For several years now, it’s been clear that the Biden administration has been thinking about officially declaring a “climate emergency.” Beginning on the day Biden took office, several politicians have floated the possibility — and some have gone further than that.
The Democrats’ leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, publicly called on Biden to make the declaration within a week of his inauguration. And ever since then, there have been articles and deep-dives in various outlets, including Politico and The New York Times, suggesting that it’d be a really good idea to essentially go to war with the weather.
As of now, as his term winds down, Joe Biden has resisted all of these demands. Biden has said that he’s “practically” declared a climate emergency — signaling that he likes the idea — but he hasn’t actually gone ahead and done it. Even so, the demands have kept coming for several years — which is a little odd, when you think about it. The definition of the word “emergency” is: “a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.” The very fact that you have to deliberate for three years about whether something is an emergency would seem to indicate that it is not.
So this is the most important point: There is not, in fact, a climate emergency — and everyone pushing this hysteria understands that very well. But they will never stop pretending this is an urgent crisis, because the moment they do that, they lose some measure of control over our lives.
The Biden administration’s flirtation with this whole idea also tells you something else, which is that the White House sees an emergency climate declaration as a potential nuclear option to deploy when they get really desperate. And with pretty much every major poll showing Donald Trump leading Joe Biden, that desperation has understandably now set in.
Right on cue, a climate emergency is now back on the agenda. According to Bloomberg, the White House is now seriously considering the idea in the near future. CBS recently spoke to a Columbia climate professor about this. Watch:
So the administration, by declaring a climate emergency, would supposedly unlock massive new powers over the economy and especially the oil industry. Of course, the administration has already done everything it can to gut the energy sector in this country. They’ve suspended new oil and gas leases; they’ve scrutinized and shut down many existing permits for the development of fossil fuels; and, just for good measure, they’ve sold off much of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, just to make sure we’re as reliant as possible on foreign energy.
What Biden wants to do now is to adopt new powers to destroy the economy, which exceed the powers he’s already employed. Specifically, these new emergency powers would potentially include the ability to ban all crude oil exports, indefinitely. Right now, we export millions of barrels of oil per day, accounting for tens of billions of dollars in revenue. All of that could disappear overnight in the event of an emergency climate declaration. Additionally, the Biden administration would be able to kill all new oil and gas drilling on more than 10 million acres of federal waters. They’d also be able to cut overseas investments in fossil fuels and greatly reduce imports and exports of fossil fuels.
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That’s according to various media publications that have looked into the emergency powers already. But the truth is, once it declares a national emergency, the federal government can pretty much do what it wants. The courts give the alleged “experts” vast and completely undeserved deference. There are no guardrails in a national emergency. Everyone knows that after experiencing the COVID lockdowns (which, of course, were the pretext to the coming climate emergency). There were never any consequences for those lockdowns or mandates. There hasn’t really been any reckoning with the destruction those policies wrought on our lives. There’s been no accountability. Nobody even seems interested in talking about it. So now they’re doing it again. And make no mistake: If they can force the entire country to stay at home because of a virus — including young people, who are at virtually no risk from that virus — then they can absolutely restrict every single one of your freedoms in the name of “saving the climate.”
But just in case you needed confirmation, you can always look north to our perennially embarrassing neighbors in Canada.
Several years ago, Canada’s government declared a national climate emergency. And just to drive the point home, several major cities within Canada, including Vancouver, declared their own climate emergencies. At the time, the idea behind this emergency was to enable the Canadian government to take steps to reduce the country’s carbon emissions — even though the entire country of Canada essentially emits zero carbon compared to the rest of the world. The whole country could commit mass suicide — which they’re sort of in the process of doing — and it would have no impact on global carbon emissions. Even so, Canada enacted a bunch of carbon taxes that made life even more expensive for its citizens.
It’s worth noting quickly — although I’ve made this point many times before — that even if you buy into the idea that carbon causes climate change, there is nothing that the U.S. — much less Canada — can do about it.
As Zach Weinberg pointed out this week, China and India comprise the vast majority of carbon emissions in the world. The U.S. accounts for less than 15% of carbon emissions, and we’re falling fast. Canada is well under 2%. So the whole idea of taxing carbon to reduce emissions and save the planet was always a scam, even if you subscribe to the Left’s theories on climate change.
