“Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”

I talked to my son this week about the “Green New Deal,” the latest totalitarian proposal from “progressives” in response to alleged global warming/climate change. We joked about getting around Minnesota, or anywhere in the vast U.S., without a car. Or living here without reliable and abundant (i.e. affordable) energy. I told him that reasonable sounding fella that Minnesotans chose for governor has proposed that Minnesota, which just survived several polar vortex assaults, rely entirely on the wind and sun to keep us alive. (Maybe if we go back to worshiping the wind and sun it will all work out.)

He told me about a high school science teacher who believed that the earth was warming because of human activity; the teacher had the integrity to present the cases for and against the conclusion that the earth was warming, and that it was caused by human activity. I asked my son if the teacher designated cow flatulence as a “human activity” but all I got for an answer was a roll of the eyes. (Well, ACO’s Green New Deal seems to have it in for bovines, so I thought it was important. Apparently not.)

My son pointed out how little we know about the climate over the span of earth’s existence and how the “Green” obsession, which promises to upend everything and put progressives in charge of everything, is based on unproven scientific hypotheses. It’s a perfect theory for people who want to boss us around.

When I got home last night, I watched a local news clip reporting Gov. Walz’s “100 percent renewables by 2050” proposal. I was looking closely at the news anchors; would they report this as a serious idea? Would they burst into laughter? One of them seemed to have a slight smile, like he was trying hard not to laugh. Or point out that Tim Walz would probably be senile or dead by 2050.

It’s revealing how many Republicans have adopted the line that “100 percent renewable” is a laudable goal but that it is an unrealistic one. They do not even bother to defend fossil fuels anymore. After all, they only get a 3-second soundbite. This is proof that most voters believe the Green Thing and will punish politicians who do not espouse and adhere to this new American creed. So much for critical thinking.

Then I ran across this little nugget in the Notable & Quotable section of Friday’s The Wall Street Journal: From a June 29, 1989, Associated Press dispatch:

UNITED NATIONS (AP)—A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.

He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.

Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study. . . .

Shifting climate patterns would bring back 1930s Dust Bowl conditions to Canadian and U.S. wheatlands, while the Soviet Union could reap bumper crops if it adapts its agriculture in time, according to a study by UNEP and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Here is my alternative headline for 2050:

“Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising energy prices and severe energy and food shortages if the reliance on renewable energy is not reversed immediately.”