Climate Hysteria Threatens To Split U.S. Democrats

“The Green New Deal may be the darling of the Democratic Party — but it really divides the Democrats on a fault line, which is more of the elites against the working class Democrats who are concerned about losing their jobs,” said Jessica Levinson, a member of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. —Politico, 1 June 2019

1) Climate Hysteria Threatens To Split U.S. Democrats
Politico, 1 June 2019

2) Bernie Sanders Demotes Carbon Taxes
E&E News, 3 June 2019

3) Climate Hysteria Destroys Social Democrats, Merkel’s Government Faces Collapse
The Independent, 3 June 2019 

4) Cool Aussies: Sceptical Voters Weather The Climate Panic Stirred By Clickbait Reporting
The Australian, 3 June 2019

5) Defeated Climate Campaigners Lick Their Lost Election Wounds
ABC News, 1 June 2019

6) The Paris Agreement Is An Utter Flop
Axios, 1 June 2019

7) We’ve Had Quite Enough Of The Law-Breaking Environmental Fanatics Of Extinction Rebellion
The Daily Telegraph, 2 June 2019

8) And Finally: PC Insanity May Mean The End Of Universities
Roger Kimball, New York Post, 31 May 2019

1) Climate Hysteria Threatens To Split U.S. Democrats
Politico, 1 June 2019

LOS ANGELES — Blue-collar union workers in solidly Democratic California are rejecting “Green New Deal” politics, a possible preview of troubles for 2020 presidential hopefuls in Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

When Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti launched his “Green New Deal LA” plan last month amid cheers from environmentalists, hundreds of jeans-wearing, tattooed union members outside the event chanted “Garcetti’s gotta go” and denounced the move as a betrayal. The Garcetti protest was followed by disputes in the state capital this month over a large buffer zone that would block new oil and gas wells, as well as a massive hydro project near Joshua Tree.

Robbie Hunter, president of the state Building and Construction Trades Council — which represents more than 400,000 workers — says that dozens of his members plan a major “Blue Collar Revolution” demonstration Saturday morning at the California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco, which will be attended by 14 of the Democratic presidential contenders and 5,000 delegates and guests.

The effort aims to send a message that the party is in danger of eroding a critical base if it continues to back the Green New Deal resolution being pushed in Washington, D.C. by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her allies. Hunter argues the measure’s goals could endanger thousands of jobs in the Southern California oil industry alone.

“All it does is do what the Democratic Party seems to be very good at lately — which is export our jobs, while doing nothing for the end game, which is the environmental,’’ Hunter said.

And California labor forces this weekend are also expected to also put their clout behind Rusty Hicks, who heads the Los Angeles Labor Federation — a candidate in a contentious race to chair the California Democratic Party. Hicks has signaled labor’s concerns by signing a letter opposing a move to ban a hazardous acid from refineries, saying it “will lead to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs for local people and cost our region millions of dollars in activity. We cannot dismiss these jobs or look at the women and as expendable: because they are not.”

“The Green New Deal may be the darling of the Democratic Party — but it really divides the Democrats on a fault line, which is more of the elites against the working class Democrats who are concerned about losing their jobs,” said Jessica Levinson, a member of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission and a professor who teaches politics and ethics at Loyola Law School.

Lifelong union members “don’t necessarily want to be retrained’’ for other, greener work spots — “nor is it even possible,’’ says Levinson. She predicts with the 2020 election looming, Democratic leaders will have to wrestle with the fact that “unlike the Mueller report and impeachment and indictment — people vote on whether or not they’re going to lose their job.”

While there’s no chance that President Donald Trump will take California, pushing too far on the Green New Deal could “make it difficult for Democrats to recapture crucial Western states” like Colorado and Nevada — both won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 — “and it would certainly be an issue in states like Pennsylvania,” said Jack Pitney, a veteran California political analyst and political science professor at Claremont McKenna College.

He says there’s a “cautionary tale” for Democrats, who should remember that “West Virginia, until 2000, was considered solidly blue.” Republican strategist Karl Rove, working for candidate George W. Bush, pushed the fact “that the Democratic nominee was Al Gore, author of ‘Earth in the Balance,’’’ a fact that didn’t sit well with coal miners, Pitney recalls.

