In Colorado, the war on climate change is a total war – with little concern about collateral damage.

Colorado, like many blue states, has a legislature so overcome with climate hysteria they overlook or ignore the effects on parts of our state’s population they claim to passionately support including working families, the poor and people of color.

The issue Colorado must confront is whether disaster from the so-called “climate crisis” is so imminent the state must take any drastic measure, no matter if the impact is globally marginal.

And if people’s jobs, homes, communities and quality of life take a hit, then that is the necessary collateral cost of “saving the planet.”

It’s not rational policy making. It’s a secular quasi-religious crusade.

Just like the old street preachers who carried sandwich boards proclaimed “the end is near,” so today’s climate apocalypse prophets continually proclaim ultimate destruction is nigh. This even though they continually update their timetable when their dire predictions fail to come true.

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For example, the world was to be awash in climate refugees by 2000. Others said disaster would surely strike if there was not drastic action taken by 2012.   U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously proclaimed in 2019 the world is going to end by 2031 – which was rapidly refuted by climate scientists.

Though there is no question the climate is changing, there are plenty of serious questions in the scientific community about the depth and breadth of human causation. As American Enterprise Institute scholar Benjamin Zycher wrote, “The assumption of many politicians… that humans are the single most significant cause of climate change is surely unsupported by the available science.”

Such ambiguity counsels pause and prudence for policymakers, not a hellbent effort to push ideological goals, overriding reasonable, practical questions.

Which brings us to Regulation 28, the latest over-the-top measure on the anti-carbon jihad agenda. The measure, which got a a kangaroo court public hearing last week, would mandate more than $2.5 billion in “energy efficiency” alterations for 8,000 large buildings statewide – which could affect up to 900,000 apartments – according to reporting in The Gazette. The regulation requires cuts in building energy use by 7% by 2026 and 20% by 2030.

A climate evangelist – who apparently doesn’t own and has never owned a commercial or apartment building – was quoted as saying building owners, and renters, for example, should be thrilled with this new mandate since it is “absolutely doable,” and will end up sparking profits for deep-pocketed building owners.

This unexpected windfall from the climate war is apparently news to the actual building owners. In fact, they explained the Econ 101 effect of the myopic focus on carbon and its consequences not only for the economy – and renters’ pocketbooks – but for the cause of creating more affordable housing.

Here’s the common-sense problem the climate alarmists won’t face: the stratospheric costs of making required structural changes in apartment buildings, for example, cannot be swallowed totally by building owners. Absorbing continually rising costs plus pricey government mandates without growth in their income makes any business unsustainable. So rents will rise.

And who will those higher rents impact most? 

A study by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies reported, “Rental housing is particularly important for low-income and minority households, about half of whom are renters. As a result, supplying affordable units… is a critical housing policy priority.”

The Harvard study pointed out renter households are increasingly concentrated in the bottom quarter of the income scale. Other studies show Black and Hispanic households are twice as likely to rent.

This Colorado extremism, of course, is part of the overall national war on natural gas, which was once the go-to clean fuel we were told to rely on instead of evil coal. Now we must join the great collective cause of eradicating gas stoves, from which Regulation 28 would protect apartment dwellers. Like a lot of climate hysteria, the gas stove nonsense – which even the federal EPA doesn’t buy – is based on flawed studies where ventilation, not the stoves, were the problem. But let’s not let facts get in the way of the climate steamroller.

If you are a progressive concerned about affordable housing, particularly in working-class communities and in communities of color, take a minute to consider the clear and demonstrable downstream negative effects of your climate crusade on real Colorado families.

But, on the other hand, tent cities don’t generate much carbon, do they?

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.