The President, the Pope, and the U.N.

In 2006 John O’Sullivan’s book, The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister, detailed how the timely convergence of President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the early eighties, led the West to a peaceful resolution of the Cold War.

All three individuals were self-confident charismatic leaders who achieved greatness through dedication and hard work. Each believed that he had been created for a purpose. For Reagan it was to hasten and bring about the collapse of Communism. For John Paul II (at least in the political realm) it was his diplomatic offensive for religious liberty behind the Iron Curtain, especially in Poland. Thatcher was determined to transform “the sick old man of Europe” (a familiar epithet for Britain) into a dynamic land of enterprise and prosperity.

Working together, these three leaders defeated the Soviet Empire, and revived the economies and spirits of the West.

Now we have another trifecta that is converging in a timely, manner. But they are the worst possible leaders at the worst possible time: a Marxist Alinskyite President, a silly, sanctimonious pope and a bland, non-entity for a British Prime Minister.

The Middle East is imploding. Islamic State butchers are annihilating Christian and other communities. Putin is sending arms to Assad. Under the Obama-Iran nuclear deal, the mullahs will get $100+ billion to expand their proxy terror war on Israel and the West. Saudi Arabia has 100,000 empty air-conditioned tents but won’t take any of the millions who’ve been driven from their homes. Neither will most of the other 22 Arab League nations or 57 Organization of Islamic Cooperation member countries.

Instead, millions of mostly Muslim migrants, militants and refugees are heading to Europe – with limited money, education, job skills, or desire to assimilate. They demand entry into EU countries whose energy, economic, employment and welfare systems are already foundering or nearing collapse.

There is no shortage of dire issues for Barack Obama and Pope Francis to be focusing on. But as economies crumble, and the Middle East collapses, these two focus like a laser beam on what?

…climate change! It’s insanity on steroids. The alarmist assertions are absurd.

“Climate change is already disrupting our agriculture and ecosystems, our water and food supplies,” Obama recently inveighed. “If we do nothing, Alaskan temperatures are projected to rise between six and twelve degrees by the end of the century.”

Projected by whom? Who concocts these fables? Nature-driven climate change has disrupted lives throughout human history. Seas have risen 400 feet since the last mile-thick glaciers melted off the northern half of Asia, Europe and North America. How did “imperiled” Pacific islands survive that?

Some Alaskan glaciers have been retreating for decades, but Hubbard is growing andGlacier Bay’s ice retreat began around 1750. Arctic sea ice has increased some 26% (400,000 square miles) since 2012, in a cycle that’s continued for millennia. The sea ice “was thick in the 1920s, thin in the 1930s and 1940s, thick again in the 1960s and 1970s, and thinner in recent decades,” oceanographer Igor Polyakov noted in 2004.

“Not only in the summer, but in the winter the [Bering Sea region] was free of ice, sometimes with a wide strip of water up to at least 200 miles away from the shore,” Swedish explorer Oscar Nordkvist reported in 1822. “We were astonished by the total absence of ice in the Barrow Strait,” Francis McClintock, captain of the Fox, wrote in 1860.“I was here at this time in 1854 – still frozen up – and doubts were entertained as to the possibility of escape.” How did cars and power plants cause all that?

Meanwhile Greenland’s ice mass has grown by some 200 cubic kilometers (48 cubic miles) just since 2014. Vikings built homes, grew crops and raised cattle in Greenland between 950 and 1300, before they were frozen out by the Little Ice Age and encroaching pack ice and glaciers. Antarctic sea ice set another record in May, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center reports, climbing 12% above the long-term 1981-2010 average, to reach 12.1 million square kilometers (800,000 square miles) – almost as much as Alaska and Texas combined!

If it’s global warming and climate change, shouldn’t melting phenomena be constant andglobal?

Pope Francis nevertheless plans to meet with President Obama September 23, to discuss “dangerous manmade climate change” and how to ensure “preferential treatment of the poor,” by building “clean” energy economies and stopping “carbon pollution.” Their concerns and solutions are illusory.

They disdain fossil fuels and capitalism – though they have brought greater health and well-being to more people than any other systems in history. They prefer the socialism, centralized government control, higher energy prices, fundamental economic transformations and wealth redistribution schemes advanced by the UN and Climate Crisis, Inc. By denying the world’s poorest people energy, jobs and economic growth, this agenda will sentence them to perpetual poverty, disease and early death. By mandating the use of biofuels, wind turbines and solar panels, it will turn food into fuel, increase malnutrition, convert wildlife habitats into enormous inefficient energy facilities, and kill countless millions of birds and bats.

The pope and president dismiss these impacts. They insist that climate change is a far worse problem, and that modern energy, housing and living standards for the world’s poor would not be “sustainable.” They believe “morality,” “climate justice” and “preferential treatment” mean protecting people from hypothesized, exaggerated and fabricated climate disasters 25, 50 or 100 years from now – by destroying millions of jobs and keeping the world’s poor energy-deprived and impoverished now and in perpetuity.

The “Freedom Team” of  Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher brought down the Evil Empire. That was a major accomplishment, and a great blessing for the entire world.

To deal with today’s threats, we have the sad Farce Team of Obama, Pope Francis and (in the absence of a strong, principled British Leader) the UN. Even if they got lucky beyond their wildest dreams and managed to completely eliminate U.S. carbon emissions, it would not be scientifically detectable in global temperatures even by 2100.

All it would do is make us poorer and less free – which makes them the polar opposite of the Freedom Team.