To be honest, President Obama did not say it in so many words. But what he did say in his speech at the Climate Conference in Glasgow was quite supportive of private sector solutions. For sure, that it was not his intent. He probably did it inadvertently.
As would be expected, he harshly criticized President Trump’s “hostility” (his word) toward climate change policies. He specifically pointed to the former President’s withdrawal from the Paris Accords. He claimed that after four years of the United States backing away from the globalist view of the problems of a warming atmosphere and the globalist mandatory solutions, America was back in the fore of world leadership.
Then he said something remarkable – almost unbelievable. He said that despite the hostile atmosphere created by Trump for the past four years, America’s business leaders and other private sector organizations rose on their own to reduce carbon emissions. Thanks to the private sector, America had achieved the short-term goals set down by the Paris Climate Accords, according to Obama.
Stop to ponder that for a moment. Obama was telling the world climate change activists that American private-sector free-market capitalists achieved the short-term goals WITHOUT the leather bootheel of government on the back of its neck.
That has been the conservative view – that business would respond to a real problem in a pragmatic manner. Businesses would not be wasting billions of dollars installing electric charging stations where there are virtually no electric vehicles. Business would be converting to electric vehicles and support systems as the technology and the costs expand the market.
When the gasoline engine came along, Uncle Same did not build gas stations across the country – especially not where were virtually no gas cars were on the roads. The business community grew the gasoline stations in a pragmatic, evolutionary and cost-efficient manner.
Ironically, even as Obama gave backhanded praise to the private sector, he noted that most of the nations that remained in the Paris Climate Accord had failed to meet even the minimal and insufficient – by Obama’s estimation – goals.
Obama criticized China and Russia for not even attending the Conference. Those nations do not have the sort of private sector that can rise to the challenge. That is because they are the sort of powerful central government that Obama touts as necessary to address the issue.
Government tends to politicize problems and then act accordingly. The Biden energy agenda – which Obama supports — is chaotic, wasteful, overly expensive and prone to high level corporate cronyism. The proposed policies are based on hyperbolic Draconian visions designed to engender fearmongering.
Obama laid out some very important facts in Glasgow. It is just that they did not support his hypothesis of the necessity of massive government manipulation. Quite the contrary.
It was sort of funny to hear Obama summarize the challenge by saying that “Since we’re in the Emerald Isles here, let me quote the bard, William Shakespeare,” who said, “‘What wound did ever heal but by degrees.’”
It caused a bit of a diplomatic kerfuffle since the “Emerald Isles” is a reference to Ireland and William Shakespeare is the bard of England. He would have been better served by quoting for Robert Burns, the Bard of Scotland. Those two allusions are not endearing to the Scots for obvious reasons.
So, there ‘tis.