Pushing the Green New Deal (Fox News Alert!)

“To fully address the threat of climate change and move towards the goal of global net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the United States should advance specific policies and champion collaborative initiatives….” American Conservation Coalition—Campus

Fox News viewers are being subjected to a slick advertising campaign by the American Conservation Coalition–Campus (ACCC), a group “giving conservatives on campus a voice on the environment.” 

“We work with existing groups on campus to promote a free-market approach to clean energy and conservation,” their pitch goes. “By working with elected officials and activists, our student leaders are working to change the narrative on conservative environmentalism and facilitating important dialogue on critical environmental issues.”

Conservative? As in rejecting climate alarmism and Malthusianism in favor of sound science, humanism, and policy realism?

Conservation? As in market conservation—or government conservationism via energy taxes and mandates?

Free market? As in rejecting carbon taxes and special subsidies to politically correct energies? In reducing, not expanding, existing government intervention?

Clean energy? As in natural gas, reformulated gasoline, and clean coal? As in infrastructure minimalism from dense, storable, portable mineral energies—not infrastructure maximalism from industrial wind turbines, solar arrays, EV batteries, and biofuels?

Exactly not. The whole idea of ACCC is to assume, not debate, climate alarmism and the need to phase down-and-out carbon-based energies. Yet natural gas, oil, and coal are the very energies that consumers naturally choose—and taxpayers do not need to subsidize.

ACCC, which intends to “move towards the goal of global net-zero carbon emissions by 2050,” is promoting the message of the Democratic Left, the climate platform of Joe Biden and the yet-to-be-selected Green Party candidate, as opposed to the freedom-forward platforms of Donald Trump and of Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen. It is energy statism versus energy freedom. 

True conservatives, including students involved in this organization, should check their premises and debate these questions.

1. What are the areas of unsettled climate science and exaggerated climate alarm?
2. What are the benefits of carbon dioxide for the ecosystem, as documented by the CO2 Coalition?
3. What is the temperature (and sea level) effect of a given level of a U.S. carbon tax?
4. What are the environmental problems of industrial wind turbines, solar arrays, biomass, biofuels, and large-scale battery production?
5. How does “government failure” and “analytic failure” compare to the alleged “market failure” of free-market energy decision-making?
6. Will the climate/energy crusade end in eco-fascism?

To ask these questions is to turn the whole mission of the American Conservative Coalition–Campus on its head. One can only hope for open student inquiry and activism of a different kind.