Climate Change Fanatics

You cannot turn on the news without being subjected to the shrieks and howls of climate change fanatics. Their apocalyptic message: The End is Nigh. Repent before it’s too late.

OK, not quite in those terms, but it’s the same discourse. They are telling us that we must feel paroxysms of guilt over what we have done to the environment, how our industrialism has destroyed the pure and holy natural world. Think of the number of bacteria we have ruthlessly destroyed. Think of the damage to health that is being done by industrial sanitation.

Climate change alarmists never think in those terms. If human lifespan has increased significantly since the advent of industrialization, they do not care. They imagine that we are all going to pay a price, that all of humanity is going to be destroyed by global warming, global cooling or the next Ice Age. They might not be able to make up their minds, but they have seen the future and the future, they insist, is a nightmare.

Of course, let’s not forget, if you refuse to accept this prophetic vision,  you are a bigot and a Holocaust denier.

In his commentary about the French uprising against a diesel fuel tax Bret Stephens offers a sobering counterpoint. He asks us to weigh the cost of all the schemes proposed by climate change zealots. Clearly, when French president Macron imposed his new tax he did not consider the effect it would have on people who drive diesel-powered vehicles. And Macron is a brilliant politician.

Of course, if the world is about to end, why would you consider the price paid by the citizenry?

As you know, Macron had a change of heart and rescinded the tax. Stephens explains the context:

Emmanuel Macron’s government was forced this week to suspend a planned 6.5-cent-per-liter tax increase on diesel and 2.9 cents on gasoline — collected for the purpose of speeding France’s transition to renewables — after weeks of protests and violent rioting throughout the country. French consumers already pay more than $6 for a gallon of gas, compared to a current national average of $2.44 in the U.S.

That’s in a country where unemployment is 9.1 percent, the median monthly disposable income is $1,930, and economic growth has lagged for decades. “To the protesters,” wrote Adam Nossiter, The Times’s correspondent in Paris, “Mr. Macron is concerned about the end of the world, while they are worried about the end of the month.”

Hmm … a glimmer of reason enters the fray.

The prevailing apocalyptic narrative tells us that no one has the political courage to stop climate change-- as though we humans control the climate. Stephens throws some shade on that idea:

So much, also, for the fantasy that our main climate challenge is that nobody in power has the spine to do something about it. The real problem is that so far most of those somethings haven’t worked, or won’t work, or won’t work anytime soon, or come at too exorbitant a price.

Among the dazzling solutions proposed by activists are these:

Biofuels? They turned out to be an epic environmental and economic disaster, never mind that so-called climate hawks like Nancy Pelosibacked them for years. Massive government subsidies for wind and solar power? No country has invested more than Germany — an estimated $580 billion by 2025 — yet it will still miss its 2020 carbon emissions goals while energy prices have soared.

The Paris Climate Accord? The website Climateactiontracker.org finds that every nation it tracks save for Morocco and Gambia is falling short of its Paris commitments. Reducing the role of coal in energy markets? In India and China, which account for more than one-third of the world’s population, things are moving in precisely the opposite direction.

Carbon sequestration? Maybe, but it will likely be decades before the technology is likely to be widely adopted. Long-term battery storage? This is the holy grail of renewable energy because it would solve the intermittency problem of wind and solar power. But like the holy grail, it’s notoriously dangerous to those in its quest, with companies that pursue it having a bad habit of going bankrupt.

One thing that might help is: nuclear power. Naturally, the climate change fanatics are against nuclear power. Angela Merkel has been shutting it down in Germany. In France, where most of the nation’s electricity has been generated by nuclear power plants, the nation is moving away from it. And they have been moving away from natural gas, one fuel that does not pollute and that has done wonders for the American climate. Now you understand why they believe that they have superior intelligence:

Which brings me back to France. For years, the French had an advantage when it came to climate change, since they get about 75 percent of their electricity from nuclear power. In 2015 they passed a law to cut it to 50 percent. Two years later, they decided to phase out all oil and gas exploration by 2040, never mind that the natural-gas boom has been essential to America’s transition away from coal.

Funny thing, when your belief system comes from the Book of Revelation, when you burn with righteous fury at those who do not accept your beliefs, when you believe that prophecy is fact, you are likely to do stupid things… and  you are equally likely not to care:

But a long history of climate policy failures might also cause climate activists and the politicians they support to be more humble about their convictions, more sensitive to the human effects of their policy, and more willing to listen to criticism.