The Patriot Post® · Climate Battles Heat Up

“The end is near!” cry the climate alarmists. They’ve been screaming that same warning for half a century, and no matter how many of their dire prophesies fail to come to pass, these false prophets just shout even louder.

In fact, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just issued a report that one climate alarmist billed as the “final warning.” UN Secretary General António Guterres says the study is a “clarion call” and a “survival guide for humanity.”

Yawn.

It isn’t that the climate isn’t changing; it is changing, just as it’s done for all of earth’s history. It’s that slight changes in average global temperature or various shifts in weather patterns don’t mean we need to turn over most economic decisions to our government or world elites shamelessly flying around in private jets.

Speaking of that last part, John Kerry, Joe Biden’s climate czar, defended the hypocrisy of such jet-setting because these global elites are “working harder than most people I know to be able to try to effect this transition.” Besides, he supposedly sold his private jet after “we were forced into that” by criticism. Now, he says, “I fly commercially.”

Kerry is part of an administration that is trying to enact the Green New Deal piecemeal via legislation and regulation. The American Rescue Plan, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and Inflation Reduction Act were all larded up with climate initiatives — primarily subsidies for Democrat constituents in the renewable energy sector. There’s also a plan for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to spend $150 billion in taxpayer money to fund a “whole-of-Agency approach” to build an “equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.” As part of that initiative, Team Biden wants to indoctrinate young people and get them invested in the cause — just like Greta Thunberg.

As for regulation, we’ve told you about the war on gas stoves here and here. Well, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was banging that drum again last week in Congress.

“There’s no ban on gas stoves,” Granholm insisted. “I have a gas stove.” Technically, that’s true enough for a Leftmedia “fact-check,” but here in the real world, Team Biden plans to regulate gas stoves so heavily that many won’t meet the standards. Granholm says that’s no big deal because “half of the gas stoves that are on the market right now wouldn’t even be impacted.”

Did miss Glass Half Full ever stop to think that means half the stoves on the market will be impacted? That’s an enormous economic distortion, despite her claim that it boils down to $12 per appliance.

No ban? New York Governor Kathy Hochul and her Democrat pals in the state legislature aim to ban gas stoves in new buildings in the state, perhaps as early as January 1, 2025. “The basic premise here,” explained Democrat State Senator Brian Kavanagh, “is that if you continue to build buildings that are going to require fossil fuels for decades to come, you are baking in … destructive behavior that burning fossil fuels causes.”

He buys the false prophesies, and New Yorkers will pay.

It’s little better in California, which is working to ban gas heaters and furnaces. Many California cities ban gas stoves. Little do some folks understand, but all this regulation hits lower-income people harder. In fact, California admits as much, as well as that its climate regulation is a form of what leftists call “systemic racism.”

Back to the Biden administration, the Energy Department is also looking to heavily regulate home air conditioning units, portable air cleaners, and window air conditioners. Why? To “reduce [the] nation’s carbon footprint” as part of “tackling the climate crisis.”

Anything is justified in the face of “crisis,” as we learned all too well during COVID. Clearly, as the ChiCom Virus pandemic hysteria fades, the climate hysteria is heating up.

So what’s the House GOP doing to stop all this expensive nonsense? Members are set to vote soon on the Lower Energy Costs Act, a 175-page bill aimed at blunting Biden’s energy agenda while also doing what Biden claims to want — focus on buying American, in this case energy.

“This bill counters President Biden’s attack on our domestic energy and includes permitting reforms that will speed construction for major infrastructure projects across the country,” said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. That’s exactly why it will never pass the Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says it’s “dead on arrival.” Neither would it obtain Biden’s signature even if it made it to his desk.

Even so, it’s an important marker to show the difference between the parties. Democrats want inside your kitchen to regulate your stove and water heater as part of their all of life effort to control everything we do in the name of climate change. Republicans want to produce more energy and adapt to climate change, not regulate our way out of it. It’s the classic battle of tyranny vs. Liberty.