“CNN’s marathon town hall Wednesday night put the climate crisis closer to the center of a presidential election than ever before,” boasted CNN. Fortuitously timed to coincide with Hurricane Dorian’s sweep of the East Coast (the town hall was scheduled long before the hurricane), 10 Democrats took the opportunity of CNN’s seven-hour in-kind campaign contribution to make the case that the planet’s relatively slight warming justifies their real climate agenda: fundamentally transforming the U.S. economy into a socialist enterprise.

In the days leading up to the town hall, several of the candidates released their “moderate” versions of the Green New Deal (GND). We say “moderate” because while the GND carries a staggering price tag of $93 trillion, plans offered by the clown car of Democrat candidates range anywhere from $1 trillion to $16 trillion — completely reasonable by comparison, right?

Wrong. Every Democrat who participated last night either endorsed or cosponsored the outrageous Green New Deal, and their comparatively less expensive individual plans are still totalitarian. Here are just a few platform planks:

• Onerous taxes on emissions

• “Social justice” remedies for the supposedly racially disparate impact of climate

• Expanded abortion for population control

• Restrictions on consumption of red meat

• Buy-back programs for gasoline-powered vehicles

• The complete elimination of fossil fuels and even nuclear power in the near future

Those are radical proposals, which is precisely why Democrats and their Leftmedia super PAC continue screaming that climate is truly a crisis. “We are fighting for the survival of the planet Earth, our only planet,” Bernie Sanders declared. Elizabeth Warren likewise warned, “This is an emergency, and without rapid and widespread change, we will soon be unable to prevent the worst harms.” She also claims, “The future of our planet depends on it.”

No crisis, no need for radical transformation.

Yet that radical transformation wouldn’t even achieve the goal Democrats claim. “One hundred percent renewable energy defies the laws of physics,” said Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research. “It would be impossible to achieve.” A study by the National Academy of Sciences three years ago agreed: “It is extremely difficult to achieve complete decarbonization of the energy system, even when using every current technology and tool available, including energy efficiency and wind, hydroelectric, and solar energy as well as carbon capture and storage, bioenergy, and nuclear energy.”

But, again, saving the planet isn’t the Democrats’ real objective. By their own admission, Democrats are fomenting panic to justify a socialist power grab.