The Washington Post reports that the White House is assembling a panel to “assess whether climate change poses a national security threat,” headed by a guy who makes coal lobbyist-turned-Acting E.P.A. Administrator Andrew Wheeler look like a radical environmentalist. Yes, the administration has hired some real crackpots before, but this guy laps those suckers by miles. So, just who is William Happer? According to the Post, he’s a former Energy Department staffer under George H.W. Bush who joined this White House in September to work on “emerging technologies,” and, naturally, has no formal training as a climate scientist. But what he lacks in relevant knowledge he makes up for in a deep and abiding love for carbon dioxide, which he said during a summit in December 2016 is “not a pollutant at all” and is “actually a benefit to the earth,” despite having been unfairly maligned by “decade after decade of abuse, for no reason.” And, of course, he thinks that abuse has some historical parallels.
“The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” Happer explained to CNBC in 2014, after yelling at Andrew Ross Sorkin to “shut up” about him supposedly being a climate-change denier. In January 2017, he added in an e-mail to a Jezebel reader that the vilification of carbon dioxide also “differs little from . . . the Soviet extermination of class enemies or ISIL slaughter of infidels.”
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Other choice quotes from Happer, who, shockingly, has received money from the fossil-fuel industry:
“If plants could vote, they would vote for coal.” November 2015
“It’s not as though if you double CO2 you make a big difference. You make a barely detectable difference.” November 2017
“Let me point out that if you have a well-designed coal plant, what comes out of the stack of the plant is almost the same thing that comes out of a person’s breath.” December 2016
“I am trying to explain to my fellow Americans the serious damage that will be done to us, and indeed to the whole world, by cockamamie policies to ‘save the planet’ from CO2.” March 2016
“Warming and increased CO2 will be good for mankind.” May 2010
There is absolutely no question that climate change presents a national security risk. This isn't a political issue.
Why does every major multinational corporation have climate change contingency plans in place? Why does the military, at the very highest levels, see climate change as one of the biggest risks to global political stability?
Happer is a moron with some significant issues.
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