OK, alarmists. Here's a thought exercise for you. Take all of the good that fossil fuels have done for the US and the world (in great part thanks to US innovations). Now take all the realistic bad things that may happen if the globe warms. Put those on a scale -- known good stuff on one side, possible bad stuff on the other. Which way do the scales tip? I can guarantee you that the good side completely outweighs the possible bad. Fossil fuels have made our modern lifestyle possible, so acting like fossil fuels are evil is ridiculous. Find me one person who would like to erase fossil fuels from our history and go back to living in mid 19th century conditions. Who wants that. If warming occurs and causes problems, by all means, let's fix them. And there is nothing wrong with finding alternative energy sources that work -- as fossil fuels are finite. But don't pretend your life isn't better because of fossil fuels. It is. Take away fossil fuels, many places in the world wouldn't be habitable. Do you think places like Houston, Phoenix, Dallas would have had the growth they've had w/o AC and cars?
Not only is your life better because of fossil fuels, but so will the lives be of your grand kids, and their grand kids.
Why the desire to find renewable clean energy? Because we know life with electricity, cars, etc. is better. No one (except a few nuts) advocate giving up modern conveniences. W/O energy, our economy would collapse.
14
@Ralphie
You really ought to listen.
The warming of the climate by more than 2 degrees celsius since 1800 will pretty much require relocating and replacing everything even as billions of people starve to death or die by starvation or come to take over the lands held by the more lucky of our species.
It's a road warrior world with a long dark age into the future, if we just wait and see.
46
@Ralphie
That is one way to look at it.
Another would be, what if the world had put R&D money into renewables in the 1940's and 1950's instead of nukes.
All the recent gains that made renewables cheaper today than either fossil fuels or nuke would have come decades earlier.
Or go another way, suppose the US government had imposed cleaner operating rules for fossil fuels. We could have had the same economy, but cleaner environment. Cleaning up is just an engineering problem, not inevitable.
Or go another way, Norway. The US would have a huge Sovereign Wealth Fund, lots of money in the bank, and zero National Debt.
Your post on the benefits of fossil fuels reads like list of excuses.
50
@gratis read this article please. Without subsidies renewables would not be cheaper.
https://www.newsweek.com/whats-true-cost-wind-power-321480
Further, there is an environmental cost for renewables that advocates ignore. Perhaps you should read this.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-want-renewable-energy-get-ready-to-dig-11565045328?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=4
As far as nukes go, they are the only known non CO2 emitting power source that could replace fossil fuels for our electric grid. We should have invested in building better nukes.
Nothing wrong with imposing cleaner fossil fuel rules.
5
From the memo to Congressional Republicans sent by Frank Luntz:
“‘Americans believe climate change is real, and that number goes up every single month,’ Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican strategist, told a Congressional panel recently. He also circulated a memo to congressional Republicans in June warning that climate change was ‘a G.O.P. vulnerability and a G.O.P. opportunity.’”
My God, what is wrong with these people? Is it all a matter of political calculus? Don’t they, too, have children and grandchildren like I do to think about? My heart sinks when I think about what it must be like to live such a hollow life.
66
@David Walker they're trusting in the rapture to save them.
19
Mr. Gillis, I suspect you are correct, that many Republican lawmakers put a false face on their true beliefs to toe the party line. By delaying action, I believe they have lost their right to receive any credit for the change that we know must come. I want no Republican to come out of the climate closet until the day after election day. I want them voted out and kicked to the curb to be swept into the dustbin of history. The delay they have caused is absolutely unconscionable - immoral even. The Republican lawmakers who remain can then decide to participate in the solution or to be isolated as they continue to be part of the problem.
Long term, climate change will be addressed. The question is whether we will be able to start implementing solutions before the damage to our economy and society become catastrophic.
45
The Republican Party is very much like a cult, Jim Jones himself would be blown away by the mindless blind obedience to flawed policy advocated by the GOP. It would be one thing if the ignorant were solely embodied in the older demographics that simply didn't know any better and didn't want to know any better - but it's not. I've spoken with kids stating the same baseless factless garbage they likely heard ad nauseum from their parents, aunts and uncles. One would think their living on Earth is a soon to expire prison sentence and they will soon be off to a home with a far more secure future. There's little doubt Fox News and the like are fanning the flames of the brush fire of ignorance scorching the souls of those supporting such factless rhetoric with far-reaching and life-altering implications.
4
So interesting to see the writer assume that saving the planet 🌏 isn’t an incentive for Republicans to step up but getting themselves re-elected is.
6
On the day Trump is gutting the endangered animals conservation act to allow drilling for oil and natural gas in protected areas this columnist wishes to believe in the fantastical existence of Republicans who care about climate change. They don't exist and no cherry picking of facts will make them real. Republicans will continue to take oil money to kill every living thing on this planet. They do not care and they will never care. They are the enemy of everyone. Do not be fooled. Do not expect them to ever come around. Republicans must all be kicked out of office if there is going to be any future for our children much less our grandchildren.
8
Come on, Justin!
American ingenuity is not nearly as awesome and real as you claim. How can it be with such a substandard education system? But my main point is that other countries already have solved the findamental problem of stupidly polluting the air with harmful CO2 and other hothouse gases from fossil fuels. So all we have to do is follow their lead when the sadly hypocritical, dumb and anti-American Republicans are tossed from power in the senate!
4
The GOP is paid really a lot of money not to believe in climate change. And their voters only listen to Fox.
3
Republicans have absolutely no imagination. And I'm not talking about dreamy dreams of fantasies or spinning yarns. It seems that unless it hits them directly, they don't comprehend the problem. So Barrasso sees the fire outside his window and suddenly is a convert. The Dayton Ohio Republican Congressman's daughter was at the shooting and now he's ready to move on gun control. Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian and Rob Portman's son is gay and they support gay rights. But if Dick Cheney's daughter was straight, would he still support gay rights? And same for the others.
They don't seem to be able to place themselves in someone else's shoes. But then something suddenly changes for them and they see the light.
What is wrong with them? What's wrong with their brains? They have no empathy. It must directly affect them. Weird. And maddening.
