Ignoring the real inconvenient truth
My junior Senator thinks the sky is falling...again.
I got out of work, came home and let the dogs out - no mean feat given current circumstances - and saw on social media that Senator LBR* had this to say about a recent decision by the Donald Trump administration.
By claiming climate change and the pollution that causes it aren’t a threat to Americans, this administration is giving big polluters a green light to make our air and water dirtier and our communities sicker as a result.
Make no mistake: this endangers all our communities.
Of course, pointing out that a 1.5-degree Celsius increase in temperature translates to less than 3 degrees Fahrenheit - the difference between a 90-degree day and a 93-degree day - brought all the people who questioned my attitude that we can adjust to conditions out of the woodwork.
Point is that we can adapt. Those who think the sky is falling should wonder why the inconvenient truth wasn't.
Yes, remember when Al Gore showed Manhattan under water?
I think it’s time to explain the truth once again.
Is there climate change? Of course there is. Over a period of centuries, we’ve endured some exceptionally warm spells like the 1930s Dust Bowl and cold times like those endured during the Revolutionary War. In the early 1800s a volcanic eruption made summer a memory for those in New England for a couple years; meanwhile, all this rain we’ve been having could very well be the result of Nature rebalancing itself after a huge volcanic eruption in 2022 produced massive amounts of water vapor.
Given all these natural factors, I’m more in the “climate skeptic” category because there are a certain portion of power-seekers who aren’t above cooking the books in order to pronounce that we must give up our 4x4 trucks with their internal combustion engines and our 72 degree cool living rooms to plug in some econobox sedan and swelter in 80 degree heat. Nope, that doesn’t happen here.
(To be fair, there are some nice EVs out there, but ask yourself: would there have been a market for them had government not put its thumb on the scale with tax breaks and sales mandates?)
I’m okay with paying a bit of a premium to have a cooler house in the summer, which is why I won’t put in the thermostat controlled by our electric utility. I don’t care how much they’d take off my bill - if it’s 80 degrees in the house my wife ain’t happy, and if she ain’t happy, no one’s happy.
Just in my region, those who believe in the folly that mankind has more than squat to do with the climate are covering previously productive farm fields with solar panels, demanding we muck up our ocean vistas with ugly thousand-foot high wind turbines (with the blinking red lights at night being an unwelcome distraction) and pushing to make every car bought in this state an EV. Looks like I’m keeping my truck because, unless things change for the better and sanity prevails once again, I’m not getting a new car.
So what did they actually do to raise LBR’s ire? Government proposed to revert back to common sense.
At an auto dealership in Indiana, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin released the agency’s proposal to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which has been used to justify over $1 trillion in regulations, including the Biden-Harris Administration’s electric vehicle (EV) mandate. If finalized, the proposal would repeal all resulting greenhouse gas emissions regulations for motor vehicles and engines, thereby reinstating consumer choice and giving Americans the ability to purchase a safe and affordable car for their family while decreasing the cost of living on all products that trucks deliver.
Don’t hold your breath on all this going away tomorrow, though, because I’m sure the environmentalist wackos will be taking the government to court. But this is a step in the right direction, regardless of what those who have been foolishly placed in Congress representing our state may say.
*This is my occasional reminder that LBR stands for Delaware’s Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester. I just get tired of typing all that out.
In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.
It’s really hot in Georgia at this time, but locals say this is the way it used to be in the summertime when the were kids. Yep, climate changes. Always has, always will.
On the exact same page, Michael *salute