American Consequences - November 2019

devastate California, causing millions of deaths. Who knows? What we do know is that as we grow richer and wiser, we will be better equipped with the resources and the brainpower to deal with catastrophes than any previous generation since the dawn of time. Our responsibility as parents, teachers, clergy, and lawmakers is to teach the children how to solve problems effectively, not to preach the end of the world. America’s millennials will inherit from my generation some $100 trillion of wealth – a bigger treasure chest of knowledge and resources than all other preceding generations’ combined. How about some gratitude? If the planet continues to warm and the oceans rise, you have the creativity, the brainpower, and the tool chest to figure out the solution. I don’t know what that will be, but I do know that the solution isn’t moving us backward in time to the pre-industrial and pre-energy age – when life was pretty rotten. I’m an optimist and a realist. This next generation will figure it out. They will save the planet from extinction. And the really good news is there’s a lot more than 8 1/2 years to come up with the right solutions. © Creators Syndicate, Inc. Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with FreedomWorks. He is the co-author of Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive the American Economy .

fossil fuels, they may not have power for their computer games. That gives them pause. As for the trends on toxic air pollution, as recently as a century ago, cities from London to Pittsburgh to Mexico City to Los Angeles were filled with dark and dangerous clouds of smog that choked people’s lungs and prevented the sun from shining. These pollution levels have fallen by 50%, 70%, and even 90%. Children are now taught that cars are evil polluters and that the combustible engine needs to be abolished. Really? When Henry Ford started rolling his Model Ts off the assembly lines 100 years ago, he was heralded as the greatest environmental savior in the history of the planet. Why? Because cars replaced horses – which dropped many tons of toxic manure into the city streets. Imagine the deplorable conditions of Los Angeles today if you had 3 million people riding around on horses. It is sadly ironic that the greens who want to save the planet are also the ones who turn to the intellectual dead end of socialism and statism to fix things. The young like to cite the “scientific consensus” that climate change will be catastrophic. Maybe. But 30 years ago, scientists warned of overpopulation, food shortages, energy scarcity, and even mass starvation. All of these scares were combatted through innovation and progress. Bad things happen. Sometime in the coming centuries, an asteroid could plunge into the planet, some new version of the plague could afflict us, or the big earthquake could

American Consequences

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