OPINION:
The jolly green giant has a fan in the White House. President Obama has signed us up to salute the United Nations’ climate change agenda. By pledging allegiance to the Global Climate Treaty, the president won’t actually accomplish much in weather control beyond enriching the likes of Al Gore and his friends in the renewable energy industry. Playing God is just another day in the Oval Office for the spender in chief, but it requires the American taxpayer to worship with dollars at the altar of environmental extremism.
The Obama administration on Tuesday broke from leading from behind by jumping ahead of most nations to commit the United States to a costly goal of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions over the next 10 years by 28 percent below 2005 levels. The globalists at the U.N. want to have more than 190 countries signed up when the U.N.’s next climate change summit convenes in Paris on Nov. 30. Congressional Republicans warn that any agreement Mr. Obama signs that lacks grounding in the U.S. Constitution could be rescinded by his successor or by a future Congress.
Here’s the expensive part: New restrictions on emissions from power plants are imposed under the Clean Air Act, which forces dozens of coal-burning plants to install air scrubbers, at a cost of billions, or close down. Rules will limit emissions from vehicles and oil and gas production, which will raise the price of electricity for all Americans. States that have adopted renewable energy mandates, which required utilities to purchase expensive power generated by inefficient solar and wind generation, have already suffered soaring electricity costs. Consumers will be hit again when they pony up the U.S. share of a $100 billion slush fund the U.N. collects from developed nations to subsidize the inefficient renewable energy projects in poor countries.
And here’s the foolish part: The president’s scheme will prevent a decrease of only 0.001 degree Celsius in global temperature per year, according to the calculations of Chip Knappenberger, a climatologist at the Cato Institute. That’s a minuscule reward for the big price tag. The Environmental Protection Agency says the president’s plan will cost about $8.8 billion a year, but other studies have placed the cost at $41 billion annually. Playing God is not a role for mortals.
Until the dawn of the Age of Obama, the U.S. military kept its eye on its actual mission, to be prepared to kill people and break things before the nation’s enemies do that to us. But the Pentagon has fallen in line with liberal wishes and dreams, designating climate change as an immediate risk to U.S. national security. (The generals and admirals haven’t yet figured out who to shoot at.)
Despite the doomsday fears of a globe growing so warm that it expires in spontaneous combustion, only 32 percent of Americans worry very much about global warming, according to a new Gallup Poll. That’s the same figure from a poll taken in 1989. Most Americans are not fools.
President Obama’s standing with the jolly green giant is hardly a surprise. He applauds the chipping away at U.S. sovereignty as it is subsumed by an emerging global governing order. It is of a piece with his assertion that America is no more exceptional than the Greeks or the British. Sad, but true.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.