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AOC’s Green New Deal could have Dems facing blue-collar backlash at polls, some say

2) Bernie Sanders Demotes Carbon Taxes
E&E News, 3 June 2019

When Sen. Bernie Sanders ran for president three years ago, he routinely held up his support for carbon taxes as proof he was more committed to addressing climate change than rival Hillary Clinton.

“I believe we should have tax on carbon and deal aggressively with climate change. That is not her position,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in one 2016 segment of “Meet the Press.”

This time, the long-serving Vermont lawmaker is taking a different tack.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), seen campaigning in New Hampshire for the Democratic presidential nod, has previously supported a carbon tax. Keiko Hiromi/Polaris/Newscom

His 2020 presidential campaign still focuses on global warming, but gone are the regular broadsides over carbon pricing. Missing, too, is any reference to carbon taxes in the climate section of his official campaign website.

Instead, Sanders has chosen to emphasize the Green New Deal when talking about climate change — a shift that underscores how much the politics of global warming have transformed in a few short years. Part of that, perhaps, is a broader decline in enthusiasm for carbon pricing among left-leaning politicians and activists.

What all this ultimately means for the political futures of Sanders and carbon pricing is a matter of debate. But it’s clear the idea has taken a back seat in Sanders’ approach to the 2020 election.

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3) Climate Hysteria Destroys Social Democrats: Merkel’s Government Faces Collapse
The Independent, 3 June 2019 

Angela Merkel‘s government is facing another crisis and possible collapse after the leader of her main coalition partner resigned.

Andrea Nahles quit as chief of the centre-left social democrats (SPD) after a series of terrible election results which saw her party eclipsed by the Greens.

“The discussions within the parliamentary faction and feedback from within the party have shown me that I no longer have the necessary support to carry out my duties,” the outgoing leader said.

Ms Merkel’s conservative CDU group is in coalition with the SPD in a so-called “grand coalition” or “GroKo” – an agreement between the two largest parties to form a government together.

Ms Nahles’ departure potentially opens the door for an anti-coalition party leader – with anyone standing as a replacement likely to come under pressure from the party’s grassroots to quit government.

The SPD has been consistently sliding in the polls since it joined the GroKo in 2013, with the party renewing the pact in 2017 despite losses at federal elections, including to the far-right AfD.

In March last year 66 per cent of the SPD leadership voted in favour of a grand coalition, but since then the party has continued to be punished at the ballot box for its participation in the pact.

Crucially, the party has started shedding votes to the Greens, who beat it into third place in the European Elections and are now polling first place above all the other parties in some surveys.

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4) Cool Aussies: Sceptical Voters Weather The Climate Panic Stirred By Clickbait Reporting
The Australian, 3 June 2019

Chris Mitchell

The word climate is clickbait to the ABC and Guardian Australia in the way the word sex is to the Daily Mail. The left media’s reporting of climate change is so hysterical it is no wonder voters, in what was supposed to be a climate election, rejected Labor’s ambitious, uncosted plans and its prevarication on the Adani coalmine.

First to Adani’s Carmichael project, the banning of which would do nothing to change the temperature in the waters around the Great Barrier Reef, no matter how many times activists falsely claim the mine could kill the reef.

Even those adult voters who were motivated by concern about climate change know there are many greenhouse gases apart from CO2 and almost all of them enter the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere.

Queenslanders knew Adani was 400km inland and farther from the reef than existing coalmines in the Bowen Basin. They also knew other coalmines had been approved by the state Labor government during the federal election campaign.

Pembroke Resources’ Olive Downs mine in the Bowen Basin, closer to the reef than Adani’s project, was approved the Tuesday before the May 18 election. It is about the same size as the Adani mine.

On April 30 Queensland Mines Minister Anthony Lynham told parliament he had approved an expansion of Yancoal’s Cameby Downs mine northwest of Brisbane the week before.

The Adani debate was dumb and you did not need to be a “climate change denier” — a tag meant to cower people into sidelining their common sense — to think so. Queenslanders know coal is the nation’s biggest export commodity at $70 billion a year.

