Paris climate summit: If liberal journos get their wish it may be lights out for billions

An globe-like tent hosting an exhibition on climate is set up in the courtyard of the French Environment ministry as part of the Nov. 30-Dec. 11 climate conference, in Paris, France, Friday, Nov. 6, 2015. Some 80 heads of state including President Barack Obama, and tens of thousands of other people, are expected in Paris for the conference opening. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) (The Associated Press)

This month, world leaders and activists are gathering in Paris, the City of Light, to try to reach a deal to turn out lights around the globe.

The UN climate change conference (COP 21) is bringing thousands of environmental activists to still-shaken Paris to discuss what liberals consider a bigger threat than terrorism -- climate change.

Heads of state are attempting, yet again, to reach a legally binding agreement for carbon dioxide emissions, even though satellite temperature records still show a pause in the warming trend. That pause began more than 18 years ago in 1997.

The conference has no bigger supporters than the liberal media. Journalists have worked together with environmentalists to attack nearly every energy source we use. News outlets have targeted energy that provides more than 90 percent of U.S. power -- oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear and even hydroelectric.

Meanwhile, they’ve helped promote renewable energy without concern for higher prices and ignored the fact that relying on them exclusively is more science fiction than science. Media have blasted coal as the “dirtiest fuel on earth,” while groups like the Sierra Club waged campaigns to move “Beyond Coal.” But journalists seldom focus on the flaws of the replacements they hype.

Instead, we are bombarded with visions of apocalypse. Journalists  repeatedly warn global warming will be “catastrophic.” They’ve regurgitated false claims about earth’s hottest years and protected climate alarmists from being discredited by scandal and failed climate models.

It’s not a conspiracy but it might as well be one. Back in 2007, "Good Morning America" even asked onscreen, “Will Billions Die from Global Warming?”

So far, no autopsy report reads Cause of Death: Global Warming.

But millions already die from direct consequences of life without electricity -- the world the left and the media advocate.

According to the International Energy Agency and World Health Organization, 4.3 million people die prematurely each year as a result of indoor air pollution from cooking with fuels like charcoal, wood or dung. They have no reliable alternative.

Imagine needing critical medical attention in a country without reliable electricity. It’s a nightmare. Yet, more than 1 billion people around the world don’t have to imagine it. And journalists won’t tell their stories.

Safe and affordable energy lengthens and improves lives. It lifts people out of poverty. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said just one proposed Australian mine project could bring power to 100 million people in his nation.

Too many world leaders, eco-activists and journalists simply don’t care. They want the underdeveloped world to go without, or to leapfrog cheap energy entirely by having the West pay trillions of dollars in climate debt to fund it. At the same time they want the West to abandon everything but renewables too.

Leave everyone powerless, with a renewable energy Utopia just around the corner. Solar. Wind. Geothermal. Those are the answer. Maybe. Some day.

That fantasy ignores the reality of renewable energy. Solar and wind are expensive, highly subsidized energy forms. In 2014, the two provided just 2.19 percent of the U.S. energy mix. They are so pricey that Britain just pulled the plug on most of its renewables. Laughably, The Guardian heralded the viability of wind power based on one “unusually windy” day in Denmark just months ago.

Germany has tried to massively scale up its use of renewables. The result: dramatic price increases. German newspapers say hundreds of thousands of people can no longer afford their electricity bills, in part because of the “green” energy transition.

In the U.S., President Obama is trying to boost renewables by punishing energy that works through the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. That’s going to cost up to $292 billion and could raise electricity prices in 47 states, NERA Economic Consulting concluded.

The inconvenient truth is that the sun stops shining, the wind stops blowing and geothermal energy isn’t readily available.

Don’t expect to hear that from the press. They put all their energy into taking ours from us.

If journalists and the rest of the climate alarmists get their way in Paris, it could be lights out for millions around the world.