At an international meeting on global warming Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry compared the effects of climate change to the horrors of Islamic terrorism, suggesting that the two pose an equivalent danger to the world’s population.
“Yesterday, I met in Washington with 45 nations – defense ministers and foreign ministers – as we were working together on the challenge of Daesh, ISIL, and terrorism,” Kerry said at the Vienna summit. “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we – you – are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.”
Kerry’s statement was all the more remarkable because no hyperbole was intended. He actually meant that reducing the world’s use of hydrofluorocarbons, which he called “exceptionally potent drivers of climate change,” is just as important for the security of the world as combatting Islamic terrorism.
Bizarrely, Kerry spoke these words in the midst of one of the most violent periods in the history of Islamic terror. Barely a week has passed since a Muslim terrorist drove his truck through a Bastille Day celebration in Nice, France, mowing down children, men, and women, leaving 84 dead and scores injured.
The Islamic State celebrated a particularly bloody month of attacks during the Muslim holy season of Ramadan, which ran from June 5 to July 5, boasting that it was responsible for 5,200 people being killed or wounded in “military operations” during the sacred time.
Instigated by an Islamic State call to jihad, Muslim terrorists carried out targeted deadly attacks in Orlando, Afghanistan, Kenya, Lebanon, Istanbul, and Bangladesh, all during the month of Ramadan.
Secretary Kerry went on to explain why climate change is just as dangerous for world security as the terrorists behind these heinous crimes.
“Week after week, month after month, year after year,” he said, “we continue to see new evidence, scientific evidence, tangible evidence, of the danger that climate change poses to life on our planet.”
These words came just two days after a group of climate scientists released findings that one of the most cited examples of accelerated global warming—the Antarctic Peninsula—had nothing to do with human behavior whatsoever, but was “entirely consistent with natural climate variability.”
Moreover, the scientists also found that the warming trend had naturally reversed itself twenty years ago and “for the early years of the twenty-first century the peninsula has in the main been cooling.”
The Secretary’s speech also followed hard on the heels of another report, released by EcoWatch, revealing that “livestock emissions” are more dangerous for the environment than the combined output of planes, trains, and automobiles.
Simply through their normal biological processes, the article stated, cows produce a remarkable 14.5 to 18 percent of the global total of greenhouse gases, more than the transportation sector of the entire planet.
Although Secretary Kerry undoubtedly intended no disrespect to the families of the thousands of victims who have died at the hands of Islamic terrorists, his words make a mockery of their deaths.
His evident inability to evaluate the relative danger of America’s enemies—and those of the planet—suggest that the end of his tenure as secretary of state cannot come too soon.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome
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