Bartender-turned-thought-leader of the Democrat Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (or “AOC,” as the left so affectionately calls her) has turned her considerable intellect to opining on climate change. With the precision that can only come with $100,000 of student loan debt for a dubious liberal arts degree from a party school, she said at a climate forum in D.C. that global warming “will cause the world to end in 12 years.”
To pay for all she wants to do to solve this climate problem, she would like to tax people at the “tippy top” at a rate of seventy percent. Socialism is a creeping normality in the Democrat Party. Keep in mind, Mussolini and Hitler came up as socialists; it’s an easy sell.
If socialism has worked so well for Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba, I see no reason we should not hear AOC out on this one. I think her term “tippy top,” aside from showing her intelligence on all matters economic, is also Dolly Parton’s line of blouses.
Socialism has worked wonders in history everywhere it has been applied. It entrenches the power of brutal leaders like Kim Jung Un and the Castro brothers. And it always leads to provocative questions by the citizens subjected to it, like “Is it safe to eat a cat?” or, “What is the best way to prepare a horse over an oil drum fire?”
As record snowfalls come and the polar bear population is the largest it has ever been, AOC points to so-called “scientific models” that help confirm humanity’s demise in 12 years. These are the same computer models that predicted the Y2K Armageddon and gave sub-prime collateralized mortgage bonds a AAA rating.
The left wanted to ban the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” not so much for its rapey vibe but because it cast doubt on global warming.
Actors with high school diplomas like Leonard DiCaprio lecture us on driving SUVs as he flies super models to his yacht in his private plane. Al Gore’s factually incorrect PowerPoint presentation wins Oscars. I do know one climate change fact: global warming is the number one cause of documentaries.
My skepticism on global warming comes from three reasons:
First, for a long time I lived in Memphis, where the Great Ice Age formed the Mississippi River; the glaciers then melted and moved toward the Gulf of Mexico. This is the reason the Delta is such flat, fertile farmland. The glacial melting lasted from 75,000 to 12,000 years ago — well before Al Gore invented the Internet and SUVs roamed the land.
Second, the same environmental wackos of my youth protested nuclear power as dangerous, thus keeping us from building any new plants for thirty years. From sheerly emotional objections to nuclear power as espoused by leftists, we ended up with all the coal-fueled plants we have now.
Third, to buy into this one has to believe that global warming is really happening (maybe), that it is man-made (unlikely), and that by giving politicians trillions more tax dollars, they can fix it (no freaking way).
Their mantra seems to be that “Everything is worse than you think, but I can fix it.” The murkier and more pretentiously moral the "crisis," the better; they then set out to solve these mythical problems of their own creation: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, acid rain, holes in the ozone layer, Y2K, health care costs, etc. Coastal liberal elites started the drinking only bottled water trend; now they are shocked these non-biodegradable plastic bottles pollute the oceans.
They spend our money, usually with their cronies, to fix the “problems” they sanctimoniously lament. No doubt, problems that do not really exist, like climate change, are much easier to pretend they can solve.
Earth is an amazing place, and no doubt we could all drive smaller cars and pick up our trash, cool and heat our homes less, and leave this place in as good condition as we found it. Capitalism will continue to help with creating efficiencies that will protect Mother Earth.
Earth has been around more than 4 billion years; humans have been driving cars a little more than 100 years, or .000000025 percent of that time. Earth has survived famine, the Ice Age, volcanoes, wars, mudslides, wildfires, locusts, plagues, floods, droughts, asteroids, tsunamis, earthquakes, and countless boy bands as recently as the late 1990s. We will be OK.
Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.
What's your view?
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Why a student of history cannot buy the climate change hype