HOW SOCIALISM DESTROYS WEALTH & THE PLANET
“[W]E HAVE REACHED WHAT SOME ACTIVISTS HAVE STARTED CALLING ‘DECADE ZERO’ OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS: WE EITHER CHANGE NOW OR WE LOSE OUR CHANCE. ALL THIS MEANS THAT THE USUAL FREE MARKET ASSURANCES—A TECHNO-FIX IS AROUND THE CORNER! DIRTY DEVELOPMENT IS JUST A PHASE ON THE WAY TO A CLEAN ENVIRONMENT, LOOK AT NINETEENTH-CENTURY LONDON!—SIMPLY DON’T ADD UP…. BECAUSE OF OUR LOST DECADES, IT IS TIME TO TURN THIS AROUND NOW. IS IT POSSIBLE? ABSOLUTELY. IS IT POSSIBLE WITHOUT CHALLENGING THE FUNDAMENTAL LOGIC OF DEREGULATED CAPITALISM? NOT A CHANCE.”1
– NAOMI KLEIN
A global warming crisis is upon us. Rising tides will soon swallow whole cities. The sun will scorch the earth, destroying our crops and food supplies. Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to join mass migrations to flee wars and famine. Tornados, hurricanes, and extreme heat will kill tens of thousands. And worst of all, we only have about a decade left before it will be too late. The world is ending, and capitalism is to blame.
At least, that’s what Americans have been told now for the past half-century by “climate justice warriors” on the Left like Naomi Klein, a New York Times best-selling author and one of the most influential climate activists in Canada and the United States. Unlike many other progressives and socialists, Klein doesn’t necessarily hate all aspects of capitalism; she admits that it’s good at boosting economic productivity, for example. But Klein says that whatever benefits capitalism might provide are far outweighed by the environmental havoc free markets are supposedly imposing on the planet.
In her best-selling book This Changes Everything, Klein does spend some time making the usual Marxist arguments about wealth redistribution—she even quotes Marx directly2 at one point—but most of her focus is on convincing the reader that an impending climate crisis demands action and “radical” changes to the way we think about society and economics:
“The challenge, then,” Klein wrote, “is not simply that we need to spend a lot of money and change a lot of policies; it’s that we need to think differently, radically differently, for those changes to be remotely possible. Right now, the triumph of market logic, with its ethos of domination and fierce competition, is paralyzing almost all serious efforts to respond to climate change. Cutthroat competition between nations has deadlocked U.N. climate negotiations for decades: rich countries dig in their heels and declare that they won’t cut emissions and risk losing their vaulted position in the global hierarchy; poorer countries declare that they won’t give up their right to pollute as much as rich countries did on their way to wealth, even if that means deepening a disaster that hurts the poor most of all. For any of this to change, a worldview will need to rise to the fore that sees nature, other nations, and our own neighbors not as adversaries, but rather as partners in a grand project of mutual reinvention.”3
Klein’s work has become increasingly popular among many left-wing groups, politicians, and socialists. For example, Klein was one of the key figures behind Canada’s popular “Leap Manifesto,” a precursor to the Green New Deal.4 (By the way, am I the only one really creeped out by the Leap Manifesto’s title? It sounds awfully similar to Mao Zedong’s murderous “Great Leap Forward” campaign, right? So much so, in fact, that the “Frequently Asked Questions” section of the Leap Manifesto’s official website includes a short section that attempts to distance itself from the “Great Leap Forward.”)5
Klein’s work has been hailed by just about every leading figure in the climate crisis movement, from Washington, D.C., to New York and Hollywood. For example, actors John Cusack and Tim Robbins both endorsed Klein’s 2007 anti-capitalism book The Shock Doctrine,6 and Rachel McAdams and Donald Sutherland were among the many signers of the Leap Manifesto.7 One of Klein’s close allies and an endorser of Klein’s This Changes Everything,8 Bill McKibben, was named to the Democratic Party’s 2016 Platform Committee by Senator Bernie Sanders.9
Although it’s not often expressly stated, the reason Klein’s whole “capitalism must go to save the planet” schtick is so popular among those on the Left—especially so-called “eco-socialists”—is that it serves as the perfect last-ditch argument for those who can’t win the socialism-versus-capitalism debate by talking about economics. If the world is ending from a capitalism-caused climate crisis, then it doesn’t really matter whether capitalism has lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty over the past two decades. According to the eco-left, they’ll all be refugees or dead soon because of climate change.
There are two massive, totally unavoidable problems with this position. First, it assumes people actually want to enact the climate change policies proposed by progressives and socialists but that there are capitalist forces preventing them from doing so. But that’s simply not true. Anyone who wants to spend more to build “green” housing, start a compost, or even live completely electricity-free can do so. Just ask the Amish. By opting not to go green, people are freely choosing to prioritize more affordable energy over reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. A free-market economy would create a CO2-free society if that’s what people truly wanted. But they don’t—at least, not enough to reduce U.S. CO2 emissions down to zero. A November 2018 survey of American adults found only 23 percent are willing to pay at least $40 extra per month to battle climate change. Forty-three percent wouldn’t even pay $1 extra per month.10 Similarly, a 2019 survey found 68 percent of Americans wouldn’t agree to pay $10 per month or more in higher electric bills to help stop climate change.11
Many on the Left like to pretend that capitalism imposes products and services on people that they don’t want—like oil, natural gas, and other conventional energy sources, for example—but generally speaking, the opposite is true. The options available in a free marketplace are nothing more than a reflection of the desires of the consumers and businesses operating within that market. (That’s not to say our current energy marketplace is totally “free”; it most certainly isn’t. The energy industry is already heavily regulated, and already forces many consumers to purchase renewable energy options they don’t want.)
