On January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued his Farewell Address, in which he warned that the United States must “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex.” While Ike was right in his assessment of the dangers posed by the military-industrial complex during the early years of the Cold War, a new, more dire threat to our nation has emerged in the years after the conclusion of the Cold War: the rise of the climate change-industrial complex.
As a matter of fact, the climate change-industrial complex, which will be explained below, began decades ago when scientists warned of “global cooling” and the coming of a modern ice age. Eventually, the global cooling “crisis” morphed into “global warming,” which then morphed again into what we now know as “climate change.”
Of course, as anyone who has taken middle-school science classes knows, the climate has always changed, and will always change. However, by adopting this vague, catch-all term, those behind the climate change-industrial complex executed a rather brilliant bait-and-switch. Plus, utilizing the “climate change” narrative has allowed them to connect any and all “extreme” weather events and social justice causes to climate change, even though these connections are loosely affiliated, at best.
Like the military-industrial complex, which referred to the insidious relationship between the military, defense contractors, and government and their aim to constantly increase military spending, a similar dynamic exists today among the climate change-industrial complex.
However, instead of military officials banging the drums for more spending on national defense less we be overtaken by the Soviets, we now have a parade of so-called experts constantly calling for massive spending and the curbing of our fundamental liberties, less we be overtaken by “climate change.” And, in place of defense contractors, who stood to receive massive federal military contracts, we now have a whole host of cottage industries that benefit from the climate change-industrial complex. Of course, the role of government remains the same, supplying taxpayer money to fund these projects and programs while using its vast power to influence the public that such measures are necessary.
But, unlike the almost quaint military-industrial complex of yesteryear, today’s climate change-industrial complex has a far greater negative impact on our overall economy, way of life, and standard of living, while simultaneously threatening our personal freedoms, destroying our environment, and undermining our dignity.
In the name of “climate change,” our political leaders have run roughshod over our core constitutional freedoms, mandating what products we can buy and censoring those who dare to question the “climate change” narrative.
Meanwhile, countless corporations and “experts” have jumped on the “climate change” bandwagon, some for fear of retribution if they do not, with scores of others willingly doing so because they benefit in some form or fashion from the perpetuation of the “climate change crisis.”
Even worse, our government, via public schools and teacher unions, is pushing the “climate change” fearmongering down the throats of an entire generation, creating a giant cohort of future voters and leaders who buy the falsehood that “climate change” is an existential crisis hook, line, and sinker.
In reality, the climate change-industrial complex is nothing more than a Trojan horse, a guise under which the beneficiaries can implement their vision of how society should be “organized.”
Yet, we would be remiss to downplay the degree of the threat posed by those who seek to re-engineer society based on a non-existent climate crisis. If we learned anything from the years-long horror show that was our government’s (and the world’s) response to COVID-19, we should be aware that many in the climate change-industrial complex viewed the incredible overreaction to a virus that posed a threat to a small percentage of the population as a trial run for what is to likely to come should they have their way in the future.
Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, laid bare that he believed “the pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.” This would include, as Schwab put it, creating a new world order “that is more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run. This means, for example, building ‘green’ urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.”
Of course, in Schwab’s vision, this new world order would also mean that people “own nothing,” eat bugs instead of meat, live in cramped “15-minute cities,” abstain from air travel, forgo driving (and owning, of course) gasoline-powered vehicles, along with a hole host of unfathomable sacrifices, all in the name of “climate change.” But, and this is a vital point, you can bet your bottom dollar that this new world order will not apply to those in positions of power, who make the rules, but conveniently for them, do not have to follow the very rules they make.
Before it is too late, those of us who will pay the ultimate price, both in a degraded standard of living and a less free and open society, must push back against the climate change-industrial complex. For if we do not, we may, as Ike warned, let “public policy … itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Photo by Dcpeopleandeventsof2017. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0.
Chris Talgo is senior editor at The Heartland Institute and a research fellow for Heartland’s Socialism Research Center.
