Pay, When?

Sixteen years ago, Tony Blair, having served nine-plus of his ten years as the UK's Prime Minister, declared:

We must pay now to avoid climate disaster.

Blair was a global-warming true believer, and made a big push toward renewables (and, to his credit, nuclear power, albeit futilely) in his homeland.

The record of climate disaster predictions is not good. Hundreds of proclamations have failed to come true, and it cannot be refuted at this point that alarmists have over-stated and over-sold anthropogenic global warming. This doesn't mean that AGW isn't happening, or that it's a hoax, it simply affirms my long-standing lukewarmism viewpoint.

Today's offering isn't about global warming, however. It's about the sentiment that Blair conveyed, and how it is roundly rejected by all but an insignificant handful of our leaders and our citizens.

If we assume that Blair was earnest, that he felt AGW was/is truly an existential threat requiring immediate action rather than a lever for , then his assertion would also be earnest. Some problems warrant addressing earlier, rather than later. From my decades of paying attention to the subject, I've concluded that the Wind and Solar And Battery approach (idiocy is my take LINK) is not only futile, it's massively wrong. I've detailed good remedies (that won't clobber our living standards or grant economic boon to our geopolitical foes) on this blog many times (short version: many modular nuclear power plants, drill for and export natural gas, invest in geoengineering research).

No, it's not AGW that requires "we must pay now to avoid disaster." It's America's entitlement programs. Social Security and Medicare are far bigger and more costly impending disasters than global warming. SS and Medicare are years, not decades, from blowing up and wreaking havoc on the nation.

This isn't news. Twenty years ago, George W. Bush sounded the alarm and argued for privatization, and presidents before him (Republican and Democrat) mouthed similar warnings. W's warning was, unfortunately, met with widespread resistance and derision, no matter the facts. Social Security didn't get its reputation as the "third rail of American politics" without reason.

Fast forward to the Biden era. Big plans and big money are at the fore of decarbonizing America, an effort that, as I noted (and especially absent nuclear power as the primary remedy) is both destructive and futile. Yet, despite that, and despite countless real-world problems associated with widespread implementation, it's full steam ahead, because "we have to act now to combat AGW." That most of the rest of the world isn't playing along doesn't much faze Biden et al, unfortunately.

But, when it comes to fixing the entitlement programs that any rational and informed person knows are a ticking time bomb, we get "you want to kill Granny" rhetoric.

So, not only are we not fixing SS and Medicare, we are burning money like mad on wind and solar and battery-powered everything (and pursuing the demise of gasoline cars and natural gas heating and cooking). As a special bonus, all this reckless spending is fueling inflation, which in turn has prompted interest rates to rise and the cost of the nation's ever-growing debt to rise along with it.

It's utter recklessness, and it's driven and abetted by the tens of millions of Americans who are as Aesop's grasshopper, utterly indifferent to the future as long as they can get theirs now.

My question to Biden and all the other global warming alarmists out there: Why are you so obsessed with global warming but so head-in-the-sand as to Social Security and Medicare?

Might your motives be less than pure?

Yes, that's rhetorical.