The next segment of the debate started off with questions about the “climate crisis.” The CNN/Univision moderators and most Democrats are like lemmings to the climate alarmist pied pipers. The Green New Deal is nothing more than green socialism aimed at creating a command economy that would destroy the US as we know it if all their cockamamie green schemes were ever fully implemented.

CNN’s Jake Tapper got the ball rolling with this question: Let’s move now to the climate crisis. I’m coming right to you Senator Sanders. The world Health Organization calls the climate crisis, a “Health crisis” and warns that climate change could fuel the spread of infectious diseases. Can you point to specific measures in your climate plan that address that threat?

Me: The premise is absurd. This is coming from the globalists at the UN who are pushing the “Agenda 21” sustainable development nonsense. In short, the same people who lied about the IPCC reports on climate change in which the predictions made were wrong! Yeah, we want the authoritarian governments who dominate the UN to destroy free enterprise in America based on some Agenda 21 mandate. Not only no, but hell no.

Bernie responded: Well, of course we do. … Look, this is what the scientists are telling us, the same scientists who make your point there, Jake. What they’re telling us is, if we don’t get our act together in the next seven or eight years, there would be irreversible damage done to this planet. We’re talking about cities in America, from Miami to New Orleans to Charleston, South Carolina being underwater. We are talking about severe droughts which will prevent farmers in the Midwest from growing the food that we need. We’re talking about extreme weather disturbances which hit Houston Texas, Venice Italy, just a few months ago.

Me: Like most leftwing politicians, Bernie conflates seasonal weather with “catastrophic climate change.” They’ve been using those scare tactics for years. Where is the mass exodus from those coastal cities, and why haven’t low-lying islands around the world already “gone under” as they were predicted to do many years ago? Because none of “scientists’” models have been able to accurately predict anything. Al Gore and others have been predicting “irreversible damage” to the climate – ostensibly due to mankind (not true, of course) – for decades, yet their predictions have all been wrong. Bernie is a big about “the workers” but never discusses what would be the devastating economic impact on those same low-wage workers if his ridiculous Green New Deal schemes were ever implemented on a wide scale. If he really thought mankind was “destroying the environment,” then he would have hit up China about that long ago, as they are the real polluters these days. He is a charlatan and a liar.

Bernie continued his frenzied lecture: This is not a middle of the ground thing. This is not building a few more solar panels or a few more wind turbines. What this is about is transforming our energy system, as quickly as we humanly can, away from fossil fuel. It is insane that we continue to have fracking in America. It is absurd that we give tens of billions of dollars a year in tax breaks and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. This has got the end and end now if we love our kids and future generations.

Me: You’re right, Bernie, it’s not a “middle of the ground thing,” and we’re not going to let you destroy the US economy in pursuit of a false socialist paradise. Solar and wind power are not sustainable because they require MASSIVE taxpayer subsidies! You clowns don’t even support the one green energy source that could potentially replace the oil and gas industry – nuclear energy. As a politician, he knows nothing about the laws of thermodynamics, heat potential of various fuels, etc. Replacing oil and gas by fiat would destroy the US economy and put millions of Americans out of work. Never mind that there is no earthly reason to do it other than in the minds of crackpot socialist theoreticians. Bernie is a complete lunatic on the subject of climate alarmism and the Green New Deal.

And the other lunatic (Biden) of course weighed in: First thing that President Obama and I were summoned to the State Department… Excuse me, the Defense Department for was to meet with all the chiefs, the single greatest threat to our national security, they said, is climate change. Single greatest threat to our national security, because as populations have to move because they can no longer live where they are, because their islands are sinking, because you saw what happened in Darfur, with the change in weather patterns and the deserted there. It causes war, it causes great migrations, great migrations. They said that’s the single biggest problem. Number two, there’s an awful lot of people today who are in fact getting ill because of the changes in the environment, particularly up where Bernie lives. I’m not… It has nothing to do with him. But having, up in the Northeast, because you have everything from beetle infestation and a whole range of things that are causing diseases as well, in addition to eliminating foliage.

Me: No, Joe, the single greatest threat to our national security (both militarily and economic) is the People’s Republic of China. And this Wuhan virus crisis is finally opening the eyes of regular Americans to that fact, as well as the national security vulnerabilities that were willfully implemented over the decades by self-serving politicians like you who transferred US manufacturing capabilities to China and created global supply chains that make Americans dependent on the Chinese for drug precursors and other vital products. The rest is nothing but scare-mongering: there have always been plagues, famines, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other disasters throughout human history, and clowns like Biden exploit them for personal political gain. They NEVER have any solutions. Never!

Tapper then threw a softball/set-up question to Biden to enable him to differentiate from Bernie’s plans: The price tag for your climate plan is about $1.7 trillion. That’s about $14 trillion less than Senator Sanders wants to spend on this. Is your plan ambitious enough to tackle this crisis?

Biden answered: Yes, it is ambitious enough to tackle the crisis, because what… Go to joebiden.com, I lay out the first 13 things I would do immediately upon being elected. Number one, we’re going to once again reinstate all the cuts the President made and everything from the cafe standards, how far automobiles can go, investing in light rail so that we take cars off the road, making sure we’re in a position where we are now in a position that we put 500,000 charging stations in areas thatall new highways that we built, making sure that we spent $500 billion a year… and the federal government paying for transportation, the vehicles we run, all of those being converted to being able to run on low carbon fuel and/or be able to run on no carbon fuel at all by having them move into a direction that is all carbon free. We can do these things. We can lay down the tracks where nothing can be changed by the next President or the following President, the one beyond that.

