RUSH: This environmental stuff, you know, there’s some things that I think you should know that are taking place within the environmentalist wacko movement and the Democrat Party.

Now, I’ve mentioned the name Tom Steyer to you. He is a multibillionaire environmentalist nutcase from California. And he has threatened to withhold his money to Obama if Obama authorizes the Keystone XL pipeline, for example. The guy is a nut. He really believes every aspect of this hoax. But there was a New York City news conference a couple of days ago. Tom Steyer was joined by Mayor Doomberg, and here’s a new member of the group, Hank Paulson.

Do you remember Henry Paulson? Henry Paulson was the secretary Treasury during the 2008 financial crisis. Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs. Paulson was the guy that grabbed all the CEOs of all the banks and put ’em in a room and locked the door and said (paraphrasing), “You’re not getting outta here until you sign a document accepting TARP money, bailout money.”

The Wells Fargo CEO, for one, said, “We don’t need it. I’m not in trouble.”

“You’re not getting outta here unless you sign.”

So he had to sign on for a bailout of $25 billion. In the last couple of days Henry Paulson has joined the global warming nuts by claiming that the greatest threat facing the United States economy is climate change. This is absurd. So what’s really going on? The US economy, the greatest threat facing the US economy is Barack Obama and the Democrat Party. But these guys, there’s a new group that want to make the case that the greatest economic threat we face is climate change. And they’re doing this because they have to change the narrative. The current story line or narrative of global warming is blowing up in their face. So they’re trying to change it. I’ll have details as the program continues to unfold.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So how’s this for timing? “Hank” Henry Paulson, one of the truly smart people, Goldman Sachs CEO, multibillionaire, banker extraordinaire, Treasury secretary that was the engineer of all the bailouts and TARP during the 2008 so-called financial crisis where we only had 24 hours to do it or the world economy would collapse. And yet two weeks later, the world economy had not collapsed. Remember that? We only had 24 hours to act. The Republicans in Congress only had 24 hours to act approving TARP and the bailouts, and if they didn’t, the world economy was gonna collapse.

Okay, so on Sunday Hank Paulson has an op-ed. I happened to see it. It was a stand-alone. I didn’t know of his involvement with the environmentalist wackos at the time. And in his op-ed, Hank Paulson — he’s another guy that you wouldn’t think, okay, Goldman Sachs, Wall Street, multibillionaire, filthy rich, worked in the Bush administration, you would think Republican, you would think conservative, you would think free market — here’s a guy writing an op-ed promoting a carbon tax, promoting massive new tax increases on energy.

Why? Because of climate change. He made the point that the greatest threat that the economy faces now is climate change. Well, that was bad enough, because that’s absurd. But then, I guess it was two days ago, there was a news conference in New York City. Tom Steyer was there, big Democrat donor, hundred million dollars to the Democrats if Obama will continue to oppose the Keystone pipeline. He was joined, Steyer was, by Mayor Doomberg of New York and Hank Paulson. And the three of them on stage at the news conference released their risky business report titled, “The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the US.” And I thought this is brand-new.

Economic risks of climate change, and what it was, this whole press conference was a PR stunt to remake the climate change issue into an economic issue rather than a weather issue or a climate or science issue, because it’s bombing out. They’re not convincing anybody. We just had the coldest weather on record. There are still icebergs in the Great Lakes. We’re coming up on July. They’re blaming the cold weather for a horrible first quarter economy, and yet they’re out there talking about global warming. So it’s not working.

I’ll tell you what this is. This is a narrative change right out in the open. This is a change in the storyline or the template. The purpose of this press conference a couple days ago was to remake the climate change issue into an economic issue and story. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the Drive-By Media cannot wait to glom onto this. They will not talk about the economy.

