When I was a college student in the dilapidated industrial city of Steubenville, Ohio, I frequently would wake up to the smell of sulfur clinging to a heavy morning fog, thanks to the fumes spewed into the air by nearby industrial factories.

I mention this not to disparage Steubenville, a town that once exemplified the American manufacturing dream but has since suffered greatly amid a decadeslong economic decline. Rather I mention it because, over the four years I spent smelling the same stench each time I walked to a morning class, I always wondered why those screaming for a Green New Deal to stave off catastrophic climate change never bothered to hear the concerns of people who live in the individual communities that were actually affected by human interaction with the environment.

As a white working-class industrial town wrecked by globalization and the export of the steel industry, Steubenville is a place that does not have the luxury of fretting about whether a plume of smoke at the factory that employs its residents is affecting weather cycles in the Atlantic Ocean or melting the polar ice caps. And they shouldn’t. After all, their primary concern must be to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.

In reading the new book Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism, a collection of essays edited by climatologist David Legates and Ernest Calvin Beisner, I kept thinking back to that smog in Steubenville and how the people of the Ohio Valley are more concerned with having a dignified job that allows them to provide for their families rather than the health and environmental effects of emissions from industrial manufacturing.

The book, which features essays from several highly credentialed scientists, does not dismiss the reality that human activity is affecting the climate but is careful to avoid trafficking in the kind of climate hysteria that overplays the reality of the issue. It also chronicles with astonishing detail the lengths to which the scientific community, the legacy media, and government institutions have gone to stamp out and ostracize any individual who does not subscribe to the theory that human-caused climate change is an impending apocalyptic disaster and requires immediate draconian action.

While this book and its authors will yet again be dismissed and branded with the scarlet letter of “denialist,” its pages offer a complete and convincing picture of the beautifully complex array of factors that influence the seasons, weather patterns, and global temperatures.

But most importantly, it bridges the class divide that so often characterizes discussions of climate change issues by offering a blueprint for ensuring the physical and economic well-being of people who live in places such as Steubenville.

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At a time when educated classes are moving toward the Democratic Party, the working-class voter base of middle America is realigning itself with the Republican Party after supporting Democrats for decades. This shift has made climate policy a microcosm of the class and party divide. An educated voter from an urban environment is more likely to be focused on climate policy, while a blue-collar voter without a college degree is more concerned about his ability to hold a stable job with a stable income. It is the luxury of the upper class that allows one to have a preoccupation with the shifts in global temperature.

While President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are hellbent on forcing a population to adopt electric cars they cannot afford, Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism offers a dose of sanity and common sense. It should serve as the baseline for a conservative environmental and economic policy agenda that prioritizes the needs of people over abstract fears of an apocalyptic catastrophe.