Ethics Alarms usually avoids the familiar fake news clickbait approach of discussing what might happen, what a President is allegedly considering doing, or worst case scenarios. In this instance, however, I will make an exception.
The reason is evident above. The Biden Administration increasingly is accessing totalitarian strategies and rhetoric. One of its favored abuses of power is weaponizing the climate change hysteria being spread by that cult. There has been rampant speculation that President Biden will use climate change to declare a “national emergency” under the 1976 National Emergencies Act. I view such a move as, first, inevitable with the current Democratic Party, and second, an existential threat to democracy that requires an effective and decisive counter-response, ranging from legal challenges to organized public protests. It’s time—past time, really—to start planning.
John Kerry, the special presidential climate envoy who flies around the world in a jet to tell conferences about the perils of carbon pollution, told the New York Times last week that the debate within the administration isn’t about whether a “climate change emergency” should be declared, but when. Biden, meanwhile, Biden told reporters on July 20, “As president, I have a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger. And that’s what climate change is about. It is literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger.”
I would view Biden’s invoking of the National Emergency Act as the equivalent of illicitly declaring martial law as a means to dictatorial power. As the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice explains, the purpose of the law is “to temporarily enhance executive power during unexpected crises that are moving too fast for Congress to respond.” By that definition, it is ridiculous to call “climate change” an emergency, and Biden rhetoric, as usual, suggests that he is either misleading the public, doesn’t understand what he’s talking about, or both.
By declaring a climate emergency, Biden, meaning the climate change-deranged Democratic Party, could halt crude oil exports, suspend offshore oil and gas drilling, restrict international trade in fossil fuels, order the construction of renewable energy systems in “climate-vulnerable communities,” and use Defense Production Act (DPA) funds to advance the use of “clean energy” technology, like electric cars, which don’t really help the situation at all. Biden could also halt hundreds of billions of dollars in international fossil-fuel financing.
The effects on American business, economy and standards of living would be immense and catastrophic, but here’s the best part: none of this would have any effect on reducing climate change whatsoever unless it was coordinated with the actions of other major industrial nations, like China, requiring the U.S. to hand over an unacceptable degree of national sovereignty to international authorities. Even then, there is no guarantee that such measures would have any positive effects, and no certainty regarding when and how much they would mitigate global warming if they did. The United States, by its actions alone, cannot significantly affect the world’s climate. This means that the entire rationale for declaring a national emergency is false.
But then the real rationale is to gain dictatorial powers to do what the normal political process and the Constitution will not permit.
Biden already stretched the Wuhan pandemic emergency to unconscionable length, using it allow deadbeat Democrats to stiff their landlord indefinitely, for example. The pandemic, however, had an identifiable end. Climate change is ongoing, and the results of Biden’s draconian (yet speculative) nostrums couldn’t be known for decades, centuries, or perhaps ever. As of 2023, 80 emergencies had been declared, with 40 have expired and another 40 are still in effect, renewed annually by a succession of Presidents. Presidents like national emergencies: they allow them to get around that annoying Constitution thingy.
The Brennan Center writes that many of the powers an “emergency” grants to POTUS “seem like the stuff of authoritarian regimes… Given how broad these powers are, it is critical to have adequate safeguards in place to prevent abuse. The National Emergencies Act, in its current form, lacks those protections. It allows the president to declare emergencies with nothing more than a signature on an executive order, and presidents can renew those emergencies every year ad infinitum. Congress can vote to end an emergency, but it effectively needs a veto-proof majority to do so.”
Worried yet? What is particularly striking is that there is no way “climate change” qualifies as a “clear and present danger.” It is definitely not clear: if it were, the climate change fanatics would not be constantly confusing weather with climate and the various models predicting catastrophic results would not be so inaccurate. Nor is it “present”: a present emergency doesn’t have its impact decades or centuries in the future. By that reasoning, the eventual destruction of all life on Earth when the Sun dies is a clear and present danger.
The climate is not an unexpected crisis moving “too fast for Congress to respond.” Climate change moves very slowly. Meanwhile, the cliamte change hysterics cannot say that by their own standards it is “unexpected.” The letter sent to the Justice Department we discussed in Part I says, “As early as 1959, Edward Teller warned the American Petroleum Institute that carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels would raise global temperatures.” They can’t have it both ways; either the “emergency’ is unexpected, or this is something we should have been dealing with since 1959, because an opinionated physicist warned us.
This looming fake national emergency will be one more ratchet click by the Left to grab our pluralistic democracy by the throat. Ironically, that will create a national emergency.
Ethics Alarms 
“The effects on American business, economy and standards of living would be immense and catastrophic, but here’s the best part: none of this would have any effect on reducing climate change whatsoever unless it was coordinated with the actions of other major industrial nations, like China, requiring the U.S. to hand over an unacceptable degree of national sovereignty to international authorities.”
Tank a slowly recovering economy right before an election. That’s a really great idea.
