In 1970, not content with “May Day” let alone “Arbor Day,” the Left demanded “Earth Day” be celebrated. Per the Museum of the City of New York:
Earth Day united various constituencies and agenda—from elementary school anti-litter campaigns and college campus ‘teach-ins’ to mothers who sought cleaner air, protesters against pesticides, and proponents of population control—under the banner of ‘a future worth living.’
And after more than a half-century of Earth Days, what is the result?
“The earth is on fire and we’re all going to die soon,” cried out the nine-year-old daughter of U.S. Representative Katie Porter (D-Calif.). Porter revealed her offspring’s anxiety when asking Greta Thunberg (avocational climatologist-Sweden) about the emotional toll of climate change (as Rolling Stone’s Peter Wade reports). One might ponder the emotional toll of using one’s child as a prop for political messaging. But being a leftist means never having to say you’re sorry; only that your opponents should be sorry for being racists.
When this Gen Xer was growing up along with Earth Day in the 1970s, the corporate leftist media’s playbook was growing as well. Consequently, there were dire warnings through the media that if the policy demands of the environmentalist movement articulated during Earth Day festivities went unheeded, the world would be confronted by a new Ice Age. A typical headline was this from the Los Angeles Times: “Is Mankind Manufacturing a New Ice Age for Itself”?
While my parents didn’t indoctrinate me with the fear that the earth was freezing and I was going to die soon, perhaps they were stealthier in guiding their unruly offspring: why did my brother and I suddenly need to learn to skate? Perhaps we should have pressed them: “What’s the deal with the sudden upgrade from galoshes to snowmobile boots?” But we didn’t. And, tragically, we were condemned to live a childhood free from climate anxiety.
Just as it is today, the corporate leftist media then was pushing the New Ice Age narrative for the political advantage of the Left. Indeed, studies have revealed that, at the time, nearly two-thirds of scientific studies predicted warming temperatures over the same period of time. Why the disconnect? Because in the 1970s, the population and our national political and economic power was still concentrated in America’s northern clime. The dispersal of all three toward the sunbelt had yet to fully manifest itself. Today, it is more politically advantageous to claim that Americans will suffer from warming temperatures than to claim that Americans will suffer from falling temperatures, in no small part due to this geographic shift.
Ironically, then, acting with their customary duplicity, the corporate leftist press had actually hamstrung their own ability to credibly advance the present climate change agenda, as the media’s past warnings of a new Ice Age are constantly thrown back at them. It is, perhaps, why the Left has changed from using the phrase “global warming” to “climate change.” The earth may or may not warm, but the climate (a.k.a., weather) is always changing. This is also why the question is never answered: what will climate change success look like—other than socialism, of course?
And, no, this is not hyperbole. Once again, let’s check in with the Museum of the City of New York to examine the aim of the climate change con artists: “Many observers . . . have suggested that this pandemic is practice for addressing climate change, forcing whole cities and nations to make drastic changes and to think big about how to help the most marginalized and vulnerable.”
So, if you liked the government’s COVID lockdowns, you’ll love the government’s climate change “drastic changes.”
Yet, there is another reason why climate apocalypticism is escalating, warning us that the end is nigh in less than 12 (or is it 11?) years; and why we must destroy our economies by 2030. You see, science is a process not a destination. Oftentimes, the established consensus is ultimately disproved by—if one is honest—disfavored voices with the intellectual honesty and personal temerity to question it. What if the present “consensus” is mistaken that the earth is not going to continue to warm absent the adoption of drastic measures—i.e., socialism? What if science reveals that there are natural factors that will lead to . . .
A new Ice Age?
By 2030.
Hey, isn’t that the climate cult’s date certain for global warming doomsday? What a coincidence . . .
Gen X, it’s time to dig out our snowmobile boots.