(The opinions expressed in guest op-eds are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.)

Climate Change is a meme. It is a very powerful meme and a useful one for the interests of global government, but like anything else in the political lexicon, it is a meme.

The climate change meme survives as a fearsome shapeshifter, one which has appeared variously as global cooling, global warming, and in its most recent form, as open-ended climate change. Any time the climate changes, the thinking goes, the government must flagellate us with scarcity and hardships to absolve our sinful energy use.

The Biden administration has painted itself into a political corner by invoking climate change to justify the destruction of the U.S. energy sector, as well as the broader economy. Fortunately, American voters have grown wise to these destructive policies.

What’s worse, the climate change meme is conceived in deception. Of course, the climate constantly changes. And of course, human activity contributes to it to some extent. The real questions are: How much does human activity contribute? And how great is the threat to humanity?

If the Biden administration sincerely intended to make the world a better place, they would use the most reliable climate change forecasts, adjust for the certainty of the predictions and the share of human contribution, and then weigh that outcome against the known harms of anti-energy policies.

To do so would miss the point, however. Whatever their true agenda, the people who design these policies know that the supposed scientific consensus for climate change is just another part of the meme. The veil slipped back in 2009 when the Climategate scandal revealed that we are being lied to by academia.

But how could that be? How could thousands of scientists and countless peer-reviewed articles be wrong about objective reality? One would assume that the vast majority of scientists are dispassionately searching for truth in the physical world. It is hard to imagine that a global conspiracy of scientists could will an unscientific meme into existence. At some point, it would be disproven by material reality.

The truth is, there is no smoke-filled room where scientists plot to deceive us layfolk. What there is, however, is an opaque cabal of leftwing foundations (some with historic ties to globalist finance capital), self-interested government departments, and influential non-governmental organizations who push climate change alarmism. These few actors collude to create an incentive structure that rewards scientific findings and projections that comport with the climate change meme. Yes, science is objective, but those who propound it are human and therefore sensitive to the climate change incentive structure.

A new poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University, sponsored by The Heartland Institute, unpacked the climate change meme by asking 401 relevant scientists deeper questions about the extent of human contribution to climate change, as well as its potential to harm standard of living. The results of this poll flew in the face of the disproven “97 percent” figure, which stubbornly fuels the climate change meme.

The poll found that the share of scientists who do not believe that climate change will significantly harm standard of living in our lifetimes is not three percent, but 41 percent – more than 13 times as many. Tellingly, the share of scientists aged over 50-years-old who do not hold this belief is 66 percent, and those who adhere to the climate change meme were much more likely to have demonstrably false beliefs about climate in general. This poll highlights the climate change meme’s power to circumscribe scientific findings, which are then cited by a complicit media, and the meme becomes canon law for the uncritical masses.

In President Biden’s own words, climate change is “the number one issue facing humanity. And it’s the number one issue for me.” His administration’s policies are deeply steeped in the climate change meme, but the American voters are tired of the very real harms caused by these policies in the here and now. Wrongheaded energy policy is a key cause of the administration’s acute unpopularity, and those policies will be on the ballot on Tuesday.

 David Hoyt ([email protected]) is the director of development for The Heartland Institute.