If the liberal commentariat is right, the world is about to end now that President Trump has reportedly made the decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.
“If Trump pulls the US out of the #ParisAgreement he will be committing a traitorous act of war against the American people,” liberal billionaire donor Tom Steyer, who once reportedly choked up over the importance of raising taxes on the wealthy, shrieked on Twitter.
”@POTUS’ decision to support a dirty energy agenda & pull out of #ParisAgreement is a grave threat to our planet,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on the social media platform, which seems to make everybody dumber.
“Abandoning the #ParisAgreement would be catastrophic for our planet, for ourselves, and for our kids,” California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris added.
Speaking of the possible U.S. withdrawal from the Paris agreement in early May, former President Barack Obama said of all the problems facing this troubled world, climate change is “the one that will define the contours of this century, more dramatically perhaps than any other.” The former president also claimed he made the issue “a top priority” during his two terms in the White House.
All this a bit much.
Democrats like to claim global warming is the greatest threat the world faces, but when Obama swept into office in 2009, with liberal majorities in the Senate and the House, this supposedly existential threat was nowhere near the top of the Democrats’ agenda.
Instead of spending his political capital trying to save the planet from global warming, Obama used the momentum of his first eight months into office on less existential issues, like pushing a large stimulus package and a healthcare bill that increased the amount of people covered by insurance from roughly 84 percent of the country to about 89 percent by the time he left office — and that’s if you use the term “covered” very loosely.
Look, whether you agree with the details of Obamacare or not, passing a major healthcare bill is no small achievement for a president, particularly a Democratic president whose party has been pushing for the government to get more involved in healthcare for decades. But if you believe global warming is literally going to subsume significant parts of the East Coast and represents a grave threat to our very existence on this planet, as many Democratic politicians seem to, then increasing the amount of people covered by health insurance by 5 percentage points seems like it should be a secondary issue.
The truth is, while some activists truly believe global warming is the existential threat the Left’s fear-mongering rhetoric claims it is, few Democratic politicians really do, at least judging by their actions. If they believed the threat matched their alarmist rhetoric, they would focus on almost nothing else.
Rather than condemning the world to a thousand years of darkness, Trump’s decision to scuttle the Paris Agreement will more likely help Democratic politicians raise a few thousand dollars apiece, or more, from their liberal base.
Jamie Weinstein (@Jamie_Weinstein) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He hosts The Jamie Weinstein Show podcast and is founding partner at JMW Strategies.
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