Vote them all out. Every Republican. Vote them out.
9
For all those leaders who knowingly lied about climate change for their own political advantage, I want some kind of accountability that goes beyond just voting them out of office. In China they would be hanged. We don't do that here, but prison would be good.
2
You can say you don't believe in gravity, but the apple will still hit you on the head.
You can say you don't believe in global warming, but that's not going to stop it getting hotter.
The carbon cycle for the last 2 million years was doing 180-280ppm atmospheric CO2 over 10,000 years and we’ve done more change than that in 100 years.
The last time CO2 went from 180-280ppm global temperature increased by around 5 degrees C and sea level rose 130 meters. (graph of the last 400,000 years of global temperature, CO2 and sea level http://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/images/impacts/slr-co2-temp-400000yrs.jpg)
One amplifying feedback alone out of dozens, loss of albedo or heat reflectivity from Arctic summer sea ice melt, over the last several decades has been equivalent to 25 percent of the climate forcing of anthropogenic CO2. And that will continue to increase as that ice disappears by mid century.
The Titanic sank because by the time the lookout called the warning the ship had too much momentum to turn. Earth's energy system and climate have a lot more momentum, e.g. we've already likely locked in ~6 meters of sea level rise from the marine sectors of Greenland and West Antarctica, and decade to decade warming in the near term is also locked in.
That momentum is building and the higher we let global temperatures rise the greater the risk of them going really high as amplifying feedbacks strengthen.
6
@jaco
What is the first word in the phrase Global Warming?
Ice is melting all over the planet, because the world is above average in temperature. The N hemisphere is above average, the S hemisphere is above average, the Arctic is way above average, the tropics are above average, the Antarctic is above average.
We have thermometers analyzed by NASA, NOAA, the British Met Office, the Japanese, the Berkeley group.
If you throw away every thermometer in the city, temperatures in the country show warming.
Thermometers in the ground show warming, thermometers in the ocean show the ocean is warming, thermometers in balloons show warming, looking down from satellites they show warming.
Warmer air contains more moisture, so some areas are seeing storms with heavier than usual snowfall, such as Boston in some of the last few years.
But if you look at the snow and ice that care about temperature the most, we have less river ice than we used to, less lake ice, less seasonal snow cover, less seasonally frozen ground, less perennially frozen ground, we have smaller glaciers, we have shrinking ice sheets, we have loss of sea ice.
All the big pieces of snow and ice which care about temperature are shrinking.
5
@jaco said "the Desert Southwest has experienced the coolest summer in decades". My two word rejoinder: "Lake Mead"
@jaco local weather and global climate are not the same thing. Are you saying that as long as the weather stays nice where you live you won't believe in climate change? Can you say, "extinction event."
1
This article reminds me of all the stalwart, right-thinking German's of the 1930's who thought the Nazi's took things a bit too far, but didn't say so because they didn't want to be called a RINO (or its equivalent).
4
Why is the climate in, pick a date, 495, 1492, 1820 or 1937, sacrosanct? If we had global cooling, with ice moving gradually south in the northern hemisphere, would that be a problem? Where is it written that the average global temperature, if such a thing could be determined, must be X, regardless of whether any deviation is caused by humans?
The Earth is Gaia, and it adapts. Where is it written that species only die? If global temperature were 20 deg higher, what new species would appear? We dont know, but evolution, having no direction or goal other than in effect adapting, would guarantee new species. One mechanism of speciation is environmental pressure. Dinosaurs were wonderful, though not so good for an incipient primate that later became homo sapiens, but they are gone. Where is it written that we must have polar bears? Because they are oh so white and cuddly?
It is true that sapiens has destroyed or diminished species, through its actions. But that has zero to do with climate. Humans are not necessarily good stewards of what is, even to their ultimate detriment, see Easter Island. Again, that has nothing to do with climate.
One final point: humans are part of Gaia, including our superior technology, that came from human brains, a decidedly natural phenomenon. Or did we come from Mars, foisted on an unsuspecting planet to destroy its wonderful existential status quo?
Doubt it.
2
@John Xavier III
"If we had global cooling, with ice moving gradually south in the northern hemisphere, would that be a problem?"
The average rate of cooling for the 6,000 years leading up to the industrial revolution was around 0.2 degrees C per millennium. Hardly a rate to get alarmed about.
The best climate for humans is that which allowed us to develop agriculture because if we keep warming the planet we won't be able to feed more than a few million people.
6
@jaco
Scientists are well aware that increasing CO2 alone can be of some benefit to plants.
But plants also care if it is too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, if they lose pollinators or get hit by an invasive.
I've killed my wife's flowers by over fertilizing them.
"Agriculture and fisheries are highly dependent on the climate. Increases in temperature and carbon dioxide (CO2) can increase some crop yields in some places. But to realize these benefits, nutrient levels, soil moisture, water availability, and other conditions must also be met. Changes in the frequency and severity of droughts and floods could pose challenges for farmers and ranchers and threaten food safety.[3] Meanwhile, warmer water temperatures are likely to cause the habitat ranges of many fish and shellfish species to shift, which could disrupt ecosystems. Overall, climate change could make it more difficult to grow crops, raise animals, and catch fish in the same ways and same places as we have done in the past."
https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-agriculture-and-food-supply_.html
2
@Erik Frederiksen
So plants did not grow in the far north? Explain the oil and gas there.
2
Why, oh why, are Republicans so linked to lies, fake news, denial of science and fiscal responsibility and supporting overt government corruption?
They used to be a respectable Party with whom I had my disagreements, but they were more intelligent, less rabid and stupid, less tribal and much more focused on the welfare of their country and fellow citizens. Now they don't give a damn, have no moral compass or backbone and are up to their ears in all things unAmerican. It's not just Trump, but he's the criminal leader.
Paul Sarbanes once told me that he would debate passionately with colleagues across the aisle and then go out to lunch with them and solve the mutual problems with reasonable compromise. Now they carry guns.
6
Okaaaaaaay.....and your point is?
