Will Vermont legislators continue with the lies, or heed the call to pivot?

by Rob Roper

After decades of spewing – and funding — climate alarmist rhetoric of the most virulent kind, multi-billionaire Bill Gates shocked the Left by admitting what some of us have been saying all along: Yeah, the climate is changing (it does that), but it’s totally manageable and not a crisis. So, y’all just chill the heck out. Or, in Gates own words,

There’s a doomsday view of climate change that goes like this:

In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us—just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature.

Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. [Emphasis added]

Yes, yes, it is. And, so, Gates new “Truth #1”…

Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization.” [Emphasis added]

One can imagine Greta Thunberg’s head exploding right about now. (If she’s even still paying attention to the climate cause. Maybe she’s ahead of Gates in making a “strategic pivot” away from a spluttering movement.)

To be clear, the climate hoax isn’t to say the climate doesn’t change over time. It does and always has. The hoax is in regard to the Left’s proposed – and fraudulent — solutions. The condition may be real; it’s the snake oil salesman’s so-called cure that’s the scam. Suffering from floods? Ol’ Doc Blittersdorf’s magic elixir is all you need! Act now and get a taxpayer funded discount on your first bottle of this miracle cure! How much does it cost? You can’t put a price on saving your life! Act now or die! Works just as well on extended droughts, heat waves, cold snaps, and hang nails!

What Gates has come to realize (again, something that some of us have been pointing out all along) is that the Left’s climate change agenda prioritizing greenhouse gas reduction, like a lot of snake oil cures, is more dangerous and harmful than climate change itself, especially for the most vulnerable populations. In the Microsoft founder’s words,

Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease….

And the resources sucked away from policies that alleviate things like poverty and disease in favor of, say, subsidizing wealthier people’s electric vehicle purchases and taxing lower income people’s transportation and home heating fuels to do so, making the poor even poorer, is, well, obviously stupid and inhumane. This is, when you dig into his arguments, the point Gates is trying to make: current climate policies are anti-human, which is why it is not surprisingly that they are increasingly unpopular with humans – who vote.

Gates’ new advice to those who will listen is if you want to save the climate agenda at all, ixnay on the emissionsyay and start focusing on policies that improve the humans’ quality of life. He cites this example:

…a few years ago, the government of one low-income country set out to cut emissions by banning synthetic fertilizers. Farmers’ yields plummeted, there was much less food available, and prices skyrocketed. The country was hit by a crisis because the government valued reducing emissions above other important things.

Like making sure their citizens don’t starve or go broke trying to feed themselves. The Vermont equivalent to this would be the Clean Heat Standard’s goal of reducing emissions by jacking up the cost of home heating fuels so Vermonters to freeze to death in their homes.

And here’s where Gates is really going to send the climate cultists into apoplexy. What’s the effective solution for a changing climate? ECONOMIC GROWTH! Gates points to research showing that the most effective way to prevent climate related deaths is far and away economic growth and wealth creation, noting as an example that access to air conditioning powered buy cheap, affordable energy will save more people from global warming than lowering emissions. “So the faster people become prosperous and healthy, the more lives we can save.” And POP!, there goes Bill McKibben’s head.

All good! But here’s the problem for Gates and those on the Left who may be coming to similar conclusions: they’ve spent the last quarter century terrorizing and brainwashing an entire generation from pre-k to college graduation that if we don’t act quickly to reduce emissions the planet will spontaneously combust – and the youngsters bought it. They have the anxiety mental health issues to show for it.

Odds are, despite the fact that this unforeseen amnesty from a sentence of suffering and death should be received as good news, the yutes won’t respond well to, “About all that stuff we told you to spend your lives emotionally investing in, creating a moral foundation for yourselves, and in many cases building your education and careers around…. Yeah, that was all a bunch of malarkey. Time to refocus!” And then, of course, there’s the snake oil salesmen who depended on these lies to market their products. So, Gates can expect some pushback.

I suspect the current majority in our legislature will fall into the brainwashed camp, loath to admit their complicity and incompetence in this whole fiasco, and will not be joining the vanguard of making the strategic pivot away from the wasteful and ineffective emissions reduction policies and toward those of rapid economic growth. But maybe those in the minority will be inspired take this opportunity to be more aggressive in pushing such an agenda. A growing majority of normal people, including Bill Gates, will be on their side. Not that that dude is by any definition normal.

Related to the Gates issue, here’s a bonus video of ANR Secretary Julie Moore reminding the Climate Council that there is no way to meet the Global Warming Solutions Act mandate for 2030 if any of the revenue derived from carbon taxes, fees, etcetera is used to mitigate the impact of higher fuel prices for low-income Vermonters. (And they likely won’t be able to meet them anyway.)

Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. This article reprinted with permission from Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics, robertroper.substack.com