Kennedy: How much if we do our part is it going to reduce global temperatures?
Turk: So, we’re thirteen percent of global emissions . . .
Kennedy: You don’t know, do you? You don’t know, do you?
Turk did not know and finally confessed that it was just a really big feeling that we had to do something. “In my heart of hearts, there is no way the world gets its act together on climate change unless the US leads,” he confessed.
Turk’s comments confirm that the progressives controlling the Biden administration’s Department of Energy are pushing a strategy about which they are clueless and which will have an unknown impact on world temperatures (if any). Instead, we are told it is to serve as encouragement for the rest of the world to do their part (because they’re not).
Progressives know that the Chinese Communist Party isn’t going to do the right thing if we show them the way by destroying ourselves. But they do know if they’re successful in using climate change as a pretext, it will get Marxists closer to their goal of economically kneecapping the United States and ushering in their final “fundamental transformation” of the US into a weak, vulnerable, and irrelevant nation.
Moreover, the massive new government regulations and tax increases that will be needed to fight the war on “climate change” will inevitably help push America down the dangerous road to socialism, just as the left wants. This road will bring tremendous costs both economically and politically. That’s because the more government regulates businesses, our economy, and our lives, the less freedom we will have and the less innovative and successful our economy will become. And the more we pay in taxes, the less money we will have to meet our own needs and solve our own problems, forcing us to become more dependent on Big Government to take care of us. Voilà!
This dangerous leftward drift moves us away from the American Dream of individuals building better lives for ourselves and our families through ambition and hard work in a free society. It moves us closer to the Marxist Dream (which is actually a nightmare) and the rule of George Orwell’s Big Brother. Viewed in this context, we see that the campaign to fight climate change—change that has been occurring since the Earth was formed—isn’t really about climate at all. It is about making Big Government bigger and shrinking the freedoms of the rest of us.
While many climate activists have been convinced they are working to improve our lives, they should keep the old saying in mind that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Fear Paves the Way for Big Government
Think about it—the Marxists and other malignant operatives among us would never be able to convince anyone of anything if the selling point was the hellfire and misery their actual agenda delivers. Ask the people of the former Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, and, of course, those unfortunate enough to live in the hellscape delivered by the Chinese Communist Party, how horrifically their roads to hell were paved.
The demand to do as we’re told, to not ask any questions, to not contradict, and to instead conform is because all leftist causes are Trojan horses with which to undermine and eventually dismantle the American government and economic system. These demands are made concurrently with doomsday assertions claiming that only our complete compliance and conformity—no matter how absurd or extreme—will provide any chance of survival. Fear again is the key to our submission.
Yes, I’m a partisan for the United States as created and defined by our Founding Fathers. But don’t take just my word for what the “climate change” agenda really is. In 2014, the editorial board at Investor’s Business Daily didn’t mince words as they recounted a speech by former Czech president Vaclav Klaus:
Global warming alarmists “want to change us, they want to change our behavior, our way of life, our values and preferences,” according to a man who knows a thing or two about communist regimes, former Czech President Vaclav Klaus.8 In a speech to Australia’s Institute of Public Affairs in 2011, he stressed: “They want to restrict our freedom because they themselves believe they know what is good for us. They are not interested in climate. They misuse the climate in their goal to restrict our freedom. Therefore, what is in danger is freedom, not the climate. . . . They don’t care about resources or poverty or pollution. They hate us, the humans. They consider us dangerous and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them. I used to live in a similar world called communism. And I know it led to the worst environmental damage the world has ever experienced.”9
Empowering Big Government to tax, spend, and regulate on a massive scale beyond anything our nation has ever known will be no easy task. After all, as Americans we cherish our freedom—that’s been true since the American Revolution. We want our government to serve the people, unlike in dictatorships, where the people serve the government. Dictatorships have no use for freedom, democracy, or the free enterprise system.
We see the American left echoing these authoritarian views, such as when Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Democratic Socialist senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (both millionaires) argue for gargantuan tax increases to punish people for hard work and success, and demand overregulation that would cripple our economy and make us more dependent on foreign suppliers for essential products. Yet most Americans don’t buy the Warren and Sanders policies—even the left-leaning electorate that votes in Democratic primaries turned its thumb down to Warren and Sanders in their bids for presidential nomination in 2020.
