Al Gore says our dithering about the grave threat of climate change resembles the west’s inaction while the Nazis rearmed in the 1930s. He says we lack the “political will” to fight this formidable adversary. Luckily “…political will is a renewable resource,” says Big Al.
On other occasions I have chided Al Gore for his loony (but profitable) quest to get Americans to abandon the incandescent light bulb, cars, planes, and air conditioning – excepting for himself and Tipper, of course – all for the noble purpose of saving the planet. But in this case, by jingo, I think he’s onto something. He could be right about climate-change being the 21st-century equivalent of the Nazis. He has certainly hit the right tone. We all love to hate the Nazis.
Of course, the world-threatening part of the comparison – i.e., the destruction and wholesale loss of life that a changing climate could bring, if it isn’t checked – is easy to see. We are sitting on our collective kiesters as this grave threat mobilizes, while a few prophetic voices try to raise the alarm. (Cue in a Wagnerian duet sung by Al Gore and Occasio-Cortez here, with suitably ominous music in the background.)
Climate-Al warns that the world did the same thing in the 1930s. Hitler armed and plotted war, and the Germans marched around sieg-heiling, as other countries stood by and did nothing. Ultimately, of course, der Führer and his gang wrecked the place. Historians have made whole careers and sold libraries full of books since then, explaining how we could have stopped Hitler at the Rhineland (1936) or Czechoslovakia (1938) – maybe.
Where the Nazi-metaphor comes apart is the “attack” scenario. When Hitler finally hit Poland, we knew the war had actually started. Also, we knew exactly where Poland was, which made it easier to fight back – although we didn’t do much of that, at first.
With climate-change, it’s a little harder to detect the actual onset of “hostilities,” as well as the enemy’s locus. Maybe Poland will suddenly go up in flames one afternoon – or Cuba will be submerged by mountainous seas – but none of that seems very likely. One imagines that climate-change – why isn’t it called “global warming” anymore? – will happen more gradually, until we finally realize that the Fourth Reich is truly on the march.
True, climate is everywhere, so identifying the enemy’s locus won’t be difficult. But which part of the climate really has to be opposed? Al says it’s carbon dioxide, and he claims the science is “settled” on this. Radical environmental activists agree, but increasing numbers of scientists with real credentials are shouting from the back pews that it’s not true.
This is something like one faction claiming that Poland has been attacked, but not being sure where Poland is, who did it, or how bad the situation is. Meanwhile, another faction is claiming that Poland hasn’t been attacked at all, and isn’t even being threatened.
But Al is doesn’t want us to wait around for the climate “war” to start – the way we sat on our hands until the Nazis were coming down the chimney. He wants us to get to work right away – levying heavy climate taxes, junking our cars, riding bicycles, changing our electricity-generation over to windmills and solar panels, and dismantling the greatest industrial economy in history – before the climate blitzkrieg actually gets rolling. We must act! Schnell! Before it’s too late.
At the start of Climate Messiah Obama’s regime, our “People’s House” (of Representatives) narrowly passed an unread, 1500-page Climate Security Bill, stuffed with 300 pages of pork giveaways and backroom deals that secured the needed votes. Mercifully, this climate-stinker was never brought to a vote in the Senate. The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body probably experienced more soiled trousers over this economic “dirty bomb,” than over any other piece of legislation in history. Dozens of senators lay awake nights, worrying that their political legacy would be wreckage of the American economy for no discernible climate-gain. It was a politician’s nightmare. They envisioned summertime Washington, DC, with no A/C; rickshaws instead of limos. Fortunately, not even Democrats were dumb enough to enact it into law.
After that near-miss, climate-urgency took a back seat, as Mr. Obama concentrated on more urgent matters, like passing Obamacare and ramping up racialism. This has led to Climate Al’s warnings about the danger of ignoring this “existential threat.” But Al’s Nazi-analogy is flawed. The Nazis were people who made malevolent plans and amassed armies to subjugate helpless nations. Climate “forces” – whatever they are – don’t do this. Climate is what it has always been – natural, inexorable and inanimate. It is driven by great cosmic forces beyond our ken – e.g., the sun, cosmic rays, meteors, volcanic eruptions, and heat deep inside our own planet.
