OPINION:
Ambition and leadership go hand in hand, and Americans expect their choices for high office to walk in the door with bold plans. President Biden has wasted no time presenting an audacious program for solving climate change. Taming forces of nature may prove harder, and more expensive, than it looks.
The Biden theme-of-the-day featured “Climate Day” on Wednesday, and the president signed an executive order that “clearly establishes climate considerations as an essential element of U.S. foreign policy and national security.” It includes plans to host a climate summit on Earth Day, April 22, as well as the suspension of oil and gas drilling on public lands, a prioritizing of “environmental justice” and — oddly out of step with anti-coronavirus efforts — a diversion of $10 billion in emergency COVID-19 funds for climate-change projects.
Before reaching for the green face paint, Americans should remember that Mother Nature is the ultimate globalist, and her designs may not fit within the four corners of a presidential directive.
Climate-change policies are based on the premise that rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are warming the planet. Recent research by Princeton University into the cyclical nature of Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets suggests the phenomenon is not that simple. Ice core samples gathered indicate that global warming occurred during long-ago Ice Ages without a prior increase in carbon dioxide.
Evidence of climate dynamics that do not comport with current theories suggest that other factors are at work, like that white-hot fireball in the sky. Rather than mirroring the rise and fall of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the cyclical nature of ice formation follows more closely the waxing and waning of solar radiation reaching the Earth as the planet progresses through its natural 41,000-year cycle of changing tilt relative to the sun.
Mr. Biden plans to solve global warming by focusing solely on reducing carbon-dioxide emissions while blocking out consideration of solar influence could ultimately have the outcome of a gnat playing chicken with a tractor-trailer.
With nary a shadow of doubt, the president has rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, a move forecast to lower the temperature by only a fraction of a degree by 2100 while consuming trillions of dollars and millions of jobs. His abrupt termination of the Keystone XL pipeline has already led to the immediate layoff of 1,000 workers and cancellation of plans to hire 10,000 more.
Mr. Biden’s climate-change blueprint, combined with Saudi Arabia’s recent decision to slash oil production by 1 million barrels a day, is already raising energy costs. For starters, oil prices have surged 40 percent since early November and gas prices at the pump are up 15 percent.
A Gallup survey from December ranked the environment and climate change the thirteenth most important noneconomic problem facing the nation. Amid a pandemic, Mr. Biden should focus his attention on achievable tasks, like saving American lives.
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