Joe Biden announced Monday that carbon emissions threaten "the very existence of our planet."  Biden does not mean that the space rock that is Earth will self-immolate; he means life will die.  No matter what he means, though, Biden is wrong (again).  This post introduces five pieces of evidence showing that the Earth and mankind will survive (although we can always be better stewards of our Earth) and that the green movement is invariably wrong because its focus is money, power, and the end of modern (and especially American) civilization.

During a press conference today, Biden spoke about the need for America once more to subordinate herself to the rest of the world.

Biden: Carbon emmissions threaten “the very existence of our planet” pic.twitter.com/ZM6Ks0dElA

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 28, 2020

Take climate change, for example. The United States accounts for less than 15% of the global carbon emissions. But without clear, committed coordinated approach from the other 85% of the carbon emitters, the world will continue to warm, storms will continue to worsen, climate change will continue to threaten the lives and livelihoods and public health and economics of our existence and our, literally, the very existence of our planet.

I believe in climate change. Life on earth has been grappling with, adjusting to, and surviving climate change since time immemorial.  We live on a dynamic planet, in a dynamic solar system that's part of a dynamic Milky Way.  Occasionally, huge meteors strike, and life dies out, only to start again.

What I don't believe in is anthropogenic climate change.  Humans certainly can change their local environment.  The green glory that is England was once completely forested land.  The lovely half-timber houses in England and Northern Europe came into being because, having cut down most of the trees, builders could make the houses only half from timber, with the remainder being plaster, brick, or stone.

We humans have also dug the biggest holes in the world, created burning mountains of tires, and polluted waterways so badly that they catch on fire.  We can be absolute hell on local landscapes.

To the extent we children of Adam are supposed to be stewards of the Earth and all that live upon it, we sometimes do a horribly bad job.  But I do not believe we can control the immensity that is the climate, and I certainly do not believe that Americans driving their cars will "literally" destroy "the very existence of our planet."

However, the leftists' headlong rush into the Green New Deal and related plans will erase our modern life in America and cast us back to a pre-modern era in which the only energy was from water mills, the sun drying clothes and crops, and humans' ability to harness animals for transportation and heavy labor.  Therefore, I wanted to bring five things to your attention regarding modern environmentalism:

1. Climate "scientists" are planning to use high-altitude particles to block the sun and protect the world from global warming.  If the scientists were educated, they'd know that this has happened before.  In 1816, Mt. Tambora was the last of a series of volcanic eruptions in the Malayan peninsula that all threw massive amounts of particulate matter into the upper atmosphere.  There was no summer, there were no crops, and great masses of people around the world died from malnutrition or malnutrition-related diseases.

2. The Medieval Warming Period increased the world's food supply, allowing the Earth's population to increase.  The start of the mini–Ice Age decreased the food supply.  Those people who didn't starve to death became vulnerable to disease, allowing the Black Death to take off.  You could say global cooling killed up to 50% of the world's population in the mid-14th century.

3. The climate alarmists are consistently wrong.  In 2020 alone, most of their predictions failed.  This is typical.  Just as the people in the year 999 were wrong when they thought the year 1000 would spell the end, the greenies' endless "end is near" rhetoric is just as foolish.

4. The environmental movement has amassed vast amounts of money and power, and it does not have the interests of ordinary Americans — or any ordinary people around the globe — at heart:

5. Michael Shellenberger explains in this podcast that the environmental movement is not interested in improving our current environment.  It wants to return to a pre-modern, possibly pre-human era.  That's why it ignores clean, safe nuclear energy, and campaigns against artificial products that protect the environment.

The bottom line is that, as always, Joe Biden is wrong.  The environmental movement is dangerous, and, while climate change will not destroy the planet, the green movement, given half the chance, will destroy America and the rest of civilization.

Image: Earth on fire by LQD-Denver. Pixabay.