For reasons I cannot completely fathom, there are teachers, professors, and politicians who look at the problems of pollution in our time and demand radical and self-destructive measures to curtail pollution.  I call these people the Green Gang.

• Al Gore
• Ansel Adams
• Prince Charles
• David Attenborough
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Greta Thunberg
• The Sierra Club
• Rachel Carson

Whether the Green Gang wants to admit it or not, we are not ready to abandon the use of fossil fuels.  Since mankind learned how to start fires, we have been using fuel for cooking, heating, and transportation.

The Culture War over the environment is not a real debate, but more a question of degree. I doubt you will find a responsible person who says, "We need more pollution!"

One of the great challenges before us is to develop reliable energy sources that minimize pollution.  We have made progress.  Our trains are no longer fueled by coal-fed steam engines.  Our cars and planes are more fuel-efficient than earlier models.  We can do better, and we should do better.

Image: 21st-century green gang by Andrea Widburg.

By listening only to the Green Gang, though, our president is causing a lot of unnecessary economic pain in America.  The Green Gang's members want us to abandon fossil fuels prematurely.  As a result, inflation soars as his polling sinks lower.  If America did not possess vast amounts of fossil fuel, Biden's plan to buy it overseas would make sense.  However, because we have plenty of fossil fuel here in America, his choice to seek it elsewhere makes many of us question his sanity or his motives.

America is suffering, and Joe Biden lamely blames it on Russian president Putin or any other convenient scapegoats.  His excuses are getting old to many Americans.

If you watch enough war movies or work in the medical world, you have heard of gangrene.  Our bodies are covered with tissue, and tissue needs a constant supply of blood to function.  Accidents or warfare takes a toll on tissue.  If the blood supply is damaged by trauma, the tissue will starve, and gangrene results.  Even today, the medical fix for gangrene is to remove the dead tissue, AKA amputation, before the gangrene spreads.  Gangrene is bad.

As humans need blood to feed our tissues, America needs fossil fuel to sustain our far-flung communities.  The rush to abandon fossil fuels threatens to damage the tissues connecting America.

We can have an inkling of what happens from the "gangrene" associated with ending fossil fuel by looking at Sri Lanka.  That country recently embraced the environmental policies of the Green Gang with disastrous consequences.  As a result, the country is not producing enough food and is in turmoil.  The leaders are fleeing the country.

The Green Gang would do us and themselves a great service if they would work with others to devise a gradual plan to wean us off fossil fuels as other energy sources become reliable (assuming that's even possible without nuclear energy).  America is hurting right now, and the example of Sri Lanka looms over us.  The Green Gang needs to show us a plan, or it will be facing the wrath of 330,000,000 desperate and hungry Americans.

Unpleasant as gangrene is, the Green Gang needs to understand it, because they are playing with fire.

Ned Cosby, a regular contributor to American Thinker, is a pastor, veteran Coast Guard officer, and retired public high school teacher.  His new novel OUTCRY is a love story exposing the refusal of Christian leaders to discipline clergy who sexually abuse our young people.  This work of fiction addresses crimes that are all too real.  He has also written RECOLLECTIONS FROM MY FATHER'S HOUSE, tracing his own odyssey from 1954 to the present.  For more info, visit Ned Cosby.