More and more Guatemalan farmers are migrating because their land “has been destroyed by climate-related weather events,” NBC News reported Thursday.
In its report, NBC does not try to distinguish between “climate-related weather events” and simple “weather events,” insisting instead that Guatemala’s droughts and floods are “made worse by climate change.”
The report includes tragic personal stories of displaced farmers as well as citing Guatemala’s high levels of food insecurity and malnutrition, all of which is mysteriously attributable to carbon dioxide emissions.
According to the World Bank, Guatemala’s annual GDP has in fact risen from $1.1 billion in 1961 to $77.6 billion in 2020. The nation’s food insecurity and malnutrition, while still lamentable, are much lower than they were six decades ago.
NBC cites “experts” who predict that “climate change could displace hundreds of millions of people around the world as rising sea levels, hotter temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events transform where is livable on the planet.”
They do not, of course, mention predictions of currently uninhabitable parts of the globe that could benefit from warmer temperatures both in terms of living conditions and agricultural potential.
“Without deep cuts in global emissions, it’s likely that global warming will create climate migrants on just about every continent. The consequences will be staggering,” the report warns.
NBC’s report stands in sharp contrast to a concurrent report in the Wall Street Journal by Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.
In his analysis, Lomborg insists that, climate alarmism aside, “data show that humanity has overcome much larger threats over the past century” and it is wrong to terrify young generations with fanciful stories that the world is ending.
While climate change is a problem, “panic is unwarranted,” Lomborg states.
“The challenge climate change poses, both to the environment and society, looks rather small compared to those humanity has already met,” he notes, adding that a 6.3-degree Fahrenheit rise in world temperatures by 2100 “would cost only 2.8% of global GDP a year.”
“Caring about the environment and human well-being doesn’t mean we should terrify young people about climate change,” he declares.
“Instead, we should encourage them to pursue innovation. That’s what saved humanity from much greater dangers in the past and what will help us now,” he concludes.