President Biden chose Thursday, which was also Earth Day, to begin his two-day Climate Leadership Summit.
But contrary to its promise, it lacked leadership, had nothing to do with climate, and very nearly wasn’t even a summit.
That was clear from the outset. The summit, which was conducted as a virtual meeting, was plagued by technical glitches, giving it a distinctive amateur appearance. Biden opened the meeting with a tweet.
“Today I’m bringing together leaders from around the world to meet this moment of climate peril, and extraordinary opportunity,”
he said. “No nation can solve this crisis on its own, and this summit is a step on a path to a secure, prosperous, and sustainable future.”
That was probably the clearest message of the event. It was all downhill after that. Even Ryan Heath, senior editor for left-leaning Politico, was disappointed.
“I am all for the substance of today's climate summit — but at a technical level, there's no other word for it than ‘mess,’”
he tweeted. “There have so far been significant sound or interpretation problems with Xi, Putin, Macron, and Morrison speeches.”
Global News chief political correspondent David Akin’s description was more colorful.
“Major diplomatic gaffe: Biden’s Global Climate Summit just cut off France’s Macron — he will be so annoyed — in favor of Putin!”
he reported.
“‘That was a tape of Macron,’ [Secretary of State Anthony] Blinken can be heard to say. From a technical standpoint, this White House-hosted summit is a complete gong show.”
“Gong Show.” Who can forget that? It also illustrates what parents and kids are going through. If the federal government can’t put together a virtual Zoom meeting, how are local school districts expected to effectively teach kids remotely?
So it wasn’t much of a summit. But it had little to do with leadership also.
Although its participants were primarily world leaders, leadership implies followers, and there were few of those.
The proceedings streamed live on YouTube. Junk Science founder and Fox News contributor
Steve Milloy observed that at the start that there were “only 200 YouTube viewers for Joe Biden's #LeadersClimateSummit.”
An hour later that number dropped to 160 viewers. As U.S. climate envoy John Kerry was delivering his final remarks, Milloy said there were a mere 23 people watching.
He added, “Climate is not only a hoax and a fraud ... it's a yawn.”
Prior to the opening of the summit, the president marked Earth Day by
tweeting that he was “proud to say science is back.”
You wouldn’t know it from the summit.
Its participants were primarily world leaders who patted one another on the back for the “great job” they were doing. There were no actual scientists present.
John Kerry was perhaps the closest thing to a scientist. Although he’s a politician, Biden appointed him climate envoy, which would suggest he’d at least bone up on the subject. He obviously did not.
At one point he remarked that “Net zero [carbon emissions] is not enough. We need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.”
All plant life requires carbon dioxide (CO2) for its existence. The absence of CO2 would mean the absence of plant life.
In addition, all animal life (including humans) produce CO2. All animal life would have to be sacrificed in order to create an atmosphere completely free of CO2. That would mean Earth would become a dead planet.
Bad science. It’s also bad economics.
Biden was correct when he said his vision of a net zero carbon emission America would create lots of jobs. But not American jobs — jobs in China.
A Tuesday headline in The New York Times read, “China’s Solar Dominance Presents Biden With an Ugly Dilemma.”
It reported that “China dominates the global supply chain for solar power, producing the vast majority of the materials and parts for solar panels that the United States relies on for clean energy.”
In addition, the use of Chinese solar panels creates a moral dilemma. The largest manufacturers of solar panels are located in Xinjiang province, an area known for using slave labor.
April 22 didn’t just mark Earth Day. It was also the birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who led Russia’s 1917 Communist revolution.
That didn’t work out all that well either.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. Read Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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