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The Left Doesn’t Really Believe in Climate Change
The sky is always falling. If the new ice age doesn’t do us in, the ozone hole will. The instant DDT is banned, aerosols must follow. Global warming is replaced by climate change is replaced by “global weirding.”
And what is the solution to these often-contradictory scenarios? We anachronists who retain a bias toward the hard sciences would employ very different measures to prevent a freezing ocean and a boiling one. To an engineer, soldier or plumber, this is obvious.
But how do leaders of the environmental left address these opposing doomsdays? By raising taxes, increasing government, impeding capitalism and reducing national sovereignty. Coincidentally, the same policies they would promote if their supposed environmental catastrophe was utter fiction. It is little wonder that voters are suspicious.
When natural gas production was a too-expensive alternative to oil, the environmental lobby promoted it as a surefire way to reduce carbon emissions. Close the coal- and oil-fired plants; convert cars to run on CNG. Yes, it will devastate industries, cost jobs and burn billions of dollars, but think of the children!
Since even malevolent industrialists love their kids, energy barons took the greens’ advice and found cheaper, more efficient ways to extract and transport natural gas. What a victory for the movement! But instead of celebrating, envirolobbyists rent their garments over their once-miraculous fuel. The instant green energy translated into Big Oil profits, progressives placed the CNG and fracking on their naughty list.
When carbon emissions were labeled agents of the apocalypse, engineers noted that the only atmospheric emission from nuclear plants is water vapor. If greenhouse gases were as dangerous as claimed, Gaia’s savior, at least for a time, was the humble atom.
Again the environmentalists turned on a dime, alleging that CO2 is bad, but tiny amounts of nuclear waste buried under mountain ranges was, well, icky. Sure, there are now vastly safer waste-reducing solutions, but did you hard-science-types forget the cool bumper stickers on our VW microbus? The China Syndrome won Oscars, you know.
Every time a real-world solution is provided to a promised calamity, leftist leaders move the goalposts. To be sure, many well-meaning parishioners have bought the con and piously observe the demanding rituals of earth worship. But the high priests still jet around the globe, chasing checks from energy tycoons to build monstrous mansions along doomed coastlines.
That’s because the Left doesn’t really believe in climate change. Their true religion is raising taxes, increasing government, impeding capitalism and reducing national sovereignty. Climate change is just a temporary excuse to achieve those ends.
Published in General
Jon,
What it’s about ultimately is envy. Those who couldn’t run a candy store want to run the entire economy of Western Civilization. Those who couldn’t change the batteries in a flash light want to formulate energy policy. Finally, those who can’t read the label on a bottle of vitamins want to protect the entire ecology of the globe.
Science isn’t magic. It’s hard work. Just like making money in the market place is hard work. They envy those who have done the work but don’t want to admit their own laziness.
They really need their lies to feel good about themselves. Thomas Friedman is not only the ultimate girly man. He is a very dangerous fool. Everyone else at the Times knows it. Sulzberger has had his hands full with Ms. Tatoo. I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds a way to edge the girly man out.
Regards,
Jim
Does this sound like a man who has conviction that he is right, right down to his core? No. From John Kerry at Boston College, May 19, 2104:
For the latest example: President Obama gave the commencement address at West Point yesterday and could not manage a word about the Veterans Administration–something he actually runs–and its latest health care scandal. Instead, he is focused on “putting together a global framework to preserve our planet.”
From the New York Times: “That spirit of cooperation needs to energize the global effort to combat climate change, a creeping national security crisis that will help shape your time in uniform, as we are called on to respond to refugee flows and natural disasters, and conflicts over water and food, which is why, next year, I intend to make sure America is out front in putting together a global framework to preserve our planet.”
Here’s a fun activity to file under “Leftist Abuse”:
Ask if they knew that a majority of astrophysicists are concerned that the decrease in solar activity could lead to a mini Ice Age. When the blank look fades – and timing is important here – ask them “You don’t want to be anti-science, do you?”
Never forget that stores moved to plastic shopping bags because paper bags used too many resources, and factories making them were smelly. Now, the plastic bags are a scourge to wildlife. No matter how society adapts to the demands, those who lust after power must use it or lose it—–so that new problems must be created to justify activity, fundraising, rent-seeking and bureaucratic jobs.
It’s called watermelon environmentalism.
Green on the outside. Red on the inside.
I’ve thought about that! It would be funny to have a take off on Superman where the star child discovers the his home planet is fine, and his father is locked up because he shot his child into space.