In remarks captured on video Friday night, Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared the threat of man-made climate change to the threat from Nazi Germany in World War II. She suggested that the U.S. efforts in that war should be seen as a “blueprint” for remaking America’s economy in the environmentalists’ image.
“So when we talk about existential threats, the last time we had a really major existential threat to this country was around World War II, so we’ve been here before, and we have a blueprint of doing this before,” Ocasio-Cortez began.
“What we had was an existential threat in the context of war,” the candidate added. “And what we did was that we chose to mobilize our entire economy, and industrialize our entire economy, and we put hundreds of thousands if not millions of people to work in defending our shores and defending this country.”
Then came the kicker: “We have to do the same thing in order to get us to 100 percent renewable energy.”
According to Ocasio-Cortez, climate change is an existential threat, just like Nazi Germany was. Therefore, America has to rethink its entire economy. The government should nationalize entire industries, directing everything to the goal of “renewable energy.”
In other words, “war socialism” without the war. Ocasio-Cortez later admitted, “It may seem, like, really big. It may seem very ambitious. It may seem very radical … but we are dealing with a radical truth.”
Earlier this month, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a breathless report. In the words of Washington Post reporters Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis, “To avoid racing past warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, that’s 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, over preindustrial levels would require a rapid and far-reaching transformation of human civilization at a magnitude that has never happened before, the group found.” [Emphasis added]
The difficulty is, politically charged groups like the IPCC do not acknowledge how limited the current scientific knowledge about human impact on global climate really is. While it stands to reason that burning fossil fuels may have some impact on the climate, the exact impact remains unknown.
Alarmists claim the science is settled, but prediction after prediction has failed to come true, and the Maldives — which were supposed to be underwater by now — still remain resolutely above the waves. Meanwhile, National Geographic had to retract an unscientific message in a misleading video.
While Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Bill Nye insist that climate change worsens hurricanes, Ph.D. meteorologist Ryan Maue explained why that connection is tenuous at best. Climatologist Judith Curry chose “career suicide” in order to keep her “scientific integrity” among the ever-mounting pressure to conform to the alarmist narrative.
Indeed, alarmists have made extremely unscientific statements — like Bill Nye insisting that human beings are 100 percent responsible for the alterations in global climate — pushing what is effectively a power grab dressed up as a scientific argument.
Meanwhile, companies are already embracing green initiatives to reduce their carbon footprints. Consumers are concerned, and the free market is adjusting accordingly. Politically, of course, this is never enough. The change to green energy has to be mandated, pushed by the government.
Activists like Ocasio-Cortez will continue to insist that America — and the world — is on the brink of collapse, even as predictions fall through. They demand more and more power be handed over to the state.
Now, Ocasio-Cortez boldly compares the climate change debate to World War II. The most effective argument to convince people to surrender their freedoms is a dire threat, especially a war. If Ocasio-Cortez can convince Americans that the battle against climate change is the moral equivalent of World War II, she can justify ever ballooning government control over the economy, perhaps even achieving a “rapid and far-reaching transformation of human civilization.”
Can you imagine a bigger power grab than that?
Watch the video below.
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