Not that long ago, Republicans and Democrats agreed that climate change was an import issue. My, how times have changed. Nowadays Republican politicians and pundits are loath to even speak the words. Why the big shift?
Maybe big oil campaign donors told them to sing a new tune. Or maybe shadowy billionaires, feeling a threat to their oligarchical rule, are financing the denialist propaganda.
By whatever means, it seems like every conservative think tank puts out an endless stream of climate change denying propaganda, that gets amplified by Fox News, and then parroted by every right leaning person in the country; ultimately to their own detriment.
Well at least President Obama got it right in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Although if you had watched the President’s address on the Speaker of the House, John Bohner’s YouTube channel, you would have missed some of his climate change remarks, because they were mysteriously edited out. No matter, here they are, just for you.
According to the President (At time 42:49 in the video below)…
“I’ve heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they’re not scientists; that we don’t have enough information to act. Well, I’m not a scientist, either. But you know what — I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major universities. The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe.”
I long for simpler days when Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi could sit down together and make a video about the urgency of acting on climate change.
The deniers sound more frantic and shrill every day, as their delusions come face to face with reality. So maybe there’s hope that someday soon that the majority of people of this great nation will realize that the time has come to act forcefully to address climate change. Hopefully, it won’t be too late.
Until then, let’s all remember that THE conservative idol, none other than Ronald Reagan himself, was a downright tree hugging environmentalist by today’s standards. Hopefully, modern-day conservatives will come to realize that protecting the environment is ultimately good for business… and the country.
Here’s a short post from my old blog about Reagan the environmentalist… Enjoy!
Climate Change Lessons From Ronald Reagan — November 2012
The NY Times had an interesting article about Reagan’s huge role in getting the Montreal Protocol treaty ratified, thus banning ozone destroying CFCs. I don’t know what this says about today’s Republicans when I find myself looking to Regan as a model. I believe in evidence-based government. A term I adopted from medicine to mean government that is based on fact, not partisan wishful thinking. Fact being defined as what has worked in the past, what is cost effective, and in what science shows us to be true. By this metric of “evidence-based government”, the majority of the Republican platform is shaky at best, especially when it comes to climate. Not to say I am a Democrat either. I’m just an independent, rational thinker who’d like to see my government make decisions that move us forward, instead of holding us back.