Guest LMAO by David Middleton
Climate Change Is This Generation’s Vietnam War
It’s an existential threat to millennials—and older Americans are standing in the way of action.
By MATT FORD
March 14, 2019
Every year, the world’s elite gather like the Illuminati in the Swiss chalet town of Davos for the World Economic Forum, where they discuss how to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. Often that results in comically out-of-touch conversations, such as the idea, put forth at this year’s summit, that digital “upskilling” can solve economic inequality. But sometimes it provides a platform for someone like the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who appeared before these elites like the prophet Cassandra.“Either we prevent 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming or we don’t,” she said at the summit in January.
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Like the Vietnam protesters of the ’60s and ’70s, millennials have shown a knack for mass organizing.
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The ruling gerontocracy won’t make it easy for younger Americans to translate their political energy into policy.
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The Vietnam War was a clear mortal threat to young people, tens of millions of whom were eligible to be drafted; nearly 60,000 Americans were killed in the conflict. Climate change presents a different sort of threat to millennials. It’s less immediate than an ongoing war, less visceral than being shot at. But ultimately it will prove more catastrophic. Even if drastic action is taken over the next decade, the impact of rising global temperatures on civilization will dwarf the Vietnam War’s bloodshed. The World Health Organization has projected that come 2030, climate change will cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year.
Combatting climate change will take much more effort than ending the Vietnam War, and much longer.
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I’m still laughing. When I saw the title, I said to myself, “Self, they’re right. The Global War on the Weather is like the Vietnam War. No matter how much blood & treasure our government spends, it can’t win.” But, the author went in a whole different direction; he’s comparing the Global War Against the Weather to protests against the Vietnam War.
I think my analogy is better. In the early 1960’s, the choices were: Either we defeat communism in Southeast Asia or we don’t. From 1953 to 1975 spent $168 billion (almost $1 trillion in 2011 USD) and 58,000 American lives on a war that was unwinnable under the conditions imposed by our government. In the Global War Against the Weather, we face a choice of preventing or not preventing 1.5 °C of warming.
“Either we prevent 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming or we don’t,” [Greta Thunberg] said at the summit in January.
Greta, I’m afraid I have bad news for you. With or without the New Green Deal Cultural Revolution… we don’t prevent 1.5 °C of warming. Let’s use the Paris Accord as a proxy for the Green New Deal Cultural Revolution.
We already have 1.0 °C relative to the mid 1800’s and about 1.5 °C relative to the coldest phase of the Little Ice Age, the coldest part of the Holocene Epoch. If 1.5 to 2.0 °C of warming relative to the glacial interstadial temperatures of the Little Ice Age is an “existential threat to millennials,” their threshold for existence is set too low (or would that be too high?).
The Vietnam War was a clear mortal threat to young people, tens of millions of whom were eligible to be drafted; nearly 60,000 Americans were killed in the conflict.
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The World Health Organization has projected that come 2030, climate change will cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year.
Is this a non sequitur or a red herring?
Vietnam War…
STATISTICS FOR INDIVIDUALS IN UNIFORM AND IN COUNTRY
VIETNAM VETERANS[…]
3. 2,709,918 Americans served in Vietnam , this number represents 9.7% of their generation.
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CASUALTIES
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2. Non-hostile deaths: 10,800
3. Total: 58,202 (Includes men formerly classified as MIA and Mayaguez casualties). Men who have subsequently died of wounds account for the changing total.
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- 2,709,918 divided by 9.7% equals 27,937,299.
- 58,202 divided by 27,937,299 equals 0.002… 0.2%. 99.8% of the Vietnam War generation did not die in the Vietnam War.
Those were real deaths. The brave men and women who sacrificed their lives in the Vietnam War were real people… They have names.
Global War Against the Weather…
The World Health Organization has projected that come 2030, climate change will cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year.
Is this comparable to to Vietnam War in any way, shape or form?
| World Birth and Death Rates |
| Estimated 2011 |
| Death Rate |
| • 8 deaths/1,000 population |
| • 55.3 million people die each year |
| • 151,600 people die each day |
| • 6,316 people die each hour |
| • 105 people die each minute |
| • Nearly two people die each second |
In 2011, 55.3 million real people died. That’s 0.8% of 7 billion people. If I add 250,000 to 55.3 million, it’s still 0.8% of 7 billion people. Furthermore, these hypothetical deaths are the results of models. There will be no way to actually attribute any of these deaths, if they occur, to whatever climate changes actually occur between now and 2030.
