How Climate Change Really Isn’t About the Climate

By David S. Petolicchio

At every opportune moment, left leaning political pundits and politicians tout climate change as a catastrophic doom that is mere decades away. These Individuals inevitably promote a legislative agenda that ultimately grows the size of government, expands harmful regulations, and can result in massive layoffs for the middle class. Time and time again, the mainstream solutions to climate change revolve around big government and invasive regulatory practices.

The most effective means of discerning the truth regarding the “climate crisis” is to simply observe its most ardent proponents and how they go about their “real” lives. The Journal of Environmental Psychology published a study called “Believing in climate change, but not behaving sustainably: Evidence from a one-year longitudinal study”. This study found that consistent hypocrisy among serious climate change proponents was a consistent trend. The study’s findings were rather revealing:

…the “Highly Concerned” were most supportive of government climate policies, but least likely to report individual-level actions, whereas the “Skeptical” opposed policy solutions but were most likely to report engaging in individual-level pro-environmental behaviors. Implications for theory and practice are discussed (1).

In other words, being a proponent of climate change didn’t necessarily lead to being more climate conscious in their daily lives. These true believers in climate change are more than happy to promote the issue but generally avoid acting on it themselves. To make matters worse, this study also found that, “Climate change believers were most likely to endorse federal climate policies.(1)” Not only are these individuals acting hypocritically, but they are promoting government controls over both their own lives as well as the lives of other people. This flagrant hypocrisy and appeal to government expansion is an excellent example as to why this issue must be viewed with skepticism and debate. It is quite clear that climate change, real or not, isn’t even taken seriously by its own proponents unless it involves demanding further government involvement.

Upon the realization of these inconsistencies, it doesn’t take a great deal of mental ingenuity to discern that “climate change”, in terms of an existential crisis, is about a real as leprechauns and a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Climate change is being used aggressively as political club in order to advance authoritarianism. This fact can be observed every time the proposed “solutions” to climate change conveniently involve massive amounts of national spending, major tax hikes, and strangling regulations. Such moves do nothing other than harm the livelihood and independence of hard working Americans and further discourage entrepreneurship. All that these regulations and taxes will do is destroy business and give the government sweeping control over the lives of its citizens.

The primary reason that constitutional conservatives oppose the notion of “climate change” is largely due to their disdain and distrust of governmental control. Consistently, arguments regarding climate change center around adding new laws and regulations that inevitably harm the economy. These harmful policies range from emissions regulations on automobiles to emissions restrictions on coal power plants. These proposed “solutions” to climate change result in the loss of jobs for many middle and lower class Americans. Explorations into the realms of hydroelectric, solar power, or wind generated power is not controversial in, and of, itself. The contention comes about when climate change activists in both government and in lobbyist positions push for the forced use and application of these systems. The key to reaching common ground on this issue is to promote private sector innovation and experimentation for truly economic and sustainable energy alternatives to fossil fuels. Once a suitable alternative is successfully established, THEN allow people to choose its adoption. To force new energy proposals onto the population through government coercion is overtly tyrannical.

The bottom-line is that climate change isn’t going to be solved by turning over more power to a historically incompetent bureaucracy. It is truly an oxymoron of astounding proportions to suggest that these supposed solutions to climate change should be forced onto individuals by a consistently incompetent and even dangerous federal government. It is paramount that government power is not reflexively granted to federal agencies in the name of any “climate crisis”. If climate change is as substantial of a threat to the earth as its proponents claim, solutions outside of government incompetence should be the first option, not the last.

References

1. Hall, Michael P., et al. “Believing in Climate Change, but Not Behaving Sustainably: Evidence from a One-Year Longitudinal Study.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 56, Apr. 2018, pp. 55–62., doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2018.03.001.