Finley: Climate emergency would be the true crisis

Climate alarmists see opportunity whenever the skies aren’t perfectly blue, the temperatures intemperate and the breezes less than balmy. Any deviation from the norm sends them scurrying to raise red flags and sound warning alarms about the need to "do something."

Take last week’s thick blanket of smoke that settled across Michigan and much of the rest of the country, caused by fires in Canada’s forests and a persistent southern wind.

Before the smoke cleared, the warming warriors were seizing the moment to press President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency. It’s a demand they’ve raised before, but the president has demurred, choosing instead to push through massive spending in the name of battling climate change.

This time, with the visible evidence of their doomsday forecast filling skies and lungs, their hopes are buoyed that Biden will finally pull the pin on the bomb that will blow to bits the principle of individual freedom.

We don't have to guess how an emergency declaration will play out. We just lived through it with the COVID-19 pandemic. Governors used their emergency powers to shut down the economy and society itself. In Michigan, capricious executive orders stripped away the right to have visitors in private homes, buy gardening supplies and go fishing alone in a boat. And a people terrified by the plague acquiesced with barely a whimper.

How much more compliant will they be if they're convinced the survival of the planet is at stake?

Declaring climate change to be an emergency would immediately allow Biden to stop oil exports, ban drilling in certain areas of the United States, restrict international trade and investment in fossil fuels, order a hastening of the transition to renewable energy, dispatch the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make massive investments in vulnerable communities, and direct private industry to shift to the development and production of clean energy technology.

When that doesn't work to stop rising temperatures — and it won't — the emergency powers will be expanded to cover everything from agriculture to zoology. Remember how two weeks to slow the curve of the pandemic became two years of ruining the economy and intellectually stunting our children?

Expect the same pattern. Nearly all human activity contributes to the creation of greenhouse gases, so all will ultimately come under the president's heavy regulatory hand. Nothing seems impossible to imagine. Already, Denmark is dismantling its robust dairy and pork industries in a relentless quest to reduce emissions. America is rushing madly toward an all-electric vehicle fleet with no confidence it can meet the nation's transportation need. Much of Europe has put at risk its ability to heat its homes rather than boost fossil fuel production.

Few decisions will be left to individual citizens who can't be trusted to always act in the best interest of the planet.The powers claimed under an emergency will not be temporary. What are the metrics for ending a climate emergency? When the temperature rise slows? Or when it falls? Either could take decades if they happen at all.

Freedoms forfeited for the planet's sake will never be returned. Lifting the emergency provisions would risk restarting the warming trend.

No steps taken by an American president, no matter how dramatic, can reverse global warming without Russia, China, India and other major polluters doing the same. America will have to strike costly deals with countries that can't be trusted to keep them, and foot the bill.

In the end, the planet will still be hotter, while Americans will be much less free.

I believe in global warming. I don't believe the solution is to halt the unbroken arc of human progress. Saving the planet only to impoverish and subjugate its inhabitants seems a fool's bargain.

Since the beginning, mankind has met every existential threat not by crawling into a cave, but with innovation and adaptation.

If we trust free and empowered individuals to face down any challenge, we will do the same this time.

Twitter: @NolanFinleyDN

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