When socialists say we need to end capitalism to save the planet, what they really mean is that we must end all freedom in the marketplace to save the planet. According to socialists, only once the bureaucratic masterminds in Washington, D.C., have complete control over our economy will the world be able to avoid total catastrophe. How convenient. It turns out that the very thing the Left wanted all along—control over society—is now supposedly necessary to save the planet from what Senator Elizabeth Warren says is an “existential crisis.”12
This brings us to the second big problem with Klein’s theory: It’s not likely the planet is actually facing the dire end-of-the-world scenario the Left insists it is.
Let’s be clear here, because there’s so much confusion and misunderstanding on both sides of this issue: Earth’s climate is warming. The evidence shows Earth’s climate has been warming for more than a century. The issues are who or what are causing most of the recent warming, how much damage will that warming cause, do the benefits of that warming outweigh the potential problems, and what can be done to stop it, if anything. Those issues are serious and worthy of consideration, especially in light of what socialists are asking us to give up in order to stop global warming: our freedom—and, more importantly, hamburgers. (We’ll get to that later.)
The popular “97 percent” claim is nothing more than a big, fat myth—and I’m talking really fat, like a Michael Moore–sized myth.
The claim that 97 percent of climate scientists agree about global warming mostly stems from several extremely shoddy studies conducted over the past two decades that attempted to determine whether there was an overwhelming consensus on the causes and consequences of climate change. The first study—which was actually not a study but rather an opinion article—was conducted by far-Left Harvard professor Naomi Oreskes.
Oreskes claimed to examine 928 abstracts of articles published by academic journals from 1993 to 2003.13 She found 75 percent supported the position humans are responsible for most of the warming occurring over the past 50 years (25 percent didn’t address the issue), but Oreskes chose not to examine whether those scientists thought the warming was dangerous, and she also left out papers that directly contradicted that view by noted climate scientists who had published in peer-reviewed journals over the studied period.14
A second “study” often cited to prove the “97 percent consensus” myth is an article published in 2009 by a University of Illinois student and her master’s thesis adviser. It consisted of a survey containing only two primary questions, one that asked whether mean global temperatures have “generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant” compared with “pre-1800s levels,” and whether human activity is a “significant contributing factor” to changing temperatures.15 Of the 3,146 scientists who completed the survey, 90 percent said global temperatures have warmed, and 82 percent said humans were a “significant contributing factor”—not 97 percent.
Importantly, only 5 percent of the respondents were identified as “climate scientists.” Most were earth scientists, and only a small fraction (less than 10 percent) said more than 50 percent of their peer-reviewed papers published in the five years prior to the survey were on the subject of climate change.16 These scientists were not asked whether they thought climate change would be catastrophic or whether humans could do anything to stop it, but even if they had been, it wouldn’t have meant much, since so few of those surveyed were actually climate scientists.
In 2013, one of the most widely cited “consensus” studies was conducted by a team led by John Cook, who is now a professor at George Mason University. Cook found 97 percent of those peer-reviewed papers he reviewed implicitly or explicitly claimed human activity is responsible for at least some of the recent warming experienced.17 However, Cook’s study was thoroughly rejected by numerous climate scientists, including David Legates, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Delaware, who reconstructed Cook’s study and found “only 41 papers—0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent” had supported the position that humans are causing most of the current warming.18
Other studies have been conducted attempting to show a 97 percent consensus, but generally, they employ similarly flawed methods as those mentioned above. There simply has yet to be a comprehensive study conducted of most climate scientists that shows whether they believe human-caused warming will be catastrophic. There have been some surveys, however, that point in the opposite direction.
A 2016 survey conducted by George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) found that only 29 percent of AMS members think the climate change that has occurred over the past 50 years is “largely or entirely due to human activity.”19 And although 67 percent of those surveyed said they think more than half of the recent warming has been caused by human activities, only 47 percent of those AMS members who said the climate in their local area will change over the next half-century think the changes will be “primarily harmful.” Nearly 50 percent said they don’t know what the changes will be or that they think the changes will be mixed between beneficial and harmful effects. Twenty-two percent of all respondents indicated that they didn’t think their local climate will change at all over the next 50 years or that they didn’t know if it would.
As Steven Koonin, former undersecretary for science in the Obama administration, noted in an influential article published in the Wall Street Journal in 2014—titled “Climate Science Is Not Settled”—the immense number of variables that affect the climate leaves the most important questions regarding humans’ impact unanswered.