Now, we do have a pretty good idea how many real people, with names, are currently dying due to energy poverty.
4 million is 7% of 55.3 million. Will a $240/gal tax on gasoline to fund a $122 trillion Global War on Weather make energy poverty better or worse? My bet is on worse.
Combatting climate change will take much more effort than ending the Vietnam War, and much longer.
Note to The New Republic: There’s only 1 “t” in combating.
The Global War Against the Weather will cost at least $122 trillion, claim tens of millions of lives and have no discernible affect on the weather. Clearly the Global War Against the Weather will require this sort of effort:
So… Climate Kiddies… You can either proceed with your “really futile and stupid gesture”…
Or you can shut up and enjoy the gift that the “ruling gerontocracy” has bestowed upon you…
From the article: “I’m still laughing. When I saw the title, I said to myself, “Self, they’re right. The Global War on the Weather is like the Vietnam War. No matter how much blood & treasure our government spends, it can’t win.”
Actually, the U.S. military *did* win the Vietnam war. The U.S. and North Vietnam and South Vietnam signed a peace treaty in 1973, and major combat ended. South Vietnam was still South Vietnam then. We won. Just like in South Korea.
Then, Watergate happened, Nixon resigned, Ford was appointed president, and the Liberal Appeaser U.S. Congress took over and threw South Vietnam to the communist wolves by causing all U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn from South Vietnam, and then failing to help the South Vietnamese when North Vietnam broke the peace treaty in 1975 and attacked South Vietnam again, even though the U.S. was legally and morally obligated to defend South Vietnam. The Democrats didn’t care. All they wanted to do was wash their hands of South Vietnam. And that’s what they did.
Vietnam was like Iraq: U.S. troops go in and take out the bad guys, and then Democrats come in and screw everything up when they get in charge, and the war that was won goes to hell in a handbasket. Two good examples of why Democrats should NEVER be allowed to guide U.S. foreign policy and war policy. They fail every time they try it. Appeasers appease, they don’t take actions against our enemies. They run away from out enemies.
Americans can be confident in their fighting forces. We defeat America’s enemies when called to do so. And I must say, I met some of the current generation of our fighting forces and was very much impressed with them. You don’t want to take these guys on.
Americans should have NO confidence in ANY Democrat when it comes to defending the United States.
The US military won on the battlefield. The war was lost in Washington DC and on the evening TV news.
“on the evening TV news.”
Yup, with LBJ’s political add portraying …… a little girl picking flowers, …. a nuclear bomb exploding …… and the TV screen going “black”.
Goldwater lost, …… LBJ was elected POTUS …… and the Nam War recruitment and expenditures dictated by the Democrats went into “overdrive”.
And Walter Cronkite declared the war lost right after we crushed the Viet Cong and NVA in the Tet Offensive. After Tet 1968, the VC ceased to exist as an effective fighting force.
“After Tet 1968, the VC ceased to exist as an effective fighting force.”
Yes, the Viet Cong, South Vietnamese communists who hid in plain sight among the South Vietnamese civilian population, made the mistake of believing their own propaganda which said that the Tet Offensive of 1968, would be the final battle to push the U.S. out of South Vietnam, and so instead of remaining hidden, they came out in public as communist fighters, and then when the Tet Offensive was stopped by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces, the Viet Cong had nowhere to hide, the ones who were still alive after the battles, that is.
The Viet Cong should not believe everything they read in the papers. Distorted views of reality can get you killed!
‘The war was lost in Washington DC and on the evening TV news.’
By progressives.
“The US military won on the battlefield.”
That’s the main point I want to emphasize. The U.S. military defeated the enemy before it.
The reason I’m a little sensitive about this is because the anti-war Left use the “lost the war” meme to try to make people think the U.S. military was not capable of defeating the enemy and therefore, the U.S. should shy away from pursuing further military adventures. The Left claims the Pentagon Papers said the Veitnam war was unwinnable. This is an example of that meme. It’s also a lie and the Pentagon Papers have been distorted, just like everything else about the Vietnam war. The winning of the war puts the lie to the Pentagon Papers report referred to. The war *was* winnable and was won on the battlefield.
It is important that other Bad Guys in the world know just how lethal the U.S. military can be. They need to know that despite all the fools in the U.S. government, that if they ever get in a fight with the U.S. military, they are going to be destroyed.
