Beware the Climate Change Terrorists!

Beware the Climate Change Terrorists!

© David Burton 2018

No Fossil Fuels
 


     It’s become clear that climate change, i.e. global warming, has been taking place in recent years. However, what is not clear is whether this rise in global temperatures is primarily man-induced or simply a natural change in the earth’s climate. Maybe it’s a combination of both. Truth be told, we simply do not know for sure. We also don’t know whether the trend will ultimately be good or bad. Would it be so bad, if winters in Alaska, Canada, and Siberia were milder than they are now? Let’s remember that the globe has undergone several cycles of global warming and global cooling well before mankind began burning fossil fuels. The environmentalist terrorists want us to believe that it’s all mankind’s fault and the we need to drastically reduce all economic activity in order to stop global warming. It doesn’t matter if we starve to death in the process or if we freeze to death. We need to stop driving our cars and heating our homes. We need to ground all those airplanes that are spewing forth their exhaust emissions and we need to shut down all the polluting power plants that burn fossil fuels. We need to generate all our electrical power needs with solar power and wind turbines. It goes without saying that all nuclear power plants must be immediately shut down, lest one of them has an accident and we all die from radiation poisoning. Any industrial operation that produces even one gram of carbon dioxide or any other pollutant that can contribute to global warming must immediately cease. Also, we need to kill off all the cattle because cattle produce methane gas, a contributor to global warming. As a last possible contribution to the war against global warming, the climate change terrorists will propose that we limit the number of children in families to one or two. This prohibition on large families (three or more children per family) would be a major factor to reducing the threat to humanity as envisioned by these climate change terrorists.

     The climate change terrorists issue their doomsday warnings and tell us that we must allow the governments of the world to head off the calamity before we all perish. We are told that only government intervention will avoid the climate apocalypse. But, bitter experience has shown the thinking person that government is the last thing we need to make things better. Mankind’s influence on climate is at best uncertain, but the environmental extremists have decided to settle for only one option - just as the Catholic Church did with Galileo. That option is massive government intervention - in what is almost certainly a futile effort – to reverse the global warming problem. But even if the “climate change crisis” requires prompt action, let’s not forget that famous quote: ”Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Just a few examples of failed and futile government attempts to reverse global climate changes are recounted in Reference 1. As pointed out in this reference, government non-interference often produces the best results. Such a non-interference policy worked well in the case of natural gas from shale. Thanks to a huge increase in its exploration and production, by 2014, the U.S. was actually able to decrease its greenhouse gas emissions down to 1994 levels according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

     Is global warming occurring? – yes. If so, is mankind responsible? – very uncertain. If mankind has caused global warming, can mankind reverse the trend? – likely no. To try to reverse global warming should mankind take drastic steps that could do irreparable harm to people and society? – I sincerely hope not! I attempted to address these issues in an article in 2015. (Ref. 2) In that article, I noted the environmental alarmists’ attempts to panic the world into taking precipitous and destructive steps to supposedly fix the alleged calamity. In this article, I will not repeat the arguments discussed in that article.

