By Jonah Goldberg
September 6, 2019
‘Climate change is an existential crisis,” Senator
Elizabeth Warren declared Tuesday, unveiling her plan to fight climate change
in advance of CNN’s interminable townhall event on the topic with ten
Democratic presidential candidates.
The use of the term “existential crisis” is ironic. No
doubt, they mean “existential threat,” i.e. that global warming threatens to
end life on earth. It doesn’t. But we’ll get back to that in a second.
The term “existential crisis” comes from psychology or
philosophy, not environmental science. An existential crisis is when you’re
overcome with panic or dread about your place in the world or your purpose in
the universe. If you’re depressed and ask “What’s it all about?” you might be
having an existential crisis.
A giant asteroid barreling toward earth is an existential
threat, midlife adultery is a sign of an existential crisis.
The irony is that concern over climate change — which is
a real and legitimate concern — seems derived more from an existential crisis
than from an existential threat.
At the CNN event, many of the Democratic candidates
insisted that life on earth was at stake. Warren said climate change is an
“existential threat” that “threatens all life on this planet.” According to
Senator Bernie Sanders, “We are dealing with what the scientists call an
existential threat to this planet, and we must respond aggressively; we must
listen to the scientists. That is what our plan does.”
That’s not true. Our quality of life on earth might be
threatened, but our existence isn’t. Now, of course, something can come up far
short of an extinction-level event and still be really, really bad. But the
idea that all life on this planet is in jeopardy if America doesn’t wean itself
from fossil fuels is just hyperbole. And even if America did exactly that,
there’s little reason to believe the rest of the world would follow suit.
Still, if we take them literally, not just seriously,
they’re saying we’re doomed if we don’t implement some version of the Green New
Deal — a sweeping, wildly expensive hodgepodge of proposals first unveiled by
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that aims to eliminate carbon
emissions inside of twelve years.
And yet, both Sanders and Warren (and others) are against
using nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions. “In my administration, we won’t
be building new nuclear plants,” Warren declared. “We will start weaning
ourselves off nuclear and replace it with renewables,” by 2035. Sanders called
nuclear power a “false solution” and vowed to end it.
It’s an odd argument. Sanders says we must “listen to the
scientists,” but there are scads of scientists who think nuclear-waste storage
is eminently manageable, including the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine. They report that the “consensus” is that safe
geological storage is entirely feasible.
More importantly, if you honestly believe that climate
change is an existential threat, akin to an impending asteroid strike, why
would you rule out one of the only proven tools to combat it? It’s a bit like
refusing to use a firehose on a burning orphanage because you’re afraid of the
subsequent water damage.
There are plenty of people who despise nuclear weapons
and want to see them eradicated. But it would be hard to take such people seriously
if they argued against sending nuclear missiles into deep space to head off an
extinction-level asteroid impact.
All the Green New Deal proposals are sold as huge
economic bonanzas, offering lavish subsidies for displaced workers, socialized
medicine, and other improvements to our quality of life.
And this is what I mean by the existential crisis
underlying the alleged existential threat of climate change.
According to the Washington Post, in July, Saikat
Chakrabarti, who then was Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, admitted that “the
interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate
thing at all.” The Post reported that, in a meeting with Governor Jay
Inslee (D., Wash.), Chakrabarti said, “Do you guys think of it as a climate
thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy
thing.”
Climate change is not the hoax that some claim it is. But
to the extent that it’s a crisis, people like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and
Warren want to use it as an excuse to radically transform the American economy
and political system along lines that have less to do with climate change and
much to do with their ideological animosity to the status quo.
And when the fight against climate change conflicts with
their fight for “social justice,” it’s climate change that takes a backseat.
The existential threat is the excuse for fixing the
existential crisis of the American Left.
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