Opinion

Opinion: Daniel J. Vance

If I knew for fact what they said about climate change was true, and their proposed New Green Deal spending would solve the problem, I really would be a climate change activist—and if one, I likely would be their lead gong banger, i.e., alarm sounder, in southern Minnesota. Perhaps even an Ocasio-Cortez doppelganger gong banger.

That gong-banging role has been hamstrung, however. Not by “evidence”—for we all know anyone can manipulate “facts.” I’ve seen “facts” pointing different ways. The issue of climate change in terms of existence and/or severity is crucial because government laws, policies, and taxes addressing the issue will affect every person reading Connect Business Magazine.

For now, I’m a skeptic at least of the sky-isfalling climate changers—and will be until the Disinformation Governance Board at Homeland Security forces compliance. I don’t believe because these climate evangelists preaching doomsday aren’t serious about stopping climate change. If they were, they aggressively would hold the primary culprit responsible. And they haven’t been.

China is that culprit.

From an October 2021 article in Bloomberg News: “China’s companies drove the country’s greenhouse gas emissions above those of all developed nations combined in 2019,” according to research published by the independent Rhodium Group.

Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air also was cited in the Bloomberg article, revealing China spewed 13 billion tons of just CO2 in 2019, while the U.S. emitted 6.6 billion tons. China will soon have about 1,200 coal-fired power plants. The U.S. has fewer than 250.

As for another greenhouse gas emission, methane, China raises 450 million methane-spewing pigs annually (think pig farts), while the U.S. raises 75 million. (The Environmental Protection Agency website says CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide cause climate change.)

You would think climate change activists, if serious about saving Earth, would be arm-twisting China. If believing what they preached, wouldn’t you expect them to be doing much more, such as boycotting China-made goods, leading peaceful protests, lecturing the Chinese government, pressuring U.S. companies to use eco-friendly Chinese suppliers, supporting moving industry back home to a U.S. awash in eco-friendlier natural gas, and/or demanding U.S. tariffs be placed on all China-made goods?

But they haven’t been. For example, in 2019, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said climate change in twelve years Daniel J Vance

FORMER EDITOR

would “destroy the planet” unless humans addressed the issue by sparing no cost. Since China now is most responsible for climate change, where is she? The clock is ticking. If we blame world famines, droughts, wars, and pandemics on climate change—as many activists have—wouldn’t China’s current emissions be the main cause of future famines, droughts, wars, and pandemics?

In his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize speech, Al Gore declared, “We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency—a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst–though not all–of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.”

When AOC, Al, and others begin acting “boldly, decisively and quickly” towards China’s spewing emissions—that may be when I reconsider being a gong banger. Otherwise, their over-the-top rhetoric seems more fiction than reality, much like Winnie the Pooh’s Blustery Day.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Daniel J. Vance was editor of Connect Business Magazine from 1996 to 2015. The opinions of this column are his own.