​The Real Climate Change Tipping Point That We’re Approaching

Women holding signs were seen at a convoy protest in Vancouver, B.C., on July 23, 2022, to show support for Dutch farmers protesting the government's climate change policies. (Vivian Yu/The Epoch Times)

Commentary

For years—actually, several decades now—we’ve heard warnings from those predicting the catastrophic effects of climate change that Earth is fast approaching a tipping point.

For climate catastrophists, the so-called “tipping point” refers to an average global temperature beyond which Earth gets so warm that we plunge helplessly and irreversibly into an era of ever-increasing climatic disasters. According to this belief system, the only possible chance the human race has to avoid climate hell is to drastically reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that we release into Earth’s atmosphere by using fossil fuels.

As it has turned out, years and decades of dire predictions have gone past and an environmental apocalypse continues to remain beyond the horizon. While adverse weather events periodically batter various regions (as they always have), global disaster remains imaginary—a scary specter that exists only in the minds of those who’ve created the myth or who’ve been propagandized to believe the myth.

In short, no climate tipping point is looming over us. Poll after poll has shown that climate change ranks at the bottom of things about which Americans are concerned. This is inevitable, as more and more people realize that trying to radically reduce the total amount of CO2 emissions is no more rational than Don Quixote’s obsession with windmills but is sure to reduce our standards of living.

Americans are becoming increasingly aware that dire climate predictions are based primarily, if not entirely, on flawed computer models that are inconsistent with empirical data; that the climate change cabal is all about political power, not scientific truth; that groups of dozens, hundreds, and thousands of scientists reject climate change alarmism, deeming it a corruption of sound science; that humans are winning the war against an ever-changing climate; that while the socialistic United Nations perennially tries to browbeat the United States into crippling our economic progress by suppressing the use of fossil fuels, it steadfastly refuses to criticize the Chinese Communist Party for continuing to pursue policies that increase CO2 emissions, even though Chinese emissions far exceed anything the United States has ever done; and that increasing the concentration of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere has had several benign and immensely beneficial consequences, including a massive greening of the planet, longer growing seasons, increased agricultural yields, and fewer temperature-related deaths.

The real tipping point that we’re approaching is the one when the American people will realize that they’ve been hoodwinked by an aggressive political agenda and will cry out, “Enough! No more!”

Americans are getting increasingly fed up with an overbearing government that wants to outlaw gas stoves and put kill switches in cars so that “the authorities” can take away freedom of movement.

Americans will grow tired of the electric vehicle fad as they find their range too limited (especially in colder climates and on sloping roads) and the recharging process too time-consuming, and because of the prospect of governments telling them not to recharge their vehicles because of local or regional power shortages in the electric grid. What kind of government tells people it wants them to buy a certain kind of car and then tells them, “Oh, by the way, we don’t necessarily want you to drive them”?

For sure, Americans are becoming increasingly concerned about the reliability of our nation’s power grid. Half a century ago, brownouts and blackouts in major American cities were virtually unknown. Today, due to the government-mandated shift to intermittent sources of power generation, blackouts and brownouts have increased in frequency, and the grid may reach its own tipping point at which there isn’t enough power being generated from fossil fuels or nuclear to keep the grid stable and on line. Americans don’t want to de-develop into a third-world type of power grid.

At some future tipping point, I expect Americans to rebel vehemently against wind energy. Not only do the rotating turbines create atmospheric undulations and subsonic resonances that harm humans (headaches, sleep problems, tinnitus, irritability, anxiety, nausea), they also kill huge numbers of bats and birds, and they will pose an existential threat to the right whales in the Atlantic if current plans to erect windmills off the east coast come to fruition. And that says nothing about the problem of where to dispose of turbines when they wear out and have to be replaced every 20 or 30 years.

The way inflation has ravaged millions of Americans over the past couple of years undoubtedly will dampen enthusiasm for continued government subsidies to the climate catastrophists’ preferred energy sources—wind and solar—when cheaper fossil fuels are available in abundance in our country, if only Uncle Sam would quit hobbling and persecuting domestic producers.

Americans will increasingly realize the folly of demonizing carbon dioxide. Those of a certain age will remember when mandatory catalytic converters were installed in our automobile engines. The purpose? To convert poisonous carbon monoxide into harmless carbon dioxide. All Americans should be reminded of a fundamental fact of life: CO2 is the basis of the food chain. Plants subsist on CO2; plants, in turn, support animal life, and both plants and animals feed human beings. CO2 is not a dangerous toxin, but the elixir of life. It’s good for us.

Americans will also rebel against the over-zealous attempts of progressive ideologues to implement their Green New Deal. If we’re resentful today of kill switches on cars and the banning of gas stoves, imagine how exercised we will be when governmental Green New Dealers tell us we’re going to have to “retrofit every building in America,” “overhaul transportation and agriculture,” “clos[e] all gas stations,” “replac[e] or retool tens of millions of vehicles that travel by land, sea, or air,” “replac[e] all power plants that use fossil fuels with wind and solar,” etc., etc.

I can’t predict when the tipping point against climate change catastrophism will be reached, but it will come. Millions of Americans will rebel against a dictatorial government imposing a top-down centralized plan that will erode personal liberty and societal prosperity. The bigger danger facing us today isn’t the ever-changing, unpredictable climate; it’s a political agenda that seeks to regiment our lives in the name of an illusory climate emergency.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.