HAMILTON, Bermuda, Jul 28, CMC – The leader of the recently formed Free Democratic Movement (FDM), Marc Bean, says climate change is a convenient term that’s being used by certain segments of society which is actually predicated on the idea of limited resources and mankind is the problem.
In an interview with the Royal Gazette newspaper, Bean, a former leader of the ruling Progressive Labour Party (PLP), who has since returned to active politics after announcing his retirement in 2016, said the idea that natural resources are running out is used “to control humanity” and that fears of man-made climate change were overblown.
“’The reason why the environment is suffering is because we have ‘too many people on the Earth’ — that’s where it’s coming from. But the FDM doesn’t subscribe to this whole idea of climate change.”
Bean told the newspaper that he did believe in human-led climate change and found it important to discuss sustainability, maintaining that the overconsumption of fossil fuels had been “politicised” and exaggerated.
He said that it implied that the planet was overpopulated, noting that the FDM is pro-environment, who are actually lovers of nature “but we don’t see the environment as a political construct.
“From our perspective, we are about protecting nature, but we don’t feel that it needs to be utilised from a political perspective to hinder or harm the progress of humanity. This idea that we’re running out of resources is used as a proxy to control humanity.
“That’s the reason why this whole idea of climate change has nothing to do with nature and everything to do with man-made politics of control,” he told the newspaper, adding that there is virtually unanimous agreement among climate scientists that human activity is the cause of an unnaturally fast rate of global warming.
Bean has pledged to install liquid natural gas (LNG) as the backbone of Bermuda’s energy industry, being critical of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power as being “overly expensive” and unreliable in terms of energy output.
“It sounds good in theory, but in practice we know that is not consistent and that it is not reliable. To be an international business jurisdiction, we have to have reliable energy sources.”
Bean said that LNG had the ideal balance of energy output, reliability and cleanliness needed to fuel a sustainable energy grid and he would be willing to look into the potential use of nuclear power, which has been deemed one of the cleanest, safest and most efficient sources of renewable energy.
“That is a responsible approach to dealing with energy security. But in the meantime, we know that LNG is the most efficient and effective way to ensure energy security.”
CMC/gf/ir/2024