Growing numbers of scientists now agree that our relatively puny activities on the globe have little or no effect on climate. Human contributions of carbon dioxide amount to only 3% of total emissions. Volcanic eruptions dwarf our industrial CO2 output. Who is doing anything to stop volcanoes from disrupting our climate?!! Have we considered trying to funnel the ocean into the earth’s interior to cool it? Maybe that would keep the seas from rising, too. But I digress…
The Nazi brand is, in fact, more aptly applied to Al Gore, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, “Occasional” Cortez, Joe Biden, Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, and all the other goose-stepping radical environmentalists – rather than to some inanimate, ill-defined changes in the climate. It was, after all, politicians – producing a lot of gaseous oratory – who enabled Hitler’s ascent to power and his ruinous control of the German nation.
Just so, radical climate-activism is a political movement aimed at controlling whole peoples and devolving modern life into a kind of selective “primitivism.” Even its true believers admit, at least privately, that the draconian Climate Security Act – which (thank the Lord) never became law – would have cooled the climate by perhaps 1/10th degree over a century, at a cost of trillions of dollars and incalculable losses in jobs and quality of life. It would have been – as General Longstreet once said of Gettysburg – “ground of no value.”
As realization grows of the counter-productivity of climate-control efforts, other countries across the world have abandoned ambitious carbon-tax initiatives that have hurt their economies. Australia and New Zealand have cancelled economy-depressing “global warming taxes” that have had no apparent effect on climate.
India and China – both major developing countries – reject all international calls to restrict carbon dioxide emissions in any way. China’s carbon-dioxide emissions exceed ours. Without these industrial giants in the game, the effect of our carbon-emissions restrictions would be negligible.
The truly dark side of efforts to “stop” climate-change – as mentioned previously in this column – is the west’s campaign to keep the undeveloped world primitive. Millions of African people live unhealthily in dirt-floor huts, cooking over smoky fires of dried dung, with scant medical care to mitigate their exposure to myriad diseases. They long to achieve the healthy, prosperous lifestyle of the West, but only industrial development will enable that. Development requires dependable electric power, which can be produced only by fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Solar panels can’t power factories in Africa any more than they can in the USA or Europe.
Experts estimate Africa’s stupendous energy reserves at nearly a trillion barrels of oil, 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and incalculable amounts of coal – enough to furnish the whole world for centuries. But powerful western interests want to keep Africa undeveloped – to “save the planet” from further climate change. Radical environmentalists see that it’s easier to keep countries primitive than to try to bring them back to a primitive state, once they have developed.
In truth, Western industrial interests fear the competition Africa would represent, should it embark on a full-scale industrial revolution of its own. And western politicians dread the legions of jobs lost to a resurgent African industrial base, rich in natural resources and abundant energy.
If there is a Nazi-esque cabal operating today, it is this unholy alliance of radical climate-activists, industrialists, and western politicians – all hiding under the cover of “protecting the earth.” It is a “wicked enterprise,” as Winston Churchill said of Nazi-ism. Mr. Gore and his climate “fellow travelers” ought to be careful how they sling the “Nazi” label around. People might wake up and realize that the new Nazis are people, not the climate.
Democrats today are all cranked up about racism and “white nationalism.” If keeping a whole continent of “people of color” poor and unhealthy isn’t racist, then I don’t know the meaning of the word.
Winston Churchill described Hitler as: “This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of …soul-destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame…” We might keep those words in mind as we recall that Al Gore’s father was one of the Senate Democrats who filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act for 83 days, until Everett Dirksen and the Republicans shamed the Senate into passing it. Looks like the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.
Sieg Heil!