“We often hear that there is a ‘scientific consensus’ about climate change,” Koonin wrote. “But as far as the computer models go, there isn’t a useful consensus at the level of detail relevant to assessing human influences.”20
There are also dozens of other prominent scientists and meteorologists who actively reject the view that humans are causing a climate catastrophe, including Legates, a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware and former visiting research scientist at the National Climate Data Center;21 Willie Soon, a physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Mount Wilson Observatory;22 Will Happer, Ph.D., the Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics emeritus at Princeton University and the former senior director of the White House National Security Council;23,24 John Christy, Ph.D., the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville;25 and Roy Spencer, Ph.D., the Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and former senior scientist in climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.26
These highly prestigious scientists—and many more, too—have for years been challenging the view that human-caused climate change will be catastrophic. These aren’t bloggers, talking heads, or, worst of all, radio talk show hosts. They’re scientists with long and impressive careers of excellence in their fields. Christy and Spencer even won NASA’s “Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal” for their temperature monitoring work. Of course, that doesn’t mean we should automatically believe everything they say about climate change, but it does call into question the idea that there is an insurmountable scientific consensus on whether climate change will be catastrophic.
So, let’s briefly reconsider the most important facts on the question of consensus: (1) The research often cited as ironclad proof that there’s a “97 percent consensus” is embarrassingly bad and easy to dismiss. (2) There are surveys like the one conducted by AMS and George Mason University that show there are large parts of the scientific community that don’t think climate change is going to be catastrophic. (3) There are prestigious, award-winning scientists who have been arguing for decades that climate change isn’t going to be catastrophic. Many of them even think the benefits of a warming world—assuming warming continues—will far outweigh the costs.
I’m not a climate scientist—surprise statement of the year, I know—and I admit that it’s possible human activities are driving climate change now and will continue to cause warming in the future. I also believe that regardless of how many or few problems climate change causes that people should choose—not be forced—to do what they can to be responsible stewards of the planet. But does the evidence show there is a 97 percent scientific consensus insisting that we’re heading for a hellish global warming nightmare if we don’t hand over the entire economy to socialist bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.? The answer is a hard “no.”
That’s true, but just because environmentalists predict something is going to happen doesn’t mean it actually will. They don’t exactly have a stellar track record of predicting catastrophe, to say the least.
Environmental organizations, climate scientists, and government agencies have been making inaccurate environment and climate predictions for a half-century, and the reason is really simple: It’s incredibly difficult to predict what’s going to happen with global climate—or really any global problem—decades into the future. There are just far too many factors that need to be taken into account. This shouldn’t be a controversial point, but it has become one because the climate change disaster debate has become so politicized.
There are many examples of climate scientists, activists, and government officials making wildly inaccurate climate change predictions. For example, Dr. John Christy and climate scientist Richard McNider, Ph.D., tested the accuracy of 102 climate models in a 2017 analysis and found that 37 years of climate show the real-life temperature increases were only one-third of what had been predicted.27 Christy and McNider have also found that the effect CO2 has on global temperature is much smaller than what the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted.28 In other words, according to research by Christy and McNider and others, many climate modelers have been horribly wrong about the temperature record over the past four decades.
Scott Armstrong, professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and his colleague Kesten Green decided to audit the most highly publicized forecasts of future temperature based on how closely they were following the principles of good forecasting. Predicting the future is difficult, and if you stray from a methodical and proven approach, your results can turn into a mess no less disastrous than Hillary Clinton’s Wisconsin strategy. Of the 89 principles of forecasting Armstrong and Green tested, the United Nations predictions failed on 72 of them.29
Look, we’ve seen the “we’re all going to die” doomsday predictions from socialists and others on the Left before, and they are just as outlandish today as they were 60 years ago. In 1967, Stanford scientist Paul Ehrlich predicted the “time of famines” would soon be upon us, and that by 1975 it would be at its worst. Ehrlich also said that the predictions made by “experts” at the time that the world food supply would need to be doubled by 2000 to feed the global population “may be possible theoretically, but it is clear that it is totally impossible in practice.”30
Two years later, in 1969, Ehrlich—who once said, “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun”31—made another doomsday prediction, insisting that “unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam [pollution] in 20 years.”32
My memory isn’t as good as it used to be, but I don’t recall the killer “blue steam” cloud of 1989 wiping out everyone I knew or the global famine crisis of 1975. And here we are now, 20 years beyond the 2000 prediction, and hunger has actually been in decline throughout much of the world.33
In 1971, the Washington Post reported Dr. S. I. Rasool, a scientist with NASA and Columbia University, prognosticated that within 50 years, “the fine dust man constantly puts into the atmosphere by fossil fuel-burning could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees,” creating a new “Ice Age.”34
In 1974, a headline in The Guardian (U.K.) newspaper warned, “Space satellites show new Ice Age coming fast.”35
Time magazine also breathlessly warned of a global ice age, reporting in 1974, “when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades.” The cooling trend “shows no indication of reversing,” Time also reported, adding that “telltale signs are everywhere” and that “Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.”36
In 1978, the New York Times reported that an “international team of specialists” predicted that there is “no end in sight” to the global cooling trend of the 1970s.37
Then, suddenly, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Earth’s climate started to warm, many in the scientific and environmental communities suddenly shifted their focus. Instead of blaming human activity or nature for creating an impending ice age, they started to warn of a looming man-made global warming catastrophe. In 1979, the New York Times reported, “There is a real possibility that some people now in their infancy will live to a time when the ice at the North Pole will have melted, a change that would cause swift and perhaps catastrophic changes in climate.”38
Later in 1979, the New York Times reported a panel of experts formed by the National Academy of Sciences issued a report to the White House indicating that “within a half-century such combustion could double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and thereby warm it an average of about 6 degrees Fahrenheit—enough to cause major climate changes that conceivably could turn farmland to desert or make deserts fertile”39—a prediction not even the most staunch global warming alarmist would agree with today.
