Tory Peer Matt Ridley has defended the use of Fossil Fuels in the Wall Street Journal, driving climate change hippies into fits of self-righteous anger. The paragraph the eco-loons hate the most points out that a million people still don’t have access to electricity. Meanwhile pollution from wood fires kills four million people a year. Ridley has some harsh words for those who would prevent the third world gaining access to fossil fuels:

“The next time that somebody at a rally against fossil fuels lectures you about her concern for the fate of her grandchildren, show her a picture of an African child dying today from inhaling the dense muck of a smoky fire.”

Yet:

Conflating climate change concerns w/a disregard for African children dying from smoke inhalation by @mattwridley is totally abhorrent.

— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) March 14, 2015

Shocked! @RupertMurdoch & @MattwRidley team up for yet more fossil fuel propaganda & #climatedenial disinformation: http://t.co/u1Gm3iupPV

— Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) March 13, 2015

Sad that @MattwRidley has become a whore for the Koch brothers. He wrote such good overviews of current science in Biology.

— Stephen Smith (@spsmith1) March 14, 2015

.@mattwridley "disproves" climate change with some handy scientific facts from preWWII. Also: cigarettes are good for you.

— Dadstruction (@DadStruction) March 14, 2015

So, Africans achieving the same standard of living as the West is a contentious issue? Who knew…