The unprovoked, genocidal invasion of Ukraine by Russian armed forces is a direct consequence of President Biden’s projection of weakness on the world stage and his destructive and masochistic war against the fossil fuel industry.
Biden is quick to shift the blame to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine for the rise in oil prices, and inflation generally, but this is a flat out lie. Gasoline prices under Biden rose 48% before the invasion began and have only increased as the war against fossil fuels left us more dependent on foreign imports. Record rates of inflation, produced by massive deficit spending, have created a perfect storm of misery for American consumers, particularly those on fixed incomes.
Biden and Democrats in Congress are clearly in thrall to the radical Greens and extremists within their own party. Biden’s policies have reversed the energy independence we achieved under President Trump, and placed the United States in the embarrassing position of crawling to hostile regimes to supply the energy we are perfectly capable of producing for ourselves. Putin can smell weakness and the stench coming from the White House has emboldened him.
For years, the Russians have been funding radical Green groups in Europe and the United States as part of a calculated effort to stop their host countries from developing their own fossil fuel resources, including those from fracking. And the radical Greens are doing Putin’s bidding. The goal is to create energy disruption and make the West, and particularly Europe, dependent upon Russian imports. The Russians and Chinese are laughing all the way to the bank as we continue this masochistic war against fossil fuels.
This campaign centers on the demonization of carbon dioxide, which the left ludicrously believes is the primary driver of global warming, or, as it is now termed, “climate change,” often preceded by the words “existential threat of” to intensify the fear factor. But “climate change” has never been an “existential threat,” nor will it be. This is pure political hyperbole designed to drive scientifically illiterate voters into the arms of a cynical and power-hungry Democrat Party.
The claim that we have only until 2030 to save the earth is not only pure fantasy, it mirrors dozens of prior prognostications of doom over the past 60 years advanced by far-left politicians and activists, like Paul Ehrlich and Al Gore, none of which have materialized. Sadly, the indoctrination has had particular success among naïve young people who are fed this radical Green religion in classrooms across the world, many of whom now suffer from depression or thoughts of suicide under the misguided belief that they have no future. In Guilford, CT, where I live, some teachers have even taken to asking students to report on their parents’ “carbon footprint,” as if they were youth cohorts of a totalitarian regime. This is encouraged by our CRT-loving school superintendent and a teachers’ union joined at the hip to the Democrat Party.
Biden’s hostility to fossil fuels is a manifestation of scientific illiteracy on steroids, and it preys on Americans’ ignorance of basic scientific facts. Smithsonian magazine reported that only one in five Americans knows which gas makes up most of the earth’s atmosphere (it’s nitrogen at 78.09%).
The others are oxygen (20.95%), and argon (0.93%), and carbon dioxide a mere 0.04% (420 parts per million). You can blame our public schools for much of this, and it’s all by design.
Climate has always been driven by several hundred factors, almost all natural and cyclical, interacting in complex ways, chief among them solar output, the earth’s positional relationship to the sun over lengthy cycles (e.g. the Milankovitch Cycles), its elliptical orbit, axial tilt, precession wobble, and the effect of cosmic rays on cloud cover chief among them. The Earth produces 186 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, only 3% of it from human activity. Carbon dioxide was singled out for one reason: because it can be used as a vehicle for gaining government control over our energy sector and the lives of every American. In fact, if every human being on earth died tomorrow, and with it all industrial and transportation activity, 99.84% of the greenhouse effects would continue unabated. Renewables are only in their infancy and require a fossil fuel back-up. Carbon dioxide, which we all exhale, is critical to plant growth. If its concentration fell to 150 ppm, we would all die.
The demonization of CO2 is, in fact, anti-human, yet we are being asked to upend our entire energy sector, destroy our economy, and sacrifice our freedom.
If globally averaged temperatures rose two degrees F, we would adapt. On the other hand, if we stopped using fossil fuels, billions will die, most of them black and brown people in the developing world. I call this racist. What choice would you make?
Kendall Svengalis is President of New England LawPress and author of thirty books, including the award winning Legal Information Buyer’s Guide & Reference Manual (now in its 25th edition), A Layperson’s Guide to Legal Research and Self-Help Law Books, and two SAT vocabulary-building, WWII espionage novels. He is retired as the RI State Law Librarian and adjunct professor of Library and Studies at the University of RI.
This green new deal suicidal nonsense is being taught to our youth as absolute fact under the pretense of Critical Thinking with no exposure to other points of view. There is nothing more dangerous than indoctrinating young people with this Marxist anti-American propaganda. Thank you, Ken, for your great letter.
Dave Holman
Right. It’s time to start focusing attention on where oxygen comes from. Somewhere between 60-80% comes from the plankton in the ocean. Since the heinous murder of over 3 million whales during the industrial whaling of the last 2 centuries, ocean ecosystems are collapsing. Yet, the US government applies little attention to save the North Atlantic Right Whale (fewer than 330 remain off our East Coast) or to challenge Iceland’s killing of 148 Fin Whales last summer. Fewer than 50 Maui dolphins survive off the coast of New Zealand. Fewer than 10 vaquita dolphins survive in the Gulf of California. Wind turbines are a scam, and its invasion of the ocean endangers ocean inhabitants. There are good ideas to transition to clean energy but I’m not hearing them from the government.