My Senator, John Cornyn, is out of the climate closet, as reported by the Houston Chronicle, and picked up by absolutely no other news source. He is up for election in 2020, and Beto's success likely influenced his position. Regardless, I will be block-walking for his yet to be named opponent. Too little, too late in my opinion.
3
There may be some republicans who don't go for the snowball act, but they do collectively sit on their hands as the EPA is neutered, drilling is opened to all and any proposal to deal honestly with science is shuttered in darkness. These shills of destruction should be run out of town and made to live piles of permafrost methane.
5
The Republican Party will not come around in time to do anything of significance to combat global warming. They are the party of money for the rich and they always have been. At one time, when Richard Nixon was president they were also the environmental party, but those days are long gone. Their base consists largely of the most poorly educated and least erudite people in America. If the Republicans changed their tune they would disappear as a party. Since change including them won't happen we should start heading for high ground or millions will drown in the floods soon to come. Publish this letter or don't, this is what is written for the planet.
4
Republicans are not in the closet. We believe, however, that people living on sinking ground on the East Cost should migrate to higher ground rather than pretending rising oceans are causing their problems and that the federal taxpayer should not make contributions to maintaining their property values or pay for their mass transit infrastructure.
We think it would make more sense to move the seat of the federal government to federal ground inland and abandon the swamp.
We think the government should streamline the approval of nuclear power plants rather than paying Buffett billions to raise electricity cost with his uneconomic wind farms.
We think that coal should be allowed to die a natural death rather than being assassinated by a war on coal.
We think NYS should allow fracking and pipelines, but respect their right to be stupid.
We think California should be entitled to encourage the purchase of electric cars, but not by forcing the rest of auto buyers to subsidize the $15,000 to $20,000 loss manufacturers experience every time they sell one, which they pass on as premiums to the cost of ICE vehicle buyers.
2
@ebmem
You wrote that "We believe, however, that people living on sinking ground on the East Cost should migrate to higher ground rather than pretending rising oceans are causing their problems"
Counterintuitively sea level rise is not uniform globally for many reasons such as land subsidence and lift, ocean currents and winds and even the strong gravitational field of the massive ice sheets.
The gravity from the ice sheet pulls the ocean towards it, as it loses mass the ocean relaxes away, so for example the loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would cause global mean sea level rise of around 3.3m, but over 4m in the North which has a more populated coast.
Parts of the N Atlantic have seen falling sea levels while parts of the W Pacific have seen 5 times the global average for the last decade which would be a distinct problem were that to continue for those areas.
The trend in sea level rise doesn't bode well for coastal areas.
1870-1924 0.8mm per year
1925-1992 1.9mm per year
1993-2012 3.1mm per year
Currently around 4.4mm per year according to this paper. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/104007/meta
graph of sea level rise through 2012 https://robertscribbler.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/hansen-sea-level-rise.png
Ice sheet mass loss, notice the lines curve downwards indicating acceleration.
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/IceSheet/IceMass.png
1
@ebmem
What is your position on solar powered homeowners
being able to sell back to the grid the excess
energy their panels create? Is this possible in Tennessee?
“The gravitational field of ICE SHEETS? Nothing that size has a gravitation field that can even be detected on a macro level, much less affect tides. Planetary bodies have gravitational fields that matter. Ice sheets don’t mass enough.
Why would you prefer to believe that than that we’ve been dumping carbon into the air via burning for centuries, and it’s about to bite us on the butt?
1
Not going to change until basic science is “learned” in schools. Note... I didn’t say “taught”.
Too little, too late.
1
American industry will only help fight climate change when they realize it is in their financial interest to do so. What are the laws and regulations needed to make sure it is in their financial interest? And how can we help them realize it is in their financial interest?
@Doug
A good first step is to make sure they pay a
reasonable price for any co2 their business activity
generates. This policy of getting a free pass
on sending co2 into the atmosphere is a good place
to focus attention. A second is to impose
a comparable charge on imports into the country from
countries that do not also charge a reasonable
price for emitting co2. A third place would promote
and simplify the process by which those who
use solar energy can sell any excess energy back
to the grid.
The fact that Florida has such low
solar power generation should be considered
a scandal and moral abomination of the first order. Implementing such a program in Florida would be,
admittedly, a political miracle of the first order, but it would also jumpstart home and business adoption of
solar power very effectively.
But before doing any of that, those living now in this country have to decide that they want to improve the chances of there being a livable planet for their descendants. It is not clear to me that enough
people have actually convinced themselves that they
need to do this.
2
The closet Republicans will recognize that climate change is real only when their own homes and neighborhoods burn down or their oceanfront properties are flooded, or their second homes have no water.
Then they'll blame it on the Democrats.
4
Whether global warming is manmade or natural is a huge red herring. It is happening, and if we do not slow it down and reverse it, we will have to replace everything that is less than 20 or 30 feet above sea level or build and maintain thousands of miles of dykes. We dont make earthquakes or hurricanes, but we still take measures against them.
Slowing down and reversing climate change is less politically divisive and cheaper than dealing with its effects, which will include resettling billions of refugees or arranging for them to die. Fighting climate change will require a worldwide strategy and some sort of worldwide confederation to enforce that strategy. Dealing with its effects leaves each nation and area free to adopt strategies that push the harm of these effects elsewhere. We will get a new division of humanity between those who occupy high and still-livable ground and those who dont, adding to the old division between haves and have-nots. Refugees from non-livable areas will be killed (by desert heat or overloaded boats or sectarian violence) if they do not stay there and die.
A worldwide strategy against climate change would embody our better, socialistic side. Dealing with its effects will show us what our entrepreneurial, individualistic, capitalist, tribal side is made of, but we know this already, from Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Burma, Stalin's purges and Hitler's Final Solution.
@sdavidc9
"if we do not slow it down and reverse it, we will have to replace everything that is less than 20 or 30 feet above sea level or build and maintain thousands of miles of dykes."
We've already destabilized around 6 meters of sea level rise equivalent of ice from the marine sectors of Greenland and West Antarctica's ice sheets.
A large fraction of which may arrive within 100 years.
