The next lockdown?

Steve Prestegard

Jul 27

Back in February 2021, I wrote a piece here at The Spectator headlined"Are you ready for the climate lockdowns?" It concerned the predictability of where the climate alarmist movement was heading, and their eagerness to explore using the model for Covid lockdowns in Europe and the United States to address environmental issues. The movement has been inching its way toward the idea ever since. Now as heatwaves roll across the globe in the prime months of the summer season, news outlets aren't being so subtle about the idea anymore — and neither is the Biden administration.

The kind of lockdowns I'm referencing, and that climate-conscious hacks are hinting at, aren't the action of direct government enforcement (yet), but rather the strong suggestion to "stay home and stay safe." Another idea being given oxygen is that full blackouts in major metropolitan cities, not just rolling blackouts, could play a role in combatting climate change.

At the Los Angeles Times for example, Sammy Roth offered a piece this past weekend titled "Would an occasional blackout help solve climate change?" In it, Roth also makes the case for "tens of millions of electric vehicles on the road, and tens of millions of electric heat pumps in people's homes." Roth either doesn't realize the dilemma of electrifying every home appliance, including thermostats, water tanks and stoves, while also advocating for major electric power grid outages — or worse, he does.

Over at the New York Times, Alisha Haridasani Gupta took the usual fear-mongering over hot days to another level by asking directly "Is It Safe to Go Outside? How to Navigate This Cruel Summer." Gupta hyperventilates over "a summer of weather extremes in the United States, in which going outside can be riddled with perils."

This week at the University of Colorado at Boulder, campus tours were canceled with temperatures barely breaking 90 degrees. In a notice to attendees, the university wrote "Following your information session, we will not be conducting the campus tour for the safety of you, our guests and our student ambassador tour guides." CU-Boulder replaced the tours with a listening panel.

Expect this trend to catch on, with more Zoom-style panels and meetings and stay-at-home orders from institutions brimming with the blanket-snuggling members of the pajama class.

Point out the media's trend toward articles suggesting soft climate lockdowns, and you will see them pushing back in their usual fashion: by declaring that any acknowledgement of these stories is the result of a conspiracy theory, as NBC News claimed earlier this month.

None of this is to suggest that the Biden administration, the president or his climate envoy and health officials are going to come out tomorrow and suggest a "fifteen days to slow the heat" platform, but they don't need to. They know their allies in corporate media have taken on a strategy of scaring people from even attempting to go outside on hot summer days, while blaming political opponents for the temperature. That's exactly what Hillary Clinton did in a tweet, blaming "MAGA Republicans" for the weather. Her post came shortly after New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote "Why we should politicize the weather."

Just pay attention to the words and actions of the climate alarmists, and watch as their allies in the media amplify them, to create the grounds for our politicians to enact them — then tell me who the "conspiracy theorist" is.

Instapundit famously wrote that he would believe that climate change was a crisis when people claiming that climate change was a crisis started acting like it was a crisis. Notice that the newspapers listed here have not ceased printing newspapers, which requires huge amounts of electricity, chops down trees for newsprint, harvests soybeans for ink and uses precious fossil fuels to distribute those newspapers.

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