“Climate”-Friendly Olympics Show Horror of Pritzker-style Policies

Every four years, the best athletes on the planet compete against one another while the watching world marvels at their physical prowess in the Summer Olympics. This year, however, in addition to bizarre and blasphemous rituals, humanity got to see the idiocy behind attempts to mitigate “climate change” — attempts very similar to those routinely mandated by Governor J.B. Pritzker in Illinois — in full bloom.

Months before the games began, Paris 2024 announced its ambitious plan to “halve the carbon footprint” from the past two Olympics and host the “greenest ever Games,” as if carbon dioxide (the gas of life) were somehow not “green.” Organizers admitted the approach was a “radical departure from that of previous major sports events.”

As it turned out, many of the athletes competing in the games weren’t too fond of the more “climate friendly” measures. Organizers celebrated their supposedly planet-rescuing schemes in endless “news” articles boasting of everything from doubling the amount of “plant-based foods” to the use of “recycled materials” in the Athletes’ Village.

Speaking out on social media and in the press, scores of athletes bemoaned the cardboard mattresses, the lack of air-conditioning, and the infamously inadequate nutrition. Private chefs had to be brought in at the eleventh hour. And huge amounts of real food — meat, eggs, and other hearty meals required by athletes — had to be rustled up on short notice to supplement what organizers described as the “climate-conscious menu.”

Following a near-mutiny by athletes, organizers finally caved and brought in real food. “There has been a reinforcement in animal proteins, with 700 kilos of eggs and a ton of meat, to meet the demands of the athletes, who we place at the heart of the Paris 2024 experience,” said Paris Olympics CEO Etienne Thobois in a statement as bad publicity grew.

But it was not just the lack of food that athletes found intolerable. The Team USA gymnastics team added their own mattress toppers to the so-called “sustainable” beds, which gold-medalist Simone Biles said “suck.” A photo of Italian swimmer Thomas Ceccon, napping outside in a public park went viral. Ceccon, a Gold-medalist and world record holder, contends that the poor sleeping conditions hurt his performance.

Faced with inadequate “geothermal cooling” systems, numerous teams including those from Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy, Britain, and the United States were forced to purchase portable air-conditioning units to deal with the summer heat, according to news reports. Apparently struggling to sleep in the heat is not conducive to athletic performance.

Naturally, the A/C purchases by some led to accusations of unfair advantage and “privilege” for wealthier nations from teams that could not afford to do the same. Climate warriors and social-justice zealots, meanwhile, complained that this was fueling “inequality” in the games.

Unable to deal with the Third World conditions, many athletes simply left the Village altogether to find better accommodations elsewhere. Nobody seems to be asking the obvious question: If Olympic athletes in peak shape couldn’t stand the living conditions in Paris for a few weeks, should anyone expect the average American to fare any better?

Of course, as those following the “climate” agenda know well, the standard of living for people around the world comes second to “saving” the planet, at least as far as enviro-globalists are concerned. Many show much more concern for the “environment” than for the health and welfare of people currently alive today.

For wealthy nations, “climate” policies may result in extreme discomfort and more poverty, as the Olympics foolishness showed clearly. But for those in poorer countries — many of whom live on the edge with barely enough food and energy to survive — it can be a matter of life and death.

As former NASA senior climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer put it, policies pursued by these globalist “climate Nazis” literally threaten the lives of millions of people. Ironically, the “carbon footprint” of many of the globalists behind it — Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Al Gore, Leonardo di Caprio, and countless more — approaches that of small African nations.

No one exemplifies the hypocrisy and lack of concern for the poor better than billionaire Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a champion of radical “climate change” policies since he took office. Most notably, the 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) mandates that the state convert to 100 percent “clean energy” by 2050, a scheme that will force electricity prices even higher.

Interestingly, many advocates of these sorts of policies actually admit that their policies will result in higher costs for consumers. As then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois told the San Francisco Chronicle while campaigning for the presidency, “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Indeed.

In July, while the Olympians were sweating in their cardboard beds, Gov. Pritzker signed a bill establishing a regulatory framework for “carbon capture and sequestration.” The governor boasted about how the Prairie State would continue “leading the charge in the fight against climate change.”

For the embattled taxpayers and workers of Illinois, that all means higher costs, less jobs, less manufacturing, and even lower living standards for everyone but the government cronies profiting from it all. Meanwhile, as U.S. and Illinois officials decimate the economy under the guise saving the “climate,” Communist China continues to build coal-fired power plants at breakneck speed.

It must be understood that the misery imposed on Olympians and Illinoisans alike is based on a fraud of historic proportions. The notion that carbon dioxide is pollution is preposterous. It is the gas of life, exhaled by people and required by plants for life-sustaining photosynthesis.

On top of that, even if CO2 were a dangerous “greenhouse gas,” all agree that human emissions of CO2 represent a fraction of 1 percent of the “greenhouse gases” present naturally in the atmosphere — literally. As Trump’s climate advisor Dr. William Happer of Princeton told me in several interviews, Earth is “starving” for CO2.

Just like so many Olympic athletes this year, the people of Illinois and the world must resist and reject government efforts to enforce misery, scarcity, and lower living standards under the guise of “saving the climate.” The whole proposition is absurd. And it will do less than nothing to help the environment.

Alex Newman is an award-winning international journalist, educator, author, and consultant who co-wrote the book “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.” He writes for diverse publications in the United States and abroad.

Originally published at Liberty Sentinel.

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