The Republican Party is too late for this party they try to make you believe no real climate change but let me ask you this last four summers have been the hottest ever recorded in the storms are bigger hurricanes tornadoes so Republican say no climate change scientists have already said were 10 years ago to save the human race. I sure believe the Republicans will not be here when all hell breaks out in the climates. They only serve one people self interests, lobbyistsbankers,Wall Street. So when the and comes will be sitting on Mount Everest hoping they won't be swept away in the waves.
1
“Do you believe me or your own lying eyes?” It’s 116 degrees in some parts of the country.
A bit of research easily puts the writer's contentions, particularly regarding Senator, John Barrasso, into question. First, Barrasso has been openly negotiating with Senator, Chuck Grassley, to forge a bill to tax owners of electric vehicles on the roads in Wyoming. According to the Jackson Hole News (August 7, 2019) Barrosa's reasoning goes like this: “Right now drivers of electric vehicles contribute nothing to the Highway Trust Fund because they don’t buy gasoline." Further, the 10 billion targeted for climate change related activities (out of the bill's 287 billion) is chopped up considerably and not so specifically targeted for this purpose. According to the industry publication, Electrek (7/29/19), the bill offers 4.9 billion to "protect roads and bridges from natural disasters," 3 billion to support carbon emissions reduction programs already in place in the 50 states, and, lastly, a couple of billion set aside in "competitive grant programs." No emissions goals or requirements are part of this bill.
The reality is that Senator Barrasso and other hardcore science-flouters in the climate arena can easily get behind this bill as its only meaningful result will be to smooth the roads and sturdy the bridges in this fossil-fuel addicted country, thus insuring our dependency on it for decades to come.
4
The Dems believe in climate change, but the climate policies they have passed or promoted only look good, overall, when compared with the Republicans.
Sorry, but this issue is too crucial to be framed in the usual, dubious, partisan narratives. Both parties are too intimately connected to big energy to pass meaningful policies.
The Dem party bosses won't even allow one primary debate to be devoted to climate change, so timidly they fear the ire of their energy sector donors.
1
Republicans should be pressed to do more than come out of the closet. Their feet should be held to the fire on why they were in the closet in the first place, and the sources of the money and advertising that drove them there. Until the power of this money and advertising is broken or at least damaged, it will still go after them.
The substantial minority of the American people who are not in touch with reality and science will continue to pervert any climate and other initiatives until they recover or discover sanity. Republicans are afraid to have a showdown with them and prefer instead to sneak stuff by them, but this leaves them vulnerable to attack by those who have drunk the Kool-aid and can be whipped up into paranoid frenzies.
Many of the substantial minority of Americans who are not in touch with reality would be brought back into touch with reality if Obamacare went away. Some states would try to make up for its absence on the state level, but others would not. Many innocent people would be hurt, but it might be worth it in the long run.
2
The GOP will sell their kids' future for a few bucks now. They did so with their tax cuts for the rich. They have done so on guns. They have done so with their climate policy.
Believe the GOP when they show you who they are.
7
Thanks for this article.
For readers interested in "legal" landmarks in the past 50 years of the climate crisis see
https://www.legalreader.com/50-years-of-legal-climate-change/
The right wing “National Party” that held power in New Zealand for 9 years until 2017 paid lip service to climate change and even signed the Paris Accord but with no serious intent. They were happy to buy fraudulent carbon credits from Ukraine and to allocate these to our largest emitters to insulate them from the need to take any action. They approved the national rail service to buy diesel locomotives when the main trunk railway line was already electrified. They spoke of being a fast follower when no one was leading. They still assert that we should “act at the pace of our competitors” who are countries like Australia, USA, Brazil, Argentina and Canada. I attended a meeting at which leading members of the party joined with grass roots to “condemn the evil socialists for frightening the kids about climate change” in the wake of school children staging strikes to demand climate action. When people advocate for measures to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, they suggest we should wait for hydrogen. When people advocate for practical steps our farmers can take now, they advocate waiting for future technological advances.
The right wing political agenda in New Zealand in respect of climate change has shifted from one shade of green wash to another. Rather than denying the science, they now say we should follow the science and wait for future solutions.
The only thing they won’t bring out of the closet is their rabid desire not to do anything.
Trust not the GOP.
6
I suppose there are also closet Republicans who understand that Mexicans aren't rapists, the 99% also matter, trans folks don't threaten our moral purity, life-long student loans are deeply damaging, Russia threatens our democracy, and we don't need a Space Force. I'm wet with compassion. Real closeted people are that way, at a heavy personal price, because of well-based fears of rejection by family and society and, in many places, violence and legal persecution. Closeted Republicans? We pay the price, not them, just to protect them from facing their own party? Let's liberate these poor souls by voting them out of office. Of course we can't tell reliably which ones are closeted and which are the true believers. Let's dump them all.
5
It’s just mind-boggling and unbelievable that in 2019, the party controlling the United States government is still cynically pretending that this existential threat to our civilization does not exist. The rest of the world has long since left this idiocy behind.
Small steps forward and inching out of the closet isn’t going to be nearly enough. The time for incrementalism was twenty years ago. Now it is already to late to avoid significant harm, and that harm will get worse every year that goes by.
Furthermore, while this is well-meaning, even sensible realistic folks need to stop accepting the GOP talking point of the “economic damage” of mitigating climate change. What will be the trillions in damage of NOT addressing it? Plus, the chance to lead these industries is one of the greatest economic opportunities in history.
2
Unconscionable and inexcusable. Every Republican needs to be voted out of office.
5
Democrats should stress the job creation, wealth building aspects of addressing climate change - as well as the inevitable costs of doing nothing.
5
After all the endangered species are dead, bees gone, soil paved over, water polluted, harmful chemicals inescapable, and science knowledge lost as former ag statisticians and researchers cannot build data or solutions. Then when all is lost the GOPers will complain and blame someone else.