Your comment gives a pretty good reason why this is unlikely to happen.
I know John Kerry is a fool and a liar, but why do you think he would say it is happening if it isn’t?
Well, it’s possible that he is suggesting it, knowing it won’t happen, in the hopes that the GOP will throw a hissy fit and then they can fall back on the tired old, “We can’t have nice things because the evil Republicans are obstructionists so y’all can just swelter in this unprecedented heat wave that is a harbinger of things to come.”
John Kerry – and most climate alarmists – have little sense of history. This “heat wave” not only isn’t unprecedented, it isn’t that hot when compared to the one we endured back in the “low CO2” era of the Dust Bowl.
They have all but forgotten the record cold temperatures and record snowfall just five months ago!
No no, you don’t understand! When the weather seems to counter the climate change case, it is either 1) “just weather, not climate, you idiot” or 2) anomalous or extreme, unpredictable weather that is a symptom of climate change. When the weather is hot, then it is climate change in action, and proof that we are doomed. Similarly, when the cliamte change narrative is that we will have more violent hurricanes than ever, and in fact we have very few, the explanation is that climate change is making the weather less stable and predictable. Thus the cliamte change case is non-refutable because everything is considered evidence that it is occurring.
Scientific theories that can not be disproved are pseudoscience by definition.
And this is the pure essence of the climate-change scam. Nothing is really measurable, repeatable, or quantifiable. Nothing can really be proven via the scientific method, but it’s lurking alrighty, waiting to smite you down and destroy you.
So when they start forcing changes on us and telling us to give up stuff and freedom and all…and nothing changes, they’ll just tell us climate is still in peril and the NEXT set of draconian measures will fix it, even though they can’t really be measured, repeated, or quantified.
Then when those changes don’t fix the problem, well, just lather, rinse, repeat…
When everything is Climate Change, nothing is Climate Change.
“Climate Change leads to Unpredictable Weather” is “Eurasia” and “Climate Change leads to Predictably Hot Weather” is “Eastasia” and we have always been at war with it.
So it is far less scientific than Fermat’s Last Theorem.
That seems more likely, yes. Or it’s a negotiation tactic: calling for a National Climate Emergency is a big demand, and might make smaller demands seem more reasonable. Or the emergency does get declared, but the actions Biden takes under it don’t end up going very far, certainly not enough to crash the economy. All sorts of normal political reasons for this and possible outcomes of it.
Might as well just end the charade and usher in the authoritarian regime; I’d rather having this done quickly in the hopes that this may finally shake enough people out of their slumber, whereas slow transition would allow those sheep to gradually get used to the new reality. Either we will have enough people to reverse this insanity, or we will know that will never happen (so we’d stop bothering thinking about it)… it’s a win/win
As one political pundit put it, “Just as abuse of morphine “makes animals of men,” so abuse of emergency powers makes tyrants of governments.”
As the Democratic Party has moved ever closer to a marxist totalitarian philosophy, such action is to be expected.
Let us not forget previous Presidents of both parties have abused emergency powers, not to preserve or restore the country after a crisis, but to wield extraordinary power in service of a political agenda otherwise beyond their reach. Congress is the true offender here and it is far past time for them to act and end its abuse. They should follow the constitutional guidelines laid out so that emergency powers once again have only a salutary effect on the body politic.
Yes, we’ll see if the Brennan folks are as indignant about misuse of emergency powers now as when Trump was President. Call me cynical, but I’ll be surprised.
“I would view Biden’s invoking of the National Emergency Act as the equivalent of illicitly declaring martial law as a means to dictatorial power.”
“As of 2023, 80 emergencies had been declared, with 40 have expired and another 40 are still in effect, renewed annually by a succession of Presidents.”
The second statement contradicts the first, in tone if not content.
You really are addicted to dishonest ignoring of context, aren’t you? Better deal with that. As the whole post makes clear, the emergency in question is why the move would be so ominous.
More to the point, all the national emergencies except the H1N1 since Nixon involved sanctions against foreign interests. None were imposed that would directly affect the pursuit of happiness by American citizens. The closest one that would impair the rights of US citizens would have been the one allowing the recall of ex servicemen in the fight against foreign terrorists.
Buzz off, Chris. Earn your internet hall monitor dollars from the DNC by spitballing somewhere else. You’re annoying.
Agreed. You’re a prime candidate for the Southeast Asian geography lesson.
The groundwork has been laid, the masses are divided and squabbling over things meaningful and trivial, and for many it is a blood sport. The magician’s maneuver of distraction while the real trick occurs unnoticed. Increasingly woke teachers prioritize wokeism over fundamental education ensuring a growing number of neo-fascist activists.
The dems are desperate because they can see how unhappy and suspicious people are with their policies, overreach, and wokeism. One result being the number of deplorables is growing and they must be dealt with but not head on, unless they throw the first punch. I just hope an all-out war is not the next big distraction…