In a Jan. 25 meeting of the Vermont Climate Council, Massachusetts Undersecretary for Climate Change David Ismay blurted out “let me say that again, 60% of our emissions that need to be reduced come from you, the person across the street, the senior on fixed income, right… there is no bad guy left, at least in Massachusetts to point the finger at, to turn the screws on, and you know, to break their will, so they stop emitting. That’s you. We have to break your will. Right, I can’t even say that publicly….” Except he just did. So don’t say you weren’t warned: These people are looking for a 60% reduction in ordinary-life emissions. And of the ordinary-life energy that causes them.
Beginning with cars, of course. The New York Times “Climate Fwd.” says various car companies bending to the wind blowing from Washington “may help the Biden administration move quickly to reinstate national fuel-efficiency standards that would control planet-warming auto pollution”. Meaning what exactly? The issue here isn’t the rhetorical inflation of “carbon pollution” and now “climate pollution” and the tendency of news outlets to beg the question of causality. It’s the question who thinks reducing American car emissions would “control” this “pollution” sufficiently to have an impact on “planet-warming”. And the surprising answer is: Nobody except very ill-informed journalists, politicians and other zealots.
No really. You might think with everyone gaga about the Paris Agreement and Joe Biden rejoining it without all that tedious mucking about with Senate approval of treaties, the scientists who say would be claiming Paris would stop the dreaded warming. But they’re not. They’re also not saying a minor increase in American automobile fuel efficiency would get the United States to Paris. Or that, if the United States went there, the world would.
So unless Biden intends by imperial fiat to require American-made, or -bought, cars to emit 60% less, the measure won’t “control” emissions in a meaningful way. Strike 1. Even if he did, and it worked, which are by no means the same thing, and if they were part of a package of measures that got the United States to its Paris targets and kept it there, it wouldn’t make other nations do it including whatever that big one with the coal plants and nuclear weapons is. Strike 2. And even if it did, according to the alarmists’ own models, everyone meeting their Paris targets would reduce warming in 2100 by about 0.1 degrees, a mere rounding error. Strike 3.
If “Climate Fwd.” is deliberately using language that makes an ineffective measure sound effective, Strike 4. Especially as if you believe there’s a climate crisis, the last thing you want is fake solutions. Strike 5. Of course “Climate Fwd.” like the IPCC depends for its livelihood on there being a crisis, and if they were being cynical it would be Strike 6. Instead they’re probably just as confused as they sound. Strike 7. Which seems like a lot but they’re not out.
Instead they’re coming for you. Just ask David Ismay in an unguarded moment.