But it was never going to stop there. Again, once you declare an emergency, without any clear way to solve it, things will continue to escalate. Give the government vast, undefined powers, and rights will continue to erode until they’re all gone. As Milton Friedman said, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” And Canada, once again, is a perfect example.
Earlier this year, in the name of saving the climate during this supposed emergency, Canadian legislators introduced a bill to suspend freedom of speech. Canada’s NDP party — which is a key part of the coalition keeping Justin Trudeau’s government in power — introduced legislation that would actually make it illegal to speak positively about fossil fuels.
Yes. That’s not an exaggeration. This legislation would make it illegal to express positive opinions about fossil fuels, in any context.
As Canada’s National Post states:
An NDP bill is seeking to criminalize the promotion of fossil fuels, and prescribe jail time even for Canadians who say scientifically true things — such as how burning natural gas is cleaner than burning coal. .. [the bill] goes well beyond merely banning advertising by oil and gas companies. … Violate this as a regular citizen, and the act prescribes summary conviction and a fine of up to $500,000. Violate it as an oil company, and the punishment could be as strict as two years in jail or a fine of $1,000,000.
Even after reading this article, I still couldn’t believe it, so I pulled up the text of the bill. And the text of the bill indeed says that,
It is prohibited for a person to promote a fossil fuel or the production of a fossil fuel… (b) in a manner that states or suggests that a fossil fuel or the practices of a producer of the fossil fuel industry would lead to positive outcomes in relation to the environment, the health of Canadians, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples or the Canadian or global economy.
So basically, private citizens who say anything good about fossil fuels can be fined $500,000, which is enough of a fine to completely bankrupt 95% of Canada’s population for life. You can’t even say the Indians would benefit from fossil fuels, even though many Indians in Canada would disagree with that statement.
To be clear, this is not one rogue politician introducing this bill. Canada’s federal Minister of the Environment and Climate Change has said he “welcomes” the bill. And various members of Canada’s public health establishment have endorsed it.
Take a look at this press conference from the NDP announcing this legislation. It’s like something out of a satire film, but it’s real. It’s not overstating things to say this is the single most demented press conference to occur in the Western world in at least the last decade. At the very least, it’s in the top 5. Here’s just some of it:
Apparently, everyone knows their kids can’t even go outside in Canada without choking on fossil fuels. That’s the position of a member of Canada’s parliament, who again, is trying to put Canadians in prison — and bankrupt them — if they disagree with him.
I listened to that whole press conference, even though it was excruciating because they spoke in French for half of it. It was a half-hour of Canadian public health “experts” and politicians saying that they’re right, and everyone who disagrees with them needs to be jailed. Keep in mind, everyone promoting this legislation got every conceivable aspect of COVID wrong. But they have no shame, only a desire for more power. So they’re back. Everything is a “public health” emergency now, even the weather.
The press conference concluded with a question-and-answer session with Canadian media, which was even more surreal, somehow. None of the journalists seemed outraged in any way by what they had just heard. Instead, they mostly asked procedural questions about when the bill might come up for a vote. In fact, one reporter even asked if Russia was helping the fossil fuel companies spread disinformation. If you want to lose all faith in Western democracy, I recommend you go to YouTube and pull up the footage from this press conference yourself. It’s almost unbelievable.
The point of talking about Canada isn’t to suggest that we should care about Canada. That would be absurd. The whole country just pretended that sewage sites were burial grounds for children, in order to justify burning dozens of churches. This is not a serious or ethical place we’re talking about. And the Canadian people have mostly given up on their country and on themselves, so good riddance. Let the country burn. This is what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard.
But Canada does have one purpose, which is to serve as a bellwether of what we can expect in this country if we get too complacent. If we allow Joe Biden to declare a “climate emergency,” then he won’t simply dismantle the energy sector in this country and destroy our economy. Give him a few years, and he’ll throw you in prison if you complain about it. (Or at least, his successor will). Those are the stakes.
It’s not worth going through how climate activists have lied for generations about the “emergency” — I’ve done that many times before, as have many others. At this point, they know they’re liars, which is why their ultimate goal is to silence you. That’s why Joe Biden wants to declare his climate emergency. Unless we want to end up like Canada, which is a fate worse than death, we have to prevent it from happening.
