Saving the Planet, Screwing the Poor

Let’s talk about something that doesn’t get nearly enough airtime: the human cost of climate activism. Not the imagined future harm from a changing climate — I’m talking about the very real, very immediate harm done right now to the world’s poorest people in the name of “saving the planet.”

Robert Bryce hits this point square on in his powerful talk, “The People Climate Activists Leave Behind.” It’s not just about energy. It’s about morality — or more precisely, the complete inversion of it.

Here’s the harsh truth: the policies pushed by elite climate activists almost always lead to higher energy prices. That’s a burden easily absorbed in wealthy cities with Teslas, solar panels, and virtue-signalling yard signs. But for billions of people who live on a few dollars a day, higher electricity costs are not an inconvenience — they’re a life sentence to darkness, cold, and poverty.

Bryce makes a few key points worth repeating:

• Energy poverty is real. More than 3 billion people today still live without reliable electricity.

• Cheap, reliable energy is the foundation of human development. Without it, nothing improves: not education, not health care, not economic opportunity.

• Climate activists oppose the very technologies (like gas and nuclear) that can lift people out of poverty — all in the name of fighting an abstract global threat 30 years from now.

Bryce isn’t saying the climate doesn’t matter. He’s saying that people matter too, especially the poor. And if our solutions to climate change make their lives harder, colder, darker — then we’re not saving the planet. We’re just shifting the suffering.

And let’s be blunt: There is no virtue in making electricity more expensive. None. It doesn’t make you righteous. It makes you blind to the consequences of your own beliefs.

It’s time we stop applauding climate “solutions” that ignore the basic needs of billions of our fellow humans. Any real climate plan must include — not exclude — the poor.

Otherwise, we’re just building a greener world for the rich — and leaving everyone else behind in the dark.

Here is Bryce's full presentation.