This essay concerns two separate issues that many have conflated to obfuscate both issues. One is whether rich people or countries should give money to poor people or countries. The second issue is whether the climate is changing because of global warming and if that is a good or bad idea.
I commend our president for withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. This accord was nothing but a wealth transfer program from rich countries to poor countries. If rich people, such as Elon Musk and Michael Bloomberg, want to give to poor countries they can do so without involving taxpayers.
The climate on earth has been changing since the earth first formed an atmosphere almost 4.5 billion years ago. Trying to stop climate change is like trying to stop the earth from turning. Every million years or so the polar icecaps are melting on Mars because the planet has a variable orbit around the sun and wobbles on its axis. The earth also has a variable orbit and wobbles on its axis. The Milankovitch Cycle describes how this variation occurs over about an 80,000-year cycle. Over the last several hundred thousand years the earth has had several ice ages.
The last ice age started about 25,000 years ago and peaked about 18,000 years ago. This ice age ended about 11,000 years ago, which allowed humans to create civilizations. These people could start living in cities because the mild climate allowed them to grow crops and switch from being hunter-gatherers. We are now in an interglacial period and in the next 1,000 years, we could enter another ice age and then most people on earth will starve quickly if they don’t die some other way because of lack of food.
Most of the land mass on earth is in the northern half of the Northern Hemisphere. Russia has the most land mass of any country and Canada is a close second. Both countries have plenty of fresh water. With global warming, both these countries will become nice places to live and grow crops. During the last ice age, Minnesota had 100s of meters of ice on top of it. Try growing crops on that ice. Global warming could prevent or ameliorate the next ice age. Encourage others to put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to cause more global warming, and do so yourself.
In my opinion conflating two separate issues, the rich giving to the poor, and whether global warming and climate change are good or bad, causes confusion and obfuscates both issues. People and accords should keep these issues apart, that is one reason why President Trump did the right thing by withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Accord.