7
As a Republican, I have always thought that climate change was "real". The problem, though, is that liberals don't seem to understand the scope of the problem and are unwilling to make the proper changes to society that are necessary to deal with the issue. Climate change will happen. It cannot be avoided. We need to adopt a national policy that stops paying for support of communities that are located near the oceans. This means that we stop rebuilding beaches, homes, etc. that are destroyed in storms. But that is not enough. We should also stop building schools and other public works projects in these locations. The money should be used to develop infrastructure at higher elevations. Public policy should allow for all coastal regions should be drained of their value and allowed to be absorbed by the ocean while regions inland should be encouraged to develop. However, too many liberal cities are located on coasts, and too many conservative areas of the country are located inland. We will never see funding cut for NYC or Boston in favor of developing new cities on farmland (which is what must happen).
2
I am a registered Democrat. I can't agree with you more. For years I have been asking myself the same questions. Well spoken. PA
When Republicans in 2016 nominated a presidential candidate divorced from reality, they lost the right to sit at the adult's table.
Those of us still tethered to objective reality will contend with the serious, existential issues. Trump should not be regarded as someone operating at full mental capacity. Neither should the party that persists in enabling his pathetic acting out.
5
When pigs fly.
1
Dear alleged Republican leaders:
You have done your utmost to destroy the country, the lives of your children and grandchildren, and the planet. You have created, by your lies and deliberate obstruction, vast portions of the inhabited planet that will need to be evacuated, including huge areas in the US that now vote Republican.
Do you hate your country so much? Do you loathe your own children and grandchildren?
Now you are seeking a way to shift the blame, to be marginally helpful without ever having to acknowledge your roles in creating and accelerating the ongoing catastrophe.
Until you are upright and open about climate change and the lies your party is spreading, you do not deserve a vote from anyone who loves their country, their planet, their children, or their grandchildren.
8
There is about the same chance that Republicans will address climate change as there is a chance they will address universal healthcare coverage.
10
In other words, many Republicans *KNOW* that climate change is a serious problem and they have refused not only to acknowledge or deal with it - but have gone to the extremes of *DENYING* it altogether for political reasons. That's one hell of a way to govern.
9
Republicans just care about their tax cuts & winning votes from unsuspecting people who are too naive or stupid to know they're signing their death notice.
2
There's climate science and then there's climate hysteria. The picture presented at the front of this article is an example of the latter. The notion that those people in the photo fear death, and the notion that climate change is an 'existential threat' to the planet, demonstrates a religious faith, not knowledge of science. Such religious fanaticism provokes these believers to label others who do not believe as 'climate deniers'. Or perhaps in this case their posted comment is censored.
2
It is an existential threat. Some of us are experiencing its effects more than others. Farmers, the poor and even middle class (who are seeing ever climbing power bills in the summer months that seem to last longer and longer), those who can’t afford to buy their way out of it are already dealing with the negative effects of climate change. It is probably not so pressing to those who have more “insulation” from calamity.
8
@johnlo
"...the notion that climate change is an 'existential threat' to the planet, demonstrates a religious faith, not knowledge of science," said someone who, despite a mountain of scientific evidence to the contrary, appears to not know the difference between religious faith and knowledge of science.
6
@johnlo
The planet will survive, but vast numbers of species, including humans, won't.
3
Republicans like dinosaurs are unable to adapt and are doomed to extinction. Some other species may arise to take their place but they will surely die off.
They will die not just from climate change but also from the many parasites sucking their strength and life away. Paralysis has already begun to set in and once that increases they won't be able to do anything else. To bad, I once many years ago was a republican but when all the thinkers were replaced by all the tinkers it was impossible to retain hope for a better end so it has become this, a bitter end instead.
1
Last Presidential election,
https://www.salon.com/2015/02/11/evolution_and_the_gops_2016_candidates_a_complet_guide/
The discovery of America by Columbus was like confronting global warming by the Republican base.
In 1491, the best educated people knew from the experts whose works they studied that the universe was made of concentric spheres. The sea actually surrounded the land but was conveniently askew so that one part on the interior sphere of land was dry and free of the sphere of water. All the dry land was on one side and the seas were all hanging out in the opposite direction to make it possible. That meant no dry land in the middle of the seas. Big surprise to find a a whole hemisphere of dry land in the middle of the ocean sea.
Time to make the Republican base give up it's false set of beliefs and help try to prevent global catastrophe from greater build up of the concentration of carbon gases.
1
I am heartened by the notion that republicans might start taking climate seriously but they cannot and should not be forgiven for the years they insisted climate change was hooey and acted to sink nearly every effort made to deal with what is now becoming the kind of reality that cannot easily be denied.
Our children, grandchildren and all life on this planet will suffer unimaginable lives thanks to these people who rightly should be held criminally responsible for their crimes against humanity.
3
And the latest boom has just been lowered with the Trump administration eviscerating the Endangered Species Act.
It's bad enough Republicans are going after the climate, but now they're going after wildlife too.
6
The image and underlying sentiment of cowards
in closets cowering from lunatic hordes of foaming at the mouth pitchfork raised mobs is amusing, but also consistent with many other trumpican congressman and their positions, such as those who have also decided budget deficits are irrelevant, despite that being heretical to tax party pitchfork holders.
In general the problem is that one is dealing with widespread derangement and fantasy thinking, well supported and reinforced by various denialists with big dollars and long memories, and, more powerfully, by MSM, not just f-x and its ilk, who have also been in their own climate closet for years.
Think of the efforts MSM made over the many years to minimize coverage of global warming, and resist spending the time to educate the public with sustained and committed programming prior to the Paris agreement, over an entire week that included scientists and non scientists engage in honest discussions about all aspects of the issue. It would have been revolutionary for changing how the country thought and talked about the subject.
Instead there was, and still is, incessant language waffling to allow "balanced" rhetoric not be challenged as an effort to induce doubt based on emotion not scientific evidence or principles.
That climate closet was best seen
from the inside when not a single climate change question
got asked in 2016 candidate forums.
So, media news directors also share this closet.
3
If we want to save the planet, we must elect Democrats.
If we want to save the planet, we must elect Democrats.
If we want to save the planet, we must elect Democrats.
How many times does this need to be said?
6
Equally as important is to combat the fiction that measures to combat climate change will be a drag on the economy.
To the contrary, investment in renewable energy requires a massive job-creating investment in infrastructure...by the private as well as the public sector.
