Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Sanders Vows To Prosecute Fossil Fuel Executives

Avowedly Socialist Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential candidate and long-time admirer of all things Communist, recently wrote on Twitter that, if elected, he would not only pass a Green New Deal, but would “criminally prosecute the fossil fuel executives who destroyed the planet.”  
I assume those would be the same fossil fuel executives responsible for providing all of the products and energy allowing Bernie to live in luxury in not one, not two, but three homes-- while traveling around the country in private jets and limousines hectoring people on the evils of fossil fuels.  
As is nearly always the case with radical progressives, he has everything exactly backwards, perfectly wrong. Fossil fuels, along with free market capitalism, have been the driving force behind the doubling of human life expectancy since 1800. They have allowed literally billions around the world to escape abject poverty. Fossil fuels, combined with the incentive and innovation that capitalism engenders, have made possible virtually every invention, every technological leap, and every advancement in health care achieved in the past 200 years. They have permitted dramatic improvements in sanitation, nutrition, and access to clean water. They have allowed countless billions to see parts of the world that would otherwise be unreachable. They have made it possible for nearly everyone to be immunized against heretofore deadly diseases and led to the invention of advanced medicines, hardware and surgical techniques that have saved the lives of staggering numbers of human beings. They have allowed for the transmission of more information in the space of minutes than was possible in a person’s (much shorter) lifetime just decades ago. They have not only saved many lives but made them worth living.  
Before a Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Al Gore, Michael Moore, or any other shameless charlatan steps up to a microphone again to badmouth fossil fuels (or capitalism), they should think of what their lives would be like without smart phones, hospitals, medications, computers, restaurants, planes, chauffeured automobiles, furnaces and air conditioning. For starters. In fact, they should be forced to sell their homes, dispense with all their phones, appliances and computers and travel only by foot. (Oh, and they won’t be able to take advantage of that—or any-- microphone again, either.)
They like telling others how to live their lives—or lose them—so they should be amenable to their own advice. Right?  
If not, perhaps they should be criminally prosecuted.

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