Judging by the ferocious intensity with which my liberal friends and their ilk on social media are tearing out their hair, they seem even more “not-my-president” hysterical that President Donald Trump killed the Paris Climate Accords.
If you only get your news from the liberal twitterati, apparently Trump’s announcement has caused the spontaneous evaporation of the ice caps. Fires now rage uncontrollably across the plains, and sea levels rose exponentially before he even left the podium. Life as we know it here on Earth has apparently came to a swift, tragic, and untimely end in the style of Hollywood blockbusters.
Give me a break. Once the left is done with their latest Trumper-tantrum, they should give President Trump a big old thank you. Because Donald Trump just saved the planet. And my liberal friends – their histrionics aside, prove exactly why.
I have never seen more universal agreement on Facebook then that of liberals – the vast majority of whom know very little about the Paris Accord – and their newfound commitment to go green. They espouse their newfound commitment to convert their homes to solar and wind power, buy hybrid cars, and only shop with companies using sustainable business practices. They will reduce more, reuse more, recycle more. And amazingly they will do it themselves without any government mandate to do so.
It’s wonderful – completely without the intervention of government, my deeply passionate friends are now choosing to achieve the results they seek by making individual decisions in the free market. Something they could have done all along but didn’t. In other words, their high-minded ranting aside, they were perfectly happy to avoid personal action when it was inconvenient or expensive and let government to crush industries they don’t like, while raising prices and limiting options for all Americans.
Now, though, deprived of the hammer of government to beat everyone else into submission to their climate change cult, these zealots will do more by moving the market to meet their needs. Their own newfound demand will create new industries and new jobs rather than destroying them, drive innovation to lower costs rather than use big-government to distort the market and stifle unapproved innovation. Free market forces will outperform the unfunded mandates and well-funded bureaucracy to deliver change.
Liberals should be glad that Trump removed us from Barack Obama’s unconstitutional acquiescence to the Paris debacle, and stopped the brutal punishment of American industry. Because Trump has enabled the free market to do exactly what liberals want: empower individuals to better the environment.
And the free market is already delivering far more for the environment than any international agreement or government deprivation of rights ever has. Electric carmaker Tesla recently announced their latest product: the “Solar Roof.” These are durable glass roofing tiles that will generate enough solar energy to power a house–and can be installed for about the same price as a regular roof. And it’ll save families a fortune on electric bills. Right on their heels was a competitor, Forward Labs, who claimed to have an even better product: a solar roof that’s more efficient and even cheaper to install than Tesla’s. And competitors will keep competing because the market will provide opportunity.
That’s how the free market works. You make a product that’s cheap, useful, and accessible — and people will buy it.
Contrast to the left’s approach over eight years with an environmental agenda focused solely on expanding government to punish business. The last administration spent billions to prop up (and then bail out) bankrupt “green energy” companies, like Solyndra, who produced expensive eco-friendly gadgets that no one wanted or could afford. The sole winners were the cadre of newly minted government bureaucrats created to manage these programs and the Obama donors whose companies benefited on the back of massive taxpayer losses.
Rather than make green energy cheaper, The Obama administration and liberal allies sought to make everything else more expensive. Higher oil prices, the war against America’s coal industry and the decimation of tens of thousands of American jobs and the families and communities they support. And the net positive result was nothing more than empty buildings of companies who soaked up redistributed taxpayer funds and never achieved anything other than big pay days for Obama cronies.
Despite the left’s best efforts and the constant hysterics from environmentalists, Americans still prefer regular gasoline cars. Our energy still comes from coal, oil, and gas and will until we have a better option. And options will come — when people make a personal choice to do so because it is cheaper and faster and better and cleaner, not because the government mandates everyone comply.
Unlike the government, the free market is having a profound impact on improving the planet, by leading the charge on energy innovation. And the result is private enterprise innovating private solutions that create new industries and jobs and empowering people to make their own personal choices.
Trump did what Obama tried, but failed, to do. And he did so without more taxes, more regulation, and more lost jobs. He did it through the free market.
Once their latest bout of teeth gnashing not-my-presidentism is done, if these liberals actually do what they say and go out and make all these personal market choices, they will prove the point – Donald Trump just saved the planet from the liberals.