In 1982, the National Research Council said a doubling of the amount of CO2 could occur by 2050, causing temperatures to rise by 2.7 degrees to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit,40 roughly the same as the current predictions for 2100.41 That means the National Research Council’s 1982 warning was off by 50 years—and that assumes the current predictions will actually take place.
In 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen warned that temperatures in 2050 will be “6 to 7 degrees higher than they are today [in 1988],” causing the number of days in Washington, D.C., with temperatures topping 90 degrees Fahrenheit to increase from 35 per year to 85 days, nearly three months.42 But since Hansen made his forecasts, the average number of hot days in Washington has actually decreased.43
By 1989, United Nations officials were predicting that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth” if global warming isn’t stopped by 2000.44
The 1990s and early 2000s featured a seemingly endless array of false global warming predictions. For example, in 2000, Dr. David Viner, a research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia, said that within just a few years, snowfall in Britain would become “a very rare and exciting event,” adding, “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”45
Former Vice President and Climate-Alarmist-in-Chief Al Gore made dozens of false or misleading claims and predictions in numerous speeches and in his 2006 Oscar-award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Gore told a United Nations climate conference in 2009 that climate scientists had told him there is a “75 percent chance the entire polar ice cap will melt in summer within the next five to seven years.”46 That never happened. Gore lamented the collapse of polar bear populations because of climate change, but new evidence shows polar bear populations have likely quadrupled over the past 50 years.47 Gore predicted in 2006 that “Within the decade, there will be no more ‘snows of Kilimanjaro,” referring to Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. But in March 2018, Doug Hardy at the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts reported Kilimanjaro experienced “the greatest snow accumulation on the glacier in years.”49
According to climate change predictions made by scientists, government agencies, and activists over the past 60 years, temperatures should be much higher today than they are now or we should be in the midst of a new ice age, a cloud of “blue steam” should have killed off a large chunk of humanity, hundreds of millions of people—at minimum—should have starved to death, whole nations should have been consumed by rising sea levels, snowfall should have disappeared in the United Kingdom and on Mount Kilimanjaro, polar bear populations should have been wiped out, and the ice at the North Pole should have melted. And yet, none of these things have happened.
Based on its track record, I think it’s fair to say a large portion of the scientific community has a tendency to overexaggerate the effects of climate change and make predictions that are not likely to come true.
Based on the intense media coverage of all these natural disasters, I can’t blame you for thinking that extreme weather events are getting significantly worse due to climate change. But in every single area you mentioned, the data show dangerous weather events aren’t becoming more common.
WILDFIRES
According to the National Interagency Fire Center, which has tracked wildfires for nearly a century, the number of wildland fires has decreased over the past three decades. In 1985, there were 82,591 wildland fires. In 2018, the number was 58,083, the lowest recorded figure since 2013. From 1998 to 2008, the average reported number of wildland fires was 80,021, significantly more than average reported from 2008 to 2018 (68,001). And although the number of acres burned since 1985 has risen dramatically, it has stayed relatively flat since 2004.50
You might also be surprised to learn that many scientists believe the federal government is mostly to blame for the increased acreage burned by fires. In 2019, nearly 300 scientists authored joint-letters to Congress requesting that the federal government change its “dangerous” procedures following wildfires. According to the scientists, the federal government’s decision to clear away logs after wildfires is increasing wildfire intensity.51
HEATWAVES
No one is more concerned about the possibility of an increasing number of heatwaves. I live in Texas, which in the summer basically becomes as hot as the surface of the sun, so the thought of heatwaves becoming even more intense isn’t something I’d take lightly. But I have good news, my fellow Texans: The average number of days exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit has not increased substantially over the past 100 years. In fact, the decade with the highest number of recorded days with 100-degree F temperatures was in the 1930s.52
It’s also incredible that for all the talk from socialists and progressives about the dangers of increased heatwaves—which, again, isn’t really happening—there’s no mention of the possibility that moderate warming could be a net benefit for the world. It is a fact that extreme cold temperatures are associated with far more death and environmental destruction. Colder weather is actually 20 times more deadly than hot weather.53
HURRICANES
Despite near-constant fearmongering from Democratic presidential candidates who have said that the hurricanes we’re seeing today are a direct result of climate change, the overwhelming evidence shows hurricane activity has not worsened as a result of climate change. In 2018, researchers examining hurricane activity in the United States “found no significant trends in landfalling hurricanes, major hurricanes, or normalized damage consistent with what has been found in previous studies.”54
In fact, when Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm, hit the United States in 2017, it broke a record of 142 straight months—for those who are math-challenged like me, that’s almost 12 years—without a Category 3 or higher storm making landfall in America.55 The previous record was 96 months, which occurred from September 1860 to August 1869.
