#AfricanLivesMatter

When one scratches below the surface of the Black Lives Matter movement, it becomes manifestly clear BLM is only about protecting black people they deem useful to their agenda.

Just look at BLM’s climate activism.

On the one hand, BLM co-founder Patrisse “I’m a trained Marxist” Cullors laments rising global racial inequality, and yet, on the other hand, asserts we must “build a better world for all black lives and protect our communities from the impact of climate change.”

What Cullors doesn’t understand is that action on climate change is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Africans every year.

A study released by the CO2 Coalition’s 60 climate scientists and energy engineers reveals how Obama-era policies that favour so-called green energy over coal-fired electricity are dooming millions of Africans to lives of extreme poverty, environmental degradation and increased risk of early death.

As Advance has been saying for years, economic development requires reliable, affordable electricity for use by industry, businesses and households – and taxpayer-subsidised intermittent renewables just aren’t up to the job.  

However, the left-wing globalists at the World Bank don’t want cheap power for the millions of impoverished Africans.

For they care more about climate change than the health and prosperity of these desperate people.

A perfect example is how the World Bank has banned lending to countries wanting to maintain or build new coal-fired power plants.

Sounds a bit like ANZ’s ban on lending to coal power, farmers and mines doesn’t it?

Instead, they lend to countries to assist them in closing mines and replacing the existing power plants with unreliable renewables.

According to Akinwumi Adesina, the African Development Bank’s president, “Coal is the past, and renewable energy is the future.”

He added: “There’s a reason God gave Africa sunlight.”

Well that’s just great.

It is this ridiculous obsession with renewables and climate change responsible for the 400,000 yearly African deaths from pneumonia, heart disease, pulmonary disease, stroke and lung cancer.

Why?

Well the Africans are forced to cook, heat and illuminate their homes with solid fuels (e.g. wood, charcoal and dried animal dung) because they don’t have access to cheap, reliable power from affordable coal-fired power plants.

Just ask the Chinese.

In 1960, those living in China and sub-Saharan Africa had a nearly equal life expectancy of 44 years.

Today however, China is at 77, (only slightly less than the U.S. figure of 79) while the African average is 61, better than it was 60 years ago, but still lagging behind much of the rest of the world.

Could the fact China has 44% of the world’s coal fired power stations, while Africa only has 1.4% have something to do with it?

Could the 41% of sub-Saharan Africans in extreme poverty be lifted from their struggles if Africa followed China and departed from raw material exports to advanced manufacturing? 

They sure won’t be able to make that energy-intensive transition with glorified windmills and solar panels…

It gets even worse.

Does Greta Thunberg ever wonder why there was no Climate Strike in the streets of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

Well here’s a clue for her.

Cobalt is a key material in the production of renewables. Without it they don’t work. And Congo produces more than 60% of the world’s supply.

With all the billions upon billions pouring into the production of renewables, you’d think the Congolese would be cashing it in on the climate bandwagon.

Think again.

In 2018, the Guardian reported that there were about 255,000 creuserurs (people who dig with their hands in open cut mines), “35,000 of whom are children, some as young as six” in Congolese mines.

They “toil in putrid conditions, endure pitiful wages, grave injury and risk death to mine their cobalt,” The Guardian said.

Poor people.

How many more African children need to be employed in dangerous mines to meet the targets demanded by rich kids in the affluent West?

How many more Africans will be forced to heat their homes with dried animal dung because their government can’t find finance to construct a new coal-fired power station?

How long until Greta Thunberg and her mates at the UN take a trip to Africa to explain why the Congolese children are stealing her “dreams” and “childhood” by not taking “climate action”. 

You can’t make this stuff up.

It’s time these ‘human rights advocates’ grow up and actually do something to reduce poverty in Africa instead of wasting their time virtue-signalling about Western vanity projects.