3
It would be a dramatic improvement if the GOP supported legislation to stop or low down climate change. What I don't understand is why the GOP base is supposedly the problem according to that unnamed GOP member of Congress. That's because it makes no sense for them to oppose climate-friendly legislation and support Trump's efforts to roll back Obama climate rules. More efficient cars would save them money at the gas pump as would better insulate housing. Green energy jobs could replace the coal digging and hauling jobs they have lost. Maybe the real culprits are the boys in the $1,500 suits and big fossil fuel portfolios. Maybe they are doing their best to encourage rightwing media to paint effective climate rules as the product of limousine liberals and grant-seeking scientists wanting to throw blue-collar guys out of fossil fuel jobs. That makes more sense.
Call me cynical, but what I foresee happening is Republicans making just enough token gestures to give themselves cover, while not forsaking their corporate masters. If data and public demand were enough to shift Republican lawmakers, we would have seen movement on gun control a long time ago. The only thing that motivates them is money.
1
The recently published research on the tremendous assist to greenhouse gas limitiation that planting a trillion trees could provide comes to mind here. What could be more innocuous than a trillion tree initiative, which the UN has already commenced? Surely we could get a bipartisan bill to plant trees everywhere that trees might feasibly grow (excluding desert and swamp), subsidize farmland that was re-planted in tree seedlings, and get on board with UN efforts to promote an international trillion tree initiative?
3
I believe it is already too late.
Look at the increasing populations, unabated fossil fuel usage, weather patterns, melting glaciers and increasing sea levels.
Our species is doomed.
2
Great piece, nice metaphor to throw around at Republicans.
Mr. Gillis reminds us of the Republican propensity for death-bed conversions ( see McNamara, Atwater, et. al.) and their tendency toward un-enlightened self-interest until something hits close to home, as with the Luntz example or Mr. Trump's burning interest in kidney disease, after learning that Melania's condition is congenital.
This is exactly what we don't have time for, but it is looking more and more like the Dismantler-in-Chief is going to get another year to do his worst by pandering to the lowest common denominator.
That, to our nation's great shame.
3
So the con is, sure we know climate change is real; just like we know assault guns kill people, racism works for us, and we are morally degenerate in regards to blowing up the budget for the next generation to clean up.
But we just need to wait "for the fever to cool".
Good luck with that. You do know you that if you cause the illness, the fever probably isn't going anywhere real soon?
This is your brand. This is who you are. It is your essential nature. You are what you say you are. You cannot work for darkness in the hopes of encouraging a later transition to light.
5
The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019 (http://energyinnovationact.org) is exactly the type of bipartisan, market-based, revenue-neutral solution we need to get both parties on board with. It is effective - it will reduce emissions by 40% in twelve years and 90% in thirty. It is beneficial - it will help low-income households and create millions of jobs. It is fair - people will each get an equal share of all the money collected - no means testing, no special paperwork. And it has a global reach, which is absolutely necessary to address the problem at the scale required. It's based on Carbon Fee and Dividend policy proposal from Citizens Climate Lobby: http://CitizensClimateLobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/.
2
Profiles in courage!
2
@J Hoban
Utah elected Mitt Romney. Miscreants, Beware!
@J Hoban Hahahahahah! Right?
It's their job versus saving the world. Almost all Republican politicians have decided that their job is a higher priority than saving the world. Many Republican do support wind and solar energy but probably not because of climate change. More likely it is to claim they are bringing jobs to their state or district and add to the supply of electricity. Texas, a red state, has the most wind energy in the country. It appears that the Republican has gone so far right that it is now a lost cause and it probably should take a new name such as the Nationalist Party to make clear what stands for. Reusing the name Know Nothing Party would also be appropriate. It is no longer the party of Lincoln. It isn't even the party of George W. Bush. It appears to be more the party of David Duke.
We have to wait for the Republican Party "fever" on climate change to break in order to do something about it?
When is that day going to come?
When the Republican Party decides they have enough fossil fuel/Koch Brothers money and they don't need any more?
Or will it be when they are willing to give up on "owning the libs" as a cynical vote-getting ploy with coal-rolling deplorables?
Not a Rhetorical Question: Why can't we agree on what our obvious problems are, and then work on reasonable approaches for solving them?
Answer: The Republican Party.
So we are reduced to praying for a recession to save us from Trumpian autocracy in 2020.
Do we need more mass shootings to get gun control legislation?
Do we need Greenland's glaciers and the West Antarctic ice sheet to float away to get climate legislation?
2
Crimes against humanity anyone? These people will take positions that put the futures of out grandchildren at risk for their own political benefit. Waiting for the "fever to cool" is not an appropriate response to the existential challenge of human driven climate change. Will we ever see courage in a public servant again? Will we ever see a politician who cares more about what is right for Americans than what is best for his next election? Is political service really all about personal aggrandizement rather than service. We will wait and watch. But not too long.
I agree that the GOP is worse on this issue. However, look at the pronouncements of the Democratic candidates. If this really is a big issue, the biggest issue, then why isn’t this where their focus lies. They pay lip service, but, then they talk about lots of free stuff for all paid for by a limited number of folks. I wish one of the more prominent candidates would say that this is the primary issue we face and it is where we are going to spend our limited resources.
@Robert
You are right. Better stick with the GOP. You just know they won't do a thing, and that is so much better than trying to do anything.
@Robert, Jay Inslee, governor from Washington state has made Climate Change and its implications his platform. He brings it up every interview he has and every debate he has participated in.
Frank Luntz, the pollster who wrote a scurrilous memorandum 17 years ago counseling Republicans to obfuscate the science of climate change, is among those who have come around. Watching Los Angeles burn from the window of his house apparently clarified his thinking. He distributed a memo to Congress in June warning that climate change was a growing vulnerability for Republicans.
Did he change his mind, or did he just recognize that it was a vulnerability? I'm thinking the later.
1
How reassuring. Some Republicans understand the obvious. If only they could do something about it. But they cannot, because, well you know, the Republican party... So they allow the dismantling of the EPA, refuse to fund environmental research, deregulate with a particularly sadist zest, sneer at any clean-energy policy proposals, remove the US from global actions on climate change. But really, at heart, if you only knew them, they are real good guys.
