RON HART: Time for a balanced approach to climate change
"Science advances one funeral at a time." – Nobel Physics Prize winner Max Planck
Democrats, the self-proclaimed "party for the middle class," raised the middle-class cost of living by raising energy prices with their regulatory meddling. Regulations cost consumers $1.8 trillion per year, which means higher bills for utilities, gas and transportation for the average person.
Another example of the cost of environmental hysteria was revealed this week. Southern Company was forced to build a “clean coal” plant by Obama and his hordes of regulatory henchmen — probably based on a few theories EPA bureaucrats had absorbed in their “You and the Environment 101” class at NYU. In 2010, the plant’s estimated cost was $3 billion. Because of government demands, the price tag for the Mississippi plant now stands at $7.1 billion. Oh — and it's not workable. A comparable natural gas plant would have cost $700 million, one-tenth the cost.
It gets better. Like other theories that government dolts came up with, the cost of this harebrained Southern Company scheme will be passed on to Southern customers — to the tune of $4.2 billion.
The left shames people into blindly accepting climate change and calls anyone like me who questions it a “denier” or a “flat earther.”
I'm not certain about global warming, but I look good in shorts so I won't fret it. Liberals believe it is wise to spend trillions, costing tens of thousands of energy workers their jobs, just so a caribou in Alaska does not have to look at a pipeline.
In reality, we right-of-center Libertarians and Republicans love the environment and want to protect it more than those crowded into gentrified Brooklyn condos. We hunt, fish, play golf, camp, etc. much more than the left. Yet another false narrative coming out of this climate change movement is that they care so much more. Not true. We are just not idiots about the solution and don’t chase every stupidly expensive idea the left kicks around.
The founder of the religion of global warming is Al Gore, a delusional man, known for his gassy omissions, who also said “he invented the internet.” Those who preach the religion of global warming, like professors and political government cronies, have something to gain by advancing the narrative. Even a UN official admitted that climate change is not about doing anything about it, but about global wealth distribution. Whistleblowers continue to tell us agencies are cooking climate data.
The poster child for global warming, the polar bear clinging to a melting ice floe, is a crock. According to recent reports, the polar bear population is growing and is in the best shape it has been for 40 years.
What was the last government-propagated fear that actually came true? These are the same folks who made us learn the metric system years ago. They shut down nuclear plant building in the '70s; it's now the cleanest energy (oops!). They said Y2K was going to be a disaster. And whatever happened to acid rain and holes in the ozone layer?
To believe all the climate change propaganda, you have to subscribe to the following: Earth is warming for the first time, mankind is causing it, and politicians are so smart that if we give them more money they can change the temperature of the earth.
Earth's temperature averages 59 degrees and has increased maybe a fraction of one degree. But politicians know better than our planet what its temperature should be. They are just that smart. So let's go with Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown’s hunch on this one. He even said he’d sue Trump on climate change. The court case has already been named: Brown v. Orange.
Ron Hart is a syndicated op-ed humorist, award-winning author and TV/radio commentator. You can reach him at Ron@RonaldHart.com, Twitter @RonaldHart or visit RonaldHart.com.