RISING SEAS
Perhaps the most striking and terrifying images related to global warming are those that simulate entire cities being swallowed up by rising seas. For example, in 2016 the Washingtonian published a series of maps showing huge swaths of Washington, D.C., underwater from global sea level rise, including much of the National Mall, Smithsonian, and the U.S. Capitol building.56 In 2017, Newsweek dedicated an entire article to answering the question: “How Long Before All of Florida Is Underwater?”57 Business Insider and 24/7 Wall St. published an article in 2018 identifying the “30 cities that could be underwater by 2060.”58
All these predictions are largely based on estimates by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Although IPCC acknowledges sea levels have been rising for thousands of years—a natural process in the wake of the last Ice Age—it says it’s “very likely” sea-level rise is accelerating.59
But before you decide to throw in the towel and buy that big beautiful new houseboat to avoid the coming apocalypse, you should know that much of the sea-level data has been heavily affected by land subsidence, the “gradual settling or sudden sinking of the Earth’s surface.”60 When high-quality tide gauges are evaluated, there is little or no evidence of sea-level acceleration.61
In 2017, researchers Albert Parker and Clifford Ollier examined six large tide gauge datasets, including 199 stations in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s database. They determined “all consistently show a small sea-level rate of rise and a negligible acceleration.”62
Judith Curry, Ph.D., a climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, researched the tide gauge record and found, “Tide gauges show that sea levels began to rise during the 19th century, after several centuries associated with cooling and sea level decline. Tide gauges also show that rates of global mean sea level rise between 1920 and 1950 were comparable to recent rates. Recent research has concluded that there is no consistent or compelling evidence that recent rates of sea level rise are abnormal in the context of the historical records back to the 19th century that are available across Europe.”63
Oh, and there are other good, completely unscientific reasons to question the claim that sea levels are rising at dangerous rates. For example, if everyone living anywhere near America’s coasts is going to end up underwater, why the heck are so many of the leading climate change “warriors” buying up beachfront property?
In 2019, Barack and Michelle Obama purchased a $14 million mansion on the absurdly overpriced and posh island Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.64 (Apparently, public “service” has been very, very good for the Obama family.) While president, Barack Obama made it very clear he believed global warming is causing higher sea levels. For instance, during his 2015 State of the Union address, Obama warned that the “best scientists in the world” say that climate change will cause, among other things, “rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods.”65 Why, then, would Obama choose to spend a fortune on a mansion that’s located on land that some climate alarmist researchers, including researchers who received funding from the Obama administration, say could one day be submerged beneath the ocean?66
Similarly, in 2005 Hollywood star and climate change alarmist champion of the world Leonardo DiCaprio purchased a 104-acre island in Belize and will soon open a luxury “eco-resort” on the property.67 DiCaprio’s purchase seems more than a little odd since he’s the same guy who has been running around the world—well, more like flying in private jets around the world—over the past decade warning us about the coming climate apocalypse. He even made a documentary about climate change in 2016 called Before the Flood.68 Call me crazy, but investing in an island resort doesn’t sound like a good idea if you think islands all over the planet are about to be swallowed up by the oceans.
In 2010, Al and Tipper Gore bought an $8.8 million home in Montecito, California, one of the wealthiest communities in America.69 (Gore is another guy who has found a way to make a killing on public “service.” Hmm, I’m sensing a pattern here.) Gore’s ocean-view home—which includes a wine cellar, nine bathrooms, and six fireplaces (yes, six fireplaces)—isn’t located right on the beach, but spending a fortune to live in a town that’s famous for its beaches again seems like a strange choice if you think much of the place could get wiped off the map “in the near future” by a 20-foot rise in sea level.70
LOWER CROP PRODUCTION
It’s common for many climate change doomsayers to say we’re facing climate-related food shortages or that we soon will. But reports clearly indicate global crop production in many of the most important areas has been steadily increasing over the past decade. Data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization show food production and crop yields for cereals, wheat, corn, and rice are all experiencing record highs or near-record highs.71
You might also be surprised to hear that higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been linked to increased greening of the Earth. In 2016, NASA reported that an “international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries” found “a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”72 The researchers found only 4 percent of the globe experienced browning.
Additionally, in 2019, a NASA study found human activity in China and India had significantly contributed to Earth’s greening. It also determined that greening across the entire Earth had increased during the two decades prior to the studied period.73
As all these data show, we’re not experiencing the Mad Max global warming hell that socialists and progressives are always telling us about. In fact, some researchers say the risk of dying from climate-related disasters like floods, droughts, storms, etc., has fallen by 99 percent since the 1920s.74
Ah, yes, the Green New Deal, the most expensive, radical, extreme, socialist policy proposal offered since—well, ever. If I were looking for the quintessential terrible American socialist plan, “the green dream or whatever they call it”75 would be my choice. (I promise, that will be the only time I quote Nancy Pelosi in this book.)
Although there have been a few different “Green New Deal” plans proposed by Democratic presidential candidates and Green Party nutjobs, the most influential, far-reaching plan is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s totally insane proposal, which she first rolled out in late 2018 before releasing a more comprehensive (and even more totally insane) version in February 2019.
The Green New Deal nonbinding congressional resolution Ocasio-Cortez released with Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., was co-sponsored by more than 90 members in the House of Representatives76 and 12 members of the U.S. Senate, including Democratic presidential candidates Cory Booker, D-N.J., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and the honorable Chief Elizabeth Warren from the tribe of ImaFraudapoke.77
The heart of the Green New Deal proposal is to eliminate nearly all fossil-fuel use in the United States in just 10 years.78 That means every coal and natural gas plant would close, along with every coal mine and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) site. There wouldn’t be any more oil drilling either, neither onshore nor offshore. Every gas station, frac sand mine, oil refinery, and most motor vehicle manufacturers would need to close or completely change their operations.
