RUSH: Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have something I want to address here as America’s Adult. By the way, I’m very honored to have that title and to execute that responsibility because I am an adult, and there aren’t too many of us, sadly.

So I have here a story that written off of a column by Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal. “Democratic presidential candidates seize on climate change as key issue in primary fight, but will it help or hurt them in the general election? Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel warned on Saturday that 2020 Democratic candidates’ climate proposals could cause the loss of millions of jobs.”

Let me quote from Kimberley Strassel’s piece. “When you talk about banning fracking. When you talk about a carbon-free economy by 2030 or 2050, you are saying ‘we are going to kill every coal job in the country, every oil and gas job, all of the shipping jobs that they do — we’re talking about millions of positions,” that we’re gonna kill with the Democrat agenda. And she says that’s not a vote-getter.

That’s not gonna get people revved up to vote for you, killing this many jobs, wiping out that much of the economy. “The problem here,” she writes, “is that this was one of the reasons they did lose last time. Remember, Hillary Clinton still says one of the bigger mistakes she made was promising to put a lot of coal workers out of a job.”

Well, it didn’t hurt Obama, which is why she said it. Obama got elected despite that same promise. But, of course, Obama got elected because he was the first African-American candidate. It didn’t matter what he said. It mattered what he looked like. And do not doubt me. That’s why so many Republicans voted for the guy hoping that they were voting for peace and tranquility and an end to the charge of racism. Ha-ha. It only got worse.

But let me ask you a question. Particularly those of you — and I know you’re there, because this audience knows no boundaries. We have all genders, both of them. We have all religions. We have all three sexes, or maybe it’s four now. We have all ages. This program’s audience knows no demographic boundaries. And thus that I know that there are some of you in this audience who think it’d be a great thing to get rid of every coal mine and stop using coal.

And I know there are some of you in this audience who think that fossil fuels are destroying the planet and we’ve got to stop using them or we’re going to die. I know you’re there. I know you’re listeners. So I want to ask you, I really want you to seriously consider my questions here. And I’m asking these questions to you as America’s Adult.

Why and how do you think fossil fuels became the primary energy source for industrialized, advanced western economies? How did fossil fuels become the primary energy source? (interruption) No, no. But but but. Snerdley’s answering in economic terms in the private communication link that he and I share. You can’t hear him for a reason.

“It’s because it’s the cheapest, it’s the most economic.” Well, before we get to that, how many of you in this audience who think fossil fuels are going to be the end of humanity and thus we need to get rid of ’em, how many of you believe that the people in the fossil fuel and related energies fields, endeavors, got into that business?

Do you believe that it is their objective to destroy the planet? Do you believe that their purpose is to wipe out a habitable environment? Do you believe that they only care about profit and do not care what happens to the place they live as well? Do you think people in the fossil fuel industry are inherently evil? Do you believe that their purpose in using these fuels is to pollute, to foul, to destroy, to eliminate life support systems on earth just for the sake of profit? Do you really believe that?

Let me ask you this. If you get rid of fossil fuels, like the Democrat candidates are promising, how are you gonna get the Moon or Mars to colonize because life here will not be supportable? How you gonna get there? What solar array or wind farm are you gonna use to get you to Mars? Or to the relatively shorter journey to the Moon?

And then once you get to either place, how are you gonna survive? The simple answer to these questions is that in free markets, innovation and invention and adaptability prevail. The reason fossil fuels are dominate is because they work. They are the absolute best at advancing the productivity, the quality of life, the standard of living, and the overall lifespan of humanity. If fossil fuels were eliminated as the Democrat Party is claiming they want to do, life as we all know it would cease to exist.

Every advance in American health would be lost, and we would begin a decline. Every advancement that we’ve made in cleaning up environmental messes would stagnate. Fossil fuels, expressed as the free flow of oil at market prices, is responsible for the greatest advance and revolution in quality of life, prosperity, economic opportunity, and life span the world has ever known.

I have to take a break here. It is stunning, the degree of ignorance that’s out there about this. Absolutely stunning to me.