The Magnificent Futility of Climate Change Activism
I have been watching American politics closely ever since 1956. Climate change is the most wheel-spinning political cause that the Left has ever embraced.
I would regard it as a tragedy if political liberals ever figured out that they cannot possibly win on this issue. They might decide to focus their attention and money on some project that they might win, such as raising the national minimum wage to $15. That would have tremendous negative repercussions on the poor, whereas climate change activism encourages liberals to pour good money after bad. They keep writing checks. Nothing ever happens politically in response.
TOOTHLESS AND FECKLESS
Here is the problem that liberals face with climate change politics. Inherently, the climate is international. Yet there is no international organization that has any teeth in it. The United Nations has been toothless and feckless as an independent agency ever since 1945. If the United States government wants a cover for something unconstitutional that it wants to do, such as the Korean War, it can wrap itself in the UN flag. But whenever the United States government is not in favor of some UN proposition, the UN proposition goes nowhere.
Unless there is an international agency that can bring serious negative sanctions against a national government for having failed to enforce some regulation that supposedly is going to reduce global warming, then there is nothing that the global warming activists can do about it. The "heat polluters" will continue to get away with it. This means businesses in China. This means businesses in the United States. This means basically businesses in the entire industrial world.
By the very nature of the problem, it cannot be dealt with nationally. If one nation's government is pressured into passing some piece of legislation that reduces the profitability of supposedly heat-producing industrial practices, then some other nation gets an opportunity for economic growth. It can expand national productivity by allowing local businesses to adopt the same warming technologies and then sell the output into an international market that no longer faces competition from the manufacturers in the nation that has prohibited the practices. In this scenario, a nation run by politicians who decide to stop some industrial practice is subsidizing manufacturing in some other nation that is wise enough not to impose the particular restrictions.
This means that nothing in the global warming activists' agenda can be done to stop the supposed global warming that is supposedly the result of private enterprise's productivity. The entire global warming agenda is based on one goal above all others, namely, to impose political costs on profitable manufacturing. In the mid-1970's, it was global cooling that the Left-wing activists were distressed over, but the same political agenda was in place, namely, passing regulations against profitable manufacturing practices. Their agenda has never changed. Their agenda is to make private enterprise less profitable and the nation-state more powerful. These activists are willing to invent any excuse that they think is politically salable in order to justify the national governments' interfering with private property.
NO POLITICAL TRACTION
The public really doesn't care enough about global warming to mobilize against it. The global warmers have been crying wolf for so long that the public is now losing interest. There has been no mass mobilization against President Trump for having pulled out of the Paris Accords. Nobody in America cares. Nobody in Paris cares. Nobody in London cares. Nobody cares enough to attend a huge rally, and then send money to some political candidate expressly on the issue of getting America back into the Paris Accords.
I find it amusing to follow the articles written by the in-house global warming hand-wringer at the Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell. He has devoted his recent journalistic career to hand-wringing over global warming. Here is a list of his articles He is truly Johnny One-Note.
Two years ago, he wrote this breathless article: "The Paris Climate Agreement Changes Everything". In fact, the agreement changed nothing. It was simply a public relations stunt by the United Nations. The fact that President Trump has pulled the United States out of it has changed nothing except in the minds of the climate change activists. Even here, they don't want to admit the truth. If the Paris Accords really meant anything, then Trump really has derailed their agenda. But they don't want to admit that he has done this. They have shrugged their shoulders, and they pretend that nothing fundamental has changed. They are correct. Nothing fundamental has changed. They tell us that we are closer to Armageddon, but there is not a thing they can do to slow down our supposed rendezvous with catastrophe.
It is becoming obvious to voters that the issue does not affect their lives. Nothing ever changes. This includes world temperatures.
Mr. Goodell searches for political hope under every rug. He doesn't find much, and what little he finds doesn't seem to get any traction. Here is his latest report.
On Monday, The New York Times published a leaked climate report by scientists from 13 federal agencies that shows, unequivocally, that the earth is warming, the consequences will be severe, if not apocalyptic, and humans are the cause of it. None of this is news to anyone who pays attention to what's happening on Planet Earth. What's new is that scientists from virtually every relevant federal agency are broadcasting this right now, at a time when the Trump administration has pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, pushed policies to increase coal mining on federal lands, rolled back air pollution standards and taken direct aim at President Obama's signature climate change achievement, the Clean Power Plan. This report argues that climate change is not only real and happening now, but that by denying science, lying to the American people and pushing fossil fuels, President Trump is putting the health and stability of the operating system of the entire planet at risk. To put it bluntly, this report is a huge throw-down by federal scientists that challenges the most basic fundamentals of Trump's climate denial charade.
What was the effect of this report? Nothing.
What is going to be the effect of this report? Nothing.
Congress is not going to do anything about it. Trump is not going to do anything about it. If Trump and Congress don't do anything about it, then nothing is going to be done about it.
