By Suzanne Tucker @ Shutterstock.com
Originally posted on October 7, 2022.
Remember when the Covid-19 virus was dismissed as tinfoil-hat lunacy if anyone wondered if it might have leaked from a Chinese laboratory?
Shortly thereafter, reminds the WSJ, experts with scientific standing acknowledged that it was a real possibility to be discussed in earnest. “It’s a bad sign when one side of a political debate demands to cut off the microphones of the people on the other—and the tech censors these days are almost uniformly progressives.”
Humanity and Climate Change
On climate change, the disinformation targets even those people who agree that it’s real: fossil fuels are a problem, but who believes that humanity can adapt? Apocalyptic predictions are overwrought, or subsidies for green energy are a poor investment. Really.
Tech Companies Need to Jump In?
According to Gina McCarthy, until recently the senior White House climate adviser, “We need the tech companies to really jump in,” Dissent, argues the WSJ, has shifted from climate-change “denial” to “the values of solar energy, the values of wind energy.” But as Ms. Climate Advisor adds, “that is equally dangerous to denial.”
The more the public resists, will the next move be to censor more? Blame it on “disinformation,” according to Ms. McCarthy. In other words, argues the WSJ, according to Progressives, “censorship must increase the more the public resists the climate lobby’s preferred solutions.”
If Gina McCarthy’s ideas lose a debate, the cause must be “disinformation.” With statements like that from White House “bigs,” is it any wonder that skeptics of big tech’s power are gaining ground?
The left increasingly wants Silicon Valley to deploy its mute buttons as a way to stifle opposition, especially on climate. If the platforms give in, they’ll be begging the next Republican Congress to rewrite the liability shield under Section 230.
Sen. Josh Hawley proposed a bill in 2019 to make internet sites get a federal certificate proving lack of bias. This is a bad idea, but one that the continuing censorship push is doing its best to popularize.
Shutting Down the Climate Censors?
Coming full circle, the WSJ assumes Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase will go through. But adds the Journal, Musk’s plans for the social site “are far from clear.”
… he (Musk) has spoken or tweeted in the past that Twitter should be the modern town square and should be an “inclusive arena for free speech.”
A good place to send that message would be to shut down the climate censors.
Biden’s Anti-Energy Zealots
At the Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton gives two examples of the “many anti-energy zealots that Biden has appointed to infest every corner of the government.”
The two most prominent are John Kerry, the so-called “Climate Envoy,” and Gina McCarthy, until recently senior White House Climate Advisor.
Then there’s John Podesta, who has just replaced McCarthy in that role. But perhaps even more illuminating are … discussions of a couple of failed Biden nominees, Saule Omarova for Comptroller of the Currency and Sarah Bloom Raskin for Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board.
Choice quotes from Omarova include “A lot of the smaller players in that industry are going to probably go bankrupt in short order—at least we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change” and “The way we basically get rid of these carbon financiers is we starve them of their source of capital.”
Raskin is identified as “a vocal proponent of expanding the statutory mandate of the Federal Reserve to include climate-change considerations in bank-lending practices and risk-management measure” and quoted as saying “Financial regulators must reimagine their own role so that they can play their part in the broader reimagining of the economy.”
Assured of the righteousness of that cause, the Biden team has begun paring back the supply of CO2-emitting fossil fuel output today, decades before the multi-exa- joule-producing low-carbon infrastructure is in place, which will presumably act as a substitute. They have driven us into “the energy transition’s looming valley of death” without a compass, a map, or any idea of how to escape.
Meanwhile, as Mr. Menton reminds readers, the Biden people have spent the last several days “begging OPEC for more production, only to have OPEC announce that it is cutting production instead.”
According to the WSJ, President Biden is planning loosening sanctions on Venezuela to permit the importation of more crude from there.
Warns the Manhattan Contrarian: “If our country were in the hands of its worst enemies, it is hard to imagine what they would do differently.”
Daniel Henninger, in the WSJ’s “Wonderland,” concludes:
It is time to recognize that spending money on the climate has become such a consuming obsession for the Democratic Party that it is putting at risk the recovery of the U.S. economy and national security.
For the Democrats, saving the planet is World War III, IV and V.
No issue or reality will deter Democrats from “demoting every other priority to achieve their climate goals,” continues Mr. Henninger.
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