One of the major founding ideals behind the creation of the United States is being threatened right now in Iowa, according to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
John Locke, the Enlightenment thinker whose writings were mined in the production of the Declaration of Independence, believed that the fundamental natural rights of man were life, liberty, and property, according to Teach Democracy.
The last is now in danger as Iowa farmers could be forced to sell their property so that carbon-capture pipelines can crisscross the Midwest, Ramaswamy said in a video posted to X.
“The Great Reset now comes to your backyard. It’s dead wrong & unconstitutional to use *eminent domain* to seize farmland to advance the global climate cult’s carbon capture pipelines in the American midwest. Shame on the GOP Establishment for its silence on this critical issue in Iowa,” he wrote in the post.
The Great Reset now comes to your backyard. It’s dead wrong & unconstitutional to use *eminent domain* to seize farmland to advance the global climate cult’s carbon capture pipelines in the American midwest. Shame on the GOP Establishment for its silence on this critical issue in… pic.twitter.com/0El7ZhI6NV
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 8, 2023
“The Climate Cult has nothing to do with the climate. That is one of the many reasons why it is a hoax,” he said, adding that the goal is to help China at America’s expense.
Noting the use of eminent domain to take land for the project from those who do not wish to sell, he said, “think of that unconstitutional violation, that World Economic Forum vision that you have no property. Well, now they’re bringing that to the back yards of even Iowa farmers in the United States.
Ramaswamy opposes eminent domain for private companies and has criticized other GOP presidential candidates for not taking a stand on the issue, according to the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
Should the government be allowed to use eminent domain for climate change?
“Why am I the only candidate who’s able to even say these things to you?” Ramaswamy said. “It’s because every politician dances to the tune of their biggest donor, like a fact of nature.”
The pipelines take carbon dioxide, such as that produced at ethanol plants, and trap it underground.
Ramaswamy said there’s a domino effect if eminent domain is used to fight climate change.
“Ethanol plants are not the only things that emit carbon dioxide into the air. You mark my words, if that meets the test, that justifies the Biden administration or anybody else coming after him to be able to come into your home and seize your gas stove and leave a $50 check in your mailbox,” Ramaswamy said recently, according to NBC News.
Kathy Stockdale, a corn and soybean farmer whose land has been identified for a possible pipeline, said she worries about what might go wrong.
“If there was a leak on our farm, we will be dead. We are in the kill zone,” she said.
It has happened before. In February 2020, heavy rain resulted in a pipeline rupture near Satartia, Mississippi. A CO2 plume made up of 31,405 barrels of highly compressed liquid carbon dioxide settled over the town, sending 45 people to the hospital and forcing 200 others to evacuate, according to Inside Climate News.
Carbon capture projects, which include pipelines such as the one being fought in Iowa, have already been funded with $1.8 billion in U.S. taxpayers’ dollars.
More than $12 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act is designed to build more projects.
The projects do not always deliver what they promise, according to a 2022 report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
The report said 10 of 13 flagship carbon capture projects between 1986 and 2019 either underperformed or were abject failures.
All that means Ramaswamy will fight against the pipelines and eminent domain.
“I am a hard defender of individual landowner rights. I am dead set against eminent domain, and I also believe that the climate agenda is a hoax. It is based on fraudulent premises. The anti-carbon agenda itself is false in the United States of America and I will declare independence of that as the next president,” he said, according to KGAN-TV.
