The Patriot Post® · Transitioning Away From Prosperity

“For those seriously concerned about climate change, the inverse — the demand for electrical continuity — may be the real problem.” —Rutgers University anthropology professor David McDermott Hughes, advocating for the rationing of electricity

Whether by accident or design, Professor Hughes has illuminated just how far the American Left is willing to go to “save the planet” from climate change. And as it is with so many holier-than-thou hucksters, his agenda must be pursued for the “greater good of mankind.” Hughes holds up two examples of where his idea has taken root — albeit involuntarily — noting that the economic “powerhouses” and social “utopias” more familiarly known as Zimbabwe and Puerto Rico “provide models for what we might call pause-full electricity.”

Much like “undocumented immigrant” or “homeless,” “pause-full” will now join the lexicon of leftist-created vocabulary designed to obscure their real agenda. “Pause-full” electricity, as in scheduled and regular rolling blackouts, is already occurring in California. And like every dedicated progressive, Governor Gavin Newsom attributes the blackouts to climate change, despite the reality that the Golden State has been steadily phasing out natural gas, coal, and nuclear power plants for years — even as demand increases.

Regardless, Newsom refuses to let inconvenient truth get in his way. Doubling down on former Governor Jerry Brown’s 2018 signing of Senate Bill 100, mandating that California’s electricity supply must be 100% “carbon neutral” by 2045, Newsom has signed an executive order mandating that all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California be zero-emission vehicles 10 years earlier than that.

In short, no sacrifice made by ordinary Californians, who will see even more blackouts to go along with skyrocketing energy and fuel prices, will be too great to bear. And they will bear those sacrifices in direct contrast to the elitists who impose them, even as those elitists continue to live in mansions, fly in private jets, and get chauffeured around in large limousines, in all their “do as I say, not as I do” hypocrisy.

Hughes illuminates their self-aggrandizing sense of faux nobility. “If my town’s blackout will lessen, say, the force of Puerto Rico’s next hurricane, then, please, shed us half a day [of electricity] per week,” he declares.

That the professor feels confident making a direct correlation between a semi-darkened town, presumably somewhere in New Jersey, and the severity of storms headed for an island nation more than 1,500 miles away is a great indication of the most potent driving force behind the climate agenda:

Unadulterated zealotry.

Such zealotry is epitomized by the plethora of doomsday warnings Americans have endured over the last couple of decades. Under ordinary circumstances, that they have proved to be spectacularly wrong would engender serious introspection and the reevaluation of premises. In a world where Ruling Class mandarins yearn for one-world governance under their “enlightened” control, we get divided into camps of “settled science” and “science deniers.” And one either embraces the former group’s Green New Deal and its trillions of dollars of unaffordable costs, economy-crushing mandates, and historically unprecedented expansion of government power, or one is beneath contempt.

Despite progressive intransigence, several inconvenient truths intrude. The Left’s cherished solar panels generate 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear power plants, become inefficient after only a decade, and leak toxic materials into the groundwater during rainfalls.

Wind turbines? A 2018 Harvard study concluded it would require covering one-third of America’s land mass with wind turbines to replace the nation’s conventional energy needs, and that any large-scale placement of those same turbines would increase temperatures.

The bigger picture? Any significant expansion of green energy would require an unprecedented increase in environmentally detrimental global mining for the required components and the increased importation of certain minerals required for such projects that would make us more dependent on foreign nations.

Another reality check? An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries published a 2016 report asserting approximately 25%-50% of the planet’s vegetated lands have significantly greened over the last 35 years — due in large part to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Yet when the real agenda is the acquisition and maintenance of power by any means necessary, none of it matters — and all rationalization becomes possible. Thus, Hughes uses the coronavirus as a metaphor for climate change to disparage our “obsession with continuity.” “What applies in the pandemic also applies — and also with desperate urgency — in the climate crisis,” he adds. “We can live with some intermittency and rationing — at least until batteries and other forms of energy storage are up and running everywhere.”

If that sounds familiar, maybe it’s because “we must shut down our nation until there’s a vaccine” resonates among the same people apparently willing to shut down the nation rather than run it on fossil fuels. And much like those who lecture us about the desperate urgency of shutdowns — while never missing a paycheck — those who would deny billions of poor people in underdeveloped nations the energy resources they need to survive — while ensconced in the safety and comfort of first-world living conditions — are equally contemptible.

In the midst of election-year hysteria, and the calculated malfeasance of a media willing to bury anything that accrues to President Donald Trump’s interests, it’s easy to miss what might be the most significant achievement that has occurred under his watch: Energy independence. “In September of 2019, we became energy independent, a net exporter of hydrocarbons,” columnist Harold Hamm writes. “We created millions of jobs across the country and filled the coffers of states with billions in tax dollars.”

Yet even more important is what we didn’t do. We didn’t send more American men and women to fight and die in more unnecessary Middle East wars to preserve an energy supply chain. We are no longer held hostage by OPEC in a nation where “No blood for oil!” was a slogan wholly embraced by the American Left.

The same American leftists whose presidential candidate, Joe Biden, promised to “transition from the oil industry” during Thursday night’s presidential debate.

Transition to where? To a nation with “pause-full” electricity … and thousands of unemployed energy-sector workers.

And electricity is only part of the equation. In the world envisioned by “experts” such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fossil fuels would be completely banned, air travel would become obsolete, every building in America would be retrofitted to make them energy efficient, and government would provide every American with “affordable” housing, “free” education, and “economic security” for all who are “unable or unwilling” to work.

A Biden administration will also dole out what Democrats call “environmental justice,” in all its racialist glory.

“For a while, let’s eat a cold dinner here and there,” Hughes suggests. “Continuity costs too much.” Continuity? Try civilization.

In the end, those who would completely reorder the world as they see fit are best described by English scientist Michael Faraday: “There’s nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right.”