On July 15th 2022, Senate Democrats announced Senator Joe Manchin had blocked portions of the mini-Build Back Better bill. Those sections included new climate initiatives. Reaction to Manchin’s objections was swift and vigorous. Evergreen Action Executive Director Jamal Raad said Democrats should take away Manchin’s Energy and Natural Resources chair position, referring to the West Virginia Democrat as a “coal baron.”
Raad went on to say “Senator Joe Manchin has written his legacy: blocking our best shot at a transition to affordable, American clean energy and a livable planet,” Raad said in a statement. “Senator Manchin has betrayed the American public and the mandate given to the Democratic Senate to act on climate.”
This climate desperation narrative touted by the Left is irrational and dangerous. Their irrationality is based on fear, lacking information to substantiate that fear, and dangerous because publicizing panic scares people unnecessarily. These comments are focused on the issue of fossil fuels and their impact on the atmosphere, not other issues environmental groups are pursuing. No one should question the goals of clean water, clean air, safe soil, retaining undeveloped land, and maintaining our woodlands. Fossil fuels and their impact on the climate is a subject unto itself.
Analysis of weather data in the United States shows that forecasts are 54% accurate for the following day. That’s a little bit better than flipping a coin. If we can’t predict the weather for the following day, how can anyone think we can predict the earth’s climate 8 years from now, or 28 years from now, or 78 years from now?
The world puts 33 billion tons of hydrocarbons into the air each year. Ten countries produce 70% of the total. China is first at 30%. The Unites States is second at 15%. If the United States completely eliminated all of its hydrocarbon pollution, there would still be six times as much still being produced by the rest of the world.
We can’t solve the hydrocarbon problem by ourselves, so let’s not pretend that if America acts too slowly, we’re forfeiting a chance to save the planet. If the doomsday scenario for 2030 is accurate, we’d better prepare for doomsday.
Polls provide us with a useful context about the politics connected to this issue.
The latest data from Gallup (2022) shows that about 40% of Americans think climate concerns are exaggerated, another 40% think they are underestimated, and the remaining 20% believe the predictions are accurate. These results roughly reflect party line positions, so neither party buys into the other party’s narrative.
Because the environment is an issue driven by the Left, it’s instructive to look under the covers at the political and ideological components, in order to understand their position better. The climate advocacy tent includes many groups, but two of them required a more detailed discussion: climate change fanatics and climate business investors.
The fanatics view climate change as an existential threat that needs immediate attention. What is the genesis of this emotional hysteria?
Climate has become “the religion of choice for urban atheists,” according to Michael Crichton, the late science fiction writer. In a widely quoted 2003 speech, Crichton outlined the ways that environmentalism “remaps” Judeo-Christian beliefs: There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment.
Freeman Dyson, the contrarian octogenarian physicist, agreed with Crichton. In a 2008 essay in the New York Review of Books, he described environmentalism as “a worldwide secular religion” that has “replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.” This religion holds “that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible.”
Is extreme climate advocacy a religion or is it also a cult? Mark Perry in a 2019 article from The American Enterprise Institute, compiled a list of factors that are commonly used to define cults. He applied them to the environmental movement. A few excerpts from that list follow.
1. Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability. The leading advocates of the Climate Change movement are politicians, entertainers, and even children. Climate preachers lack any formal scientific training and live personal lives of unparalleled luxury while prescribing carbon austerity for the masses. No one is permitted to point out their scientific ignorance or call attention to their hypocritical lifestyles.
2. No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry. The conclusions of the Climate Change movement may not be challenged or questioned under any circumstances. Those who dare scrutinize the conclusions, methodology, or prescriptions of “climate scientists” are categorically dismissed as “Climate Deniers”, excommunicated untouchables whose opinion is no longer valid on any subject.
3. Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions. The Climate Change movement always shouts out revised and updated apocalypse predictions, eerily reminiscent of the guy on the sidewalk with that “The End Is Near” sign. “The world will end in X years if we don’t do X” is the constant refrain. The years always pass, and the apocalypse never happens. At the moment, we apparently have 8 years to transform our entire economy and phase out fossil fuels before we all die a fiery death.
4. The group/leader is always right. When have the climate leaders been called wrong for their failed predictions? Regardless of the weather, they are always intrinsically correct. Flood? Climate Change. Drought? Climate Change. No Snow? Climate Change. Too much snow? Climate Change. Hurricane? Climate Change. Lack of hurricanes? Climate Change.
Climate Fanatics and Politics
Love of and
care for nature goes back to the early 1800s, as a part of the Romantic
Movement in America. Living with nature required caring for nature so it would
always be available. During the Progressive Era (1890-1920), there was increased
attention, by the federal government, focused on saving forests and maintaining
natural beauty. This was the time when most of the American national parks were
designated. The 1960s saw another step forward, using technological resources
to raise public consciousness about the serious impact of air and water
pollution. As a result of public pressure, the first environmental laws were
passed to protect the wilderness and the animals that live in it. More
recently, environmental issues have become politicized by America’s tribal
state, so the Congress is deadlocked and has difficulty moving forward.
Separate from an increase in public concern about the environment, the radical Left employs the environment as a tool in their fight against capitalism. During the 1960s, socialists were disillusioned about their lack progress in the United States. They realized revolution was unlikely, so they needed to employ a different strategy, a strategy that attacked capitalism. Their belief was that discrediting capitalism would create an opening for socialist ideology to move forward.
Socialists realized they could employ the concepts of exploitation and alienation by applying them to the environment. In the same way capitalists exploited minority groups, they exploited the resources of the earth. The link between human behavior and the health of the planet could never be considered resolved. Since capitalism meant the production of wealth, and wealth necessitated exploitation of the environment, capitalism was the enemy of the environment.
Climate has remained in the socialist playbook to this day, joining feminism, racism, and sexism as wedges to apply against capitalism and capitalists. True socialists don’t care about whether climate change is real, they care about the power they gain from the wedge issues they exploit.
Climate Business Investors
The primary
motivation for business creation is the belief that a product or service has a
market and, if that market is successfully exploited, the entrepreneur will be
successful. The Green market is at the beginning of a generational opportunity
for new business startups with enormous profits and great benefits to the
environment on the horizon. As America moves toward eliminating fossil fuels,
there will have to be new technologies and products developed. New types of power
plants will be needed. New modes of transportation will be required. Today, there
are dozens of electric vehicle startups vying for market share.
Those who are building these green companies are onboard with the fanatics. Green entrepreneurs want climate change hysteria amped up and in front of the public constantly. It’s the old rule of propaganda. Tell the same story enough times and people begin to believe it.
Fanatics and the green entrepreneurs have the same motivation, but neither provides balanced guidance to help the American people make reasonable choices about climate initiatives. The fanatics embrace the unbelievable. The entrepreneurs put making money above choosing the correct path to address climate change.
The truth is that our climate is changing, always has always will. The impact man has on the atmosphere is debatable, but that shouldn’t matter. Human beings should embrace sustainability as a moral imperative, but the path forward should proceed carefully, not irrationally.
