Two Peas in a Pod – Jerry Brown and Barack Obama on Climate Change

You’ve got to hand it to Governor Jerry Brown and President Barack Obama for at least one thing: they each have heaps of chutzpah, though critics might call it effrontery.

The guv and the prez have the gall to cast themselves as crusading heroes on climate change – hobnobbing with hip celebrities and basking in accolades from the likes of Bill Maher, Arianna Huffington and Leonardo DiCaprio – even as they promote mass immigration and massive U.S. population growth that will inevitably sabotage national-level efforts to reign in America’s carbon dioxide emissions.

And the only way these two hacks can get away with this scam is because of a lazy, sycophantic press and an environmental community that allows itself to be bamboozled and beguiled by silver-tongued charlatans who excel at gilded rhetoric, verbal sleight-of-hand and wishful thinking.

Faith-based climate activists fall for the feel-good fantasy that a win-win wholesale transition to clean energy from dirty, evil fossil fuels can avert climate disaster even as the number of carbon dioxide emitters is allowed to grow unchecked.

One gets the feeling that in the simple-minded, either-or calculus of cynical climate campaigners, it’s a question of either scapegoating guilty-as-charged oil, gas and coal barons or scapegoating innocent immigrants and babies. A no-brainer.

The Sacramento Bee reports that Brown recently spoke at the U.N. climate change summit in New York City, where he urged world leaders to support “more ambitious” action and touted an expansion of California’s cap-and-trade program to transportation fuels, a move that even some fellow Democrats oppose.

Brown claimed California will meet its target of reducing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Soon he plans to set a new goal for 2030 “that will be more ambitious, that will require more technology and will also require heightened political will.”

Of course, at the same time, Brown has been pushing amnesty for illegal immigrants, and in general doing all he can to welcome ever more immigration to California – infinite ingress as it were – so that the state’s already bloated population of nearly 40 million will continue to grow recklessly.

The delusional Brown somehow believes that ever higher numbers of Californians can produce ever lower CO₂ emissions, an example of cognitive dissonance, magical thinking and fuzzy math par excellence. It’s equivalent to believing that you can lose weight on a diet that actually increases your caloric intake. And hypothetically, you could, but only if you run faster and harder, and keep running ever faster and harder – forevermore, or until you drop dead.

It’s a circle that can’t be squared, pure and simple.

As a November 13, 2013 CAPS blog post of mine entitled “California’s Population Tsunami Overwhelms its Climate Goal” pointed out, a study by the highly respected Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that California’s:

…many programs to boost renewable power, encourage alternative fuels and improve energy efficiency should lead to a substantial drop in greenhouse gas emissions through 2030.

[CO₂] emissions will start to rebound after 2030, largely because of population growth. California’s population, now 38 million, is expected to top 50 million by 2050, pushing up the demand for electricity and fuel.

As a result, California will badly miss its target of slashing emissions 80 percent by 2050…

President Obama speaks at U.N. Climate Summit in September 2014.

For his part, Climate-Organizer-in-Chief Obama exhorted captains of industry, politicians and other members of the global elite assembled at the United Nations to do their part to combat global warming. “We will do our part,” claimed Obama.

But actions speak louder than empty words from empty suits.

By stoking U.S. population growth through his actions, such as executive amnesties for illegal immigrants, and his words in support of drastically increased legal immigration, Obama is doing his own part to ensure that the United States will not reduce CO₂ emissions nearly to the extent needed to meet international and moral obligations.

“It’s phony to say ‘I’m for the environment but not for limiting immigration,’” said Earth Day founder Senator Gaylord Nelson in 2001.

Brown and Obama are just as phony for saying they’ll aggressively decrease U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at the same time as they work overtime to aggressively increase immigration and U.S. population.