We’re talking about millions of jobs lost—not thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, but millions of jobs. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates there are more than 2 million Americans employed in traditional energy sectors and low-CO2 nuclear and natural gas.79 Another 2 million work in the gasoline-powered “Motor Vehicles and Component Parts” industry, not including auto dealerships.80 Many of those working in these 4 million jobs would likely find themselves out of work or at risk of losing their employment if the Green New Deal were to become law. And who knows how many millions of additional jobs would be destroyed by imposing significantly higher energy costs on the entire economy.
And that’s just the beginning. The Green New Deal would also require sucking trillions of dollars out of the economy to replace all of that lost electricity generation with wind and solar energy sources, which are much more expensive to operate. Americans would have to build thousands of new windmills and solar facilities and thousands of miles of new transmission lines—all merely to provide exactly the same amount of energy generation that we do now.
The American Enterprise Institute’s Benjamin Zycher estimates the net annual cost of replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar energy sources would be $357 billion per year, or nearly $2,800 per household per year.81 In reality, the burden would likely fall much harder on those who pay income taxes, middle-class and wealthy households.
The Green New Deal would also require spending trillions more to enact all sorts of truly off-the-charts crazy reforms. For example, Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal “Frequently Asked Questions” sheet—which she had to pull from her office’s website shortly after posting it because of the incredible backlash it produced—said her proposal would involve building “highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”82 Say goodbye to air travel, America, and say hello to being trapped in a metal tube with hundreds of other pissed-off people stuck traveling for days on train trips that would have only taken a few hours to complete on a plane. Sure, air travel is also sitting in a metal tube with hundreds of pissed-off people, but at least it’s comparatively short.
The FAQ and resolution also promised to provide every American with “safe, affordable, adequate housing” that’s green-energy compliant. Yeah, the thought of having federal officials come to my house to make it more “safe,” “adequate,” and “green” doesn’t sound horrifying at all. “Come on in, Mr. Bureaucrat, and please be sure to tell me everything that’s not ‘safe’ about my home. Oh, you want to see the gun safe? Uh, no guns here, Mr. Bureaucrat. Let’s go outside so I can show you my new green-energy-compliant compost in the backyard instead.”
In another section of the FAQ, Ocasio-Cortez answers a “frequently asked question” about why the Green New Deal allows for a very limited amount of CO2 to be emitted, rather than just banning all CO2 emissions outright. Among the reasons given in her answer is, “We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.”83
I bet when you see cows peacefully grazing in a picturesque little pasture, you probably think something like, “Wow, those sure are some big cows.” Or maybe, “Hey, it’s a cow. Suddenly, I have a craving for milk.” Or maybe just, “Steak, it’s what’s for dinner.” Okay, I don’t know what you say when you see a cow, but I do know this: Whatever you see, it’s not what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sees—big, fat, Earth-destroying, rising-seas-causing, planet-endangering fart machines. That’s right, fart machines. You see, cow farts produce methane, methane contributes to global warming, and global warming is going to kill us all. So, if we put on our Sherlock Holmes thinking caps, we’ll realize, just like Comrade Ocasio-Cortez, that logic dictates we kill all the cows. It’s elementary, dear Watson.
Now, as you know, Ms. Resistance, the stated purpose for causing all this economic mayhem is to stop global warming. Or, as the Ocasio-Cortez resolution puts it, the Green New Deal is “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era” that’s necessary to halt “climate change… a direct threat to the national security of the United States.”84 Maybe you think all the job-destroying, airplane-obliterating, and cow-killing is worth the trouble because climate change is, as you’ve already said, potentially “catastrophic.” But here’s perhaps the biggest problem with the energy provisions of the Green New Deal: It’s trying to stop a problem we can’t solve, no matter what the cause is.
Even if I accept the position that human beings’ CO2 emissions are the primary driver of climate change—which is entirely possible—and even if I accept that climate change will be catastrophic—a view I think is much less likely to be true, but okay, I’ll go along for now—cutting U.S. carbon dioxide emissions down to zero would do absolutely nothing to stop a future climate change disaster. Nothing. Zip. Nada.
You see, as hard as it might be to accept what I’m about to tell you, it’s a well-established fact, not an opinion, that U.S. CO2 emissions do not drive global climate change. You don’t have to take my word for it. Please, please, please—do your own homework. If you do, you’ll find that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions only make up less than 15 percent of global CO2 emissions,85 and that countries such as China and India are rapidly increasing their annual CO2 emissions as they continue to industrialize. In 2018, China—the world’s largest emitter—increased its CO2 emissions by 4.7 percent.86 India increased emissions by 6.3 percent. Excluding China, the European Union, India, and the United States, emissions produced by the remainder of the world rose by 1.8 percent.