When Sydney tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes created a Twitter stir the day before the election proclaiming, “Coal is dead. The only question is how fast Australia realises this and transitions to clean energy,” Queenslanders’ BS detectors chimed in.

One of the world’s richest men, Warren Buffett, has just invested $US10bn ($US14.4bn) in Occidental Petroleum to back its $US38bn bid for Anadarko Petroleum so he clearly sees a future in fossil fuels.

And while $200,000 a year mining jobs may not seem attractive to Cannon-Brookes from his $100 million Sydney harbourside mansion, they are enticing to families in central Queensland.

Indeed, if coal were dead how would Cannon-Brookes explain the April average thermal coal price of $US86.77 a metric tonne? This is down slightly from the start of the year but remains near medium-term highs and reflects the building of hundreds of new coal-fired plants globally.

Did conservationists really expect cynical Queenslanders to take notice of former Greens leader Bob Brown’s convoy from Melbourne to the central Queensland coalmines or Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg and the regular Friday climate strikes by Australia’s schoolchildren?

Why on earth would adult voters stoke the irrational fears of children? Do climate change alarmist editors really think adults make decisions about jobs and employment based on children’s nightmares? The Guardian may have decided to change its editorial style book to refer to climate change around the world as a “climate emergency”, but many grown-up voters would regard that as leftist hectoring.

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5) Defeated Climate Campaigners Lick Their Lost Election Wounds
ABC News, 1 June 2019

Like many Australians, green groups were surprised by the federal election result.

The Climate Council, Greenpeace, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society all invested significant resources in the weeks leading up to the May 18 poll.

Underlying much of their campaigning was the belief that the majority of voters wanted stronger climate action.

But the results did not seem to bear that out.

Did environmental groups fail to read public sentiment?

And did they, in fact, help the Coalition to victory?

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6) The Paris Agreement Is An Utter Flop
Axios, 1 June 2019

Of top 10 global carbon emitters, not a single one is hitting its climate goals as outlined under the Paris Agreement, per data from the Climate Action Tracker.

Why it matters: Even if every country that’s adopted the Paris Agreement were to meet their pledges, it would not avert the worst effects of climate change.

Driving the news: June 1 marks the 2-year anniversary of President Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would withdraw from the deal. Per the Climate Action Tracker, the U.S., the second-largest world emitter of greenhouse gasses (but top historical emitter), falls under “critically insufficient,” the worst category, in meeting its Paris pledge. […]

Where countries rank: The top 10 emitters are bolded.

Role model: None.

1.5ºC Paris Agreement compatible: Morocco, The Gambia

2ºC compatible: Bhutan, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, India, Philippines

Insufficient: Australia, Brazil, EU, Kazakhstan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Switzerland
Highly insufficient: Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, UAE

Critically insufficient: Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United States, Ukraine

Yes, but: There is no enforcement mechanism under the Paris Agreement to punish a country for missing a target.

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7) We’ve Had Quite Enough Of The Law-Breaking Environmental Fanatics Of Extinction Rebellion
The Daily Telegraph, 2 June 2019

Tom Welsh

There is no point in beating about the bush. The Extinction Rebellion eco “protesters”, who are reportedly planning to shut down Heathrow airport for a day in mid-June and then for another 10 days in July, if their ludicrous demands aren’t met, are threatening what amounts to economic terrorism.

Extinction Rebellion are given too easy a time when the group is threatening economic terrorism at Heathrow CREDIT:  LUKE MACGREGOR/ BLOOMBERG

They plan to fly drones above the airport if Heathrow’s third runway project is not scrapped. It is blackmail, pure and simple: if the result is that planes are grounded, as at Gatwick last year, thousands of people will have their holidays ruined and the economic cost will run into the millions; if they are not, their crime could become mass murder.

No one sane can support such “activism”. Whatever your views on climate change, and the measures necessary to stop or mitigate it, this is not cost-free or even non-violent protest. If I were to threaten to cut the power to the Treasury building, because I consider the tax burden to be an “emergency” and I deem the Government to be insufficiently serious about addressing the scandalous way our money is wasted, I would expect to be stopped from doing so. For some reason, however, Extinction Rebellion believe they should be allowed to use precisely the same arguments to shut down one of the world’s busiest airports.

