Peter Murphy
cfact.org
Peter Murphy is Senior Fellow at CFACT. He has researched and advocated for a variety of policy issues, including education reform and fiscal policy, both in the non-profit sector and in government in the administration of former New York Governor George Pataki. He previously wrote and edited The Chalkboard weblog for the NY Charter Schools Association and has been published in numerous media outlets, including The Hill, New York Post, Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal.
So many of the same politicians who incessantly warn about end of democracy are deploying the most undemocratic means to impose their global warming (aka climate change) agenda on American society and worldwide, resulting in economic bedlam.
There are indications, however, of pushback, including from the often craven and pusillanimous private sector of large companies that have played along with the global warming pursuits of the Biden administration and international organizations.
The issue of projection used in psychology stems from the famous 19th century psychologist Sigmund Freud. Psychology Today describes it as “the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal or object…attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another… [and] unacceptable feelings or impulses to someone else to avoid confronting them”.
We see this trait from politicians on a daily basis, starting with President Joe Biden, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and so many others as they warn of “threat(s) to our democracy” and that democracy is “in peril” from their political opponents.
Those who project psychologically are not necessarily self-aware. Global-warming politicians are behaving much worse by hypocritically and deliberately accusing their political opponents of doing what they, the accusers, practice.
Start with the urge by many in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader and political lifer, Chuck Schumer from the once Empire (now declining) state of New York. Shortly after President Biden assumed office, Senator Schumer and others urged him to declare a “climate emergency” to bypass the legislative branch and impose new mandates and restrictions on the private sector economy. Such action would have been worse than Covid mandates since at least Congress and state legislatures voted to grant emergency powers to the executive branch.
While President Biden never formally declared a climate “emergency,” his administration is effectively implementing one through executive order and agency regulation without congressional action or pre-existing legal authority. Examples abound.
The federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last spring issued regulations to require publicly traded companies to assess “climate-related financial risk” as part of their reporting to the SEC, which has no statutory authority to mandate. Federal agencies overseeing the banking system are doing the same by targeting the portfolios of banks and investment firms that finance oil and gas development in order to starve the traditional energy sector so vital to Americans’ living standards.
The Biden administration also is pressuring the World Bank against supporting oil, coal and natural gas projects in developing nations to rather force renewable energy. This is especially hypocritical policy, espoused by the tinned-eared “Climate Ambassador” and Martha’s Vineyard resident, John Forbes Kerry (who married into the wealthy Heinz family fortune) and former vice president and fellow centimillionaire, Al Gore.
Cheaper and accessible fossil fuel energy is the surest and quickest way to reduce poverty in the developing world and build a middle-class economy – just as occurred in the US for the last 150 years. Instead, the US is seeking to exploit such nations, the outcome of which relegates their populations to perpetual poverty in a manner worthy of colonists of centuries past along with exacerbating global starvation due to higher food costs.
Undemocratic, harmful climate policies go beyond the Biden executive branch in Washington. Earlier this month, Democratic officials from 13 states who are in charge of public pension funds issued a letter chastising their counterparts in other states for not steering their pension investments to fulfill “environmental, social and governance sustainability goals”. ESG investing ultimately is about imposing climate policies and other leftist causes, which serves to shortchange middle-income and working-class pensioners, rather than attain the greatest possible return.
The outcome of these undemocratic global warming policies has been to tangibly harm the economic well-being of Americans, which follows similarly absurd and pointless climate efforts in Germany, Britain and other European nations. Energy prices have skyrocketed in Europe and the US as a result, even to the point where many Germans are literally cutting down trees to heat their homes.
There are growing indications that the Biden administration’s global warming imposition has gone too far with the private sector and the public at large. Earlier this month, US Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a leading climate fanatic in Congress, demanded to know if corporate executives had policies against funding new oil and gas projects. Jamie Diamond, the long-time head of JP MorganChase, responded, “Absolutely not. That would be the road to hell for America.”
It’s about time someone in corporate America stood up to such climate folly. There are further hints of more backlash.
The American Banking Association, albeit tepidly, raised concerns with so-called “climate-related financial risk” mandates from the Biden bank regulators. Also, major investment banks, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, have threatened to withdraw from the United Nations climate financial alliance due to legal exposure from its overly restrictive de-carbonization commitments.
Beyond corporate chieftains, the American public will have a chance in the mid-term elections this fall to push back against the global warming agenda that has no impact on global climate but results in higher inflation, devaluation of retirement savings and decline in living standards.
