Don’t Let Fear Mongers Scare Us into Destroying the Economy
By Steve Levy
Newsday just ran a story quoting scientists noting how some of Long Island is soon going to be under water. https://www.newsday.com/long-island/environment/long-island-sea-level-mh1026ad
The article claims that climate change will be causing extreme environmental devastation to our coast line over the next few decades.
We certainly believe that climate change is real, and the earth is warming. And it’s logical that man’s activity is contributing to it. We need to be serious about confronting this challenge. However, nothing we do here to cripple our American economy is going to matter very much in lowering the global carbon footprint so long as China, India and the world’s other major polluters continue to use cheaper non renewables.
That’s why the real solution to climate change will be through innovation that makes cleaner alternatives less expensive than fossil fuels. We’re not there yet.
Investing in innovation is much wiser than shutting down Fossil fuels for American consumers and making our energy rates triple. And before you totally capitulate to these dire warnings from the scientists, just remember that, in 2005, the federal government placed a plaque at the front of Glacier National Parkin in Montana warning visitors that, by 2020, the ice caps in the mountains in that preserve were going to be eliminated due to global warming. https://www.krtv.com/news/montana-and-regional-news/glacier-national-park-is-removing-glaciers-will-be-gone-by-2020-signs
Spoiler alert: It didn’t happen.
Then go back and take another look at Al Gore’s 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth. It laid out predictions of world upheaval that was to have taken place by now. Most of their cataclysmic predictions never came to pass. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/al-gore-history-climate-predictions-statements-proven-false
Healthcare and science elites have been proven to have lied and exaggerated to us through the Covid process. The bloom has withered from that rose due to so many falsehoods and guesses that were pushed on us. Health officials just recently conceded that their six feet apart standard during COVID had no basis in science. Then they claimed that the pandemic started from a wet market. Most believe that to be false.
We should not ignore the predictions being served up to us by these scientists. There is a great deal of substance to many of them. But the days of just buying hook, line, and sinker the wild predictions made for 20 or 30 years down the road have to make us pause and understand that a lot of this is pure guesswork. (Remember the scientific predictions of the 1970s warning of the upcoming ice age. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/1684884/on-this-date-51-years-ago-climate-scientists-predicted-a-new-ice-age-was-coming/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=WE_DSA_New-Targeting_2024&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw6uWyBhD1ARIsAIMcADoJ4HqYu-RbmR6HA2BeqyqhuEe14YSuo5Hgw3ZaqskoPFtGR72W5owaApQZEALw_wcB)
We should take their points very seriously, but we shouldn’t destroy our economy based on these predictions that often prove to be wrong, or are pushed on us from cottage industries with keen financial interests in scarring us to death.
And if that’s not enough to calm your fears, just remember that Barack Obama, who built his presidency on the concept of preventing the worlds waters from rising, recently purchased a waterfront mansion in Martha’s Vineyard.
Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” www.SteveLevy.info, Twitter @SteveLevyNY,
steve@commonsensestrategies.com