by Lil Tuttle
It was the rage in 1970. A million people crowded into New York's Central Park to celebrate and demonstrate support for a radical new environmental protection agenda.
Mainstream Media covered all the dire warnings, among them:
- Between 1980 and 1989, 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, will starve to death.
- By 2000 there won't be any more crude oil.
Mother Nature had the last laugh. Judging by reports of a growing American obesity epidemic, Americans are eating quite abundantly. And more crude oil deposits have been discovered since 1970 that anyone back then could have imagined. Time, it seems, has a way of exposing the Left's follies.
Earth Day 2016 is a sad day for its true believers. The thrill is gone. They're only going through the motions now.
President Obama won't be in attendance when world climate representatives gather today at the United Nations for a signing ceremony of last fall's Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
Obama's U.S. initiative for the Paris Agreement – EPA's massive Clean Power Plan regulatory mandates – is dying a slow death. Bipartisan resolutions in the U.S. House and Senate rejected the CPP.
States filed a lawsuit against it, and the U.S. Supreme Court may ultimately strike it down.
On Feb. 9, the US Supreme Court issued an unprecedented stay of the Clean Power Plan, halting the implementation of its rules until the suit is settled. The Court signaled what Congress, states and legal experts have been warning: President Obama's climate regulations may ultimately get struck down.
The biggest problem with the CPP scheme is that it costs American jobs — lots of them.
CPP isn't really an environment plan at all, argues Monica Crowley in How the Green Energy Bullies Drive Poverty. It's really a radical global wealth redistribution plan designed to take from industrialized nations and give to underdeveloped nations.
Worse, the poorest consumers in industrialized nations bear the brunt of the costs, pushing low-income consumers into "green energy poverty."
Crowley highlights several examples of how CPP's costs hit the poor and increase poverty (with sources):
- 20% of low-income Americans' income is spent on energy – 3 times more proportionally than middle- and high-income households (AmericasPower.org).
- CPP will increase Hispanic poverty by 26% and black poverty by 23%, and household income will decline by 12 million for Hispanics and 7 million for blacks by 2035 (National Black Chamber of Commerce).
- California's household electric bills run 40% higher than the national average, thanks to state green energy mandates (Institute for Energy Research).
- 1 million California households live in "energy poverty" (Manhattan Institute)
- green energy mandates in Europe caused electricity to grow 42% more expensive over the past 8 years (Eurostat).
And the environmental benefits of the CPP? Almost non-existent, Crowley argues:
Further, the oppressive costs come without significant benefit in terms of public health or environmental protection. According to the Cato Institute, the CPP, for example, will only mitigate .018 degrees Celsius of warming over the next 85 years, or less than two one-hundredths of a degree Celsius by the year 2100.
If you’re so inclined on Earth Day 2016, thank Mother Nature for exposing yet another foolish liberal idea.