Climate change hysteria has taken over the University of California, Berkeley. Last Friday, The Daily Californian (U.C. Berkeley’s student newspaper) ran six op-eds. Every single one of them pushed the leftist talking points on the topic of climate change. What a coincidence! While it’s good to be environmentally conscious, U.C. Berkeley’s paper was full of wild, overblown, and downright odd statements. Here are the highlights:
“I am losing sleep at night pondering whether or not I will someday want to bring children into a world of environmental catastrophe.”
“Growing up in the era of climate change is like living out that classic nightmare in which you can’t run away. A monster is coming, something sinister, but you can’t move.”
“Children should not have to watch someone idolized from their perspective look down on them and say the fossil fuel industry is more important than their right to breathe, their right to have a childhood, their right to live.”
Any reasonable person would read the above statements and instantly recognize their insanity. Sadly, this kind of climate hysteria, which is undoubtedly overblown, is believed by many young people.
There has been a movement among teenagers to pledge that they will refuse to have children until climate change is appropriately dealt with. What action do these students, who have been indoctrinated by professors, want to see happen? Who knows. Some people will shout that we need to implement the Green New Deal immediately or all humanity will perish. It’s much more that the Green New Deal would wreck the entire American economy, plunge large numbers of Americans into poverty, and also make no real impact on the climate- after all, China emits more carbon than the U.S. and E.U. combined. Policies such as those in the Green New Deal are clearly harmful, but the power-hungry Left disagrees.
Conservative approaches to environmental conservation that are based in facts and proven technology are more reasonable. Conservatives support investing in technologies that will be effective. An example of free market innovation is carbon-capture, a new development that allows for the capture of up to 90% of CO2 emissions from the fossil fuel industry. There is also promising evidence that Carbon-capture, in conjunction with renewable biomass, leads to a carbon-negative state where carbon is actually taken out of the atmosphere. Furthermore, conservatives support the use of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy protects air quality, requires minimal land usage, and produces a small amount of waste. These are all proven ways to further improve the environment without sinking our economy, but unfortunately, the Left ignores realities that don’t advance their own flawed principles. The United States has reduced its carbon emissions more than any other country, thanks to the US free enterprise system.
This display by The Daily Californian is indicative of a schooling system that supports monolithic thought. A quick glance through nearly any campus newspaper will reveal scores of left-wing editorials and coverage. That is in part because college campuses have hired leftist instructors who simply push biased opinions on impressionable minds and then silence conservative voices. It is time for college campuses to return back to places where meaningful conversations can be had, and students of both sides feel free to express their opinions.