Why is this the case? To be fair, the police did eventually take a hard line against these people when they blocked roads across London this year. More than 1,000 were arrested, and police chiefs called for the law to be reviewed to ensure that the right to protest does not become a cover for criminal activity. But when I asked an officer at an earlier protest why they did not clear the streets of the Swampy wannabes who were holding up traffic, he said that they had orders not to do so.

There is an embarrassment, a cultural cringe, among politicians about taking on the eco lobby. They have accepted the language of a climate “emergency”. They have bowed and scraped before Greta Thunbergand her unthinking delusion that nobody before her ever cared about the environment. On the Left, but among Conservatives, too, Extinction Rebellion is generally held to have the best of intentions, even if their tactics are to be regretted.

No. Their actions are criminal and motivated by contempt for the rest of us: why else would they be targeting ordinary holidaymakers (and, before that, car and van drivers)? And unless they are stopped, all we will do is give the nod to other, similar “protest” groups, from the radical vegans who regularly invade farms and the pro-immigration activists who have sought to prevent legal deportations, to the anti-free speech vandals who are determined to silence anyone they disagree with.

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8) And Finally: PC Insanity May Mean The End Of Universities
Roger Kimball, New York Post, 31 May 2019

Once upon a time, universities were institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the transmission of the highest values of our civilization. Today, most are dedicated to the destruction of those values. It is past time to call them to account.

People used to talk about the ends of the university and how the academic establishment was failing its students. Today, more and more people are talking about the end of the university, the idea being that it is time to think about closing them rather than reforming them.

Last month at a conference in London, the distinguished British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton added his voice to this chorus when responding to a questioner who complained of the physical ­violence meted out to conservative students at Birkbeck University.

There were two possible responses to this situation, Sir Roger said. One was to start competing institutions, outside the academic establishment, that welcomed conservative voices.

The other possibility was “get rid of universities altogether.”

That response was met with enthusiastic applause.
Sir Roger went on to qualify his recommendation, noting that a modern society required institutions to pursue science and engineering. But the humanities, which at most colleges and universities have devolved into cesspools of identity politics and grievance studies, should be starved of funding and ultimately shut down.

It’s an idea that is getting more and more traction.

In a remarkable essay in Quillette titled “After Academia,” ­Allen Farrington summed up the growing consensus. “We need to stop wringing our hands over how to save academia and ­acknowledge that its disease is terminal.”

Is he right? It is too soon to say for sure. But if so, Farrington is correct that its demise “need not be cause for solemnity.” On the contrary, the end of academia “can inspire celebration,” because it could “allow us to shift our energies away from the abject failure of modern education and to refocus on breathing new life into the classical alternative.”

A huge amount of attention and public anxiety has been expended on the plight of free speech on campus. Every season the situation seems to get a little worse. Guest speakers are routinely shouted at, de-platformed, or disinvited. Students and teachers alike are bullied into ­silence or craven apology by self-appointed virtue-crats in college administrations and among designated victim groups among the students.

But the issue isn’t really, or not only, free speech. Bret Weinstein, a former biology professor, was hounded out of Evergreen State College when he objected to a “Day of Absence” rally that insisted that all whites stay off campus for a day.

Since then, he has been frequently invited to talk about free speech on college campuses. But he notes that the real crisis in education isn’t about free speech. Rather, it is about “a breakdown in the basic logic of civilization.”

Academia is the crucible, the engine room of this rot. But the breakdown of which Weinstein speaks isn’t confined to college campuses. The revolutionary ­intolerance that has made college campuses so inhospitable to free expression and the impulses of civilization has also deeply affected the woke mandarins of social media and Big Tech. It has made serious inroads into the HR departments of the Fortune 500 and elsewhere in the world of business. And it has insinuated itself into the values and practices of most governmental agencies, many of which have yet to meet a politically correct left-wing cause they do not embrace.

The economist Herb Stein once observed that what cannot go one forever, won’t. In the coming decade, we will see many so-called liberal-arts college close their doors. We will also see more alternatives to traditional colleges. Many of these will be on-line. Some will be local, ad hoc ventures. All will be rebelling against the poisonous hand of identity politics.

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