Guess who graduated?!?!?!

I remember when I graduated college and got my first job. My new boss handed me a bucket and a mop. Indignantly I told him, “Excuse me, but I just graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the boss said, “Let me show you how to use those.”

It’s been a world wind of graduations in the Caldara family. My daughter, Piper, just graduated from the University of North Texas with a degree in Finance. And get this, it cost gobs less than if she went to CU in our own hometown. Furthermore, she graduated without learning to hate America or celebrating her victimhood. Damn Texans.

Of course, her hair got big and she only eats at Whataburger, but at least she doesn’t have any pronouns on her email signature line.

And she has a job in her chosen field of Finance. Of course she’s been practicing spending my money for 22 years now, so she’s more than qualified.

I have the hat-trick of adult poverty – a divorce, a severely handicapped son, and a daughter who somehow makes the handicapped son look like a fiscal bargain. But now she’s off the payroll. I plan on buying a small Caribbean island with the savings.

And my son just graduated his post-high school program for special need young adults called Transitions. His challenges going through the Boulder public school system as a kid with Down Syndrome can be boiled down to this – special ed staff were rock stars, the administration were cruel and hateful to the disabled.

The biggest injury came from locking Chance out of school during COVID and doing nothing to repair the damage. They hurt kids like him more than most.

Boulder has money galore for new buildings for administrators while the handicapped kids in Transitions are taught a temporary building. The school district that preaches tolerance and inclusiveness separates out the developmentally delayed and keeps them in Tuff Sheds.

Nonetheless, I’m grateful to the teachers who worked with him every day, cared for him and worked hard to improve his skills. They are an amazing group of people. In exchange, Chance was the class clown they needed. They’re gonna miss each other.

Most importantly, I am proud of both my graduating kids!

My hometown of Boulder is going to sue oil companies over climate change. I'm thrilled about this and wish them the best of luck. In my latest column, below, I explain that these mega energy companies haven't done enough to rid the planet of greenhouse gases. In order to do the right thing, they need to drill a lot more. Read on and find out why.

And remember, what do you call the person who graduated last in his medical school? “Doctor.”

In Complete Colorado, Cory Gaines has a piece on the progressive press’ covering of climate change.

Ari Armstrong opines on Colorado’s immigration experience.

Mike Rosen gives his take on the Trump protests.

Helen Raleigh escaped Communist China for the promise of America. She found an America obsessed with racial victim ideology for every minority except, surprisingly, for Asians. What about their history of oppression?

Boulder’s climate virtue signaling keeps the wood fires burning

By Jon Caldara

The Colorado Supreme Court is allowing my hometown of Boulder to sue oil-and-gas companies over their culpability in climate change. It’s about time. I wish Boulder nothing but success.

It is my hope Boulder takes these energy corporations to task and forces them to dramatically cut the emissions being flung into our air, choking our mother planet to death.

And there’s only one real way for those corporations to do it. They must produce a whole lot more natural gas. And fast.

Of the roughly 8 billion people inhabiting this beautiful planet, only 1 billion of us have reliable energy on demand. We Boulderites are among the fortunate one in eight who flip a light switch without worrying if the light will turn on. Helps make us fat and happy.

Boulder’s energy abundance privilege

Living the life of energy abundance makes it easy to think everyone else does, too. And when you live the self-important lifestyle that is Boulder, it’s easy to forget your policies have real-world trade-offs.

The energy you can afford to turn your nose up to in Boulder is an environmental miracle elsewhere.

According to Anne Hyre of The Bettering Lives Foundation, 2.1 billion people across the planet still cook over open wood fires.

Her goal is to help people in Ghana and Kenya (to start) move from cooking over open fires to using propane. Propane is a liquefied natural gas, LNG, the stuff made by the companies Boulder is suing.

To cook over an open fire fueled by wood, women in these African nations spend, on average, five hours a day collecting sticks, breaking them up by hand, setting them ablaze inside their poorly ventilated homes as their little children inhale the smoke, just to cook the family’s meals.

Indoor smoke pollution from open fire cooking kills an estimated 3 million people annually. That’s more than malaria, HIV, tuberculosis and cholera combined. But, fortunately, we Boulderites don’t have to watch those deaths, so what the hell do we care?

We care about the air we breathe and the wildfires within our expensive county borders. These fires are certainly not caused by mismanaged government forests and open space. They must be caused by global warming.

Global warming is caused by evil energy companies not doing enough to replace deadly wood fires with clean-burning gas stoves.

For around $40, women in poor nations (yep, men don’t gather wood or cook in these nothing-like-Boulder nations) could switch to a portable propane burner running on a portable tank, like what your backyard barbecue uses. When they do, their lives change dramatically for the better. But again, who cares about them.

Actually saving the planet

Why should it matter to we Boulderites? If these 2.1 billion people switched from cooking over burning twigs and cow dung to inexpensive propane stoves, it could save the planet.

According to the International Energy Agency, it would do more than ending shipping and airline transportation combined.

Do you hear that? Boulder wants to cut emissions drastically. That could be accomplished by moving people from cooking over open fires to gas. It would do more than ending shipping transportation and airline travel combined!

Environmentalist pin-up girl Greta Thunberg shames people for traveling by air. But the Earth doesn’t care if greenhouse gases are produced by wealthy Boulderites flying on vacations or people in squalor cooking over burning cow dung.

If the goal is cutting emissions, then stop deforestation, stop enslaving girls to peasant labor, stop killing children with indoor air pollution and start producing more LNG and get it to poor people around the globe.

Don’t keep it in the ground. Get it out of the ground to save the planet.

Burning wood pollutes less than burning cow dung. Burning coal or charcoal pollutes less than wood. And burning natural gas pollutes far less than coal.

Boulder-type environmentalists don’t want to talk about trade-offs. They want to emote.

It might come as a shock to we Boulderites, but those cooking over open wood fires will not soon be affording windmills, solar panels and backup batteries to simply cook their food. But a switch to affordable gas stoves in poor nations could be done relatively quickly.

It begs a question: Does Boulder care more about virtue signaling than solving climate change and saving lives?

NEXT CLASS
DATE: June 19, 2025
TIME: 6:30pm – 8:00pm
LOCATION: Online (video link sent upon registration)
COST: $15

Saturday, September 13, 2025

Kiowa Creek Sporting Club
46700 E County Road 30
Bennett, CO 80102