“Climate Action” is the theme of this 50th Earth Day, and it is useful to note that these five decades of apocalyptic warnings truly are amazing in their consistency: Not one actually has come to pass. The juxtaposition of two news stories, respectively from 1988 and from last January, is among the more amusing tidbits from decades of climate fearmongering. The former: “A gradual rise in sea level is threatening to completely cover” the Maldives. The latter: “Maldives to open four new airports in 2020.”
Amusement aside, the theme this year is a clear sign of the intellectual and ideological exhaustion of the environmental left: It has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. What “climate action” do the celebrants of Earth Day recommend? From shooting feral camels in the Australian Outback, to denying billions of people the fruits of hard work and increasing wealth, to the substitution of utterly inefficient and unreliable “clean” (actually, very dirty) wind and solar electricity in place of fossil-fired power, to the imposition of an authoritarian regimentation of which the COVID-19 lockdowns are only a taste: The climate effects of “climate action” would be virtually unmeasurable. The deeply unserious Paris agreement: 0.17°C by 2100. Zero greenhouse gas emissions by the entire Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: about 0.3°C. A 30 percent cut in GHG emissions by virtually the entire world (stop laughing): about 0.6°C.
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