Many rational people, including plenty of scientists, agree climate change is a natural phenomenon that has been going on since the dawn of time, and dire global warming predications are overblown and exaggerated.

But leftist scholars ignore all reason and continue to plow ahead. They use extreme rhetoric and advance draconian policies to foist their costly views on the rest of us.

For example, imagine what it’s going to cost California taxpayers to make all 10 UC campuses “carbon neutral by 2025” – a stated goal of UC President Janet Napolitano – who said this week during the system’s climate change summit at UC San Diego that reducing the human carbon footprint is a “moral imperative.”

Audience members at the summit included alternative energy peddlers who could not wait to land juicy, tax-payer funded contracts for potential boondoggles such as stocking campuses with all-electric busses and covering them with solar panels.

Already the system has agreed to buy 80 megawatts of solar power, the largest such purchase, the Associated Press reports – adding “UC experts are asking religious leaders to help foster change.”

Such efforts have already begun.

One of the top religious studies professors in the country, for example, suggests climate change is the “core moral issue of our time” and said she believes ignoring the phenomenon is akin to sin. That underscores the head of the Episcopal Church saying earlier this year that ignoring climate change is “sinful.”

Meanwhile, there’s a professor of climate science and energy policy telling the world in a TED talk that advanced nations should cripple their economies to save the planet from global warming. Yes, America should go into an economic depression because the ocean temperature has risen one-tenth of one degree or something over the last decade.

“Economic growth needs to be exchanged at least temporarily for a period of planned austerity in wealthy nations,” the professor said in her talk, adding this effort is especially needed so that developing nations could put out more pollution.

Oh yes, First World countries are the bad guys in all this. Make no mistake.

According to the UC’s carbon neutrality plan, “the wealthiest need to cut back dramatically, while green energy needs to be made more available to the poorest 3 billion people,” AP reports.

Understand this: Climate change talk in the classroom, at academic summits, in TED talks – it isn’t just a debate about whether the science is settled. The goal of this movement effects our economy, our bank accounts, grows the higher education bubble, impacts how we live, and much more.