Through Dec. 12, the “Climate!” crowd is swarming COP28, Dubai’s carbophobia cavalcade.
(COP28 refers to the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, under way in the United Arab Emirates.)
The fact that these global-warming alarmists are surrounded by Earth’s deepest pools of fossil fuels makes their Hajj infinitely ironic.
Also astonishing is the nearly immeasurable impact of these people’s gyrations. They blow trillions of dollars, bludgeon human freedom, and yet do shockingly little to fix their vaunted “climate crisis.” One practically needs an electron microscope to find their promised reductions in allegedly venomous carbon dioxide or supposedly lethal temperatures.
According to #ActInTime’s Climate Clock high above Manhattan’s Union Square, humans have—at this writing—five years and 228 days until we boil to death in a cauldron of steaming carbon.
Since The End is scheduled for Saturday, July 21, 2029 (mark your calendars!), Big Government liberals offer jaw-droppingly paltry climate benefits, despite their spine-chilling predictions and unbridled interventionism.
- Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s proposed Clean Power Plan was a diamond-encrusted specimen of do-nothingism. According to a May 2015 analysis by their own Energy Information Agency, between 2015 and 2025, the Clean Power Plan would have slashed real gross domestic product by $993 billion, or an average of $39.7 billion per year. It would have sliced real disposable income by $382 billion, or $15.3 billion annually. It also would have chopped manufacturing shipments by $1.13 trillion, or $45.4 billion per year.
The Energy Information Agency forecast a decrease of 0.035° Fahrenheit. This would have cranked a thermometer from 72°F way down to 71.965°.
As Billy Joel once sang: “Is that all you get for your money?”
- Biden’s blessed Inflation Reduction Act budgeted $369 billion for green-energy projects. Goldman Sachs subsequently slapped a $1.2 trillion price tag on it.
Danish environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg ran the Inflation Reduction Act through the United Nations’ climate models. “Impact of new climate legislation,” Lomborg specified. “Unnoticeable: 0.0009°F to 0.028°F in [the year] 2100.”
That would chill thermostats from 72° to 71.9991°. If we get lucky: 71.972°.
Biden said on Jan. 31 that “if we don’t stay under 1.5° Celsius” or 2.7° Fahrenheit, “we’re going to have a real problem.” If a 0.0009°F reduction costs $369 billion, then Biden’s 2.7° F goal would devour—brace yourself—$1.107 quadrillion – with a Q.
Source: EV Voice of the Customer
“Already, electric vehicles are stacking up on our lots,” the dealers complained. “The majority of customers are simply not ready to make the change.”
This chaos aside, Biden’s mandate would limit CO2 by 10 billion tons through 2055. Alas, China is expected to generate 320 billion tons of carbon in the next 32 years. So, Biden’s “savings” will asphyxiate in a giant Chinese carbon cloud.
The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins calculates that Biden’s EV order would decrease planetary emissions by a whopping 0.18%. “The climate effect of the extravagantly expensive Biden plan will steadily approach zero,” Jenkins anticipates.
- Rather than jail criminals or deport illegal aliens, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul bans gas stoves and demands that gas heaters yield to electric heat pumps—never mind that her constituents freeze to death during post-blizzard blackouts.
“The global effect of the costly program of compulsory electrification will be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of less than 0.05%,” the Empire Center for Public Policy calculates.
Obama, Biden, Hochul and their comrades might respond that no single bauble will fix everything, and every shiny object helps. Maybe. But these four schemes alone carry an enormously high price in shredded freedom and incinerated taxpayer dollars, yet still leave at least 99.82% of emissions untouched.
As Groundskeeper Willie of “The Simpsons” once said: “Now we’re wasting more energy than Ricky Martin’s girlfriend.”
To quote another Briton, William Shakespeare, perhaps this “sound and fury, signifying nothing” is not about cutting emissions or curbing Earth’s temperatures. Maybe it’s designed to help liberals spend trillions of dollars to signal virtue, bark orders at the American people, and lavish taxpayers’ hard-earned cash on their politically connected pals—from the Potomac to the Persian Gulf.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
Read the full article here
