About twenty years ago, a very conservative friend of mine had a small get-together for friends. Nearly all of them were also of his political persuasion. I didn’t mind. I was almost there, myself.
I had seen something the rest had not, however. It was the Hardiness Zone map of 2003, which had been prepared by the American Horticultural Society for the US Department of Agriculture. That map had been leaked before its publication, but the George W. Bush administration did not like what it saw in it and refused to let it go to the public.
That was something I found profoundly disturbing. I had been waiting to take a look at the new map because I wanted to know the truth about global warming, and when I saw the map, I could see the proof that it was happening. The area where I live had been in Zone 4, nearly Zone 5, in the earliest maps, but by 2003, it had warmed to the point that it was in the middle of Zone 5.
In case you are wondering, the border of Zone 6 is now one block down the street I live on. That means the average coldest night’s temperature has increased by a bit more than 10°F, and that change has brought about such new things as Lyme disease into the area.
The official reason why the map was withdrawn was that its data was all drawn from a 15-year period, which could make it subject to short term change, and the government wanted a new map based on a much longer period. To my ears, that sounded too much like saying “We don’t want a map that shows what has been going on recently, because it looks like climate change.” I could not support a political party that would deny clear evidence on climate change just because it supports the idea that the idea that the climate was changing. As a relatively conservative voter, I found I had to reconsider my habits in the polling booth.
Chatting at my friend’s gathering, I happened to pronounce the words “carbon footprint” during one of those quiet moments when everybody stops talking at once. I was just loud enough that nearly everybody heard them. Suddenly, the room went absolutely silent, and a nearby man said, “Do you mean you believe in global warming?” It sounded like an accusation.
My reply was “If you don’t accept the idea that the climate is getting warmer, you’re going to bow out of taking part in the biggest business opportunity that has ever come along.” There are better arguments, but that one is great for a conservative. Nevertheless, everyone there avoided the message. I suspect that keeping open to that possibility was more than they could bear. I doubt that any of those people is invested in solar or wind power today. (The host might have been, because he liked the idea of PV microgrids and the independence they could produce, but he died some time ago.)
Recently, I came across an article on a paper published by International Energy Agency titled, “Global energy investment set to rise to $3.3 trillion in 2025 amid economic uncertainty and energy security concerns.” That paper’s title would tell most people what its main message is — the investment. People who read CleanTechnica will be able to read more into it, however, and realize a second message that it clearly has: “China, China, China.”
Why should the United States come in behind China, as I had predicted? I made that prediction based on our refusal for years to be able to look at what was clearly happening around us. We have not been concerned as a nation, and so a group of people who we always thought of as standing in the water in rice paddies, wearing broad conical hats, is way out ahead of us. They are not what they were in the past, and we should not have expected them to be.
There is more to the story, however. Climate change has become clearly dangerous, just as a political party denying its existence has become entrenched. It is called a party of climate deniers, but I think it goes beyond that. The question I think everyone should be asking is, “Do we want to be led by people who deny what reality clearly is?” The present reality is that China has more than half of a market the United States should be able to dominate. China is eating our lunch.
Investments of $3.3 trillion are big, and China is more than half of the market. What can I compare that to? How about the global car market? I did a Google AI search on, “How big is the global car market?” It came back with a slightly larger figure: $4.4 trillion. It used to be that America had that kind of lead in the car market. But China is beating us there, too, because China is making most of the EVs, and conventional vehicles are already starting to decline.
I believe we were so focused on making America great again that we forgot what made America great to begin with. One big thing that made us great is the Constitution, which implies respecting the opinions of others, even if we disagree with them. Another thing is keeping in mind the parable of the Good Samaritan, which says we should look out for one another, even if we have a different religion. Another thing that made America great is the hardworking and courageous immigrants who came here. Yet another thing that made America great was our science and invention — and the schools that supported those efforts. I could go on.
We have been following a man who might be called the Mad Piper of Washington, and following him and his ilk, we have marched out of the biggest business opportunity ever to come to market. He is making us abandon conservative principles as States’ Rights, individual freedom, freedom of assembly, right to due process… Indeed, he has abandoned most of the Constitution he swore to defend.
Shame on us if we let him get away with it.
Image: Statue of Liberty (Pierre Blaché, Unsplash)
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