Obama’s Climate-Change Blitz: The President Hopes to Get Democrats Off The Hot Seat
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Published at TheWashingtonTimes.com
What President Obama lacks in sound public policy, he certainly makes up for with his effective use of propaganda. By using the power of the bully pulpit, coupled with actions by the executive branch, Mr. Obama has been generating news that will continue to force climate change into the public square in the coming weeks.
The release of the third National Climate Assessment earlier this month by the White House marks the launch of Mr. Obama’s spring political offensive. The second phase was the release of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed regulations for existing power plants.
By clinging to climate change, Mr. Obama hopes to rally his environmental base and liberal donors in an effort to blunt the anticipated sharp Republican gains that could force Sen. Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, from the Senate majority leader’s post.
Mr. Obama’s media allies will support the climate-change blitzkrieg. The media, who have already bought into man-made global-warming alarmism, will gladly amplify the shocking claims of economic and environmental destruction. Sensationalized headlines of ecological devastation could also help Democrats with women and millennial voters.
The National Climate Assessment is a propagandist’s dream. In addition to describing the overarching damage to the United States from weather extremes, it breaks out the estimates of harm into eight different geographic regions, as well as to the coasts and oceans.
The localization of environmental destruction provides the media with an opportunity to dramatize the impact of climate change to specific communities and local politics.
Predictably, the release of the National Climate Assessment generated alarming stories in politically important states. For example, the Citizen-Times in Asheville, N.C., reported that the area could have fewer days for ski slopes to operate, and that the area runs the risk of an increase of insects that could “wipe out thousands of acres of hemlocks in the mountains.”
There were probably hundreds of similar stories written about climate change in local communities across the country.
Climate change will be the latest “gotcha” question for Republicans on the campaign trail, and the information from the National Climate Assessment will be used against candidates that disagree with the left-wing orthodoxy.
Read the entire commentary originally published at TheWashingtonTimes.com
Dr. Tom Borelli is a senior fellow with FreedomWorks.