At this pace, even if the United States were to completely eliminate all carbon dioxide emissions and kill every single one of its farting cows, the increased CO2 emissions produced by the rest of the world would more than offset any U.S. reductions. Using the United Nations’ own estimates, the future temperature impacts that would be avoided by eliminating all U.S. emissions would be less than two-tenths of a single degree by 2100, barely enough to measure accurately.87
Now, some have suggested that the United States can convince China, India, and dozens of other countries to commit economic suicide and switch to renewable energy sources, but that ain’t happening. As Reuters reported in September 2019, “China’s total planned coal-fired power projects now stand at 226.2 gigawatts (GW), the highest in the world…. The new China projects would be more than Germany’s existing installed power capacity of around 200 GW by the end of 2018.”88 Additionally, the left-of-center Brookings Institution says “coal is king in India—and will likely remain so” through “2030 and beyond.”89
Barring some incredible new technological energy innovation, the increased CO2 emissions occurring in China, India, and throughout much of the rest of the world will continue in the coming decades, regardless of what the United States does, because those countries desperately need access to affordable energy. They simply aren’t concerned about the potential effects of climate change decades into the future, and if you were in charge of a country with hundreds of millions of people living beneath the international poverty line of $1.90 per day like the leaders in India are, you’d probably be more concerned with economic growth than polar bear populations too.90 (And don’t forget, there’s no reason to worry about polar bears. They’re doing just fine.) That means, regardless of whether we’re headed for a CO2-driven climate nightmare or not, the Green New Deal—and nothing else we do here in the United States—can stop it.
The Green New Deal actually has very little to do with protecting the environment and everything to do with trying to impose socialism on unsuspecting Americans—all under the guise of “saving the planet.” The Green New Deal is nothing more than a big socialist Trojan horse.
Now, I know that many regular folks in the Democratic Party and members of environmental groups like the Sierra Club truly believe that the Green New Deal is all about saving the planet. So, when I say the proposal was designed to be a “socialist Trojan horse,” I’m not suggesting this was planned by your run-of-the-mill progressive or even your local Joe Communist who religiously attends his monthly Democratic Socialists of America meeting at the local Starbucks. I’m referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ilhan Omar, and many of the other leaders of the progressive and socialist wings of the Democratic Party.
No conspiracy theories here. There’s absolutely no question the Green New Deal is primarily about pushing the country toward socialism, not climate change. And here’s how I know that’s the case: Although the proposal calls for trillions of dollars in new spending to battle climate change, it also demands tens of trillions of additional dollars to pay for new government programs meant to advance socialist goals, including many programs that have nothing to do with climate change or the environment.
Among the Green New Deal’s many socialist and/or progressive provisions are:
The American Action Forum projects the total cost of all the Green New Deal provisions—including the socialist programs mentioned above—is as high as $94.4 trillion, more than four times the current national debt, over just a 10-year period.100 Of that potential $94.4 trillion cost, the energy and climate-related provisions would only amount to about 13 percent of the total spent. The single-payer health care estimate alone is $36 trillion over just 10 years.
Now, ask yourself this important question: If we really are on the verge of a climate catastrophe—oceans covering whole cities, millions of “climate refugees,” killer heatwaves and hurricanes, and more—and if climate change really does pose an “existential threat” to humanity, then why would anyone who believes this want to spend a single penny on “free college,” a government-guaranteed job, or single-payer health care? Why wouldn’t we instead focus every resource we have on stopping the world from ending? Answer: Because this isn’t about saving the environment, it’s about advancing socialism. But, hey, don’t take my word for it. Ocasio-Cortez’s own chief of staff (now, her former chief of staff), Saikat Chakrabarti, said it better than I ever could.
In May 2019, a Washington Post reporter attended a little-publicized meeting between Chakrabarti and Sam Ricketts, the former climate director for Washington governor Jay Inslee’s now failed presidential campaign. According to the reporter, Chakrabarti said, “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.”101
The reporter noted that “Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face,” but, incredibly, Chakrabarti went even further: “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
Even for a candidate as candid as Ocasio-Cortez, this was a stunning admission to make. I would praise Chakrabarti for his honesty, but it turns out his penchant for truth-telling only applies when he’s talking about climate change. Chakrabarti resigned from Ocasio-Cortez’s office in August 2019, right around the same time federal agents started investigating him for potentially violating campaign finance law.102
You’ve got it all backwards, Neal. Historically, socialism has been terrible for the environment. Throughout human history, environmentalism has largely been a luxury concern that people are only able to prioritize when they’re not in the middle of an economic crisis. When there are severe economic problems to deal with—which is nearly always the case in socialist societies—people stop caring about protecting the environment. And can you blame them? If you had to spend much of your time worried about finding the best bread line in town, you probably wouldn’t be too concerned about making sure the greater prairie chicken ends up on the Endangered Species List.
We’ve seen this play out dozens of times throughout history. Shawn Regan, a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, notes that the historical record shows “the socialist economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were not just economic failures; they were also environmental catastrophes.”103 Regan added that, “By one estimate, in the late 1980s, particulate air pollution was 13 times higher per unit of GDP in Central and Eastern Europe than in Western Europe. Levels of gaseous air pollution were twice as high as this. Wastewater pollution was three times higher.”