     “In the 1970s, Americans were told we were in a global cooling crisis and if something weren’t done, we’d enter a new ice age.
     “When that didn’t happen, a few decades later we were told that entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend was not reversed by the year 2000.
     “Despite the consistent failure of these apocalyptic warnings, that hasn’t stopped climate change alarmism. We’re now being told we only have 12 years to combat climate change and the solution is to fundamentally dismantle the system of free enterprise. That means Washington controls things like how we produce our energy, what food we eat and what type of cars we drive.
     “The question is, even if we believed their alarmist, catastrophic predictions, would their proposals work?
     “Not according to the climate scientists’ own models. Based on those models, even if the United States cut its carbon dioxide emissions to zero, it would only avert global warming by a few tenths of a degree Celsius — in 80 years! [Emphasis mine]
     “We would see no noticeable difference in the climate, yet it would come at an enormous cost to the American people. Climate change is happening and human activity undoubtedly plays a role, but big-government climate policies are all economic pain, no environmental gain. [Emphasis mine]
     “After all, the purpose of climate change regulations is to drive energy prices higher so families and businesses use less energy. Abundant energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas have allowed Americans to affordably drive to their jobs, light and heat their homes, and power their refrigerators, computers, and iPhones.
     “On the other hand, more heavy-handed climate regulations would drive up electricity bills and prices at the pump. Families would be hurt multiple times over, paying not just more for energy but also more for food, clothing, and healthcare, as energy is critical for every stage of planting, harvesting, manufacturing, and transporting goods to consumers.
     “These rising costs would stifle economic growth, one of the most important factors for maintaining a cleaner environment. As a country’s economy grows, the financial ability of its citizens to take care of the environment grows, too. So creating more economy-killing climate regulations and taxes would not only harm the livelihoods of the American people, they would also harm our ability to protect our environment. [Emphasis mine]
     “Instead, government should focus on keeping the economy strong by reducing taxes and eliminating regulatory barriers to energy innovation. For example, some states produce clean, cheap natural gas, but excessive regulations and litigation prevent the construction of pipelines to distribute natural gas to other parts of the country. {Such is the case in my home state of Massachusetts, where the cost of natural gas is among the highest in the nation because of the inability to get permits for routing natural gas pipeline into the state.} . . .” (Ref. 3)

     What about that Green New Deal that was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on 7 February 2019? The Senate voted the resolution down on 26 March, but Ocasio-Cortez was drafting a series of smaller, related bills. Wouldn’t that solve the global warming conundrum? Let’s take a look what this Green New Deal would mean if actually implemented.

     “If someone asked you to describe the Green New Deal, what would you say?
     “According to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., it's a ‘bold idea’ that would ‘create millions of good-paying jobs’ and help ‘rebuild communities in rural America that have been devastated.’
     “Oh, you thought the Green New Deal was all about fighting climate change? Well, think again. Turns out it's a green-glossed Trojan horse designed to increase government control over the economy {i.e., it’s another scheme to bring the failed policy of socialism to America. }.
      - - -
     “Just how much change would the Green New Deal bring to the economy? Put simply, it would bring it to its knees.
      - - -
     “{Like most socialist utopian dreams, the} Green New Deal is big on vision, but sparse on details. For example, it calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 60% below 2010 levels by 2030, with the ultimate goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. But it doesn't say how to get there.
     “One thing is clear: to meet these goals, Washington would have to force all Americans to reduce their energy consumption and/or switch to ‘green’ energy sources – and fast. And the only way to do that is to impose coercive taxes and regulations.
     “To assess the economic effects of such a scheme, we started by looking at a carbon tax – the most popular recommendation of those asking government to ‘nudge’ us off of fossil fuels.
     “Using the Energy Information Administration's model, we tested to see how high a carbon tax would have to go to meet the Green New Deal's emission targets. We ratcheted the tax up to $300 per ton, which dropped emissions 58% below 2010 levels – but not until 2050.
     “That left us far short of reaching the deal's targets, but when we tried to push the tax higher, the model crashed. Clearly, the Green New Deal's emission targets are unrealistic. Yet the danger they pose to the economy are far too real.
     “Before the model's lights went out, we found that a $300 per ton carbon tax and associated regulations would cost a family of four nearly $8,000 per year in income lost to higher energy costs, consumer prices and foregone wages. The 20-year cost totals $165,000.
     “During that same 20-year period, the tax would siphon off an average of 1.1 million jobs per year and diminish GDP by a total of more than $15 trillion.
     “That's a hefty price to pay for getting barely halfway to the net-zero emissions goal. Is it worth it? After all, proponents of eliminating conventional fuels argue that the cost of climate change dwarfs the cost of climate policy. However, in terms of ‘climate insurance,’ eliminating greenhouse gas emissions doesn't get you very far.
     “To see if this is true, we turned to another tool: the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC). Developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, this model assesses how much increases and decreases in greenhouse gas trajectories will affect global temperatures and sea levels.
     “Running this model, we found that overhauling America's economy – as envisioned in the Green New Deal – would abate global warming by approximately 0.2 degree Celsius {that's only about 1/2 degree Fahrenheit} by the year 2100. The reduction in sea-level rise would be less than 2 centimeters{less than 1-inch!!!}.
     "In other words, the Green New Deal offers minimal climate improvement at impossibly high prices. [Emphasis mine]
     “. . . The Green New Deal isn't a ‘climate thing’ at all. And it would certainly change the economy – for the worse. (Ref. 4)

