Days before last week’s election, Bernie Sanders issued a dire warning to voters: “If Donald Trump is elected, the fight against climate change is over.” [emphasis, links added]
He has this right.
Climate change fanaticism was effectively on display in last week's vote. The green energy agenda was soundly defeated.
It turns out that the tens of millions of middle-class Americans who voted for Trump are not very interested in the temperature of the earth in 50 years. They are too busy paying bills.
This result shouldn't be too surprising. Every poll in recent years has shown climate change ranking near the bottom of voters' concerns. Concerns about jobs, inflation and illegal immigration are much higher.
But if you ask the top 1% of American income earners, climate change is seen as a direct and existential threat to the planet.
Polling we conducted earlier this year in Unlocking Prosperity found that cultural elites are so obsessed with climate that they favor banning air conditioning, non-essential air travel and many modern household appliances to stop global warming. Our research shows that not many of the other 99% agree.
Wake up, Bernie and Al Gore.
Climate change has become the ultimate luxury: the richer you are, the more you worry about it.
Among elites, obsession with climate change has become a favorite form of virtue signaling in country clubs and faculty lounges.
There is little reluctance among the green elite—those who donate six figures or more to groups like the Sierra Club—to hold low-income Americans accountable for stopping global warming.
This is the political curse of climate. Millionaires don't care much if the price of gas goes up $1 a gallon, or if they pay $100 a month on utility bills. But the middle class is unwilling to pay more.
It’s not just economics that voters are turning against climate warriors like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Workers aren't too excited about the government's push to order them to buy electric cars – whether they want one or not.
It doesn't help the cause of the Greens that the same progressives are fighting to save the planet through grand changes while governments around the world seem to have no problem with the litter, graffiti or the smell of feces and urine that pollutes our main city streets. street corner.
This is real pollution. It is affecting us here and now.
The good news is that this year’s voter revolt against a radical green agenda is not a vote for dirtier air or water. The air we breathe and the water we drink is cleaner than ever — and Trump is right to point it out. Pollution prevention and control continue to make new progress.
But the nonsense about “net-zero” use of fossil fuels is too far-fetched. The destruction of jobs historically occupied by blue-collar union workers cuts right to the heart of the Democratic Party’s traditional voting base.
They are full of enthusiasm to save the earth, Democrats forgot to visit steel plants, construction sites, and auto plants to ask workers what they thought.
Well, now we know. Americans are realizing that their shrinking wages and rising prices for gas they pay at the pump pose a real clear and present threat to their way of life.
If Democrats don't start to understand this, they'll be worrying about their jobs in their sleep, too.
Read more at RealClearPolitics