And how about Paulson’s timing? He writes a piece on Monday that global warming, climate change, the biggest threat to the economy, and two days later, the Regime announces that in the first quarter the economy shrank 3%. I still can’t get over that, how horrible that is and the fact that it is the direct result of policy. It’s the direct result of the cultural decline that’s happening in this country. It’s the direct result of open borders and swarms of illegals who are uneducated and poor swarming into the country. It’s the direct result of Obamacare and the Regime taking over one-sixth of the economy, the private sector economy.

So here’s Hank Paulson, he’s one of the smartest people in the world, on Sunday with an op-ed, and guess what? The greatest economic risk that we face is climate change. They’ve gotta change the narrative. They have to, ’cause as a science issue, it’s bombing out. But then Hank kind of got bit on the rear end ’cause two days later here comes the economy contracting by 3%, because it was cold. I mean, imagine. In normal circumstances this guy would be so humiliated and embarrassed and discredited, he couldn’t show his face.

The economy contracts 3% because it was cold. It was so cold nobody could go out of their houses and shop. It was so cold they couldn’t open the malls. It was so bad. It was so bad. He has a piece saying global warming is the greatest threat to the economy two days prior. And the specific item that he mentioned in his op-ed piece that ran Sunday, he called for a carbon tax. The Democrats have been trying to tax energy in earnest since Bill Clinton in 1992. It probably predates that. Clinton was one of the early proponents of a massive — and his idea was a massive carbon tax combined with the EPA now assaulting power plants, this demand that power plants reduce emissions by 30%.

Your electric bills, if these people get what they want, without a carbon tax, your electric bills are going to skyrocket. They’re gonna skyrocket so much you’re gonna have to make lifestyle changes. You’re not gonna be able to use disposable income for gasoline or air-conditioning or heating. This is gonna be mandatory spending. It’s going to curtail people’s lifestyles. This is massive. The hit that’s going to take place on energy costs, you tax carbon, you’re taxing everything. Gasoline at every level, every stage of the transportation system. It is going to be punitive.

And here comes Hank Paulson — they got him I don’t know how. They think he’s bringing credibility, Treasury secretary, in charge of the bailouts, TARP, oh, smart guy, and even Paulson realizes we’ve gotta have a carbon tax increase. All it’s designed to do is to transfer wealth. It’s just designed to spread poverty, folks. Let me put it another way. Rather than say the carbon tax primary purpose is to spread poverty, the primary purpose of the carbon tax is to prevent the accumulation of wealth. The income tax is a direct obstacle in the way of accumulating wealth. The carbon tax will be, as are other taxes, and that’s what the objective here is, to prevent the accumulation wealth.

Now, I can imagine some of you, “Rush, do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? Why would our leaders who are looking out for us, why would our leaders who want the best for us –” That’s where you’re wrong. “Why would our leaders want to prevent us from accumulating wealth? Wouldn’t that mean the economy’s doing well?” I’ll tell you why. It’s real simple. You just have to have the courage to understand and admit this. The reason they want to retard the accumulation of wealth is so you will forever be more and more dependent on Washington, government, whatever, for the necessities in life. They own you then.

They’re already on the way to owning you with Obamacare. But that’s why. It’s power. If everybody is able to take an equal stab at accumulating wealth, and a lot of people do, what results? You’ve got independent people. You have self-sufficient people, self-reliant people. That’s the biggest enemy to people who want as much power over other people as they can get. And that’s the express purpose of all of this. And has as an ancillary effect, it will spread poverty. It will make people less affluent. It will make people less wealthy, and it will retard everybody’s ability to accumulate wealth.

And they’ll justify that with silly talk about income equality and fairness and family issues and whatever else they need to do to put a scarlet letter S on the achievers and make them suspects, which is part and parcel of what the Washington establishment is all about. So you probably will be hearing in the not-too-distant future about climate change as a great economic threat.

Since they have failed to convince people on the basis of the so-called science, since they have failed to convince you that you are destroying the planet, the next gambit is to try to convince you that global warming is destroying your ability to earn money and that you had better make changes in your lifestyle and allow Washington to take even more control in order to fix this serious problem — and both parties are part and parcel of it.

That is what the establishment is aiming to do.