     The Green New Deal is just one more part of the climate change terrorists’ attempts to panic the unthinking into believing that the end of the world is nigh because of a changing global environment. The solutions to their perceived apocalypse would end capitalism, destroy the standard of living which this capitalistic economic system has brought us and put us at the tender mercies of the commissars who have ruined the economies of all the countries that have experimented with socialism, e.g., Stalin’s former Soviet Union, Mao’s People Republic of China, Kim Jong-un’s North Korean basket case, and Chavez’s glorious failure in Venezuela.

     “The Green New Deal nonbinding congressional resolution unveiled by Democratic lawmakers {in February 2019} calls for economically destructive and environmentally toxic extremist policies that would be an utter disaster for our country and the American people.
     “The radical and impractical plan could suck trillions of dollars out of our economy, raise costs of much of what we buy, wipe out millions of jobs and plunge our country into a recession or perhaps even a depression. It would be a self-inflicted wound causing enormous harm to us all.
     “Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., released the proposal, elements of which have already drawn support from some congressional Democrats, including several seeking their party’s presidential nomination {i.e., Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D- MA and Joe Biden}.
     “Calling climate change ‘a direct threat to the national security of the United States,’ the resolution calls for the United States to ‘achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers.’
     “In reality, the direct threat to our national security and economic security comes from the Green New Deal itself. [Emphasis mine]
     “The resolution aims to accomplish its ambitious goals by eliminating virtually all fossil fuels from U.S. electricity generation within 10 years. That would destroy at least 3.4 million jobs in the oil, natural gas and coal industries. [Emphasis mine]
     “The radical plan would replace fossil fuels by building hundreds or even thousands of costly new renewable energy facilities across the country. It also calls for building high-speed rail and eliminating as many gasoline-powered vehicles ‘as is technologically feasible.’
     “All this would hit American families and businesses hard in the wallet – not just with increased taxes to fund the Green New Deal but with dramatically higher prices of much of what we buy.
     Renewable energy sources like wind and solar power are two to five times more expensive than existing conventional energy sources like natural gas. [Emphasis mine]
     “Forcing Americans to ditch their perfectly good gasoline-powered vehicles and pay far more than they do now to provide power for their vehicles and homes could cost families billions of dollars each year, harming low-income families the most.
     “Higher power costs for businesses would create huge incentives for them to relocate to other nations to reduce their power bills. This would be particularly true of factories, which require large amounts of power to manufacture all sorts of products.
     “The Green New Deal would mandate the removal of ‘pollution and greenhouse gas emissions’ from every manufacturer and industry. This provision alone would have devastating economic effects.
     “If manufacturers and all industries are forced to go ‘green,’ the cost of producing products in the United States will increase so substantially that it would be virtually impossible for American companies to beat their global competitors. Manufacturers staying in the U.S. would try to cut costs in other ways – by holding down wages and by replacing as many workers as possible with automation. [Emphasis mine]
      - - -
     “If all this wasn’t bad enough, so-called green energy sources are also much more unreliable than fossil fuels, because the wind isn’t always blowing and the sun isn’t always shining. Electric power brownouts and blackouts would likely become common if the American people were forced to depend on these ‘green’ energy sources.
