All Americans have heard of the Holocaust, but far fewer have heard of the Holodomor—the man-made terror famine perpetrated against Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of people. The word itself connotes “death by hunger,” “killing by hunger,” or “murder by starvation.” By 1939 and 1940, Ralph Raico reminds us that, “At that point, Hitler had slain his thousands, but Stalin had already slain his millions.”

The New York Times was complicit in covering up and denying the government-caused Holodomor Famine in Ukraine and other related crimes of the Soviet Union. In 1932–33, the Soviet famine killed anywhere from approximately 3.5 to 5 million, even possibly 7 to 10 million people. While it was admittedly difficult to report fully what was occurring in the Soviet Union because of limited information, the close watch of government, and the requirement that the government approve all news stories, many did know much more than they were reporting. They largely had ideological sympathy for the Soviet Union and enjoyed access to power which was guaranteed by favorable reporting.

Despite this, Welsh reporter, Gareth Jones, was able to report on the actual conditions during this time. After his discoveries, Gareth Jones spoke out publicly about his findings of starvation, mass murder, and cannibalism. All these were caused by the forced collectivization of the Soviet government. The New York Evening Post published “Famine Grips Russia Millions Dying. Idle On Rise, Says Briton” on March 29, 1933. A few days later, on March 31, 1933, Walter Duranty—foreign correspondent to the Soviet Union for the New York Times, “Our Man in Moscow”—published his denial of the statements of Jones in his article, “Russians Hungry, but Not Starving.” Even though Duranty and many others knew of the starvation and mass murder, they continued attempts to discredit any such claims. On April 13, 1933, Gareth Jones published “Balance-Sheet of the Five-Year Plan: Article III: Ruin of Russian Agriculture,” for The Financial Times, in which he stated, categorically and truthfully,

What are the causes of the famine? The main reason for the catastrophe in Russian agriculture is the Soviet policy of collectivisation. The prophecy of Paul Scheffer in 1920-30 that collectivisation of agriculture would be the nemesis of Communism has come absolutely true. …

A famine is a severe shortage of food relative to the population that is so acute that people are at risk of malnutrition and death from hunger. Intentional famine, of course, is a democidal act of a government by which food is restricted from people in order to starve them to death. This is not simply a failure to provide food—which governments do not do—but prevention of production and exchange, including confiscation and destruction of food or the means to produce food. Historically, the Holodomor—against ethics and economics—took place because of an ideological commitment to central planning. Similarly, today we are unfortunately at the edge of an energy holodomor.

This comparison and framing might seem unreasonable—is it really fair to compare anti-fossil fuel/green climate activists to Stalin’s murder of millions of people through a government-imposed famine? In reality, without exaggeration, the comparison would be unfair to Stalin. Stalin and the Soviet Union—indeed, all the crimes of Communist regimes—killed millions of people, even up to 100 million; forced reduction or elimination of fossil fuels would cause the deaths of billions of people and regression to extreme poverty for whoever remains. …

How do we know that the anti-fossil fuel, anti-impact, green energy proponents are disingenuous in their framing and/or ignorant of the issue? Giving some room for uninformed, zealous “true believers,” we know the framing is disingenuous because they only focus on the risks and negatives and never focus on the empirical positive benefits of fossil fuels, even pretending that there are no positives. Additionally, while some admit that there will be severe trade-offs, many act as if there is literally no downside to retrenchment of fossil fueled energy. Hence, John Kerry,

If the worst-case scenario about climate change, all the worst predictions, if they never materialize, what will be the harm that is done from having made the decision to respond to it? We would actually leave our air cleaner. We would leave our water cleaner. We would actually make our food supply more secure. Our populations would be healthier because of fewer particulates of pollution in the air—less cost to health care. Those are the things that would happen if we happen to be wrong and we responded. In reality, fossil fuels empower some 95 percent of transportation, 99 percent of synthetic fertilizer production, and make up some 85 percent of the total energy supply. The “green” policies would mean the deaths of billions of people, making Stalin look like an amateur.

Even if there are sincere “true believers” among them, the intentions do not match the results. There were “true believers” among the socialists and Communists too. To many of them, it would be acceptable for billions of people to die to switch to green energy. In fact, given their planet-centric model, billions of people dying or never having been born would be the best case scenario for our “delicate nurturer” Mother Earth. The people who argue that capitalism and freedom only provide “freedom to starve” are, in fact, advocating policies which would impose forced starvation and privation on billions. But remember, they’re the compassionate and empathetic ones!

Stalin killed millions by denying them grain. Modern climate ideologues could kill billions by denying them energy. As Alex Epstein has poignantly reminded us in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, “Fossil fuel energy is the food of food” (p. 83).