Might go off on an Earth Day tweet thread later today about climate change, rural communities, and the environment. Stay tuned.

Alright y'all, let's do this. I'll start bluntly. It EXASPERATES me when folks contend that the climate isn’t impacted by humans. Come on. The combined activity of 7.9 billion people on a planet is going to have some level of impact. Arguing otherwise is nonsense.

Years ago, I heard T Boone Pickens asked if he "believed" in climate change. He nailed it. He said (paraphrased from memory), "of course humans impact the climate. That's obvious. We just need to figure out to what extent we can do something about it."

Now, here's a problem. Many activists have ulterior motives, using trendy topics to push an agenda. If you use climate activism to push anti-capitalist, anti-animal ag, etc. agendas, I've got no time for you. You're doing the climate a disservice with your dishonesty.

Now, I'm speaking to my rural and ag people: if you bow out of the climate convo and deny it's a thing, you just let the agenda-driven activists control the narrative and you're worse off than if you had engaged. Let's engage and do it honestly. We've got something to sell.

I'm a Christian, but no matter your position on Earth's origin, we should agree on basic principles:

1. We have a resilient planet.
2. Resilience doesn't mean impervious to harm.
3. It's the height of human arrogance to think we don't owe it some level of stewardship & care.

So let's talk #3. My man @Tye_KC already predicted this segment. An "externality" is a cost or benefit that affects a third party without their involvement. (example: secondhand smoke). Similarly, every single human activity has an environmental impact, some small and some large.

We can't fully eliminate human environmental impacts, but we CAN deal with it honestly. We can make good public policy decisions that figure out how/when to minimize impacts and what's the best net positive for society.

See this related thread for some of my thoughts on having an intelligent policy conversation about fossil fuels (which isn't as much fun as shameless political antics): https://twitter.com/jamesdecker2006/status/1382792627343351813?s=20

Back to externalities. Activists want to do things like eliminate livestock as food source and replace with lab-grown meat or replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

DO Y'ALL THINK THOSE LABORATORIES AND WIND TURBINES AND SOLAR PANELS DON'T HAVE ENVIRONMENTAL EXTERNALITIES?

I'll try to summarize my thoughts on importance of livestock and agriculture to climate change, but I encourage you to watch @AllanRSavory's Ted Talk on the matter. It's one of most important (and pro-rural) speeches ever given about climate change.

Savory has little use for activist agendas. He cuts straight to science. Grasslands cover over 1/3 of Earth's landmass. They evolved symbiotically with the animals grazing them. In the absence of wildlife, they need to be grazed by livestock.

Savory's discussion of desertification is important. The loss of grasslands to desert (and corresponding loss of carbon-sequestering plants) is our biggest climate change problem and that's what policy makers ACTUALLY need to work on.

That's where rural America comes in. We won't minimize human impacts on climate change with ridiculous policy ideas that exchange one set of externalities for a whole new set of externalities. Yes I'm talking Green New Deal. No, it won't solve things.

We need to better manage our grasslands (read the work of @SavoryInstitute), but that requires grazing them. It's actual science. Any policy proposal that removes livestock from the equation is driven by a different agenda.

Similarly, we can and should cut fossil fuel emissions. We won't do it by replacing every car with a Tesla. We WILL do it with better, cleaner fuels of all kinds. If you aren't willing to consider clean natural gas to replace dirtier emissions, you reject actual climate progress.

If you've followed me very long, you know I'm a nuclear energy groupie, but ask yourself, which has less of an actual environmental footprint:

One nuclear power plant or a couple hundred thousand acres of wind turbines?

Because the energy output is about the same.

Rural America, let's lead on climate change.

Let's be honest and assertive.

Let's engage hidden agendas.

Let's offer real solutions that are good for the environment and for our communities.

We have the ability and frankly, we have the obligation.
Happy Earth Day, y'all.