With the Christmas season ending and radio stations returning to their regular selection of music, one song I most certainly will not miss is that painful British tune “Do They Know It’s Christmas.” Written nearly 40 years ago by a group of British musicians to raise money for victims of Ethiopia’s famine, the song is best remembered as the leading prompt for millions worldwide to change the station — a truly terrible, annoying, sanctimonious song despite its noble intentions and purported support for a worthy cause.
Resulting mostly from the tribal chaos of the country’s decade-long civil war, the Ethiopian famine affected roughly 8 million people. What saved the nation was fossil fuels. Yes, the generosity of Western nations helped. America alone donated nearly 800,000 metric tons of food worth over $400 million in 1984. Our surplus yields resulted from better farm equipment, irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides.
Our farming abundance is only possible because of fossil fuels. If you told a Gen Zer with a plastic water bottle from Fiji eating avocado toast that most of humanity has been hungry, he would not comprehend. If you told him fossil fuels are bad, he would be the first to block traffic for the cause.
The line, “In our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy,” needs a fact-check. It is not mere luck. It is the development of life-saving agricultural practices made possible by fossil fuels. The song tells us, in Africa, “Nothing ever grows. No rain nor rivers flow.” In Africa? The land that was once the breadbasket of the Roman Empire? It seems that even back then “climate change” was an excuse for everything.
The New Green Slavery
There is another reason that these British singers need to regroup besides their failure to give due respect to oil, gas, and coal’s role in improving agriculture: Africa today is arguably worse than in the 1980s. Nearly 40 million people across Africa and elsewhere are affected by slavery, a trend driven by developed nations. So enormous is that number that it eclipses the total number of slaves during the height of the transatlantic slave trade, a barbaric period in our history.
To put it bluntly: Slavery is worse today than in the 1800s. Think about that in light of recent calls for reparations, tearing down statues of Founding Fathers, and erasing the names of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson from high schools. Our nation is outraged about the past but indifferent about the present.
Once again, the developed world is driving the slave trade, and many nations are equally guilty: North America, China, South Korea, Japan, all of Europe, etc. It is not just cheap goods we want but also the rare-earth elements that power nearly all “green” energy: wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, and battery storage units.
Consider cobalt, an essential ingredient of lithium-ion batteries. They power the electric vehicles that California Gov. Gavin Newsom is forcing on his 40 million residents by 2035. But cobalt does not come from the mines of West Virginia or the fields of the Permian Basin. Amnesty International estimates that 40,000 children, some as young as 6 years old, work in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These mines are operated by communist China, which funnels money to Congo’s leaders. For the workers, no labor unions negotiate fair wages or paid time off. There is no safety training or OSHA regulations. There is just forced labor, this time in the name of “climate change,” and all the virtuous, environmentalist world leaders ignore it.
Climate Hysteria Powers Slavery
“Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you,” Bono shrieked in that song. I agree, and I’m glad my gas-powered truck does not require child slavery to make it run. The Biden administration’s green agenda cannot say the same.
Or consider another line: “Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time.” That lyric today explicitly excludes Congolese slave children. We have deemed “climate change” worth their exploitation. We’re no different than our predecessors, who considered cheap cotton worth the exploitation of slaves decades ago.
Going green is the great driver of the modern slave trade.
To be sure, fossil fuels have drawbacks and limitations. Even as one of their greatest advocates in the public square, I will gladly outline those downsides honestly and objectively. No matter how much the green movement hates oil, natural gas, or coal, they need to accept the truth that their “green” energy requires the forced labor of Congolese children.
End Oil, Erect Slave Camps
Just recently, the United Nations’ annual climate summit, COP28, ended in Dubai with an agreement that we must end fossil fuels and go green. This is bad news for Congolese slave children, yet no musician will compose a song for them. “Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?” I assure you they do not.
Perhaps if the child slave camps were in Ukraine our elected officials would care.
American fossil fuels built the nation. They drive our economy, power our military, and uphold our national security. They feed the world. Fossil fuels are inexpensive, abundant, and clean. They provide life-saving power and products to all people. And they are 100 percent free of child slavery. Yet, for some reason, we have a president and a powerful green movement that prefer the expensive, unreliable, intermittent, weather-dependent “green” energy that enslaves millions. This is the “energy transition” we hear so much about.
My American fossil fuels are not made with slave blood. Your “green” energy is. And no feel-good song can change that.
Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at daniel@powerthefuture.com and follow him on Twitter @DanielTurnerPTF.
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