In his March 15 Sunday Telegram column, “Climate culture change still upstream,” Greg Kesich predicted a billion refugees and an “uninhabitable” planet in just a few decades absent a “turn on a dime” rejection of fossil fuels by the world economy. The solution? Car pooling – maybe we should use it for cancer – and making burning fossil fuels as socially unacceptable as burning tobacco. Such climate change apocalypticism offers a partial explanation of climate change zealotry. But I think there’s more to the story.

Imagine that someone of impeccable credentials on global climate dynamics – like, say, God, or even better, Al Gore – made a pronouncement supported by irrefutable evidence that the Earth’s current warming ( and I do believe it is warming ) is primarily due to natural cycles, which will soon normalize. Would such a pronouncement be met by climate catastrophists with hallelujahs on bended knee, or with devastation at having lost a club with which to pummel conservatives as anti-science morons; no longer able to label America a planetary threat; and with no need for international accords that siphon American wealth?

In short, no more perfect storm, which is what the climate change issue is to the left – a single issue that paints conservatives as stupid, America as evil, and warming zealots as morally superior planet savers. Are they relieved that while they may have been wrong, the world was saved? Or chagrined that the “deplorables” were right all along?

I know my answer.

 

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