     “And it surprises many people to know that many forms of renewable energy – supposedly better for the environment – can in fact cause significant environmental problems.
     “Solar facilities and wind farms take up far more land than many existing conventional energy facilities. For example, solar energy requires 40 to 50 percent more land than natural gas facilities. Wind energy production takes up 90 to 100 percent more land.
     “Additionally, in order to build the thousands of new wind turbines and solar panels that would be needed to power the country, substantially more steel and rare earth minerals would need to be manufactured and mined, causing massive environmental damage.
      - - -
     “The Green New Deal would also have the federal government ‘work collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector.’
     “The radical plan would do this in part by mandating ‘sustainable’ farming and land-use practices, giving tremendous power to the federal government to manage U.S. farms and ranches – immensely increasing the costs of producing the food we eat.
      - - -
     “Another disturbing provision of the Green New Deal would require ‘upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximal energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification,’ costing trillions of dollars more.
     “Not only would these policies kill jobs, hurt families and insert the government in everyone’s home and business – they would provide few, if any, environmental benefits and would do nothing to avert climate change. [ Emphasis mine]
     “Even if you believe that humans are causing climate change and that climate change will cause significant problems in the future – claims not all scientists accept – the Green New Deal would not reduce global carbon dioxide emissions.
     “This is because countries like China and India are increasing their carbon dioxide emissions by so much that they will, based on current projections, more than offset any carbon dioxide emissions cuts made in America.
     “And unfortunately, the above economically disastrous policies are just the tip of the iceberg. The Green New Deal has still more harmful provisions when you look below the surface.
     “The resolution also includes dozens of socialist policies that have little or nothing to do with the environment – including some that were not included in Ocasio-Cortez’s initial draft proposal released last year.
     “For example, the Green New Deal resolution would provide ‘resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States, with a focus on frontline and vulnerable communities.’
     “Translation: implementing the Green New Deal will likely include a universal free-college provision that could costs trillions of dollars over the next couple of decades. [Emphasis mine]
     “The Green New Deal also promises ‘universal access to healthy food,’ ‘economic security’ for all Americans, universal health care, and a jobs guarantee that would provide employment to anyone who wants it ‘with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security.’ {In other words, the Green New Deal is a blatant first step toward replacing America’s proven successful system of capitalism with a socialist system that has failed wherever it has been tried!}
     “Funding all these government giveaways would require massive tax increases – and not just on the wealthiest Americans, because there are not enough of them to pay for all these enormously expensive programs. And even with gigantic tax increases, soaring federal deficits would still be likely under the Green New Deal.
     “The bottom line is that the Green New Deal would transform gigantic sectors of the U.S. economy – energy, health care, college education, and potentially more – into huge socialist, government-run or managed programs that would be controlled by an army of bureaucrats in Washington.
     “And all this would be done in the name of trying to control the weather 80 years in the future. This isn’t just socialism, which has been proven to fail repeatedly throughout the world over the past 100 years. It’s crazy. ” [Emphasis mine] (Ref. 5)

