Energy use correlates well with a higher standard of living, but we still have to make sure our world is livable. I reject the Leftist notion that environmental policy should be centered around conspicuous, pious, superficial, Instagrammable acts of individual sacrifice or virtue signaling. In caring for our planet, the Left prefers genteel hypocrisy. Lots of talk, no action. Green New Deal, but no compromise or execution. In other words, the exact opposite of the can-do American spirit.
My Catholic friends often talk about subsidiarity, an organizing principle that says matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized competent authority. The emphasis here is on competence. It sounds a lot like federalism. Few of our governmental institutions are at all effective, especially at the federal level. The Catholics start where Aristotle did—with the family, still the strongest institution in American society despite weird efforts to redefine it. Fathers must teach sons reverence for Creation and teach their sons to be gentlemen: gentle and careful with the natural world.
To be out in nature is to love it and to be awestruck by it. We’re hardwired for it. We’re grateful for the careful attention of those before us who had the wisdom to leave us space for the national parks, which continue to inspire generations of Americans. You never forget the first time you see a buffalo or a bald eagle in the wild. I wouldn’t be the first American political populist to champion the greatness of America’s wild spaces. That would be the great Theodore Rex, Teddy Roosevelt. Maybe the natural successor to a Bull Moose is a Florida Man.
From nature, we learn that there are duties that come with being our planet’s apex predator. We have been entrusted by our station to care for all those below us, in much the same way we care for the weak or the sick or the infirm. The hippies speak often of thinking globally and acting locally. Part of loving your neighbor as yourself is loving your neighborhood and protecting it. We have a neighborhood watch. Why not an environmental watch made up of passionate citizens? If each of us took care of a sector close to us, we’d make the world a better place, and more importantly, we’d have fun out of the house. Charity begins at home and so too does conservation.
Unfortunately, we outsource our awesome responsibility to the trial lawyers and bureaucrats who run the Environmental Protection Agency, a bureaucracy that neither protects nor gives the public much agency to solve the environmental problems in their communities. The current EPA should be abolished and entirely reimagined.
To solve a problem, you must first acknowledge its philosophical underpinnings and limitations. For example, one of the critiques of animal rights is that you can’t teach the cat to respect the rights of the dog. I prefer the term “humane” behavior to “rights-respecting” behavior. Humans shouldn’t treat animals poorly, not only because it’s bad for the animals but because it’s bad for humans, bad for our character. Our EPA, by contrast, is an antihuman bureaucracy. It must be abolished before it abolishes the environment itself. We are our best selves when we realize and care about what’s real.
Climate change is real. I did not come to Congress to argue with thermometers, only windbags. There is a scientific consensus that the Earth is getting warmer. There is a moral consensus that we should do something about it. I want to avoid frivolous fights over obvious science, just as I want my neighbors fighting fewer frivolous wars. Serious people take on serious challenges. Climate change requires our attention and our best minds. Assemble the nerds and unleash them. Every one of us walks around with more computing power than we used to land on the moon. What if we brought it to bear building probes, trackers, and sensors to make sure our environments were healthy? We could use GPS to help us navigate to a cleaner, better future.
Our environment is constantly spitting out data. We should analyze it for the public good. From our natural world, our nerds should take nothing but data and leave nothing but the lightest of footprints.
What climate change doesn’t demand is a socialist takeover. Being smarter for our land and people doesn’t require surrender to AOC’s Green New Deal socialist Woketopia. I’ll prove it.
Earlier this year, the secretary of the air force, the secretary of the army, and the chiefs of staff of both the army and the air force testified before the House Armed Services Committee that in real time, climate change is impacting the strategic decisions that our military makes regarding weapons testing, basing decisions, the global movement of people, and high-stakes territorial claims made by our geostrategic adversaries in the Arctic.
Keep in mind, this dire message is coming not from a smelly vegan drum circle banged out on a shit-stained sidewalk in San Francisco or the nutty editorial staff of Mother Jones magazine. This warning is coming directly from the top brass of the United States military—the most lethal fighting force this world has known. Climate change is directly relevant to our national security, and it is relevant to our nation’s border security, too. If you think the situation at the border is wild now, imagine a not-too-distant future of millions of climate refugees putting additional pressure on our nation’s sovereignty—creating a global staging ground for terrorists and traffickers alike. Will we have the will to stop them? Or will we be among them? A failed environment could well be a precursor for a failed state. It usually is.
The question of how we treat our environment is directly related to how we treat our people. It might come as a surprise to many, yet makes perfect sense, that many of the most prominent environmental
