Bloomberg News is reporting that the Biden administration is again considering declaring so-called climate change an emergency. Although actual evidence for such an emergency is slim, to say the least, supporters believe that a climate emergency declaration would firm up sagging support among young voters who believe that climate change is an existential crisis.
Biden has been under pressure from climate activists since Day 1 of his administration to declare a climate emergency. Climate zealots believe that an emergency declaration would give Biden over a hundred powers to act unilaterally on climate decisions, evading congressional review and, even worse, sidestepping the Constitution in ways that the Founders of this nation never envisioned.
“It might be a good idea for President Biden to call a climate emergency,” said top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) in the days after Biden’s inauguration. “He can do many, many things under the emergency powers of the president … that he could do without legislation.”
At the time, Democrats used Donald Trump’s emergency declaration on the southern border as a template. “Trump used this emergency for a stupid wall, which wasn’t an emergency. But if there ever was an emergency, climate is one,” Schumer said.
Among those “things” Biden “could do without legislation,” climate zealots believe, are stopping offshore drilling and creating draconian limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Climate Depot’s Marc Morano believes that such a declaration would unnecessarily create economic disruption.
“They are doing everything possible to make our country more expensive to live in, disrupt supply chains, create inflation, harm economic growth, and impact our national security,” Morano said on Fox News. “And the Biden administration’s going after the rare Earth mining, oil, gas, at the same time, they’re claiming it’s all for the climate. The climate’s not going to notice one bit, but this is going to hammer Americans. I can’t imagine, other than cheap politics for their environmental base, why they thought this was a good idea six months before the presidential election.”
Remember that last August Biden said he’d already declared a climate emergency, “practically speaking,” at least.
When questioned about it by the Weather Channel, he explained: “I’ve already done that, the national emergency — we’ve conserved more land, we’ve moved into — we’ve rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, we’ve passed a $368 billion climate control [initiative]. We’re moving. It is the existential threat to humanity.”
When pressed about whether he actually made a declaration, Biden vacillated: “Practically speaking, yes.”
But an actual declaration is what climate zealots are hoping for. In some cases, they appear to be threatening Biden to declare an emergency, using their votes as leverage.
“If Biden wants to win the youth vote, he needs to take forceful action on climate change,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the climate zealot organization Sunrise Movement.
Among Sunrise Movement’s most ardent demands is for Biden to declare a climate emergency. “The climate crisis is here and our leaders need to start acting like it. We need President Biden to declare a climate emergency right now,” states a petition that the movement is pushing.
Sixty percent is the magic number for the youth vote that Democrats believe will assure them of electoral victory in November.
“For a Democrat to comfortably win the Electoral College, he or she needs to win 60 percent of the youth vote,” said Harvard’s John Della Volpe. “Biden is in the mid-50s. Can you improve that to get to 60 percent? It’s within reach. But he’s going to have to get younger men and young men of color, younger men who are white, younger men in the suburbs and their urban areas to turn out.”
Politically, at least, declaring a climate emergency might be a good move for Biden, since the climate crisis narrative plays best among the young, who are closest in age to the indoctrination centers known as public schools. Realistically, it would be a dishonest declaration.
Consider the words of over a thousand scientists, including two Nobel Prize winners, who in 2022 loudly declared that “there is no climate emergency.” In their view, climate science has devolved into an almost religious discussion, with faith in climate modeling taking the place of actual scientific observation.
The scientists proclaimed: “To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naive belief in immature climate models?”
On this Earth Day, Morano concluded that a climate emergency declaration is better suited to a more frightening day on the calendar.
“This is truly a Halloween story, not a story for Earth Day,” Morano told Fox News. “This is a truly frightening story, and [Biden] might just be desperate enough to declare it.”