The global warming activists just cannot figure this out. They do not understand that this gloom-and-doom theme gets no traction politically. Yet this is the number-one political issue around the world that the Left is committed to. But it gets no traction. The public doesn't care.
Goodell goes on to announce:
In the coming weeks, it will be grimly entertaining to watch Trump, Pruitt and the cast of clowns in the White House discredit, dance around and deny this report. But for the moment, scientists have gotten their revenge. They have resisted the forces of darkness and given us a sharp and true picture of the world we are creating for ourselves, and for generations to come. And for that, we should be grateful. It's not easy being a truth-teller in this new world of alternative facts and fossil fuel hucksterism, but this report is a reminder, if one is needed, that climate scientists are among the real heroes of our time.
First, it doesn't take any courage at all to be a global warming propagandist in a government bureaucracy. These people can't be fired. Everybody is protected by civil service legislation. These people are not heroes. They're just self-serving people who want to continue to maintain the money flowing into their various bureaucracies. I'm sure the money will continue to flow. Trump is not going to cut their budgets because of this report. They would only focus attention on the report.
Second, the proper political response of the Trump administration is obvious: say nothing. Don't dance, either. Just ignore it. Nobody cares. The liberal media have other fish to fry. They want to talk about the nonexistent connection between Russia and Trump. That has their attention. It pushes the story about the global warming report to the back pages.
There is going to be a recession. When it hits, the Republicans will be on the defensive. The Democrats will be on the offensive. The politics of America will shift to the question of rising unemployment. The legendary line of James Carville in 1992 will return to the Democratic fold: "It's the economy, stupid."
What Democrat is going to be campaigning in 2018 or 2020 on this pledge? "I will push for rigorous controls on American business to halt climate change." His Republican opponent will cut him to ribbons. In the middle of a recession, any Democrat who campaigns on a platform to cut jobs is suffering from a death wish politically.
The recession is going to drown out all other issues in Washington. Political careers will be on the line among incumbent Republicans. Democrats will understand this, and money will flow into those campaigns locally where incumbent Republicans look vulnerable. They will be vulnerable on the economy, not global warming.
By the very nature of American politics, which places pocketbook issues at the top of the list of things voters are worried about, climate change is a nonstarter. It has been a nonstarter for 25 years. But the Left, committed to political salvation, is determined to start this nonstarter. They just won't let it alone.
I hope this does not change. I hope they commit to putting an end to climate change for the rest of their lives. The climate is going to change, so they will still remain committed to this hopeless political project on a permanent basis. They are not going to get a one-world government with the ability to impose negative sanctions against any nation that does not pass laws that hamper profit-seeking businesses in the name of climate change. Their entire agenda is toothless and feckless for as long as the United Nations is toothless and feckless.
PR STUNTS
All that the global warmers have is the ability to put on an occasional public relations stunt. The last time it tried to do this was in Copenhagen in 2009. The theft of the incriminating emails was conducted just before the meeting, and the emails were released to the world media. The media could not leave them alone. In just two weeks, this destroyed the career of global warming activist and supposed scholar, Phil Jones. Then came the appearance of the polar bear.
The meeting never recovered. National leaders decided not to attend. In 2015, Mr. Goodell accurately describes what happened.
The last time the world came together to cut a climate deal was in Copenhagen in 2009, and it was a diplomatic train wreck, ending in melodrama, bitterness and recrimination. Even worse, it resulted in an agreement that did little to solve the problem of climate change. In fact, it arguably made the problem worse, since it suggested that nations of the world were about as likely to cut a deal to reduce carbon pollution as a class of hungry kindergarteners would be to cut a deal to reduce ice cream consumption.
Here is an example of hope springing eternal.
But this month's UN Climate Change Conference in Paris was no Copenhagen. The world has changed a lot in the last six years. Long before French foreign minister Laurent Fabius slammed his green gavel down on Saturday night to close the deal, everyone knew Paris was going to have a happier ending. Exactly how happy, no one was sure. But two nights before the negotiations ended, while hourly news reports from the conference were still playing up the intrigue, I was at a reception in an elegant 18th century building on the Place Vendôme in central Paris co-hosted by billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer. I asked Tim Wirth, former senator and now vice chair of the United Nations Foundation, who has been in the climate fight as long as anyone, how he thought the negotiations were going. He beamed. "It's a done deal," he told me. "All that's left now are the ankle-biters."
On the issue of global warming, Donald Trump is the senior ankle-biter in the world. He personally sank the whole project in full public view. It was never anything more than a PR stunt, but it was all that the global warmers had. It is now on hold for 3 1/2 years. By 2021, the issue of the economy will be front and center all over the world. Global warming will once again be put on the back burner.
CONCLUSION
The magnificent futility of global warming activism warms the cockles of my heart. May the Left cling to it on a permanent basis, now and forevermore, amen.