From CFACT
By Peter Murphy
Former U.S. Secretary of State and longtime climate change devotee John Kerry made a triumphant return to the UN COP climate summit on its second day with an Orwellian claim that American voters endorsed his climate change agenda.
The American people “made climate change and its exigencies a voting issue,” he said.
A short bus ride away from Kerry’s fantasy world, a panel of corporate business leaders described the challenges for the private sector to implement lower carbon emission targets to meet “climate goals”. The consensus among this panel was that governments must institute “collective action” by mandating such targets on all businesses.
With the Democratic Party roaring back to sizable majorities in both houses of Congress, which hold the power of the purse, Mr. Kerry is right to feel giddy, since one of his party’s agenda items — kept hidden during the election campaign — is to reinstate climate mandates on U.S. businesses and, invariably, U.S. consumers, many of whom voted last week in record numbers.
Well into his octogenarian years, yet still vigorous with a fulsome head of hair (likely fake), Mr. Kerry gaslighted his audience with the mendacious claim that “Americans did vote for clean, affordable energy,” deceitfully declaring they embraced the climate agenda, which is the opposite of affordable.
Mr. Kerry has never let facts, science, or practicality get in the way of his pursuit of climate nirvana on Earth, and no one in the building was going to challenge him, including the supine media.
Last week’s election outcomes were arguably a repudiation of climate policies long championed by Kerry, former Vice President Al Gore, and their fellow climate colleagues in the U.S. House and Senate.
Reputable post-election surveys found that the overwhelming concern of voters was the lack of affordability in the cost of living, which was the theme the Democrats used to defeat President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress and capture robust majorities in both houses. The affordability issue stemmed primarily from high gasoline and food prices, for which the major influences are the Iran war and tariffs.
Climate change did not register as a concern for American voters. Since climate policies necessarily lead to higher gasoline and oil prices to help make “renewable” energy more economically competitive, e.g., by canceling oil and natural gas development and imposing usage mandates on utility companies, it stands to reason that Americans voted against such policies that would mathematically exacerbate their affordability concerns.
Which brings us to the COP31 panel, Leading by Example: Corporate Best Practices for Climate Action, which comprised several private-sector business leaders who discussed ways to “accelerate implementation” of renewable energy to reduce “greenhouse gases … to achieve climate goals.”
This panel at first danced around the implications of achieving such climate goals before eventually acknowledging that reducing one’s carbon footprint with alternative energy sources is “not cost effective [and] no one would do this,” said Emre Kuzu, General Manager of Honeywell in Türkiye. Since cost-prohibitive climate goals cannot be achieved through the free marketplace, “[government] mandates are essential,” he said.
“Collective action is the name of the game here,” said one of the panel’s moderators, an assertion no one on the panel challenged, but all endorsed.
“Collective behavior is very important,” said Murat Tarakcioglu, the chairman of Cargill in Türkiye, the Middle East and Africa.
Agreeing among on climate goals and the need for “action” is free and easy to businesses and nations alike, which is basically what every COP summit celebrates. “Implementation” of climate policies to reduce carbon emissions is something else entirely because it imposes tangible cost increases to businesses, which are passed onto customers.
Addressing the affordability problem in the U.S. starts with lowering gasoline prices and removing tariffs, which will necessitate increasing global supply of oil and natural gas.
By contrast, “achieving climate goals” necessitates government mandates to impose “collective action” to use more expensive wind and solar energy and cut the supply and usage of oil and gas, which will raise their costs.
“Fighting climate change” through “implementation” of climate goals agreed upon at annual UN COP summits is costly and economically damaging, which is why so many nations balk at doing so, and why others (e.g., China, India and the U.S. under the Trump administration) refuse altogether to play along.
The new Democratic congressional majorities, if they echo John Kerry’s delusion to eagerly reinstate high-cost climate policies, do so at their political peril.
Stay tuned.
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