So how does the left get Americans to accept the supersizing of Big Government and pave the way to a socialist utopia? Through fear. And the greater the fear, the better. Not the kind of fear that makes us just a little scared, but the fear that leaves us absolutely terrified.
Nothing sparks nationwide fear like a major crisis. Americans have a long history of giving up some of our freedoms and letting the government grow more powerful when such crises hit. We saw this in the 1930s and 1940s, for example, when the American people mobilized to deal with two very real and overwhelming fears: economic collapse caused by the Great Depression; and the threat of world conquest by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan during World War II. Americans supported the creation of an alphabet soup of government agencies and massive government spending and expansion to fight the depression. About 16 million served in the military (including over 400,000 who died) in the war against the Axis powers.10, 11
On top of this, Americans endured tax rates to fund our involvement in World War II that would bring tears of joy to Warren, Sanders, and other far-left radicals like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. The wartime Democratic-controlled Congress approved raising the federal tax on incomes of over $200,000 (about $3.2 million in 2022 dollars) to an astounding 94 percent. Believe it or not, that was less than Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted.
In 1942, shortly after America entered World War II, Roosevelt asked Congress to approve a top tax rate of 100 percent, saying that because America faced “grave national danger,” he believed “no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year.” Talk about progressive! But members of Congress must have reached the obvious conclusion that if Uncle Sam collected every penny people made over $25,000, a lot of people would make no effort to earn more. Why work longer hours or risk losing money on a business expansion that would create new jobs if there was zero chance of financial reward? Despite big Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, Roosevelt’s proposed 100 percent rate was never enacted.12
Bernie Sanders, born in 1941, likely wasn’t tuned in to political news as a baby, but if little Bernie was paying attention, he probably would have cried when he learned of the rejection of the 100 percent tax rate. When he was all grown up and seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, the proud socialist told the New York Times: “I don’t think that billionaires should exist,” explaining that he intended to raise taxes so high that no one could accumulate so much wealth. His proposal was designed to outflank Senator Warren on the left, after she came out with a wealth tax proposal not quite as radical.13
Marxists and others consumed with envy tend to believe they have sole possession of the truth and believe they are the ones who should determine what other people can, and cannot, have. Perhaps Bernie was at his beach house, one of three homes he and his wife enjoy, contemplating what sort of people should not exist and what they should or should not have.14 Some progressive and Marxist activists rake in the cash while those they supposedly care about continue to suffer. But that’s part of how envy is industrialized, capitalized, and weaponized by the professional grievance mob.15
Not surprisingly, one of the reasons Sanders used to justify his proposal for massive tax increases on Americans was . . . you guessed it . . . fear of climate change. Without a world war or a depression to justify sky-high tax rates, Sanders figured climate fear was his best bet to make Uncle Sam grow into the Incredible Hulk. He proposed the most expensive climate plan of all Democratic presidential candidates, costing a staggering $16.3 trillion.16
By way of comparison, Sanders’s plan to wage war on climate change would have cost nearly four times the amount America spent fighting World War II ($296 billion in the 1940s, which comes to about $4.3 trillion in 2020 dollars, the year Sanders campaigned on his proposal).17
The Bernie Sanders website actually makes the alarmist comparison between World War II and the battle against climate change, stoking fears of an uninhabitable planet by stating: “The scientific community is telling us in no uncertain terms that we have less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, if we are going to leave this planet healthy and habitable for ourselves, our children, grandchildren, and future generations. . . . The scope of the challenge ahead of us shares similarities with the crisis faced by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940s.”18
World War II was far from the only crisis in US history that prompted Americans to support giving up some of their freedoms and allowing government and their tax bills to grow. We saw the impact of a crisis again after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, prompting the US invasion of Afghanistan, a spike in military enlistments, the creation of the massive Department of Homeland Security, and the growth of government surveillance and other incursions on our individual liberties.
