OPINION:
This past Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced a list of new executive orders he will impose on the American people. Included in King Joe’s royal decree was a call to immediately print another $2.3 billion of Monopoly money (something that used to be known as the U.S. dollar). The reason for cranking up the presses at the Treasury Department? Global warming. “This is an emergency,” our dear leader bellowed. “I said it last week. I’ll say it again, loud and clear. I will use my executive powers to combat… the climate crisis in the absence of congressional action.”
One would think that such political hutzpah would receive a standing ovation from Mr. Biden’s purported allies. But in fact, the reaction from his own party’s high priests of Terra Mater was the exact opposite.
Sens. Jeff Merkley and Sheldon Whitehouse, for example, immediately condemned the president’s response as not going far enough. According to these charter members of the “Chicken Little’s Sky is Falling Club,” anything short of a presidential declaration of a national emergency consigns us all to planetary destruction in a matter of days.
“There is probably nothing more important for our nation and our world than for the United States to drive a bold, energetic transition in its energy economy,” said Mr. Merkley. “[The President must go] on offense… [He must] do all the things that [are] within the executive powers to do that have not so far been done,” added Whitehouse as he then called for Mr. Biden to “unchain” himself from Congress in order to save us all from imminent extinction.
But, what exactly do the likes of Mr. Merkley and Mr. Whitehouse mean when they call for a “bold, energetic transition” and declare that our president should use executive powers to “unchain” himself from the legislative branch of our government?
Well, that answer is found in a paper published by the Center for Biological Diversity, titled “The Climate President’s Emergency Powers: A Legal Guide to Bold Climate Action from President Biden.” This document, which is apparently considered sacred text by all members of the Democrats’ Church of Gaia, pulls no punches as it sets forth the tenets of its members’ faith.
Declaring that “the climate emergency presents a ’code red for humanity,’ the paper proceeds to argue that “unless we ignite an economic transformation now, we will spiral toward a dangerous and increasingly unlivable planet.” The authors then make their premise very clear: “By declaring a national climate emergency, Biden can unlock emergency executive powers… to permanently end the federal fossil fuel leasing and drilling program.”
What could possibly go wrong with this?
These people are fools.
As other countries around the world are presently suffering the devastating consequences of such asinine policies, the smart folks advising our president tell Mr. Biden to double down on dumb.
Sri Lanka declared its own version of a “national climate emergency” in April of 2021, and it is now in the throes of 54.6% annual inflation, with products such as food, clothing, transportation and electricity exceeding 300%! Fishermen can’t afford diesel for their boats, and farmers can’t buy fertilizer for their fields. The result is no fish in the markets and a 50% to 60% decrease in crop yields for carrots, tomatoes, and other produce. One-third of the country’s farmland now lies dormant. Eighty-five percent of the farmers have faced crop losses, and a country that was formerly self-sufficient in rice now faces food shortages and the need to import $450 million worth of grain annually.
The Netherlands is another example. The wise and learned ones in this country, which produces a disproportionate amount of chicken, pork, and beef for all of Europe, have imposed a 30% reduction on all livestock numbers. Why? Well, it seems that animals pass gas and produce manure, and you know we can’t have any of that if we want to have a clean Mother Earth, now can we? One has to wonder if these same smug know-it-alls would have concluded that killing nearly 60 million bison roaming America’s great plains during the 1800s was a good rather than bad thing. All that buffalo flatulence could cause the polar ice caps to melt, after all, and flood Al Gore’s beachfront home in Montecito.
St. Paul once told the first Christians in Rome that worshiping the creation rather than the Creator would result in a “reprobate mind.” We see this every day as we watch our nation’s elites stumble over themselves, elevating the planet over people. Our ruling class is so fixated on the god they see in the mirror rather than the God we see in the Bible that they can’t think their way out of a paper bag.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery).
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