The Practical Equivalent of War

Climate Change activists often call their cause "the moral equivalent of war." It is, in fact, the practical equivalent of one waged against the America and the West.

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Benjamin Zycher of the American Enterprise Institute considers the oft-stated rationale behind a raft of litigation against "Big Oil" and finds the idea that it is premised on "saving the planet" wanting:

Image by Jason Blackeye, via Unsplash, license.

There is the further matter that that "Big Oil" is so small a part of global industrial operations that elimination of the [Greenhouse Gas (GHG)] emissions from consumption of the fuels produced by those producers would have virtually no impact on climate phenomena. Whatever the current or prospective harms caused by GHG emissions: Can anyone argue seriously that Big Oil is responsible for all of them? What about other fossil-fuel producers -- Aramco and the Russian oil and gas industry and many others come to mind -- and agricultural activities, cement production, coal output, ad infinitum? That the litigation is being aimed at only the five or so large producers actually vulnerable in American courts speaks volumes about the pecuniary, ideological, and political imperatives actually underlying this effort. Or is it the goal of the groups promoting such litigation to win these suits and then take aim at one economic sector after another, thus imposing massive losses upon the U.S. economy writ large?

One could just as well ask the Democratic Presidential candidates -- who all favor the Green New Deal or something similar -- why none of them has discussed bombing the coal plants in India or China. If, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has put it, her crusade is the "moral equivalent of war," why the lack of saber-rattling? (Just to state the obvious, I regard fossil fuels and the freedom to use them as essential to human prosperity and have no desire to see anyone anywhere forcibly deprived of their many benefits by tyranny or war.)

While we're on the subject, it amazes me that nobody calls out leftists like Ocasio-Cortez on war metaphors: They frequently use these, despite their constant protests against war as such, especially wars which are being fought based on the idea (mistaken or not) of national self-defense.

Despite appearances, the left is not as inconsistent as it sounds: It's just that they're coy about their actual enemy. A policy (or litigation strategy) that will obviously cripple the American economy is not just the moral equivalent of war: it is the practical equivalent of one waged against America. And protestations on the part of foreign powers that they have "clean" plants and have pledged to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions would (of course) be treated as cause not to begin the bombing in five minutes.

It is not so much that leftists really believe the foreign leaders as that they aren't truly serious or careful about their stated crusade. (Elizabeth Warren is both anti-fossil fuels and anti-nuclear. In other words, she opposes the only power source that can currently come even close to replacing fossil fuels in a reasonable time frame. This is lies somewhere on the spectrum between dictatorial and genocidal, at best.)

They are focusing all of their efforts on stopping America and the West generally from using the fuels we depend on to live and flourish. This fact deserves much more attention than anything they have to say.

-- CAV