Henry Miller and Andrew Fillat write for Issues and Insights about the COVID-19 epidemic’s impact on an annual event for environmental propaganda.

In recent years, however, Earth Day has devolved into an occasion for professional environmental activists and alarmists to warn of apocalypse, dish anti-technology dirt, and proselytize.

However, if there was ever a time that Earth Day’s hysteria was completely overshadowed by genuine apocalyptic scenarios, the COVID-19 pandemic is providing it.

Passion and zeal now trump science on Earth Days, and provability takes a back seat to plausibility. The Earth Day Network, which organizes events and advocacy, regularly distorts science and exaggerates fears in order to advance its Big Government agenda. With a theme of “Climate Change,” this year’s event is no exception. In the United States, the prototype of climate activism is the Green New Deal (GND), which is impractical, unworkable, monumentally expensive – and lethal.

Its price tag – tens of trillions of dollars – means that, were it to be implemented, the GND would lead to what has been dubbed “statistical murder,” because the diversion of resources to fund it would exert a so-called “income effect” on health and longevity that reflects the correlation between wealth and health. …

… To deprive communities of wealth via taxes to fund the GND, therefore, is to increase their health risks because the deprivation of income itself has adverse health effects — for example, an increased incidence of stress-related problems, including ulcers, hypertension, heart attacks, depression, and suicides. …

… The bottom line is that siphoning off vast amounts of wealth from a significant fraction of the nation’s population to achieve the GND’s goals will cost lives today, with uncertain benefits far in the future. And providing a health care framework to mitigate the damage would escalate the cost of the GND. …

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