Detroit — Democrats, environmental justice activists, and idealists admit they want to burn down Michigan’s economy and rebuild it in their image.
How do I know this? I went to the heart of the Green Revolution last week at the MI Healthy Climate Conference in downtown Detroit. Good news! We can fix the most pressing issues facing Michiganders through sweeping government mandates enacted with a socialist flair.
Shalanda Baker, former Biden staffer and current vice provost for the sustainability and climate action at the University of Michigan’s Office of Sustainability and Climate Action, said the Green Revolution is not just about emissions or sustainability—it’s about fixing everything we’ve done wrong.
“A just transition is about changing everything,” Baker said.
She said the current capitalistic system of extraction is dying, “and we have to let it die.” In its place, we build a “living economy” that prioritizes social well-being, regeneration, sacredness, cooperation, and something called “Deep Democracy.”
The state admits that a full transition away from our current energy mix and gas-powered cars means we’re going to have to say goodbye to about 20% of the economy, so the state has promises to retrain the losers who work in a carbon-emitting industry.
Until all of the former auto workers are turning dials on the solar farm, there’s nothing more important than doubling down on “climate work.”
Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer both gave rousing calls to action in the face of the Trump administration’s efforts to challenge state climate causes.
Whitmer said she would give money to poor households to help provide them with energy-efficient appliances and house upgrades—bread and circuses with an Energy Star.
Gilchrist’s announcement was that millions in taxpayer funds could even go directly to churches and religious organizations as long as they “cut emissions, create good-paying jobs, and unlock even greater investment in Michigan’s clean energy economy.”
So the state is gung-ho on giving public money to religious organizations when it comes to vague climate solutions, but it’s verboten for religious schools to use public funds because of the separation of church and state? Weird!
Many of the attendees of this conference seem to live in the swamp of government grants and subsist off of alphabet soup. In this habitat, state bureaucracy mingles with interested nonprofits and local government agencies. Through this, dangerous creatures spawn all over the state.
For example: A member of the MI Healthy Climate Corps works with the AFL-CIO’s workforce federal-funded nonprofit but gets her check from Americorps, which is also federally funded, and the money flows through the state.
Another Corp member is employed by Groundwork, which actively works to “Shut Down Line 5 for a Better Future.”
One member I talked to said they have been told their jobs are secure, at least for the time being.
A Corps member from Kalamazoo told me with a straight face that they are extending their initiative for No-Mow May to go all summer (within reason) and that we should make sure not to pick up the leaves in our yards this fall.
“Pollinators lay their eggs in the leaves” is the idea.
But is leaving my leaves on the ground for pollinators and killing my carbon-capturing grass going to make a difference when China and India are spewing out unfathomable tons of pollution?
My apologies for questioning the infallible “climate science” that has been handed down to us from on high. But it’s hard to trust a movement propped up by unwitting taxpayers and zealous regulators.
Green Inc. knows if they can push the government from the free market to the green market, they can make it big. And it seems here, among 1,050 of the faithful climate alarmists, that I am the only one wondering whether a zero-emissions future is worth the full-scale revolution.
Brendan Clarey is deputy editor of Michigan Enjoyer.
