OPINION:
The worthies attending the United Nations COP28 climate summit in Dubai are mostly not eating meat. That’s because they believe and have been told that meat leads to flatulence, and flatulence leads to “global warming.”
Instead, they’re getting mostly plant-based food. In another fitting irony, some attendees came from European countries where there is heavy snow and cold weather. Their private jets emit far more carbon dioxide than many steaks.
In a news release, the United Arab Emirates’ environment minister, Mariam Almheiri, said: “We know that our food systems are intrinsically linked to the fate of our natural world, and so we have made the progressive decision to ensure that we explore how the catering provided across the event can be responsible and climate-conscious.”
Where have we heard versions of this apocalyptic nonsense before? From just about everywhere, elites gather and attempt to regulate, increasingly tax us, and limit our freedoms. Global warming is the secular holy of holies, and those who don’t embrace their “faith” are to be cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
British King Charles III ratcheted up his already high hyperbole about climate change when he said at the gathering: “The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth.”
Was he referring to the Genesis account of creation? Probably not.
In 2009, then-Prince Charles said we had only 96 months to avert “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse.” 2017 came and went, and we have yet to see a collapse. Nor have any of the other numerous predictions from various climate change apostles come true.
It doesn’t matter. Just as we have now learned from the British Medical Journals that masking children during the COVID-19 pandemic had no “real-world effectiveness,” we should take the alarmist claims coming from Dubai with a grain of salt substitute.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, who flew in on his private jet, said he thinks coal-fired power plants should not be “permitted anywhere in the world.” Mr. Kerry, who is not a climate scientist and basically repeats and adds to what he has been told by people who reinforce what he already thinks, has made repeated end-of-the-world predictions.
Like the predictions of Nostradamus and modern religious and secular false prophets, none have come true. But we should believe Mr. Kerry now because he says he is becoming “more and more” militant about climate policy. That’s because, he says, people are avoiding responsibility. Facts from real experts, not more militancy, is what we need. Avoid believing a “scientific consensus” on climate change. Remember Dr. Anthony “I am the science” Fauci’s claims about COVID-19 that subsequently proved untrue?
How much more of this should we take? Government leaders and bureaucrats are constantly looking for new “crises” to impose their will on us while largely disobeying the laws and regulations they pass. When their forecasts of disaster fail to come true, they quickly move on to the next one.
The Chick-fil-A fast-food chain has billboards depicting a cow that says, “Eat more chicken.” Maybe the climate alarmists should adopt that slogan as they continue to promote a false doctrine that, if adopted, will cost trillions of dollars and not achieve the ends they claim.
Doesn’t this represent something akin to the old central planning systems of Soviet Russia? We know how that turned out, including a forced famine under Stalin.
• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).
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