We saw a frightened crisis response again with the advent of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, with government mandates shutting down private businesses, requiring us to wear masks, canceling worship services and other gatherings, keeping our kids out of school, and in some cases mandating getting vaccinated or losing our jobs. In all these cases, the “states of emergency” and the fear they generated allowed the government to take actions circumventing the normal constitutional process. Politicians delivered political rhetoric, reinforced by media and Big Tech, leading to what can only be described as a mass hysteria, allowing illegal and unconstitutional actions to be implemented. Those who question the narrative, the orthodoxy, or “The Science” are shamed, fired, or banished from the public square. These actions are meant to silence basic questioning and dissent, as well as spread more fear throughout every community.
The Ideal Crisis
From the point of view of the left, climate change is the ideal crisis to create a record level of fear among the population and inject Big Government with a shot of growth hormone. Think back to our opening discussion of the left as a domestic abuser on a mass scale. Do they blame the rest of us for causing all our problems? Absolutely. Do they intend to terrorize us with threats of violence and death? Every misleading headline about increasing natural disasters says yes. Do they isolate us from our friends and family? Yes, by telling us not to travel and by telling us to cut nonbelievers out of our lives. Do they try to manipulate the people we care about into telling us their way is the best way for everyone? It’s nonstop. Do they try to restrict our access to financial independence? That’s all they do!
But there’s more! And there always will be. Forget about cow flatulence being a problem. There’s a much bigger issue on the horizon—human breathing. As Britney Spears might note, oops, they’ve done it again! They’ve moved from condemning us for the things we do right into condemning us for existing. The New York Post Editorial Board had a few thoughts:
Get ready, humanity: The next climate crackdown target looks to have been chosen—breathing! That’s right: New research indicates “exhaled human breath can contain small, elevated concentrations of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), both of which contribute to global warming.” The research, from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, reveals we’re all climate criminals, just like how it turned out a few years ago that we’re all racists.19
The Post reminds us this isn’t at all far-fetched considering the overall agenda of climate extremists: “For huge swathes of the green movement, remember, ‘degrowth’ is a preferred solution to all climate issues. That means an effective reduction of global living standards via artificial scarcity, which would necessarily entail mass death. So the idea of greens moving to suffocate humans to save the climate isn’t that far-fetched.”20
Great! We should start right away. Them first.
Hollywood celebrities, Democratic politicians, and millionaire business executives who live in mansions and travel in private jets and yachts on luxurious vacations—and ironically, travel the world attending climate-change conferences—are among those telling the rest of us we must make painful sacrifices to avert a climate apocalypse. Never mind that they generate gigantic carbon footprints with their privileged lifestyle.
The rich and famous tell us to live in smaller homes, turn down the heat so we shiver in winter, lower the air-conditioning so we swelter in summer, give up our gasoline-powered cars to ride mass transit or buy expensive electric vehicles, stop eating meat, and make other sacrifices. Never mind that the wealthy climate hypocrites do none of these things. The “little people” need to do as the elite say, not as they do.
On top of this, the climate elitists don’t care that hardworking men and women in the oil, natural gas, and coal industries would lose their jobs with the elimination of fossil fuels. Hillary Clinton admitted this about coal miners when she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in March 2016. “I’m the only candidate which [sic] has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity, using clean, renewable energy as a key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” the former first lady, senator, and secretary of state said.21
Oops!
Clinton backtracked and said she regretted the comment after it sparked predictable and understandable outrage, including a question at a campaign event in West Virginia by unemployed coal worker Bo Copley, who pointedly asked her, “How can you say you are going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs and then come here and tell us how you’re going to be our friend?”22 Turns out the only one kept out of a job by the comment was Clinton herself, who lost votes in coal-producing states as a result of sticking her foot in her mouth and—for a change—telling the truth about what she would do if she became president.
Then there are the folks at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Those in charge describe their mission as working “to safeguard the earth—its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends.” Well, that’s heady!
One particularly asinine claim by the zealots at the NRDC in the crusade against climate change condemns our use of toilet paper—yes, toilet paper—because of the “long-term climate impact it leaves behind” (so to speak) as a result of chopping trees down to manufacture the product. “Toilet Paper Is Driving the Climate Crisis with Every Flush,” the group warned in a headline on its blog in June 2020.23 What a perfect, intensely personal way to instill even more guilt and self-loathing into people.