     To the climate change terrorists, the human race has no right to change any aspect of nature; all living creatures (except people) have priority over humans; any cost is acceptable that prevents a change to the natural environment; the human race is a destroyer and polluter of the natural environment and should be allowed to exist only to the extent that it does not change the natural environment; the negative impact of environmental considerations upon people is irrelevant.
     For our climate change terrorists, people have no rights - only animals and the environment do. According to these extremists, damn the cost, the inconvenience to people, and all the negative and disastrous consequences.
     Instead of blindly following the destructive path of the Climate change terrorists, we must insist that environmental concerns be realistically balanced with the needs and objectives of people. It is said that God gave man dominion over nature, not vice-versa. Indeed, we are obligated to be stewards of the environment, but the needs of people must also be considered.[6]

     The climate change terrorists foisted a meaningless sham of a solution to global warming with the egregiously misguided Paris Climate Accord, more commonly known as the Paris Agreement. This accord, signed in 2016, is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance. The deal required countries to set their own targets for reducing emissions by 2020. The Obama administration committed the U.S. to reducing carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025.

     “The Paris climate agreement was negotiated badly and signed out of desperation. In fact, there was enough bipartisan opposition to the pact in Congress that President Obama bypassed sending it to the Senate for ratification as a treaty. The American agreement rests on nothing more than the former president’s handshake. That is why America’s agreement was based upon an executive order and not a formal treaty.” (Ref. 7)

     In June 2017, President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the agreement. Under the agreement, the earliest effective date of withdrawal for the U.S. is November 2020. In practice, changes in United States policy that are contrary to the Paris Agreement have already been put in place. In November 2017, the Trump administration announced America's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord.

     Without producing “any impact on global temperatures, Paris was the open door for egregious regulation, cronyism, and government spending that would have been as disastrous for the American economy as it is proving to be for those in Europe. Heritage {Foundation} analysts projected that this agreement would have raised energy prices, killed jobs and cost the average family of four $20,000 by 2035. [Emphasis mine] . . .
     “This decision has come after a long debate over the issue . . . research showed that the Paris plan would have created a shortfall of 400,000 jobs, a total income loss of $20,000 for a family of four by 2035, and an increase in household electricity expenditure by 13 to 20 percent . . .” (Ref. 8)

     “. . . the Paris agreement was basically an attempt to halt climate change on the honor system, a system that internationally rarely, if ever, succeeds. Its only legal requirements were for signatories to announce goals and report progress, with no international enforcement mechanism. Under the agreement, it is highly likely that the United States and wealthy developed nations would have implemented severe climate change rules while many of other countries would have avoided doing anything that would slow their own economies. The agreement basically made the U.S. economy and other nations’ economies sacrificial lambs to the cause of climate change. [Emphasis mine]
     “There are some who regarded (and still do) the Paris climate accord as nothing but blackmail on the part of several countries who want lots of U.S. dollars to consider reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. For example, ‘Yemen has promised a whopping 1 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions as part of the global Paris climate agreement.
     “ ‘North Korea, meanwhile, has said its pollution will double by 2030 compared with 2000 levels — but only if the rest of the world writes a sizable check. Otherwise, its emissions will rise even further.
     “ ‘Peru says it can cut emissions by 30 percent by 2030 compared with its ‘business as usual’ projections, though that would be a net pollution increase of 22 percent and is contingent on billions of dollars in funding.
     “ ‘India, Iran, South Sudan, Niger, the Central African Republic, Cuba, Egypt, Paraguay and a host of other countries have similar demands: Pay up, or else they will have to keep polluting. [Emphasis mine]
      - - -
     “ ‘. . . for many that remain in the accord, the demands for cash are fueling the argument that the Paris agreement, at its core, is as much about redistributing international wealth as it is about saving the planet from climate change.’ “ (Ref. 9), (Ref. 7)

     But, let’s forget the horrendously negative impact of the Paris Agreement on America. Would it save the world from the imminent disaster predicted by the climate change terrorists? “From The Wall Street Journal editorial page: ‘The Big Con at the heart of Paris is that even its supporters concede that meeting all of its commitments won’t prevent more than a 0.17 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures by 2100, far less than the two degrees that is supposedly needed to avert climate doom.’
     “That’s right: Both MIT and the UN’s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have projected that full adherence to the Paris deal would have little or no impact on global temperatures. Meanwhile, even without an agreement, U.S. CO2 emissions were 23 percent lower (per GDP dollar) in 2015 than in 2005. We’re cutting greenhouse gas emissions faster and farther than the same European nations that are denouncing Trump for destroying the Earth. [Emphasis mine]
     “Ah, but who can bother about boring old facts when {the tree huggers of the world scream that the sky is falling and that} ‘Trump Pulling Out of Paris Accord is a ‘Suicide Note To The World!’ “ (Ref. 10)

     As the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in September of 2019, “the alarmist narrative on climate change resembles ‘religious extremism.’
     “{Here in the U.S., many, like} congressional representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) {are}. . . trying to impose extreme socialist policies on the basis of the catastrophic scenario drawn by the climate change narrative.” (Ref. 11)

     As a consequence of past actions induced by the environmental terrorists, America is now facing threats from China that impact not only our national defense but also our ability to make positive impacts on climate control. I have previously discussed the threat to our national security by China that has resulted from environmental activists’ pressures on previous American administrations (Ref. 12) and I will not repeat that discussion here.

