In May, I warned of the dangers of political complacency and the threat to freedom in America. Those threats are growing, real and imminent. I’m not talking about the pseudo-Nazi threat magically materializing at the Templeton/101 overpass. Our family experienced life in North County since the 1950s and the “white supremacist threat” was invisible; the area was a community where all were welcome. I believe an outside group affiliated with unknown supporters staged the incidents in question. The magical appearance of an “Antifa” counter-protest, a group that is itself the very embodiment of “fascism” by the tactics it employs, lends credence to my theory of a staged event. 

••KEEP Al Fonzi
Al Fonzi is an independent opinion columnist for The Atascadero News and Paso Robles Press; you can email him at atascaderocolumnist@gmail.com.

There are multiple threats to the Republic from both without and within, the latter presenting the threat of self-destruction, the former a growing, very real military, existential threat greater than the Cold War between the Soviet Union and America. Externally we face growing, massive arsenals of nuclear weapons held by communist China, the modernized nuclear arsenal of Russia, and emerging nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran. Never before has the United States faced multiple nuclear threats capable of launching devastating attacks against the American homeland. 

China is not a signatory to any nuclear arms control agreements; its arsenal numbers thousands of missiles, many of which are mobile and un-trackable, combined with a modern Navy larger than our own, rapidly outpacing us and will dominate the western Pacific within a few years. Furthermore, our defense industrial base has badly eroded since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s. We’ve allowed North Korea to develop a credible, deliverable nuclear capability in the hands of a megalomaniac while refusing to recognize China is not a competitor but an adversary. 

As great as these threats may be, a more imminent threat is internal as we rip ourselves apart, fracturing our society along every conceivable fault line. The destruction of our society and culture is never more evident outside the social/cultural issues than the systematic destruction of our economy and the middle class by environmental zealots. They pursue their goals with a religious fervor regardless of the real harm caused to millions of people, even relegating millions to a slow death by starvation “to save the planet.”

When I write “facts don’t matter,” they don’t to the millions who believe that humanity can affect the climate in any meaningful way by focusing upon reducing greenhouse gases to minuscule levels, whatever the cost. The cost is real. The prospect of massive shortages of electricity to power the new electric economy is growing as warnings about alternative energy destabilizing the grid are ignored. 

California continues to tear down hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River in Oregon, regardless of potential future power shortages. Refineries are being strangled with new regulations and shutting down. Anti-nuclear forces are powering up for more legal fights. “Fast-tracking” of a wind farm project in New Mexico took 17 years. Windfarm projects off the East Coast are facing increasing opposition as rules to protect marine mammals are obliterated: windfarms threaten the survival of whales, forcing them further offshore into shipping lanes where ship-strikes increasingly kill whales. 

We ignore facts: Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg deals in numbers and his numbers are revealing. Despite massive media hype for catastrophe, hurricanes are no more numerous nor intense now than in the past, actually less so. Forest fires are fierce, but forestry experts repeatedly point out the fires are due to poor management, not climate. California needs to burn 2 million acres a year in controlled burns to return to a healthy ecosystem; we burn about 40,000 acres at best and continue to build in high-fire-risk areas. Sea levels aren’t rising at alarming rates, barely at all, measured in inches over 140 years and much of that questionable. 

Satellite measurements reveal stable sea levels globally: accurate measurements require continuous calibration of tidal gauges on stable platforms, which also account for land subsidence, which doesn’t occur, leading to false alarms about rising seas. We worry about increasing temperatures but discount any benefits from warming which outweigh any from cooling. Higher energy prices mean less use of fossil fuels but also increasing cost of energy leading to more deaths from cold as occurred last year: 179,000 extra deaths. (The Journal Lancet estimated that the observed temperature rise over the past two decades increased heat deaths by 0.21 percent but decreased cold deaths by 0.51 percent.) Reducing fertilizer use, (manufactured by fossil fuels) means smaller crop yields, equating to starvation in underdeveloped economies. Polar bear populations increased from 5000 in the 1970s to over 30,000 today, yet we’re told they’re threatened. Stop hunting them and see them increase even more.

It’s well-documented that the “green economy” will be inefficient and built with slave labor in third-world countries, including the use of child labor. It will be incredibly environmentally destructive, far more so than fossil fuels ever were, with massive strip mining and pollution overseas if not here. How is that humane? Facts do matter, just not to the national media and the political sycophants that depend upon their distortion of facts.