5
I am not heartened by this opinion piece. I do believe that there are Republicans who know that human-accelerated climate change is a fact. However, that makes me more cynical and angry: despite knowing the facts they won't or can't muster enough leadership to speak out and influence their voters and their legislative colleagues, much less their "I-know-nothing-inconvenient" president. The clock is ticking and time is running out. The far more likely scenario is that when Democrats do get control (hopefully sooner than later), the minority Republicans will continue to use man-made climate change to rally the base they have told it doesn't exist to use it as a partisan cudgel against the Democrats.
2
"For those Republicans still cowering in the closet, I have a question: If we really decided to commit the nation in all its might to solving this problem, do you not believe that American ingenuity and American industry could get the job done?"
Exactly! The Republican party is not working right now to make America great again, but to makes us impotent. They promote cynicism in government and xenophobia to distract from real problems such as climate change and a shifting global economy that continues to augment income equality. These issues require cooperation and large-scale policies to address. However, the Republican agenda is currently aimed at undermining any potential for such solutions in an effort to protect those that benefit from the status quo.
2
21st century Republicans:
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
(W.B. Yeats: "The Second Coming")
3
If the Republicans know climate change is real and man-made and needs to be addressed, then failure to acknowledge it is an inexcusable offense. They need to speak out against leader of their party, Donald Trump, who has said climate change is a hoax, that he doesn't believe the scientific studies, that wind turbines cause cancer and has worked tirelessly to promote coal and fossil fuel expansion. This is an emperor-has-no-clothes moment and anyone who knows and fails to speak out is as guilty and clueless as those who continue to actively deny.
1
The climate emergency grows more obvious with every passing day. Attacking it effectively needs open minds across the political spectrum. Students of all ages everywhere on the planet recognize the need for action that makes a real difference.
Hard to believe new technologies, reflecting science not yet generally accepted in the scientific community, can rapidly reduce the need for fossil fuels which otherwise are expected to still provide 78% of our energy by 2050.
One example is water as fuel. Any engine can soon be easily and cheaply converted to run on water instead of gas, diesel or jet fuel.
Vehicles running on water can become power plants when parked - using existing technology. Millions of them can replace central power plants and sharply reduce the need for coal, natural gas and nuclear power.
This is a Green Swan - a highly improbable invention with enormous implications. A few others exist. Moving them to market as fast as is humanly possible can dramatically change the energy landscape at a huge reduction in the cost projected for existing alternatives.
And this is enterprise - that has no need to wait for slow moving government to act. All it takes is individuals and organizations unafraid of the high risk of revolutionary ventures. And unconcerned by groundless attacks by those who are certain the new science is impossible.
A Green Swan Movement is pregnant. It opens a new and different path forward - beyond partisan politics. See aesopinstitute.org
Donald Trump, as owner of a Scottish golf resort, applied for British government subsidies to build a seawall to protect his resort from rising ocean levels. I don't know if he got the subsidy, but his act as Chief Climate Denier is just that, an act.
1
Using the Obama Administration's own estimates of the "Social Cost of Carbon," a tax of approximately $23 per ton of CO2 can be justified on the basis of economic theory, provided all EPA jurisdiction over CO2 is at the same time repealed.
For details, see my "The Carbon Tax: Welfare Triangle or Welfare Obelisk, at
http://blog.independent.org/2016/08/07/the-carbon-tax-welfare-triangle-or-welfare-obelisk/
Burying CO2 counterproductively accelerates the productivity of adjacent oil wells, and only makes a difference until the CO2 wells spring a leak. When they do, the local CO2 concentrations could actually be toxic.
2
Republicans and Democrats need each other.
Democrats need (real) Republicans to remind them that their wonderful ideas need to be somehow paid for, and may well have unintended consequences.
Republicans need Democrats so that they don't have to drive past sick, starving poor people when they're on their way to church on Sunday morning.
And from the biggest hypocrite of them all....let's not forget that the Trump organization is currently trying to obtain some kind of permit that will allow construction of a seawall to protect his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland. So he hates immigrants but he hires them on the cheap in Florida, and he disavows climate change but spends money to protect his Scottish property that's at risk of damage beause of rising seas. Why don't Trump supporters see this stuff? How can anyone countenance Trump and the GOP in the face of such bald, hypocrisy? I'll never understand.
1
A common device I use is this: If you believe climate change is a lie, but you turn out to be wrong, then the world ends. If you believe its true, all we have to lose is money. We can print more of that if we need to.
@MK
Your reasoning is why we are, IMHO, more likely to be incinerated by the National Debt in the coming decade than by CO2.
2
@MK: Interesting. Your 'device' is the exact same rational the church used to convince atheist to believe in God. Ironic.
1
That the Republicans continue to see man-made climate change as a "political" issue rather than an issue of survival simply disgusts me more than I can say.
Today I read that the Trump administration is relaxing environmental rules that are currently protecting a number of species, including wolverines and Monarch butterflies, both of which may die out because relaxation of these protections could be, in the words of the article, "the beginning of the end" for them.
While I generally am willing to coexist with all living creatures, including pests, I actively wish for the extinction of one species: the Republican, by means of the ballot box. They are, as far as I'm concerned, a blight on the planet.
1
The juxtaposition of this opinion piece with the proposed rolling back of the enforcement of the endangered species act says everything about any Republican's concerns about people's imepact on the environment, health and welfare.
1
For a Republican in Congress, professing belief in climate change and advocating policies to address it present the classic prisoner's dilemma.
Just as opposing the malefactor occupying the Oval Office does.
6
It doesn't matter how many Republicans come out of the climate closet as long as centrist, corporate Democrats like Nancy Pelosi disparage big action on climate change, like the Green New Deal -- per Pelosi, "or whatever it's called."
Climate change may be a problem lots of Republicans are ignoring, but so are lots of centrist, corporate Democrats, and those Democrats go back to at least Obama who, when asked what energy policy we should pursue, replied, "All of the above" including fossil fuels.