     “The recent threats by Beijing to cut off American access to critical mineral imports has many Americans wondering why our politicians have allowed the United States to become so overly dependent on China for these valued resources in the first place.
     “Today, the United States is 90% dependent on China and Russia for many vital ‘rare earth minerals.’ [Emphasis mine]
     “The main reason for our overreliance on nations like China for these minerals is not that we are running out of these resources here at home. The U.S. Geological Survey reports that we still have up to 86% or more of key mineral resources like copper and zinc remaining in the ground, waiting to be mined. These resources aren’t on environmentally sensitive lands, like national parks, but on the millions of acres of federal, state and private lands.
     “The mining isn’t happening because of prohibitive environmental rules and a permitting process that can take five to 10 years to open a new mine. Green groups simply resist almost all new drilling. [Emphasis mine]
     “What they may not realize is that the de facto mining prohibitions jeopardize the ‘green energy revolution’ that liberals are so desperately seeking.
     “How’s this for rich irony?: Making renewable energy at all technologically plausible will require massive increases in the supply of rare earth and critical minerals. Without these valuable metals, there will not be more efficient 21st century batteries for electric cars or modern solar panels. Kiss the Green New Deal and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders’ utopian vision of 100% renewable energy goodbye.
     “Yet, for decades now, environmentalists have erected every possible barrier to mining here in America for critical minerals — which we have in great abundance.
     “Thanks to the extreme environmentalists, we import from unfriendly and repressive governments the critical minerals needed to produce rechargeable batteries (lithium and cobalt), wind turbine motors (dysprosium), thin films for solar power (tellurium) and miniature sensors that manage the performance of electric vehicles (yttrium).
      - - -
     “Here is one simple but telling example of the shortsightedness of the 'no mining' position of the environmentalists. Current electric vehicles can use up to 10 times more copper than fossil fuel vehicles. Then, additional copper wire networks will be needed to attach convenient battery chargers throughout public spaces and along roads and highways. Do we really want this entire transportation infrastructure to be dependent on China and Russia?
     “Also, because our mining laws — the ones that don’t outright prohibit mining — protect the environment far more than those in nations like China and Africa, by importing these minerals, we are contributing to global environmental degradation.
     “So, there you have it. The keep-it-in-the-ground movement environmentalists demand against use of almost all of America’s bountiful energy and mineral resources is blocking a green future and a safer planet. Do they know this? Do they care?” (Ref. 13)

     In their mad dash to supposedly stop global warming the environment terrorists are urging people to destroy the economic and industrial breakthroughs that have made modern life on planet earth possible. Their blind rush to solve one problem would result in a multitude of catastrophes greater than the one on which they have set their sights. Like all terrorists, these environmental zealots believe that they are speaking for the Lord when they tell us to do as they say or we will all perish. Their solutions to their perceived number one threat to human existence must be blindly accepted and implemented – no matter what their unintended consequences or practicality. Their battle cry is that of Chicken Little – “The Sky Is Falling. The World Will Come To An End If You Do Not Do As I Command!

     “Zealots convinced of their own righteousness are dangerous people. When they conclude the courts have failed them, the democratic processes have failed them and the government itself has failed them, violence will be their only recourse. They will have plenty of supporters in the media willing to justify it. After all, they are all convinced the world will end in a decade if they sit idly by.
     “Listen to the environmental zealots, and hear for yourselves how salvation is obtained. It is not pretty. The United States has done more than most countries to cut its emissions, but the zealots always demand more. They do so because, as long as sinners still sin, those who should be saved cannot be. [Emphasis mine] In Christianity, the unrepentant sinner will not find salvation. For the saved, however, access to heaven is not dependent on the unrepentant. In environmentalism, the penitent environmentalist will not find salvation as long as the polluters pollute. If the government won’t stop the sin, the zealots will have to.” (Ref. 14)

     In their headlong rush to panic the world into taking catastrophic action to avoid their vision of the end of the world, the climate change terrorists are enlisting and brain-washing the impressionable youth of the world. Under the direction of these apocalyptic fanatics, teenagers around the world have taken to the streets to call for environmental action. A 16-year old Swedish climate alarmist was invited by Democrats to testify before Congress. Thousands skipped school to take part in global protests.

