It seems as if every political speech, press conference, budget discussion and on is not complete without some panicked reference to “climate change.” New Jersey has even mandated “teaching” climate change, as if this is some revolutionary new concept. The fact is, climate change has been happening for millions of years for a variety of reasons.
That is why around 10,000 years ago at the end of the Wisconsin Glaciation, our shoreline was 50 miles east of Sandy Hook. Prior to that when dinosaurs roamed the much warmer earth, our shoreline was roughly where Scranton, Pennsylvania is today and most of New Jersey was underwater. Anyone who has ever collected fossilized shark teeth from Poricy Park or belemnites (fossilized squid) from a farm field understands this phenomenon.
Some of the natural occurrences that could impact the earth’s climate include volcanic activity, plate tectonics, tilts in the earth’s axis, sun cycles, increased sunspot activity, and so on. The real controversy lies in the degree of influence that humans have on climate. To say that humans have no impact on climate is as wrong as it is to say that the world is doomed in a few years if the United States doesn’t destroy its economy and kill off its reliable sources of energy by some arbitrary date.
That’s why there needs to be calm, level-headed, factual discussions – not hyperbolic, panic-inducing hysteria. Here are a few irrefutable facts.
The United States has done more over the last few decades to cut and mitigate its carbon emissions than any other comparable nation on earth. Even the Biden Administration’s own, so called “climate czar” John Kerry stated that 90% of the world’s carbon emissions come from outside of our borders.
Technological advances have also opened the door to a number of promising alternative energies to augment our existing systems. Carbon capture systems are also effective ways to incorporate proven energy sources to continue to serve our future energy needs. These are all things that we can be very proud of as a nation.
Instead, we get panic-driven, unworkable policies for New Jersey such as many of the goals contained within the Murphy Administration’s Energy Master Plan and associated legislation that calls for, among other things, the electrification of new and existing housing stock, banning gas-powered vehicles by 2035, and outlawing gas-powered lawn and garden equipment, among many others. This is where the absurdity of the climate debate comes in for the country as a whole.
Instead of focusing on the United States which has done more to address climate change than any other nation on the planet, and who accounts for only 10% of total global carbon emissions, why not focus on the rest of the world to at least accomplish a fraction of what we have already done? Countries like China, India and Nigeria, who alone account for nearly a third of the world’s population, have abysmal environmental records with countless areas ripe for improvement.
Even Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace had this to say about The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], an intergovernmental body of the United Nations: “Their campaigns against fossil fuels, nuclear energy, CO2, plastic, etc., are misguided and designed to make people think the world will come to an end unless we cripple our civilization and destroy our economy. They are now a negative influence on the future of both the environment and human civilization.”
Clearly, everyone wants a clean, healthy environment, along with a strong economy and prosperous nation. Caustic rhetoric, alarmist warnings, self-inflicted, harmful policies and unworkable technologies will only hurt us all. With the rest of the world lagging way behind our efforts, economy-killing initiatives that are largely symbolic, but having zero impact on the environment, benefit no one and distract from the real global problem areas.
