The Emissionary Position
If You Really Want to Lower "Global Emissions," ...
Emissions are the new little black dress. Okay, not new, but in the Orwellian Climate Games, ‘emissions’ is the hot new blonde. Forty years ago, it was CO2 and warming. Forty years later, it still is, but the names have changed to confuse the disinterested. “Emissions” is like “Stuff” assuming responsibility for whatever bad thing they will claim we need to reduce.
And you are emitting. You are ruining the planet. Your diet, lifestyle, mobility, spending, everything (coincidentally) that a centrally planned command-and-control government would want to manage … needs pruning. You cannot be relied on to do it. They must regulate your ‘emissions’ lower or else. Or else what? Nothing, as it turns out, not that what I’m about to share would mean less if there were something.
And that’s the beauty of it. Emissions or not, none of it matters.
India vs Vermont
I like to pick on Vermont because it is just a step to my left (on a map and ideologically, but it is otherwise similar to my own state of New Hampshire).
Vermont went left a long while back and hard left more recently. Democrats are quickly destroying what was left, and while New Hampshire has grown and prospered, Vermont has struggled. The state is drowning under waves of progressive virtue signalling, which includes the insane climate clowns chanting chapter and verse in pursuit of arbitrary emissions reductions ‘cuz Climate Change.
Again, for this scenario to make sense, you can believe in that fantasy as much as you like, but if so, you need to accept the truth I share, engage in meaningful action, and stop punishing your neighbors.
The cost to Vermont and Vermonters of these plans within plans is enormous. Their “leaders” have adopted California air quality regs, but even on a good day, the total emissions they might reduce (if we ignore all the real emissions offshored out of Vermont to build and run the not-very-green renewables they claim to crave) are tiny.
On a global scale, Vermont’s contribution to anything, especially ‘emissions,’ is a raindrop in the ocean.
To mitigate these Vermonters will be made to pay a kingly sum for a pauper's reward—all cost and net-zero gain. That goes for New Hampshire, Maine, all of the New England States, and, while we’re at it, North America and Europe. India is now burning more coal than all of them combined.
Since India doesn’t have the same air quality regulations as the US or Europe, and neither does China, which is burning even more coal, the futility of the economic punishments of overzealous emissions police in a tiny state like Vermont should overwhelm you.
Vermont could burn tires for fuel and still not compete with India on “emissions.”
But wait, there’s more.
While Democrats in Vermont (and those pining away in your state and mine to do the same) crush us with energy inflation, new taxes, burdensome regulations on wood stoves, lawnmowers, generators, and gas stoves, and a future that cannot promise more than intermittent power, India is doubling down.
Post pandemic, the country’s power demand scaled new records on the back of the fastest rate of economic growth among major economies and increased instances of heatwaves.
India saw its biggest power shortfall in 14 years in June, and had to race to avoid night time outages by deferring planned plant maintenance, and invoking an emergency clause to mandate companies to run plants based on imported coal and power.
India is spending another 33 billion to build more coal plants, and that is just the beginning of more. The goal is to lift their people out of poverty and into the improved comfort and security of the second and first world.
To paraphrase Konstantin Kisin, they will not stay poor.
Only China has more and burns more, and neither of them is about to stop and consider what blue-state lefties in the West think except when selling them solar arrays and wind turbines made with open-pit mined rare earth metals manufactured with coal-powered energy.
Ironically, a state like Vermont could do exponentially more to lower global emissions if it abandoned the California standards, banned EVs, wind, and solar, and expanded hydro and natural gas. By eschewing those “green” things, they reduce the real emissions created to make them, likely a far greater reduction than any they could manage locally.
Vermont might also enjoy more reliable energy, lower costs, better growth, more business, and tourism, and it could lower taxes and actually generate more revenue.
Do I need to say that none of that will happen if you keep electing Democrats? You will also need to convince far too many Republicans. It is true, but the global reality is that the pain and expense of these policies won’t even scratch the surface of the problem they insist they are meant to address.
Emissionaries
No one sends the Peace Corps to Westchester or Sara Clara County because these are some of the wealthiest places in America. They go where the need is and so too should those obsessed with emissions. They can call themselves Emissionaries, traveling the globe (in wooden tall ships, presumably) imposing their bizarre neo-western climate values on the nations presenting an existential threat to the entire planet.
Any other action, in any other place, for any amount of time or other people’s money, especially in states like Vermont, makes the politically imposed decline not just meaningless but grounds for lawsuits alleging fraud and domestic abuse.
You are punishing people for less than nothing, or is that the goal?
And I get it. In our increasingly godless world, more people than ever are looking for something to believe in. A cause, a purpose, or some passionate pursuit that they feel will add value to their short time in our world. Thinking that someone else is destroying the planet is a good fit for them. They could play god themselves and pretend to fix it. If that’s you, and you are harassing Vermonter’s (Or Granite Stater’s and so on) you’re doing it wrong. We aren’t the ones whose emissions need to be reduced. We were actually doing that fine on our own. Advances in fracking had filled our energy resources with cleaner natural gas (whose export Joe Biden tried to ban - just like fracking - which would require foreign nations to BURN MORE COAL!).
When they come, climate-narrative-hat in hand, to take money and comfort from you, ask them how many emissions they have reduced in China or India.
The answer is none, which is how much deference you should give to them or their plans for you.
Amen!