OPINION:
As the U.S. worked to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of scientists signed the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for “focused protection” for older adults, people with medical conditions, and other high-risk populations rather than near-total lockdowns.
That rankled Dr. Anthony Fauci and then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins so much that they colluded with news outlets to engineer “a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises.” The mainstream media helped ensure that the declaration was primarily ignored. Businesses went bankrupt, millions of students fell years behind in their studies, and thousands suffered unnecessarily.
Today, scientists and other experts are showing that fears about a man-made climate crisis are exaggerated and that “clean” energy “solutions” would be far more harmful than any alleged temperature increases, climate “disruptions” or “unprecedented extreme weather.”
People are listening. In Europe, farmers, workers and citizens demand that green energy policies be scrapped because families are jobless and entire industries are closing down or moving overseas as energy prices skyrocket.
America’s “climate crisis” profiteers have also seen rising doubts and opposition — and are determined to protect their advantages, reputations, and control over public perception.
They believe desperate circumstances require desperate measures — including censorship campaigns that look like the Barrington takedown on steroids. No one can be permitted to challenge their “science.”
A few years ago, Facebook and other social media platforms recruited third-party “fact-checkers” to approve or reject climate information and silence anyone who questioned apocalyptic climate claims. When people began raising questions about the utility of wind, solar and battery power, censorship efforts swiftly targeted those doubting Thomases.
Then-White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy called on news media and tech companies to help silence “insidious and widespread misinformation” that might be “seeding doubt” about the feasibility and costs of the Biden administration’s “energy transition,” whether wind and solar can provide reliable, affordable electricity for modern industrial societies, and whether we can just stop using fossil fuels.
But this is exactly what we must discuss before activists, bureaucrats and politicians make energy decisions that could destroy our economy, standard of living, freedoms and environment. We need to know:
• How many wind turbines and solar panels do we need to replace the electricity we now depend on — and to generate even more electricity to replace gasoline for vehicles and natural gas for heating and cooking?
• How many trillions of dollars will those wind, solar and transmission installations cost?
• How much will our electricity rates will go up, and how many millions of acres of wildlife, scenic, agricultural and ocean areas the facilities will cover. How much private land will be seized through eminent domain?
• If we shut down natural gas, coal, nuclear or hydroelectric power plants and don’t have sufficient wind turbines, solar panels and batteries to replace them, how often will widespread blackouts occur?
• How many millions of tons of nonrenewable steel, aluminum, copper, cobalt, concrete and other materials will be required to manufacture all this equipment, and how much toxic pollution and carbon emissions will all those activities cause?
• How many of those activities will take place in the United States — and how many in China, Russia and Africa, with monumental amounts of coal but few pollution controls, child and slave labor regulations, or consideration for U.S. national security risks?
These are fundamental, commonsense concerns. Europeans are revolting against net-zero and clean energy policies because politicians refused to listen.
Yet the concerns rarely get raised in the U.S. because climate crisis and renewable energy allies don’t seem to want people to realize how costly, risky and harmful this Green New Deal transition would be. In fact, they’re ramping up information control, “fact-checking” and censorship.
Print, electronic and social media use government and foundation grants to generate more articles asserting that man-made climate change causes species losses, human health issues, domestic violence and other far-fetched problems. Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration, trains journalists worldwide to produce dramatic and rigorous coverage of climate change, to engage audiences, and to create “the political will needed to tackle the crisis.”
Media outlets often refuse to cover studies or statements that suggest climate change is not driven by fossil fuels or is not a crisis.
A Swiss billionaire funded Climate Power, whose website describes it as “a strategic communications organization focused on winning the politics of climate,” to pressure broadcasters to stop airing ads criticizing President Biden’s electric vehicle mandate. “Fact-checkers” insisted it’s not a ban or mandate, but merely regulations that make it impossible for manufacturers to produce anything but EVs. Other billionaires are prodding Hollywood to promote climate Armageddon in movies.
These “esteemed arbiters of climate truth” are making progress — but are far from achieving their “masters of the universe” goals.
Nevertheless, their bias and censorship are impacting our lives. They need to be resisted and called to account before they transition our energy infrastructure into one that leaves us freezing in the dark.
• Craig Rucker is president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org).
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