Me: A smorgasbord of big-government mandates and regulations to be reinstated! Yeah, that’s the ticket, Joe. Reversing President Trump’s regulatory relief will destroy the economy. And “investing in light rail”? You mean like that California “high-speed rail” boondoggle whose cost was re-estimated just last month at “$80.3 billion … – $1.3 billion more than previously expected”? The rest is more green blarney. Where does energy to run “green vehicles” come from, Joe? Not green sources.

Biden continued with his pandering to the climate change crowd: In addition to that, … I would immediately rejoin the Paris climate accord, which I helped put together. I would call the 100 nations, over a hundred nations, but the hundred major polluters to the United States and the first hundred days, to up the ante and make it clear that in fact if they didn’t, there’d be a price to pay. And lastly, I would be right now organizing the hemisphere and the world, to provide $20 billion for the Amazon, for Brazil no longer to burn the Amazon, so they could have forests… They’re no longer forests but they could have farming and say, “This is what we’re going to do.” … the region is burning out than we admit in one entire year, per year.

Me: Unbelievable nonsense.  No, we’re not going to cede running our economy to external organizations like the UN. The “hundred major polluters” in the US pale in comparison to the real polluters in China, too. He wants to impose his environmental fascism on Brazil, too. He shows his true nature here.

Bernie was not to be outdone, as this is one of his signature issues: Number one, no more subsidies for fossil fuel industry. No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends, number one. Number two, we’re in a situation as well where we cannot… We are able to move rapidly to change the dynamic, in terms of what we can do to set in motion. The fact that he says climate change, Paris Accord doesn’t mean much. We could get everything exactly right, we’re 15% of the problem. 85% of the problem is over there. We need someone who can deal internationally. We need someone who can bring the together again. We need someone who can move in a direction that in fact, if you violate the commitment you make, you will pay an economic price for it. Like what’s happening in China there they’re exporting coal, significant coal.

Me: Those measures would destroy the US economy, and he knows it. Not only the loss of American jobs, but the loss of the energy sources that support every other basic manufacturing, production, and distribution industry in the country. And China imports coal bigly, including from the US. I guess he’s never watched Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Sante Fe (BNSF) coal trains traversing the upper US on their way to west coast ports for transshipment to China (they run virtually non-stop).

Bernie railed on and on: This is an existential crisis. I’m talking about stopping fracking, as soon as we possibly can. I’m talking about telling the fossil fuel industry that they are going to stop destroying this planet. No ifs, buts and maybes about it. I’m talking about speaking to China… Well, I’m not sure your proposal does that. I’m talking about speaking to China, to Russia, to countries all over the world and in this moment, making the point that instead of spending 1.8 trillion on weapons of destruction designed to kill each other, maybe we should pool our resources and fight our common enemy, which is climate change.

Me: Good luck speaking to China and Russia, Bernie. With your Green New Deal proposals, you will destroy the US economy, and they’ll laugh in your face because you will have lost the only leverage that counts – the strong US economy. No, it’s NOT an “existential crisis.” That’s just scaremongering, and we’re not “destroying the planet.” Endlessly repeating the phrase doesn’t make it true. Does Bernie seriously think that the Russians and Chinese think climate change is a “common enemy” and an existential threat to the planet? It is absurd to think of Bernie in the Oval Office negotiating with our adversaries; imagine what he’d willingly give away to them.

Bernie continued: What this moment is about Joe, is that the scientists are telling us they underestimated the severity of the crisis. They were wrong. The problem is more severe. So all that I’m saying right here is that we are fighting for the future of this planet, for the well-being of our kids and future generations. You cannot continue, as I understand Joe believes, to continue fracking, correct me if I’m wrong. What we need to do right now is bringing the world together, tell the fossil fuel industry that we are going to move aggressively to win solar, sustainable energies and energy efficiency.

Me: Those are just words from a scaremongering politician. There is no “severity of the crisis.” To the contrary, last fall 500 scientist wrote the UN to dispute the claims of the climate alarmists, as noted here:

More than 500 experts in the sciences, academia, economics, business, law, and other fields have sent a “European Climate Declaration” to the Secretary General of the United Nations asking for a long-overdue, high-level, open debate on climate change.

The signatories underscored the importance of not rushing into enormously expensive climate action before fully ascertaining the facts.

“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent,” they declared. “However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.”

The signatories of the declaration also insist that public policy must respect scientific and economic realities and not just reflect the most fashionable frenzy of the day.

“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm,” they note. “We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050.”

In short, Bernie is lying yet again about climate change and the supposed threat to the planet.

Here’s a good place to end this part of the debate analysis. These guys aren’t afraid of spending taxpayer dollars on schemes that will destroy millions of American jobs and the economy with them in their pursuit of an ephemeral green-socialist Utopia that defies science, economics, and immutable physical laws. And to think that there are millions of idiot Democrats (and others) who swallow their swill.

The end.