Try to imagine how future generations will offer up Mr. Spock-like appraisals of their grubby, long-departed ancestors, and the maddening dependence they exhibited on the range of fossil fuels in use at the time. Almost certainly, future historians will adopt the gratingly superior air of the enlightened; coldly surveying the follies of the ignorant, misguided creatures that muddled through a thankfully bygone era.

 In the twenty-second century (or perhaps beyond,) such an attitude may be understandable. Obviously, any scathing judgments pronounced upon us by our descendants will have the benefit of a great deal of newly-acquired scientific knowledge and discovery not available to us today.

 And that’s precisely why -- if we may hurry back to the present -- such condescension is simply too much to bear coming from the likes of John Kerry and other Climate Change Crusaders. They arrogantly presume a degree of knowledge unknown to even the most brilliant among us, let alone the somewhat more obtuse former Secretary of State. So therefore, Mr. Climate Czar, a suggestion: Until you’ve done some serious time travelling, kindly rein in your pretentions to prescience.

Take a break from the exhaustingly noble job of “saving the planet,” and reconsider the wisdom of the oil/gas/coal industry mercy killing you and your colleagues contemplate. Recognize that the corrosive effects of government-inflicted poverty ennoble no one; not even the “bitter clinger” types whose career paths you wish to re-direct onto a more green-worthy trajectory.

It has been repeated often enough to qualify as a cliché that for some, Leftism is a substitute for religious faith. Overused though it may be, there is nevertheless much merit in that observation. An exaggerated belief in, and reliance upon “following science,” even when there is no great scientific consensus or settled position on a given matter, is typical of that sort of quasi-spiritual devotion. To the practitioner, it lends a patina of rationality to callous, often hurtful, ideologically-driven policies and actions.

But as we’ve seen through the ages with regard to actual religious practice: When powerful beliefs regarding temporal matters are grounded in dubious claims or specious facts, the result will not be enduring truth or justice, but instead superstition, bigotry, and in too many instances, outright cruelty.

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The belief has existed for some time among many on the left that if we impede, obstruct, and ultimately eliminate the fossil fuel industry’s ability to locate and retrieve the various sources of present-day fuels, we will somehow hasten the arrival of a new era of clean fuels and environmental purity. As the thinking goes, Earth’s inhabitants must boldly and bravely forego the short-term economic benefits of relatively inexpensive “dirty” fuels, and quickly transition to cleaner sources such as wind and solar.  At the same time, we’ll need to accelerate development of potential breakthroughs such as nuclear fusion that are still mostly on the drawing board. Much as the desperate vicissitudes of war tend to spur technological innovation and invention, so will the inevitable pain and expense of such a drastic shift turn novel theories into practical solutions.

A risky bet, to say the least; and like most grandiose schemes, it parks the dangers squarely on the backs of the middle and lower classes.

But is this attitude reflective of a genuine commitment to scientific principles? Or is it more reminiscent of the superstitious behaviors of our own distant forebears, who sacrificed animals, and even occasionally human beings, in order to invoke desired outcomes from natural forces beyond their control?

And who qualify as today’s sacrificial lambs? Are they not the very definition of “deplorables,” whose lack of suitable education or training obliges them to seek employment in fields considered environmentally undesirable by their clean-handed betters? In this manner of human sacrifice, the victims are left breathing, but their livelihoods, and perhaps their very futures, grimly expire on the altar. The prospects of their families must almost certainly follow.

Most of them are not serious political players; indeed after 2020, some now see no further point in even voting. So wrecking their lives is a fairly risk-free endeavor when in pursuit of the greater good of bringing us nearer a bright, emission-free future. After all, when that deliverance finally arrives, the vital skills these people possess that now allow us to escape the cold, process and transport food, and power every accoutrement of modernity -- including private jets -- won’t be missed.

The heartbreaking stories of the shattered expectations of summarily laid-off Keystone XL pipeline builders are only the beginning. The cynical pre-election bargain made by the Biden camp in order to forestall an ideological revolt by the Sanders-fronted radical upstarts, assured that the gods of climate change will surely get their due in the new regime. In their turn, geologists, drillers, fracking technicians, refiners and various associated trades and professions can be expected to join the altar queue.

How many years of chronic unemployment can convince the Democrats that genuine progress comes only in its own good time? The post-fossil fuel era will almost certainly arrive at some future date. Until it does, we must always be mindful of the necessity of controlling pollution, and limiting it to an absolute minimum. Despite the bleating of American liberals, the U.S. has been far better at that task than any other large developed nation. We are, and have always been, environmentalists. However, that new and glorious era we seek cannot materialize by mere invocation, or otherwise be delivered to the present by the birthing pains of destructive government interference with people’s right to earn a living. Any more than desperately needed rains can be coaxed from the stubbornly unyielding skies by an impassioned, pleading dance.