Cheap Seats 2023 By Rich Trzupek

As If - 02/15

By Rich Trzupek
  Does the left really, REALLY want to save the planet? I have my doubts. Ok, I have a deeply-rooted skepticism based on over 40 years of dealing with these charlatans.
  Understand that I make a hugely important distinction between the ordinary people who get sucked in by the scary messages that the environmental industry (for an industry it is) and their allies in politics and the media force feed the public.
  The aim of the modern snake-oil salespeople could not be more clear. The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the NRDC, etc., and their allies in the media and politics need you to believe that the United States (and most importantly of any nation on earth) is in the midst of an environmental crisis.
  Absent that “crisis” environmental NGOs become increasingly irrelevant and would surely see their funding levels drop precariously. Their very existence – at least at their current strengths – depends on keeping a certain percentage of the population sufficiently frightened, such that gullible donors keep their checkbooks open and available.
  I don’t think you’ll find a Sierra Club fundraiser at your door celebrating the undeniable, provable fact that emissions of conventional air pollution have been drastically reduced over the last 50 years and continue to drop. I don’t think you’ll find liberal politicians or reporters capable of passing along the fact that the US has steadily reduced greenhouse gas emissions since 2008.
  I’m certain you won’t find any of the so-called environmental “experts” on the left admitting that China, and to a lesser extent, India are solely and wholly in control of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere moving forward. The US could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero and it wouldn’t make a whit of difference to global greenhouse gas concentrations if China and India continue on the same path.
  So let’s take a look at some of the things the self-appointed saviors of the planet would actually care about if they actually cared about the environment.
  Three Things Climate Alarmists Could Immediately Do To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions If They Actually Cared About Greenhouse Gas Emissions:
  First, they’d be all in with nuclear. And, in fact, some sincere climate-change worriers have jumped on this particular bus. You want cheap, abundant energy that generates no greenhouse gases? Here’s your sign!
  The idea that nuclear power is somehow “dangerous” would have been thoroughly debunked decades ago in an ideal world where clueless journalists, cardboard cut-out politicians and blinder-equipped academics did not exist. Unfortunately, they do and they have a HUGE influence on public opinion, no matter how dopey, misguided and ultimately unscientific their pronouncements are.
  Since the dawn of the atomic age, we’ve had exactly three crises involving nuclear power. We had Chernobyl, which was an actual disaster, but one that only served to demonstrate the fact that if one counts on government-approved “authorities” to be actually authoritative – as the Soviets did at Chernobyl – it’s only a matter of time until you’ll understand how truly incompetent and dangerous bureaucracies can be.
  Then there’s Three Mile Island, which is basically the disaster equivalent of a fart in church. Far more people have been exposed to far more radiation lounging in their basements than anyone living near Three Mile Island ever experienced.
  Fukashima? The Fukashima complex survived a massive earthquake and accompanying tsunami without a problem. It was only the failure of poorly-located back up generators that caused a problem. And even then, there was no massive death-toll, as the charlatans in the media so confidently predicted.
  Second, environmentalists would be all over combined-cycle power. Combined cycle plants are about twice as efficient as conventional boiler powered plants, thus drastically reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from a power plant per megawatt of power.
  Thirty years ago the Sierra Club was a big advocate of going combined cycle. Now, not so much. Why the switch? Thirty years ago coal was the big enemy and combined cycle plants are powered by natural gas, which they were in favor of at that time. Now that they have decimated coal-fired power production in this country, they need a new fuel to demonize to keep the money flowing in. As the most important and abundant fossil fuel in America, natural gas became their next target.
  Finally, environmentalists would stop focusing on America’s environmental issues – which are really trivial these days – and focus on the third world where environmental controls are largely unknown. Many people living in Africa, for example, heat their homes by burning dung in a hearth. I guarantee you that the fumes they are exposed to on a day-to-day basis are far more dangerous than anything associated with coal fired power in the US.
  But these clowns don’t want to save the planet, they want to protect their cushy jobs and preserve their righteous moral outrage for all to see. They are a blight on modern civilization. We can only hope they’ll find a different planet to save.
  Email: richtrzupek@gmail.com