Kyle Becker | On 27, Jan 2013

In an interview with CNBC, Whole Foods CEO John Mackay said global warming is “not that big a deal” and may actually be beneficial for human civilization.

I haven’t been outspoken about global warming. I’ve been smeared quite a bit in the media about it—all of a sudden, I’m a climate change denier. I mean, climate change is obviously occurring. So—it’s gotten a little bit warmer. I guess my position on it is that I don’t think that’s that big a deal. Actually, humanity’s flourished usually when temperatures gradually warmed. And humans gradually adapt to it.

The controversial CEO’s comments as the UN proposes yet another global climate change treaty. Mackay’s opinion echoes that of expert IPCC reviewer Matt Ridley, which jibes with a U.K. Met Office report that shows no significant upward trend of global warming in 16 years.

As Matt Ridley points out in a Wall Street Journal article:

How can there be such disagreement about climate sensitivity if the greenhouse properties of CO2 are well established? Most people assume that the theory of dangerous global warming is built entirely on carbon dioxide. It is not.

Based on Department of Energy statistics, man’s impact on the greenhouse effect can be assessed as follows (note that manmade global warming or climate change advocates almost never bring up, let alone quantify, such an obviously relevant matter):

• Water vapor is 95% of the greenhouse effect, and 99.999% of water vapor in the atmosphere is naturally occurring.
• Carbon dioxide contributes 3.618% to the greenhouse effect.
• Man contributes about 3.207% to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
• Man thus contributes about .28% to the greenhouse effect. Put in terms of a ratio, man contributes 1/357th to the greenhouse effect.
• Additionally, the impact of increased CO2 is not linear, but logarithmic — meaning the magnitude of CO2′s thermal forcing diminishes as more of it accumulates in the atmosphere.

Climate experts can nitpick with these figures, but they are invited to provide their own substitute figures, backed by evidence that these physical chemistry properties are incorrect.

The Whole Foods CEO proceeded to make strong points about free enterprise reducing global poverty that are commonly dismissed by the left.

“We can probably eliminate poverty on the planet earth in the next 50 years if we will just continue to follow the tenets of free enterprise capitalism to the greatest extent possible. So I just don’t want to see that change.”

A quietly released UN Millennium Challenge report begrudgingly confirms this observation, as reported by Yale Global Online:

The poor countries that display the greatest success today are those that are engaging with the global economy, allowing market prices to balance supply and demand and to allocate scarce resources, and pursuing sensible and strategic economic policies to spur investment, trade and job creation. It’s this potent combination that sets the current period apart from a history of insipid growth and intractable poverty.

This cannot be mentioned enough: many people support free enterprise not because they are greedy and selfish, but because the economic system unleashes people to better their own conditions through human action, thereby empowering them to reduce their own poverty. The job of government is thus to protect the fruits of people’s labor, so that there are no disincentives against labor or hiring people to work.

H/T Breitbart. Follow Kyle Becker on Twitter @rogue1776