That just might discourage otherwise reckless dictators from doing stupid things with regard to the U.S, and might save us a lot of trouble in the future.
Yes, we have stupid politicians, but you don’t won’t to go up against the U.S. military. They demonstrate why you should be afraid every time they take the field.
Win the war, lose the peace.
What a bunch of ungrateful, privileged, immature brats. Their ancestors, through hard work and perseverance have handed them a virtual paradise (compared to life just 100 years ago) and all they can think to do is complain that it isn’t good enough and try to tear it down. They haven’t yet earned the right to criticize the generations that came before them.
On that same day in this comment:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/14/npr-its-2050-and-this-is-how-we-stopped-climate-change-riiight/#comment-2655228
I said:
My argument was that Climate Change activism is the younger generation’s Vietnam War protests. Both misguided. Both due to ignorant child-like young adults who thought they knew more than they did.
In my comment, I didn’t take Matt Ford’s idiotic presumptions that CC is something we need to worry about.
I wonder if Matt Ford read my comments for his ideas to write a story??
It is racist, sexist, and ageist to imply that only old, white men are sufficiently intelligent to see CAGW for the scam that it is.
Disgusting brain washed, indoctrinated fools…I mean IDIOTS. Good God!
As the climate gets chiller, the alarmists get shriller.
“We have to destroy the economy to save it.”
“Self, they’re right. The Global War on the Weather is like the Vietnam War. No matter how much blood & treasure our government spends, it can’t win.”
Yeah: and like the Vietnam war it is based on a lie of the domino effect and the idea that you can bomb people back into the stone age. Well I have news for the little agitators: you can send society right back into the stone age with the policies mooted as the Green New Deal. Nothing works faster than to start a civil war in the midst of a collapsing economy.
And about that damn “4 million dying from” cooking over wood fires. Please, please read the original source and not the NYTimes version of it. It says smoke from cooking fires is attributed to have contributed to the premature death of 4m people per year, all of whom were born after 1935.
Attributed to…
contributed to…
premature death…
Not “killed”. It is all made up, literally, if you look into how that number was imagined.
I assert by various attributions that 1% of all visitors to this website to have at last once dreamed of driving a yellow Boxster. Prove me wrong.
Say that again ….
Say that again ….
“DUH”, ….. 4 million dying from cooking over wood fires, …. 3 million dying from cigarette smoke, …… 1 million dying from secondhand smoke, … yada, yada, yada.
Just who in ell is performing all the autopsies that prove or justify the above claims
I was a child propagandized in public “school” during the Vietnam War, and now I’m part of the “gerontocracy.” Older and unbrainwashed is better.
These are the same liberals that will fly happily jetset around the world, drink Fiji water in plastic bottles shipped across the pacific, live in big houses, consume the finer things in life imported from all over the world, and use devices and products like mobile phones that would be impossible without fossil fuels. They have free will to “take action” themselves, but they refuse to do so. I can only assume they think “taking action” means other people have to make sacrifices, not them.
Recently there was an article about how the older you are, the more likely you are to be skeptical of the climate change nonsense. One of the reasons given was that people over 45 remember the global cooling scare of the 1970s. I would argue that it’s simply a result of being alive decade after decade and none of the disaster scenarios ever coming to pass. It’s easy for a 20 year old to buy into it, but after 40 or 50 years of nothing happening, you start to get tired of the garbage…
So is algore the new Hanoi Jane?
No, fentynal is this generation’s Vietnam War. Just look at the body count.
Sad to see so many skulls full of mush believe the Globalist\Deep State canard that somehow links destructive Climate Change to Capitalism! The only thing the two have in common is that both start with “C”! A far more fitting correspondence are the terms Climate Change and Communism because elimination of Capitalism leaves the doors wide open for implementation of the most destructive, incidious, and nefarious form of government ever invented, and that is Communism! And that is the goal of the Deep State Globalists!
Perhaps these kids would feel differently if we were to suggest that they should be drafted to go fight a shooting war with the world’s most prolific emerfing CO2 emitter. Because I don’t think they’ll stop emitting otherwise.
Clearly, the “pawn” on the left does NOT speak for the trees, for if she did, she would be saying “Thanks for the CO2, we LOVE it!”
The analogy works on a certain level. The Vietnam War was a giant mistake perpetrated by highly educated government experts that wasted ridiculous amounts of money and cost thousands of lives. Stated that way, the comparison to “climate change” is obvious.