The climate crisis narrative is inescapable. And it doesn’t help to have an administration - Biden and company - pushing alarmism through whole-of-government policies either.
Are you living in the path of earthquakes? Blame climate change. Didn’t get the job you interviewed for? Climate change is to blame. Elderly Americans, who live in warmer states, will be climate casualties before we know it, too.
Climate change is sexist, homophobic, racist, and a malleable trope progressives apply to whatever perceived problem there is. But do they treat this seriously and live like we’re in a crisis? Hardly. They refuse to personally decarbonize, but we the people, must severely alter our lives, diets, and habits to achieve net-zero by 2050. Drink beanless coffee, eat lab-grown meat or stomach the bugs. Stop driving cars and stop breathing air - we’re killing the planet, they tell us. It’s exhausting to hear this, but dangerous to dismiss. These power-hungry types, if given more power, will follow through with obtuse climate mandates.
Charting a bizarre net-zero course, unsurprisingly, will require destroying our economy in the process, with no measurable decline in global temperatures as required by the Paris Climate Accords. Surprise, surprise!
Despite Americans souring on climate alarmism, progressives still double down on these alarmist talking points. They cannibalize themselves to their detriment–but to our benefit.
Why isn’t Biden’s electric vehicle agenda working as desired? It’s not because American consumers and car dealers oppose mandates. Don’t be silly! Why, equity - this hot new buzzword - explains why only 7 or 8 public-funded EV charging stations have been constructed since 2021. Washington Free Beacon reports:
“But internal memos from the Department of Transportation obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, as well as interviews with those who are responsible for overseeing the implementation of the electric vehicle charging station project, say the delay is in large part a result of the White House’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
"These requirements are screwing everything up," said one senior Department of Transportation staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It’s all a mess.
Free Beacon’s reporting adds:
To qualify for a grant, applicants must "demonstrate how meaningful public involvement, inclusive of disadvantaged communities, will occur throughout a project’s life cycle." What "public involvement" means is unclear. But the Department of Transportation notes it should involve "intentional outreach to underserved communities."
That outreach, the Department of Transportation states, can take the form of "games and contests," "visual preference surveys," or "neighborhood block parties" so long as the grant recipient provides "multilingual staff or interpreters to interact with community members who use languages other than English."
What a mess. DEI/ESG posturing mudding and dictating policy isn’t by accident; it’s by design. This stems from the Justice40 initiative from a Day One Biden administration executive order. The federal government, under Justice 40, has a “goal that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain Federal climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, and other investments flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.”
If you dare challenge the climate crisis narrative like Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has, he’s blamed for exacerbating natural disasters and extreme weather events. DeSantis dared - gasp! -to erase the mention of climate change from Florida law. He must be a despoiler of the environment now, right? This threw climate activists and woke meteorologists into a tizzy.
Progressives tell us climate change - which isn’t catastrophic and occurs naturally - is beyond our control, but Governor DeSantis can wave a magic wand and stop it or natural disasters? Imagine instituting costly climate regulations and saying “climate change!” three times will lead to no hurricanes, tornados, and flooding in the future.
Meteorology student and my new CFACT colleague, Chris Martz, rebuked attacks on the Florida governor, writing, “Gov. @RonDeSantis does not possess magical powers to make it rain. Climate change also doesn’t cause it to rain or flood somewhere.”
Martz urged the media in 2022 to not regurgitate climate nonsense in their Hurricane Ian reporting, writing, “This tendency to link climate change to every single weather event after it passes has in all honesty become tiresome. After careful examination of the data and literature, there doesn’t appear to be any reason to suggest that human-induced climate change played a significant role in the occurrence, intensification, or storm surge and rainfall associated with Hurricane Ian. Any signal gets lost in the noise of natural variability.”
Climate change doesn’t define every natural disaster and it isn’t an excuse for your problems.
We should welcome the self-cannibalizing behavior of climate activists. It just might save America from a dystopian net-zero future.
