As We Endure Through COVID-19 Lockdowns, Dems Gear Up for ‘Climate Crisis’ Authoritarianism

If you think I overreacted in calling Donald Trump’s invocation of the Defense Production Act a dangerous precedent, consider Barack Obama’s comments regarding Trump’s rollback of Obama’s auto mileage regulation. 

In Obama Compares Climate Change To Coronavirus, Rips Trump Rule Change, the Daily Caller’s William Davis reports:

Former President Barack Obama compared climate change to the coronavirus pandemic and criticized President Donald Trump for rolling back one of his administration’s key climate initiatives.

“We’ve seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic,” Obama tweeted Tuesday. “We can’t afford any more consequences of climate denial. All of us, especially young people, have to demand better of our government at every level and vote this fall.”

On April 8, 2020, the New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized:

President Donald Trump on Sunday again pushed an unproven therapy for COVID-19, defying the advice of Dr. Anthony Fauci. It came two days after he said he will not wear a mask, defying the advice of the CDC. Science doesn’t much impress the man.

His response to the crisis has left America lagging behind the rest of the world.

When he’s criticized on this, he attacks.

Do you notice a pattern? It’s exactly his response to the climate crisis. Ignore the science. Ignore any wisdom from outside our borders. Attack the critics.

My emphasis.

Criticism of Trump is certainly within reasonable opining. But, there it is again; tying the COVID-19 crisis to the “climate crisis.” The two are not analogous. The first is a genuine emergency. The second is a political tactic of the criminal socialist Left. Expect the drumbeat to grow ever more intense. 

On March 31, I wrote:

The Democrats’ Green New Deal already envisions a World War II-like central mobilization of the nation. The chance of them getting away with the authoritarian scheme has now gone from slim to likely, in my view. Who could stand in the Democrats' way, and on what grounds, after a Republican president sets the precedent of stretching the DPA to the point of virtually unlimited usage? Under cover of a health crisis, Trump declared himself “a wartime president,” and justified his invoking of the DPA as "essential to the national defense"!!! If the Defense Production Act can be invoked in response to a health emergency, then why not in a climate emergency, or any event that any future president decides to attach the emergency label too? 

It appears the Democrats have gotten the message loud and clear. If ever a lawsuit to challenge the constitutional validity of a federal action were warranted, Trump’s invocation of the Defense Production Act to fight the health emergency without first getting congressional authorization, this is it. 

Mirriam-Webster defines emergency as “an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action." COVID-19 is a true emergency. Climate, on the other hand, is “the average course or condition of the weather at a place usually over a period of years as exhibited by temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation.” [My emphasis]

However the actions taken by our public officials is ultimately judged, clearly some immediate governmental action to the pandemic was warranted. But the severe restrictions on our social freedoms due to COVID-19 is an immediate action that will be short-lived. Nobody likes the current emergency restrictions on our freedoms. But the unfolding of the pandemic, its progress, and its inevitable end can be tracked by all on a day-to-day observation. The restrictions are sufferable because the current pandemic is a true emergency with an observable beginning, peak, and diminution. In theory, anyway.

But “climate emergency”, on the other hand, is a dangerous and disingenuous contradiction-in-terms. Climate change takes years, even decades, to ascertain. Taking immediate, freedom-crushing action on the erroneous basis of a climate “emergency” (or “crisis”) would last for years and years. As we wait indefinitely for climate results, an entrenched dictatorship will take hold. It would be the end of freedom. And it would be a huge hit to our prosperity. As Alex Epstein put it bluntly in a recent interview, "Just as we're seeing [many of us] be [temporarily] poor by the COVID-19 lockdown, we would see [all of us] become permanently poor with the Green New Deal." It would be the end of America in all but name. The stakes are enormous.

Related Reading:

Did Trump’s Defense Production Act Invocation Clear the Way for the Democrats’ ‘Climate Crisis’ Authoritarianism?

‘Climate Crisis’: The Dem’s Path to Totalitarian Socialism

Related Viewing:

Obama Draws Exactly the Wrong Lesson on Pandemic Preparedness--Alex Epstein