     All this “sturm und drang” is the climate change terrorists’ attempt to convince the youth that the world will come to an end because of mankind’s destruction of the climate. “The ‘existential threat’ scenario is another left-wing falsehood used to whip up hysteria that will lead to the left’s control of the economy and society.
     “And that takes us back to the children: If you can’t sell your hysteria to adults, try kids. And that is what the left has done. After all, no one is as malleable or as easily indoctrinated as children.” (Ref. 15)

     “Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg lives in the healthiest, wealthiest, safest, and most peaceful era humans have ever known. She is one of the luckiest people ever to have lived.
     “In a just world, Thunberg would be at the United Nations thanking capitalist countries for bequeathing her this remarkable inheritance. Instead, she, like millions of other indoctrinated kids her age, act as if they live in a uniquely broken world on the precipice of disaster. This is a tragedy.
     “ ‘You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,’ Thunberg lectured the world. And maybe she’s right. We’ve failed her by raising a generation of pagans who’ve filled the vacuum left by the absence of faith, not with rationality, but with a cultish worship of Mother Earth and the state. Although, to be fair, the Bible-thumping evangelical’s moral certitude is nothing but a rickety edifice compared to the moral conviction of a Greta Thunberg.
     “It’s not, of course, her fault. Adults have spent a year creating a 16-year-old because her soundbites comport with their belief system. It was ‘something about her raw honesty around a message of blunt-force fear [that] turned this girl from invisible to global,’ says CNN in a news report about a child with a narrow, age-appropriate grasp of the world.
     “It should be noted that ‘blunt-force fear’ is indeed the correct way to describe the concerted misinformation that Thunberg has likely been subjected to since nursery school.
     “There probably isn’t a public school in America that hasn’t plied the panic-stricken talk of environmental disaster in their auditoriums over and over again. . .
     “We’ve finally convinced a generation of Americans to be Malthusians. According to Scott Rasmussen’s polling, nearly 30% of voters now claim to believe that it’s “at least somewhat likely” that the earth will become uninhabitable and humanity will be wiped out over the next 10-15 years. Half of voters under 35 believe it is likely we are on the edge of extinction. Is there any wonder why our youngest generation has a foreboding sense of doom?
     “It’s the fault of ideologues who obsess over every weather event as if it were Armageddon, ignoring the massive moral upside of carbon-fueled modernity. It’s the fault of the politicians, too cowardly to tell voters that their utopian vision of a world run on solar panels and windmills is fairy tale.
     “It’s the fault of media that constantly ignores overwhelming evidence that, on balance, climate change isn’t undermining human flourishing. By nearly every quantifiable measure, in fact, we are better off because of fossil fuels. . .
     “Thunberg might do well to sail her stern gaze and billowing anger to India or China and wag her finger at the billions of people who no longer want to live in poverty and destitution. Because if climate change is irreversible in the next 10-12 years, as cultists claim, it can be blamed in large part on the historic growth we’ve seen in developing nations.
     “China’s emissions from aviation and maritime trade alone are twice that of the United States, and more than the entire emissions of most nations in the world. . .
     “Boomers, of course, have failed on plenty of fronts, but the idea that an entire generation of Americans should have chosen poverty over prosperity to placate the vacuous complaints of privileged future teenagers is absurd. No generation would do it. Until recently, no advanced nation has embraced Luddism. Although these days, Democrats who advocate for bans on fossil fuels and carbon-mitigating technologies such as fracking and nuclear energy are working on it.
     “Climate activists could learn something from Thunberg’s honesty, though. She argues that ‘money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth’ have to come to an end. The emission cuts that environmentalists insist are needed to save the earth would mean economic devastation and the end of hundreds of years of economic growth. This is a tradeoff progressives pretend doesn’t exist. [Emphasis mine]
     “And Thunberg’s dream for the future means technocratic regimes will have to displace capitalistic societies. We can see this future in the radical environmentalist plans of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, one supported by leading Democratic Party candidates. It’s authoritarianism. There is no other way to describe a regulatory regime that dictates exactly what Americans can consume, sell, drive, eat, and work on. [Emphasis mine]
     "One imagines that most Americans, through their actions, will continue to reject these regressive ideas. One reason they should is so that Greta Thunberg’s generation won’t have to suffer needlessly.” (Ref. 16)

