A devastating tsunami triggered by the biggest earthquake on record in Japan killed at least hundreds of people along the country’s northeastern coast on Friday. Many hundreds more were still missing and authorities expected over a thousand deaths.

Japan is a country that has learned to live with earthquakes. Because of rigorous building codes, many towers were able to withstand the quake while levies and concrete walls prevented even more regions from being flooded.

Earthquakes shake Japan every year and tsunamis, while less frequent, are a common occurence in East Asia. Yet, supposedly, the latest catastrophe was a stark reminder of the dangers of global warming.

That, at least, is what the President of the European Economic and Social Committee would have us believe. Not only Japan was struck by the earthquake; “some islands affected by climate change have been hit,” according to Staffan Nilsson.

Has not the time come to demonstrate on solidarity — not least solidarity in combating and adapting to climate change and global warming? Mother Nature has again given us a sign that that is what we need to do.

After all, there were no earthquakes before industry? Natural disaster never struck before humanity began polluting the skies? They did, of course, and while our climate is changing, the devastation in Japan and across the Pacific is not a reminder of it at all.

When global warming alarmists jump on any calamity to make their point, it discredits environmentalism altogether and reveals plainly that to them, it is more about ideology than science.

Japan wasn’t struck by disaster because it pollutes too much. Rather the reason so many Japanese were able to survive the worst earthquake in their recorded history was the incredible advances in science and technology that could only have happened on a free market.