OPINION:
Anyone who has been to New York has likely run into a street prophet preaching about the end of days. Such displays have long been a curiosity for passersby who likely never give the Book of Revelation a second thought.
Today, in our world of information management dominated by the far left, the ranting about the end of the world has gone mainstream. It’s done on television, on college campuses, in Congress and on social media. Everywhere you turn, climate change has been embedded into the psyche of the nation, and it’s making people sick.
For the sake of driving fear and panic about impending planetary doom, they are adding to the mental health crisis in America. Climate anxiety disorder is a growing area of psychology affecting mostly young people, according to the LANCET. More and more people are being treated for the illness, whose symptoms include irrational panic attacks, loss of appetite, fear, irritability, hopelessness, weakness and sleeplessness.
To the left, we’re all victims, and now our very existence is imperiled unless we fundamentally change our economy and way of life. This scheme should sound familiar.
America is systemically racist, so we must fundamentally change the way we teach our children, govern, vote and police our streets. America is under constant threat from COVID-19, so we must fundamentally change the way we live, work and manage our health. America is discriminatory, so we must fundamentally change the way we think about gender and language. The list goes on.
Climate change panic is the progenitor of all these concepts. All of these leftist marketing schemes damage people emotionally and spiritually. All of them are based on a deliberate mischaracterization of history, facts and science.
Only the arrogance of the far left would suggest that the world’s survival will depend on some international accord or Congressional legislation. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that more than a few of these climate change anxiety disorder sufferers use iPhones and the cloud or dabble in Bitcoin, all of which have massive carbon footprints they conveniently ignore.
The bombardment of inaccurate and outrageous information is so constant and voluminous, many Americans have lost any ability to discern fact from folly. That failure to think critically about the left’s claims is again proving dangerous.
For 50 years there has been a cavalcade of scientists who have been making dire claims about the impact of global cooling, then global warming and now climate change.
The claims range from the ridiculous to the sublime. Whether it’s former Vice President Al Gore or some so-called climate scientist, by now there should either be neither snow nor blizzards, palm trees in Central Park, or such frigid weather we’ll migrate to Antarctica. There will be endless storms or permanent drought. One after another, the predictions of doom have fallen flat.
Here are the scientific facts that are widely accepted about the state of our natural environment.
The climate changes and it always has. Humanity and industrialization can have an impact on the natural environment including the climate, but that impact has yet to be quantified. The environment in the U.S. is cleaner today than it was 100 years ago. Starting in the 1970s with the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, sensible government regulations and new technologies have reduced emissions and waste.
Since the year 2000, the U.S. has reduced its emissions more than Europe despite not participating in the Kyoto Protocol or other draconian international environmental accords.
The other truth, which the left ignores to whip people into a climate frenzy, is that our environment is global. Without China, India, Russia, Africa and the rest of the developing world on board with even basic efforts, little we do here in the U.S. will impact the planet.
Climate anxiety disorder among Americans is completely senseless.
Despite this, psychologists are now telling their patients that, just like gender dysphoria, having debilitating anxiety over climate change is somehow “normal.”
The biggest environmental problems we have are not related to how we treat the planet. They are related to how we treat each other. They are related to the degradation of human society, driven by government and far-left ideologies that corrode the soul.
We should celebrate the work we’ve done to protect the planet and continue it sensibly, but recognizing that nature is more powerful a force than we are.
The thing that will truly doom humanity is the societal rot we see on our streets and celebrated in our media. We should be sickened by that. The planet will go on.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax Television, an author and a former Bush administration official.
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