There is probably no policy area where the “progressive” left has gone further off the deep end than climate/energy, especially during the Obama Administration. The policies they advocate have simply been insane since they make no economic, scientific, Constitutional/legal or even environmental sense. They make no economic sense because they would seriously decrease US competitiveness, raise energy prices, and restrict US access to its very rich fossil fuel resources when just the opposite policies are needed. They make no scientific sense because the basic science cited by green “progressives” is simply wrong because they are invalid according to the scientific method. They make no Constitutional/legal sense because they violate the Constitution and the Clean Air Act in important ways, particularly with regard to the separation of powers. They makes no environmental sense because they are damaging major environmental values such as the existence of birds and bats and even threatening one of the very bases of life on Earth–carbon dioxide.
Many of these problems are due to the behavior of the Obama Administration in supporting such views. But it is also a result of the irresponsible behavior of the mainstream media and the trepidation of corporate America to take on the green lobby and its ideology. Corporate America provides very little financial or even ideological support for climate/energy skeptics even though their fate is very much dependent on the efforts by volunteers and a very few paid supporters to carry the burden of defending science, free enterprise, and economic progress against the deliberately misinformed green loonies.
Donald Trump’s election victory provides the best opportunity that is likely to occur to push back against the green lobby before they assume permanent control of the climate/energy policy area and with it the continued survival of the free enterprise system in the US and the fossil fuels that provide the energy that make a modern economy function. The “progressive” left is mounting an extensive effort to try to maintain their beachhead to control climate/energy policy, restrict energy use, and impose government control of the energy sector for the benefit of green ideologists and crony capitalists. They are not planning to surrender their beachhead without a long and bitter fight despite their setbacks from the election. But now is a better time to wage that fight than later when they will probably be even more radicalized and more impervious to reason and logic. The Bush Administration tried to disguise its anti-green colors, and all that resulted in was to make the green excesses of the Obama Administration even worse.
Politicians usually try to avoid an ideological fight if they can, but the time has come to wage one since there is no real alternative. Whether the Trump Administration follows through on the Candidate’s good words on climate/energy during the campaign is going to be the real test of the new Administration.
The New York Times may be beginning the process of popping the bubble. It published a piece titled, “Trump’s Climate Policies May Work Out in the Planet’s Favor”. In it, the reporter highlights a recent study by the Breakthrough Institute showing that the rate of deceleration in CO2 emissions was faster BEFORE the Kyoto Treaty than after. There isn’t much new in the Breakthrough Institute piece for people who have been paying attention, but it may be news to many NYT readers and other green fanatics.
Or will Trump get sucked into the swamp?