It Is A Time to Choose

 Tom McCaffrey has an article today at the American Thinker entitled Where Science Ends and Morality Begins that makes the point that the climate change scare, and the green new deal are all smoke screens for socialist government that will leave everybody but the scavenger class poor and without rights of any sort. The truth is that man has survived through both colder and warmer temperatures than today, and that man is not really having much affect on climate temperatures. Another truth is that we could have "clean" electricity by simply switching to nuclear energy.

We are left to assume that today's astronomical prices at the pump ($6.78 for hi-test in California town yesterday) are only temporary and that prices will return to lower levels after the transition to wind and solar is completed. But this is pure fantasy. Wind and solar power are far more expensive sources of energy than fossil fuels. That's why coal, oil, and gas became our predominant sources of energy in the first place. The only reason there are wind and solar to speak of is that the government has subsidized their development with taxpayer dollars.

But why would environmentalists want Americans to spend more on energy? Because they believe that wealth is the great enemy of the environment. People in poor countries don't mar the natural landscape with superhighways and factories and shopping malls and skyscrapers. "In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun," wrote Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich in 1975.1

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Climate change doomsayers never specify what would be an ideal temperature level for human purposes. Yet this is an interesting question, considering that average temperatures have varied dramatically on Earth, even during man's short time here. But the premise behind the effort to eliminate fossil fuels — and economic growth in general — is that nature knows best. Whatever nature serves up, whether it be warmer or cooler temperatures, would be better for man and other life forms than any change in temperatures that might result from human activities (not that such activities are in fact causing climate change to any significant extent).

He goes on to point out that in his home state of California, one must fill out a boatload of paperwork, and expend considerable capital before one can turn the first shovel of dirt on one's own property. While it is less onerous elsewhere, the truth is that a maze of local planning boards and supposedly environmental laws have had the same effect in most places. But if you must first get permission to make changes to your property, are you really the owner, or merely renting from the government?

Would we still consider America a free country if writers had to seek government approval of their manuscripts before they could be published? Land use censorship is every bit as pernicious as any other form of censorship. Indeed, in the absence of private ownership of land, no other rights are possible. Try to imagine freedom of religion if the government controls all the land; have you tried to erect a Christmas creche on a public square lately?

The first plank in Marx's Communist Manifesto called for the abolition of private land ownership. The complete absence of individual rights in Marxist countries like the Soviet Union, Mao's China, and Castro's Cuba was not an idiosyncrasy of those regimes, but a logical concomitant of state ownership of land and capital.

Under the Biden administration, we are getting a foretaste of a green future. The high costs of gasoline, heating oil, and electricity; the consequent high prices of everything else; the food shortages; and economic recessions will all be permanent features of a green America. Tried flying lately? Consider the phase-out of air travel to be already underway. Supply chain problems causing empty shelves at the store? Not to worry; when "buy local" is your only choice, you won't have to worry about supply chains.

Hidden in the above is the truth that the all the "green" excuses are just masquerades for the transition from a free America to a Communist America, built on the Chinese model. Klaus Schaub's saying that you will own nothing is the desired end state. You will not own a car, or a house, and what you will be allowed to have will be determined by the state.

You will not have rights either, they would be denied. This blog would not be allowed to be published. Oh, and paper books would be outlawed too, making it possible to change the content as the state sees fit. Thus getting a copy of C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters would be impossible. People will be encouraged to engage in silly pursuits on social media when they are not working for the state. And yes, you will need written permission to travel. Oh, and the dream of killing off the "useless" among us would at last be realized. What a glorious world, if you are among the "elite." Not so much for the rest of us.

Don't like arbitrary government mandates? Don't like what the COVID lockdowns did to your constitutional rights? Don't like seeing the rule of law abandoned before your eyes — from our open southern border to the homes of our Supreme Court justices? Consider all this your introduction to socialist governance.

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Yet science says we have no choice but to prohibit the use of fossil fuels — according to the environmentalists. Science says that we have no choice but to surrender our freedom and our prosperity. But the choice whether to extinguish the use of fossil fuels is not a scientific one, any more than the choice to consider all men equal was a scientific one. It is a moral choice.

In truth, science says nothing. Science is a tool used to discover the physical facts around us. But we are the ones who interpret the facts that science makes available. And those choices are just that: choices. Are we going to choose to give up our rights, our rule of law, our Constitution, indeed our freedom to return to a feudal society that subsists and did paleolithic man?