Why are the biggest polluters being ignored?
niall Ferguson
Historian Niall Ferguson has slammed Greta Thunberg's climate change hypocrisy at Davos, asking why "I don't see her in Beijing or Delhi."

Teenage environmentalist Thunberg gave another hysterical speech at the global confab yesterday in which she claimed, "Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour. We are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else."

"We don't want these things done in 2050, 2030, or even 2021," Thunberg said. "We want this done now."

Ferguson, Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, questioned why Thunberg isn't directing her message to the biggest polluters on the planet.


"60% of CO2 emissions since Greta Thunberg was born is attributable to China... but nobody talks about that. They talk as if its somehow Europeans and Americans who are going to fix this problem... which is frustrating because it doesn't get to the heart of the matter," said Ferguson.

"If you're serious about slowing CO2 emissions and temperatures rising it has to be China and India you constrain," he added, noting that while Greta travels to New York and Davos, "I don't see her in Beijing or Delhi."

Ferguson is right. Take the UK for example.

"Britain's CO2 emissions peaked in 1973 and are now at their lowest level since Victorian times," reports the Spectator. "Air pollution has plummeted since then, with sulphur dioxide levels down 95 per cent. Britain's population is rising but our energy consumption peaked in 2001 and has since fallen by 19 per cent."

This global pollution map published by the WHO perfectly illustrates Ferguson's point.
world pollution map

Comment: That map is itself unreliable. For starters, that big red blob in Africa is substantially desert. Few live there, so there's hardly much car-driving and industrial manufacturing going on there. Secondly, Britain and other Western countries can boast "zero CO2 growth" because they've off-shored their manufacturing needs to the red and orange areas. Thirdly, those red and orange countries are not yet fully modernized - some at all - so of COURSE, by the metrics that are used, those countries "produce more CO2."


Even if you believe wholeheartedly in the decidedly shaky science behind man-made global warming, the west is more than doing its part. But we're the ones being lectured to not travel, not eat meat and not have children despite already being in massive demographic decline.

Meanwhile, Africa, India and China continue to wantonly pollute and none of Greta Thunberg's fury or the attention of the media is ever directed their way.

On top of this, Greta continues to have her message amplified by the likes of Prince '4 private jet trips in 11 days' Harry and Arnold 'garage full of tanks and muscle cars' Schwarzenegger.