I'll give our First Selectman credit

Remember this fraudulent panic? We have another one now.

The entire world-wide plastic straw ban was based on spurious date collected by a nine-year-old school boy*

There are lots of issues on which Fredo Camillo and I disagree, but I do understand that he has to try to resolve them in ways that balance the widely-divergent wishes of the residents of Greenwich, rather than just rant from the sidelines, as I do.

Still, he did support Trump (albeit a bit tepidly), and Friday he refused to sign off the latest children’s campaign, a declaration that global warming is “an emergency” that demands immediate action. Good for him — I’d expected him to go along with the silly thing, and in fact predicted here that he would. But no, at least for now.

GREENWICH — It partially came down to debate on whether it is a “life-or-death” issue, but in the end, the Board of Selectmen declined to take action on a proposed resolution to declare a climate change emergency in Greenwich.

Local youth activists presented the proposal to the town last month, saying that climate change poses a threat to the world. The town should declare an emergency to set the foundation for “future priorities, policies, plans, budgets and actions” to build a more resilient coastline and take other action, the proposal said.

But First Selectman Fred Camillo expressed reservations about the use of the word “emergency.”

“I said from the beginning that the word ‘emergency’ bothered me, and there are a couple of things in there that had to be reworded,” Camillo said at Thursday’s meeting of the Board of Selectmen. He also said that the wording of the proposal “got people upset because people are hurting right now” economically due to inflation.

“We’re all in agreement on the goal, but we want to make sure it’s not worded in a way that comes across as extreme to people,” Camillo said. He said he considers an emergency to be “a life-or-death situation.”

The proposed resolution calls on the town to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and for the selectmen to collaborate with the Board of Estimate & Taxation as well as the Representative Town Meeting on an “emergency mobilization effort” to meet emission reduction goals.

Greenwich is taking climate change seriously, Camillo said, pointing to town initiatives to purchase electric vehicles. But he said he was worried about the high price of gas as well as the need to transition to alternative energy sources such geothermal and solar.

“We’re working toward this so it doesn’t become an emergency,” Camillo said. “But I think people got a little nervous about using that word right now.”

*Here’s the straw that should have broken the camel’s back of these bogusities, but didn’t.