The ‘Climate Crisis’ Isn’t an ‘Emergency’ – The American Spectator

The Biden administration’s climate change policies are based, in part, on flawed studies — such as those from East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit — while ignoring historical reality. They have caused significant environmental and financial harm. It’s about to get worse.

On Sept. 20, the United Nations will convene a summit “to accelerate action” for the climate crisis. The White House is being urged to declare an “emergency,” which would give it extraordinary powers to further its goals. (READ MORE: Climate Activists Have Exploited Our Children)

President Joe Biden doesn’t have the authority to declare a national emergency over climate change, according to U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and other Republican lawmakers who have reintroduced the Real Emergencies Act in the Senate. A companion bill has been introduced in the House by Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas). These measures would prevent the potential emergency declaration.

Scientists Say There Is Little Historical Data Supporting Climate Change

The White House’s hyperbolic environmental language and alarmism do not appear to be justified. In her 2015 testimony before Congress, climate scientist Judith Curry reported:

There is considerable uncertainty and disagreement about the most consequential issues: whether the warming has been dominated by human causes versus natural variability, how much the planet will warm in the 21st century, and whether warming is dangerous.

She noted that scientists disagree about climate change, and the “historical data is sparse and inadequate.”

There is increasing evidence that claims of a dramatic human impact on climate are based on flawed and biased data, particularly ignoring natural causes of climate change and the reality that the planet has alternately warmed and cooled in the past, far in advance of any human influence. Temperatures in Europe were warmer 1,000 years ago than they are today. Temperatures cooled significantly during the “Little Ice Age,” which about 800 years ago and from which the planet is still recovering. (READ MORE: Montana Madness)

Researcher Gregory Wrightstone writes:

There is a legitimate and worthy argument that is being made by scientists like myself that, while the additional CO2 is likely having a slight warming effect, the majority of the rise in temperature is due to a natural rise in temperatures since the end of the Little Ice Age…An unbiased opinion may legitimately be that the current warming is a welcome respite from that harsh era. Prior to the current politicization of climate science, the warming periods were called “climatic optima” because humans flourished during those times…The temperature rise we are witnessing today is neither unprecedented nor unusual.

Policies to Reverse ‘Climate Crisis’ Hurt the Environment

A case may be made that climate change policies have resulted in considerable harm. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) notes that, due to the White House’s policies, inflation reached its highest rate in 40 years:

Everyone who has been to a gas station or paid their electric bill has seen firsthand the astronomical costs associated with Biden’s anti-American energy agenda. When fuel prices are high, it impacts the lives of American families. The world runs on oil and gas, and to ignore that fact cripples our economy.

One of the worst fires in American history in Lahaina, Hawaii, was caused, in part, because the local utility company devoted its funds to “green” projects rather than to the maintenance of its local facilities. Americans, under siege from massively increased energy prices, are finding daily life unaffordable. (READ MORE: Davos Man Becomes Beijing Man: The World Economic Forum Meets in China)

Russia has financed its Ukraine war by selling energy that the U.S. no longer supplies. Throughout the U.S., birds are being decimated by windmills. Along the nation’s eastern seaboard, whales are washing ashore dead allegedly due to offshore green-energy projects. Politically connected firms take vast amounts of taxpayers’ dollars for climate projects, then go bankrupt. Tracts of land are devoted to solar power, taking them from wildlife and useful projects.

Much of the climate change movement is more concerned with advancing socialist economics than protecting the planet. There is significant irony in this: Nations with leftist economics tend to have far worse environmental records than their capitalist counterparts. 

Frank Vernuccio serves as editor-in-chief of the New York Analysis of Policy and Government.