“Next week, I will be joining President Hollande and world leaders in Paris for the global climate conference,” President Obama said ahead of the event that began this week. “What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be, when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children.”
One could hardly blame the leadership of the Islamic State if they had a hearty laugh at this peculiar response to its attacks on Paris last month. The same could be said about the multiple instances in which Obama and high-ranking members of his administration have asserted that climate change poses a greater national security threat than terrorism, or is, as Secretary of State John Kerry once put it, “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”
For the civilized world, this rhetoric is no laughing matter, and not just because of the bad policies that may emerge from the Paris talks. Western news consumers are well accustomed to careless and cynical but attention-grabbing predictions about the potential effects of climate change — cannibalistic polar bears, no more coffee, social injustices, whatever major storm just hit nearby or will hit tomorrow, et cetera, et cetera.
The new fad of blaming climate change for terrorism, or treating the two as comparable security issues, is troubling. It should make voters worry about the quality of their elected leaders.
Bernie Sanders’ recent assertion in a presidential debate, that “climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism,” was not an aberration, but increasingly a part of left-wing orthodoxy in the U.S. The Bern actually believes it.
Terrorism is generally caused by bad people dissatisfied with the way the world is and determined to use fearful violence to bend it to their will. Terrorism is not caused by the weather.
Today’s terrorist acts are more spectacular and often have higher body counts than those of the past, thanks to advances in technology, greater population densities and the increasing ease of global travel. But terrorism was around long before the recent run-up in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. The various massacres of Bleeding Kansas were not caused by climate change. Guy Fawkes was not motivated to blow up the British Parliament by climate change. The Sicarii did not routinely mill about the streets of ancient Jerusalem looking for Roman sympathizers to stab in broad daylight because of climate change.
Today, terrorism is caused mostly by radical Islamist ideology. There are appropriate law enforcement, intelligence, propaganda and occasionally military responses to it. But when you hear politicians talk about global warming as the cause of terrorism, take it as an indication that they aren’t serious people, and should not be trusted with complex affairs of state.
