Syrian President Bashar Assad isn’t in the habit of letting his people die with dignity. That’s evident by the Sarin gas he launched against a little rebel-held town in northwest Syria earlier this month. At his hands, more than 80 men, women, and children suffocated, leaving this world in a putrid mix of their own snot, vomit, and diarrhea. But one tenured professor at the University of Michigan isn’t impressed by that crime against humanity. History Professor Juan Cole still thinks President Trump is way worse.
Writing in The Nation, Cole accuses Trump of waging a more insidious war with a different poison, namely “carbon dioxide emissions.”
Ladies and gentlemen, mark the date and mark the time. Liberal academia has officially reached peak Trump hysteria.
To be sure, the liberal professor admits that the current Syrian Civil War was created by a series of social and political crises. But he places the lion’s share of the blame on a global warming-induced drought. And according to Cole, if Trump’s Republicans really cared about those dead babies “they wouldn’t be trying to spew ever more CO2 into the atmosphere.”
It’s difficult to know where to start with that sort of hysteria.
Begin by dismissing the fact that the drought began under President George W. Bush, continued under Obama, and was over long before Trump. Then forget that Sarin gas is a man-made, Schedule 1 armament specifically condemned by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. And finally, conclude by disregarding the that carbon dioxide is the natural byproduct of our breath.
What’s left? An environmental nihilism no less despicable than the sadism of power-hungry dictators.
While purporting to want to save a life, Cole dreams of a green utopia where “our coal plants, factories, and automobiles had left Mother Nature alone.” But a simple reduction in pollution won’t curb his appetite. No, the professor writes that “we need zero emissions.”
As Cole must know, there’s only one way to achieve his dream. It requires reversing the advances of the industrial revolution and reinstating the barbarities of the Dark Ages. The professor will only be happy when men and women bludgeon each other with rocks and clubs on a pristine planet.
It’s stupid, nonsensical and perhaps a bit tongue in cheek. Above all else though, it’s shameless. Cole used recently dead Syrians as an opportunity to reintroduce his own alarmism. What a jerk.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
