Robert Bryce explains for National Review Online readers why they would be better off trusting BP than Pope Francis when it comes to the climate.
Whether you love the pope and hate BP, or vice versa, doesn’t matter. What matters when discussing energy availability, climate change, and poverty are hard numbers and simple math. And the latest edition of BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, which was released eight days before Pope Francis issued his encyclical on climate change, is chockfull of numbers that expose the pope’s failed climate math. Indeed, an analysis of the two documents reveals the deep, and perhaps unbridgeable, chasm between the religiosity that pervades discussions about climate change and the hard truths about the energy sector.
There is much to admire about Pope Francis. His humility — “Who am I to judge?” — has made him a revered leader of the world’s Catholics. But his new encyclical on climate change, Laudato Si’ (Be praised), shows a shallow understanding of global energy use and, in particular, of how energy consumption is soaring among the people he claims to care most about: the poor. The effects of climate change “will probably be felt by developing countries in coming decades,” the document says. “Many of the poor live in areas particularly affected by phenomena related to warming.”
That may be true. But if developing countries are going to prepare for possible changes in the climate, they will have to get richer so they can afford to deal with any calamities that may occur. And how will they get richer? The answer is obvious: by consuming more energy. And for countries throughout the developing world, the lowest-cost energy is still coal. …
… Why is coal use rising? The short answer: It’s playing a pivotal role in meeting booming electricity demand throughout the developing world. Over the past decade, global coal use has risen by 33 percent while electricity use has jumped by almost the same amount: 28 percent, with nearly all of that growth occurring in developing countries.