     Let’s be honest. Climate change does not forecast the end of the world. The climate may change and mankind will adapt to the change. Mankind and all other species on this planet have been doing so ever since the dawn of creation. In the end, change is inevitable in the world in which we live. Adaptation is what enables mankind, and all other life on earth to exist. What mankind does or does not do to impact the environment and the climate is, at best, unknown. But the chances of mankind creating an Armageddon through climate change is not likely. More realistically, we should all be more concerned with preventing a manmade nuclear Armageddon.

     Instead of listening to the threats and dire predictions of death and destruction being rained down on us by the climate change terrorists, we would all do well to step back, consider the real science and the real facts, and decide upon a balanced approach to addressing all the issues facing us - not just the single perceived problem of global warming. Life on this planet involves more than just one issue. The truth is that we can reduce pollution and protect the environment while, at the same time, continuing to improve the quality of life on this earth. We have the technology and the power to do this. And we don’t have to return to the dark ages, as the climate change terrorists would have us do. We have to carefully consider the consequences of proposed courses of action and not be led down paths leading to disastrous outcomes.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References:

  1. Climate Change: The Unintended Consequences of 'Green' Energy, PierreGuy Veer, The Blaze,
    13 May 2014.
  2. The Sky is Falling!, David Burton, Son of Eliyahu; Article 227, 13 July 2015.
  3. The Right Way to Ensure a Cleaner Environment, The Heritage Foundation, Accessed 16 September 2019.
  4. The Green New Deal: Less About Climate, More About Control, Nicholas Loris and Kevin Dayaratna,
    The Heritage Foundation, Accessed 16 September 2019.
  5. Democrats’ ‘Green New Deal’ is a Crazy New Deal that would be a disaster for us all, buzzdept.com,
    8 February 2019.
  6. Environmentalists and Bureaucrats Combine to Cheat Us, David Burton, Son of Eliyahu; Article 202,
    26 September 2014.
  7. The Paris Climate Agreement - Trump Finally Got One Right, David Burton, Son of Eliyahu; Article 295,
    15 June 2017.
  8. President Trump just announced the US is leaving the Paris Climate Agreement, Edwin J. Feulner,
    The Heritage Foundation, 1 June 2017.
  9. Consequences of Paris Protocol: Devastating Economic Costs, Essentially Zero Environmental Benefits,
    Kevin Dayaratna, Nicolas Loris and David Kreutzer, The Heritage Foundation, 13 April 2016.
  10. Getting beyond Paris, OpEd, Boston Herald, page 14, 2 June 2017.
  11. Climate change narrative resembles ‘religious extremism’ say scientists, Sandra Flores, The BL, 9 September 2019.
  12. Now is Not the Time to Let Our Guard Down, David Burton, Son of Eliyahu; Article 356, 29 April 2019.
  13. Green New Deal depends on mineral mining, Stephen Moore, Boston Herald, Page 16, 20 September 2019.
  14. Environmental zealots grab media spotlight, Erick Erickson, Boston Herald, Page 17, 23 September 2019.
  15. If You Can't Sell Your Hysteria to Adults, Try Kids, Dennis Prager, The Jewish Press, Page 6, 27 September 2019.
  16. The Tragedy of Greta Thunberg, David Harsanyi, The Daily Signal, 28 September 2019.

 


  6 Dec 2019 {Article 390; Whatever_66    
Go back to the top of the page