasing these investments in the fossil fuel industry would be a betrayal of life itself,” Thunberg wrote in the Guardian, including the youth’s demands:
We demand that at this year’s Forum, participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.
We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now – as in right now.
The world of finance has a responsibility to the planet, the people and all other species living on it. In fact, it ought to be in every company and stakeholder’s interest to make sure the planet they live on will thrive. But history has not shown the corporate world’s willingness to hold themselves accountable. So it falls on us, the children, to do that. We call upon the world’s leaders to stop investing in the fossil fuel economy that is at the very heart of this planetary crisis. Instead, they should invest their money in existing sustainable technologies, research and in restoring nature. Short-term profit should not trump long-term stability of life.
But despite Thunberg’s and others’ claims, experts say that not only are fossil fuels responsible for improving human conditions around the globe but activists’ call for ending subsidies to oil and gas corporations will do little to help the environment.
The Library for Economics and Liberty wrote about the idea that fossil fuels harm not help humanity:
No one exposes its sheer absurdity better than Alex Epstein in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. You cannot have modern civilization without abundant energy. And despite decades of government favoritism, alternative fuels have yet to deliver. As global wealth has skyrocketed, energy use has risen 80%, thanks almost entirely to increased production of fossil fuels:
full story at https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/11/greta-thunberg-to-lecture-leaders-about-fossil-fuels-at-world-economic-forum/