Similar problems have occurred in other socialist nations as well. Many of Cuba’s rivers and coastal areas are full of trash, oil, and even sewage.104 In one report by the Miami Herald, a Cuban resident told a reporter that “he’s heard talk about the dangers of the contaminated bay waters, but people ‘don’t care about that. You can see plastics, garbage, dead animals and debris everywhere. There’s a shortage of garbage disposal places, so people throw it directly into the ocean. It’s something very sad.’ ”105
Regan reports environmental disasters also plague Venezuela. According to Regan, reports show “socialist policies have contaminated the nation’s drinking-water supplies, fueled rampant deforestation and unrestrained mining activity, and caused frequent oil spills attributed to neglect and mismanagement by the state-owned energy company.”106
Really? Have you been to Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Newark, New Jersey? They are some of the most disgusting, polluted cities in the nation, despite being run by progressives and socialists for decades. Much of San Francisco is about as sanitary as a toilet bowl. And not just any toilet bowl, I’m talking about a toilet bowl you would find in a porta-potty at an abandoned amusement park. Think I’m exaggerating? In 2018, there were more than 28,000 reports of humans defecating in the streets of the city, more than five times the number reported in 2011.107
Additionally, of the American Lung Association’s 10 worst cities for air quality (based on ozone), seven are in far-left California and number 10 on the list is the Democrat-dominated Newark–New York City metropolitan area.108 And reports indicate many of the states with some of the cleanest environments are also some of the most conservative, like South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho.109
It’s also worth noting that the Environmental Protection Agency—before it became the out-of-control behemoth it is now—was founded in 1970 by a Republican president, Richard Nixon, in reaction to growing environmental concerns about air quality and other pollutants.110 Today, the market-based United States has one of the lowest concentrations of fine particulate matter—an important measure when determining air quality—in the entire world, beating many countries in Europe, like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and far surpassing socialist Cuba and Venezuela.111
Look, supporting individual freedom, property rights, and free markets doesn’t mean you don’t care about protecting the environment. I care deeply about being a good steward of the Earth. In fact, my ranch is completely powered by wind, solar, and natural gas. I’m one of those lunatics that bought solar panel technology back when it was half as good and three times more expensive. Why? Because I genuinely care about preserving nature and doing what I can (most people do!).
And I know a lot of other people who are committed to limiting the size and power of government and promoting economic liberty that share my love for nature. But the idea that the only way to protect the environment is to put government in charge is demonstrably untrue. History has shown the best way to promote environmentalism is to create prosperity. Environmentalism is a luxury created by capitalism, not socialism. Without the wealth that has flowed from private property ownership rights granted to all people, we would have fewer environmental protections today than we do now, and even if we did have them, most people would ignore those regulations, just as they do throughout much of the world.
THE DECOUPLING OF ECONOMIC GROWTH & RESOURCE CONSUMPTION
Wait, I’m not done yet. We can’t move off the topic of climate alarmism without addressing a few more things. The fact is, politicians and bureaucrats are using climate change as an excuse to control every aspect of your life. I’ve already covered how they are using this supposed environmental crisis to pass legislation to create a ton of non-environmental-related programs. Well, it doesn’t end there.
What happens when “fixing the climate” means controlling what appears on your dinner plate? A number of the Democratic presidential candidates had a lot to say about Americans’ red meat consumption during CNN’s September 2019 “Climate Crisis Town Hall.” Presidential hopeful Andrew Yang talked about creating “economic incentives” to help “shape our system” when responding to a question about curbing red meat intake in America.112
Sen. Kamala Harris, after apologizing for enjoying a cheeseburger “from time to time,” talked about “creating incentives” and promoting moderation in America’s diet. Harris then said she would favor changing the food pyramid and dietary guidelines to reflect calls to reduce meat consumption. Just think about that for a moment—a mainstream former presidential candidate is actually advocating a change to America’s dietary guidelines, not based on science or health, but on the basis of climate alarmism.113
If limiting red meat doesn’t concern you, how about the concept of population control? Yes, I know there are a lot of kooky ideas out there being proposed by fringe wackos on both sides of the aisle, but I’m not talking about those people; I’m talking about America’s “favorite” socialist, Bernie Sanders.
During the CNN town hall, when asked about whether he would pursue a policy agenda based on “educating everyone on the need to curb population growth,” Sanders said, “the answer is ‘yes.’ ”114 And Sanders isn’t alone. A number of people on the Left have expressed their support for limiting population growth, including Al Gore and Bill Maher, while others have said that their fears about environmental concerns have led them to rethink having children.115
In February 2019, Ocasio-Cortez went so far as to suggest that bringing children into the world could be immoral. “There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult,” she said. “And it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: is it okay to still have children?”116
We know at least one person agrees with Ocasio-Cortez. Writer Wes Siler, writing for online publication Outside, agreed to have a vasectomy “because of climate change.” Claiming “there are simply too many humans on this planet,” Siler says he chose to forgo having children for the rest of his life because, “Two people deciding to make fewer humans eliminates the entire cycle of consumption that would fuel that kid’s life.”117
Siler and Ocasio-Cortez aren’t alone. Population control language was used in a climate change letter signed by thousands of scientists in November 2019. The letter—which incited dire headlines such as, “Climate Crisis: 11,000 Scientists Warn of ‘Untold Suffering’ ”—referred to human population growth as a “profoundly troubling sign.”118 Labeling economic and population growth as “important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions,” the letter goes on to state that “the world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced.”119
A recommendation like this raises the question: How do we go about reducing the world’s population? Don’t worry, the “experts” have some “solutions.”
Opposed
In Favor
