More than a quarter of adults aged 18-29 believe that they will need to make “major changes” in their personal lives to fight climate change. They may be correct, but not for the reason they may think.
“Climate change,” which typically refers to “long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns,” has been blamed for severe summer heat, wildfires, tropical storms, and essentially any other weather phenomenon that has negative impacts.
“Global warming,” the popular phrase utilized just before “climate change,” became the new buzzword and has been highly debated among scientists and politicians for several years. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the primary source of global temperature monitoring, and it has come under scrutiny in recent years for “poorly managed sensors” and inaccurately high readings.
As TPUSA previously reported, some organizations have “accused NOAA of placing monitoring stations in places that artificially raise the temperature, such as asphalt parking lots within large metropolitan areas. Scientists have explained these ‘inconsistencies’ in recent studies, stating, ‘Cities have grown up around stations, and some weather stations are not ideally located. All of these issues introduce inconsistencies into the temperature record.’”
Despite this, 63% of Americans believe that climate change is a current threat that will worsen within their lifetimes, while 30% of young adults believe that “major changes” will need to be made in their personal lives in the name of fighting new weather phenomenons, according to Pew Research.
When asked who has the ability to stave off climate catastrophe; however, a majority (55%) of Americans say that energy industries and large corporations hold the lion’s share of the responsibility, while a minority (27%) believe that individual responsibility plays the largest role.
Unfortunately, those who feel that individual Americans will be required to sacrifice the most may not be entirely wrong.
Americans have already been encouraged to purchase electric vehicles and replace their gas stoves, yard equipment, and tools; but soon, there may not be much of a choice. California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington have each introduced plans to phase out the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. This is bad news for motorists, road-trip enthusiasts, vehicle manufacturers, those who have already lost billions on electric investments, and the electric grid — which simply is not prepared to support the demand of an all-electric roadway.
Aside from commuting concerns, several residents in California have also experienced “Flex Alert” notifications, requesting that they voluntarily reduce their power usage to prevent a regional electric blackout. In Denver, an “energy emergency” during peak usage prevented 22,000 residents and Xcel Energy customers from changing the smart thermostat in their homes for several hours. TPUSA reported at the time, “The city of Denver made it a goal to run entirely off of renewable energy by 2030, and Xcel Energy aims to have net-zero emissions by 2050.”
For more than 50 years, climate “doomsday” alarmists have warned of global disaster unless humans make radical and costly overhauls of developed civilization. Every cataclysm imaginable has been predicted, from global famine and the “population bomb,” to new ice ages and even severe drought that would leave Earth’s oceans bone dry. Despite the endless predictions from scientists and “green” activists, “none of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true,” as the Competitive Enterprise Institute points out in a lengthy piece detailing all of the now-bunk predictions.
This piece first appeared at TPUSA.
