Army Bob: Rebuttal to editorial on environment

by Robert M. Traxler

Our esteemed editor penned an editorial July 14 concerning the end of all life on Mother Earth due to Americans’ lack of environmental controls and programs. Below is a counter to his exceptionally well written piece. 

He wrote, “As long as we collectively continue to fight Culture Wars and ignore the real problems we should try to solve together, we will be spiraling downward toward doom, whether it’s 2030, 2050 or 2525.”

Perhaps 18 months to “doom”?

There is nothing we as a nation can do to change that. Using today’s data, not five- to 10-year-old data, we produce 5 to 7 percent of the world’s carbon, we can cut out all carbon and the world will still increase overall carbon output. 

Perhaps it is a good idea for those who predict we may be doomed in 18 months to take a breath. If true, there is nothing we can do to stop it, as we as a nation do not control the major sources of carbon. Perhaps some folks who are fatalistic just may end it all now rather than wait for the doom? 

China has more automobiles than we do, and they pollute more per vehicle; the number is increasing in China and our number of operational vehicles is decreasing. China has 1,130 coal-powered power plants, while we have 220. China and India are increasing coal plants nearly two per month, and we are reducing them.

Perhaps the editorial should have been addressed to the folks who outsourced massive pollution to the underdeveloped nations, allowed by the climate change corporations, the United Nations and the entire climate industry. We as a nation do more about climate change than 94% of the world’s population. 

Perhaps it is time we used common sense and not emotion to control carbon. Common sense does not allow shipping oil halfway around the world by super tanker, burning millions of gallons of high carbon diesel when we can move it by pipeline from Canada. A pipeline uses a very tiny amount of carbon producing fuel, compared to a super tanker burning diesel-powered internal combustion engines.

The environmental folks are cheering the shutdown of the pipeline from Canada, but willingly use oil from the Middle Eastern nations and South America? So just how is that common sense? Just how is that reducing carbon?

Perhaps it is time we produce items in our nation with its strict pollution laws and enforcement agencies and not in the third world with its darn near non-existent pollution controls. They have laws in China and India, but do not enforce them. The most polluted places on Earth are not Detroit or even in our nation, they are in India and China. 

The United States is at zero population growth, even negative growth. Progressives like Vice President Kamala Harris, in a speech at Coppin State University July 15, 2023, advocates reducing our population to control climate change. We already are; we have China and India increasing population, China 9.56 million in 2022, India 25 million each year per UNICEF. At the current rate of increase, China and India will increase population by the size of the United States every eight years, perhaps less.

The progressive/socialist movement needs to understand if we are all dead in 18 months, or 7 years or 27 years, it is not that we are not doing enough to solve climate change — it is because others are not. The possibility of the end of all life is because the progressives and the American environmental movement/industry are bailing the sinking ship after the water is over the gunnels. Bailing may make them feel good, but it is accomplishing nothing.

The United States is reducing carbon and population, even with the truly asinine environmental rules like banning drilling and production in our nation with its strict laws, and welcoming drilling in other nations with much less effective environmental controls. Moving oil by ship burns millions of gallons of diesel, but who cares? The Keystone XL pipeline has been stopped, hooray. 

Folks who comment in this esteemed publication accuse me of “throwing up my hands and saying there is nothing we can do.” To them I say, do the math, follow the science, look at reality; we have met the enemy and it is not us. Why we beat ourselves up for what others are doing is puzzling.

It’s time the progressives define the problem and see reality and stop blaming you and I for what other nations are doing. Will they? Not as long as the money is good. My opinion.