Parody or News about Global Warming?

TUCSON – A recent news story by KGUN9 reads like a parody, as is the case with many local news stories.  It’s about students and former students of the Tucson Unified School District getting the school board to pass a climate-action resolution, which has an estimated cost of $900 million.

The resolution has the goal of net-zero carbon emissions and zero waste by 2040.  In other words, it parrots the fantasies of Western governments and such global institutions as the United Nations.

As a former head of an environmental group in metro New York, I care about the environment and understand the physics, chemistry and harm of too much CO2 in the atmosphere.  But I also understand the complexities, tradeoffs, costs, political realities, and the self-interest and other foibles of humans, including myself.  I doubt that the cadres understand this, especially given the academic issues at TUSD.

If memory serves, only about a third of TUSD students meet state standards for reading and math.  But the cadres excel at being indoctrinated in sophistries, pieties and nostrums.

Another KGUN9 story was about a Latino group getting a $500,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.  Of course, the EPA is part of the federal government, a government that has a $36 trillion national debt and is on an unsustainable spending trajectory. The trajectory is not going to end well for Latinos and all the other races and ethnic groups, but that’s not an issue in the election or in local news.

The dubious premise of the grant is that Latinos are affected more severely by global warming.

A case can be made that poor people, regardless of race and ethnicity, are affected more severely, due to having less money for air-conditioning and other reliefs from the heat.  For sure, the homeless in Tucson of any race/ethnicity are severely affected by living on the street in the heat.  But it’s hard to see the correlation between heat effects and ancestry or genes.

It’s unclear what the $500,000 is supposed to accomplish or how success will be determined.

The word “community” is mentioned numerous times in the KGUN9 story.  It’s a word that is used so much in the media and academe that it has become meaningless.  Of special irony is its frequent use on the University of Arizona campus, where faculty and staff are at each other’s throats.

“Latino” is another ambiguous word.  When I lived in the barrio of San Antonio long ago, my Mexican neighbors and friends referred to themselves as “Mexican,” not “Latino.”  The same is true today in Tucson, except for activists with an ax to grind or a grant to be obtained.

After all, Latinos can have ancestral roots in any of the following countries:

Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Saint-Barthélemy, or Saint-Martin

Latinos can also have any of the following racial/ethnic ancestry:

Amerindian, Black, Mestizo, Mulatto, Zambo, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, French, British, Greek, Polish, Ukrainian, Croat, Irish, Jewish, Armenian, Lebanese, Syrian, or Palestinian.

Are we supposed to believe that all of the above ethnocultural groups are affected identically and more severely by global warming?  Well, the EPA and KGUN9 believe it.

Mr. Cantoni can be reached at craigcantoni@gmail.com.