You often hear climate change described as a global conflict with existential consequences. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once put it, "This is our World War II." It would be interesting to know what survivors of, say, Guadalcanal or the Bataan Death March think of that comparison. But never mind. Let's take the hyperbole seriously. If global warming is a war, who is our enemy? Who are we fighting? First on the list would have to be double agents. These are the people who pretend to be on the side of righteousness but in fact are doing the work of dark forces. During the last world war, people like this were called quislings, after the Norwegian collaborationist leader. They were dealt with harshly. Who are our quislings today?
If you were compiling a list, you'd start with former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, both one of the world's richest men and one of the most visible climate activists. In a recent C-SPAN interview, Bloomberg was asked if he lives a "climate change lifestyle." Bloomberg dodged the question, which is tantamount to answering it. This is a man who travels by private jet and helicopter, between the at least 10 luxury properties he owns all over the world. It's hard to imagine a life of more profound carbon emissions. Bloomberg has personally caused more global warming than entire African states. Yet from listening to him talk, you'd think the real problem was poor people in West Virginia and Kentucky. Bloomberg routinely attacks the coal industry as a driver of climate change. He'd like to close every mine in America, further impoverishing the country's most beleaguered communities. The fight against global warming demands no less, Bloomberg claims. What he doesn't mention is his own lifestyle, which is baffling.
If Bloomberg really thought the future of mankind hung in the balance, wouldn't he be working to reduce his own emissions? Each one of Bloomberg's private flights emits about twice as much carbon as the average American household does in an entire year. We aren't really asking for extreme sacrifice here. How about fly first-class?
Bloomberg's not the only one. Leonardo DiCaprio, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and many other top climate activists exhibit the same behavior. Fortune 500 companies are equally to blame. They have fleets of private planes that ferry around not just the CEOs but all the top managers. The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to 31 of the top corporate, celebrity and nonprofit backers of urgent action on climate change to ask if they would forgo private air travel. Crickets.
If Bloomberg and the other billionaires ranting about global warming were really worried about climate change destroying our planet, it would seem reasonable that they would be willing to put up with at least some minor inconveniences to their high-flying lifestyles, even if only to drive home their seriousness.
Climate activists who are funded and supported by these billionaires, celebrities and corporations are conspicuously quiet about their benefactors' truly massive carbon emissions. If they really cared about these issues wouldn't they speak up? If the earth really hangs in the balance it seems reasonable to expect that they would.
The policies advocated by these leading climate change luminaries read like a left-wing wish list: more regulation, higher taxes, more government and less fossil fuel production. All those things come with costs to regular people. It's hard to convince people to sacrifice, but it's impossible when those asking are totally unwilling to join in. The result: BS detectors going off big time.
In 12, 20 or 50 years, if the oceans really do rise to wipe out entire islands, if the glaciers melt away, if severe storms ravage the planet regularly and entire communities are upended and mankind as we know it is put in danger, the biggest villains won't be Donald Trump and Dick Cheney. They will be remembered as the thickheaded dopes who couldn't get their heads around the seriousness of the problem. The true villains will be those who knew better but were totally unwilling to make even the tiniest sacrifice to lead others by example. Just behind them will be the entire climate activist community that stood by silently while their biggest supporters sent the world a message that climate change is important enough to talk about incessantly but not important enough to require even the tiniest sacrifice.
Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel co-founded The Daily Caller, one of America's fastest growing online news outlets, which regularly breaks news and distributes it to over 15 million monthly readers. Carlson and Patel also co-founded The Daily Caller News Foundation, a nonprofit news company that trains journalists, produces fact-checks and conducts longer-term investigative reporting. The Daily Caller News Foundation licenses its content free of charge to over 300 news outlets, reaching potentially hundreds of millions of people per month.