Henry M. Paulson, Jr. should be remembered as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the 2008 economic crisis. He saw to it that favored banks received government bailouts costing the American people plenty. Along with a group of economic experts, he insisted that some financial institutions were “too big to fail.” According to his style of thinking, there aren’t any economic laws; there are only opportunities to increase government domination of the nation’s economic life.
In the June 22nd New York Times, Paulson transformed himself from economic wizard to climate expert. Because he has experience poorly combating an economic crisis, he feels qualified to beat the drums for combating the “climate change crisis.” In his lengthy op-ed piece, he advocated “putting a price on emissions of carbon dioxide — a carbon tax.” He claims that emissions of CO2 by power stations, factories, autos, and other “polluters” are the cause of our planet heating up. The man-made temperature increase, he says, is causing a catastrophic sea level rise, the result of melting Antarctic ice. How great is the threat? He says it may take centuries, but sea levels could eventually rise “by as much as 14 feet.” And all of this extra water, he tells readers, will inundate New York and many other coastal cities.
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Not only will cities be flooded, says Paulson, there will be other “climate-related disasters like floods, drought-related crop failures, and extreme weather like tornadoes, hurricanes and other violent storms.” With this great threat facing him, Paulson has allied with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and billionaire-moneybags-for-Democrat-candidates Tom Steyer in a venture called Risky Business. They plan to influence business leaders worldwide to abandon traditional methods of generating and using energy. Others say these plans will harm the world economy, destroy freedom, and even impact health. Yet Paulson claims of climate scientists and economists: “There is virtually no debate among them that the planet is warming and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible.”
No debate? It seems none exists in the circles where Paulson, Bloomberg, and Steyer travel. But consider what happened to American University’s Dr. Caleb Rossiter. In his op-ed article appearing in the May 4th Wall Street Journal, he suggested that the African continent is being “sacrificed” on the altar of climate change and he termed the fright about man-made global warming “unproved science.” He even had the temerity to cite data published by the UN International Panel on Climate Change to show that there’s no change in the earth’s temperature over the past 20 years. Dr. Rossiter summarized: “Just two days after I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for Africa to be allowed ‘all of the above’ energy strategy we have in the United States, the Institute for Policy Studies terminated my 23-year relationship with them.” Those who object to the fright peddlers and their questionable claims about climate change face being dealt with rather swiftly.
Richard Lindzen is the famed retired professor of Meteorology, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has never in his long career agreed with the doomsayers who point to “global warming” or “climate change.” He stated that the most recent report from the UN “has truly sunk to the level of hilarious incoherence.” And he concludes that there is “nothing to be alarmed about.” Many who insist that mankind’s future will be marked by catastrophic climate change agree with Paulson’s dire assessment. More sensible people stick with the likes of Rossiter and Lindzen.
John F. McManus is president of The John Birch Society and publisher of The New American. This column appeared originally at the insideJBS blog and is reprinted here with permission.