1
“When will believers in global warming come out?”
One thing that would be very helpful in discussions about climate change would be to ban the use of the word “believe.”
If we want to advance our responses to climate change issues we need stop treating concepts such as “beliefs” and “feelings” as elements of the scientific method.
Allowing politicians to repeatedly state that they believe or feel such-and-such about climate change has myriad negative effects:
•It gives legitimacy and false equivalency to personal beliefs, demanding those beliefs be treated and considered as having scientific value. “My beliefs are as good as your scientific facts!”
•It further erodes the public’s often mediocre understanding of how science actually works, creating more opportunity for myths and outright lies to propagate.
•It wastes precious time by allowing irrelevant and amorphous beliefs into the factually-driven debate on how to respond to climate change.
•Ultimately it gives undeserved shelter to leaders who are afraid to commit to creating policy based on the scientific facts as we know them.
6
@Jaco, No, what you state is not scientific fact. Virtually every single scientist who studies anything associated with climate is in agreement--we humans are the biggest drivers of the speed of climate change. The amount of time we have before irreversible damage happens grows short. Pray we are in time to stave off the worst.
I wish someone would find a way to convert testosterone into a renewable energy source.
3
So true. Nothing significant can be achieved on climate until the Republican Party gets on board.
The Democrats and environmental lobby must help Republicans to come round without losing face and by accepting some of their fundamental principles in climate policy : the power of markets, role of corporations, the (sometimes well-founded) suspicion of bureaucrats.
The fight for climate and the environment won’t be won as long as only one party owns it.
71
@Leonick
You are correct: The fight for climate and the environment won't be won as long as only one party owns it. We need to put a price on carbon. Change is difficult for all of us, but courageous Republicans are starting to speak up about the reality of climate change. They need to encourage their leaders to be courageous as well.
There is a bold and economically reasonable realistic climate solution bill in the US House, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act HR 763 which many Republicans, given some leadership, could support. Also, check out presidential candidate John Delaney's ideas.
Denigrating an entire political party will not help us to get this immense crisis solved. We need all the help we can get.
6
@Clare Rogers The Republicans will NEVER be on board. All we can do is vote them out, kill the filibuster, and adopt policies to ameliorate the situation.
13
@Leonick
Why is it up to the Democratic Party to enlighten the Republicans?
25
It would be helpful if many Republicans, who are "pro-life", could extend this mantra to polluting industries. For example, there is nothing "pro-life" about coal plant emissions which contain high levels of mercury, lead, cancer-causing heavy metals, more radiation than nuclear plants (from uranium inclusions mixed with coal), and a host of deadly contaminants in the remaining fly-ash. These are especially harmful to unborn children who are highly susceptible to even minute quantities of such toxins.
Even if you don't accept the reality of climate change, isn't it "pro-life" to support the phase-out of coal in favor of industries such as solar and wind which do not harm human life, God's greatest gift? I would love to see more Republicans make this connection. It's frankly a puzzle that the pro-life community hasn't yet done so, by-and-large.
154
@Dwarf Planet
This would require a modicum of scientific literacy and the willingness to believe experts in their fields. I haven't seen any evidence that this is a quality possessed by climate deniers.
15
@Dwarf Planet When will GOP believers in global warming come out? NEVER! The science on climate change is settled, but the politics isn't. The GOP is disingenuous when they deny the science, but let's be honest the Democrats are even more disingenuous when they deny the cost. Cap & Trade, carbon taxes, etc. are politically dead in the water. American voters simply don't want to pay more for energy. We & (the world) will continue to use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future no matter what happens. Maybe less but still in massive amounts. It's baked into our energy grid. It can't & won't be eliminated overnight. That will take decades at best. Even though our governments now subsidize clean-power sources, efficient cars, buildings, we continue to rip as much oil, coal & gas out of the ground as possible. And if our green policies mean there isn't a market for these fuels at home, then no matter: they will be exported instead. The US is extracting carbon & flowing it into the global energy system faster than ever before. For years we've tried to simultaneously reduce demand for fossil fuels while doing everything possible to increase the supply. More efficient engines enable more people to drive more cars over greater distances, triggering more road building, more trade & indeed more big suburban houses that take more energy to heat. Can we bring ourselves to prioritize renewables over cheap fuels, power, convenient goods & services? We all know the answer. Absolutely not.
2
@Ed Davis
Renewable power is a job creator. A Manhattan Project for CO2 reduction is a bigger job creator. If the GOP cared about jobs and "the general welfare", instead of about industries that are living fossils, we could have all that with minimal cost to the public and with better jobs for many.
11
In Ohio, republicans are not "cowering in the closet." Both the house and the senate are controlled by republicans. The governor is also a republican. In the recently passed state budget, the repubs decided to bail out two nuclear power plants situated on Lake Erie by levying a charge that will appear on every consumer electricity bill. Our republican public servants also severely reduced the requirement that a certain percentage of state energy come from renewable sources. Coal gets another gasp and we tool merrily down the road to climate disaster.
143
@Susan
I do not object in principle to keeping those nuclear power plants open. They do produce carbon free electricity. (Though the politics and TV advertising for the bill were nauseating.) But that the same bill also bails out two coal fired power plants, one of which is located in Indiana. That's certainly not progress.
25
@Susan It's absolute madness and stupidity to bail out those two past-retirement nuclear power plants (with a long history of dangerous accidents and neglect) and two 1950s coal-fired power plants. FirstEnergy lobbied to be deregulated 15-20 years ago and they got what they wanted...but they found out they can't compete in the open market so Ohioans now have to fork over $1.6 Billion in the next 10 years in subsidies to bail out First Energy Solutions, the spin off from First Energy. This is in addition to over $10.2 Billion in subsidies since 1999 to prop up Davis Besse and Perry nuclear plants. Republicans have gotten millions of dollars in donations from FirstEnergy, and are now in their pocket. FirstEnergy groomed Republicans for office that are now doing their bidding, as evidenced by this outrageous bill that was signed into law. I hope all Ohioans join me in getting these people voted out of office.
8
@Susan
I see the GOP is brave enough to raise taxes or utility bills as long as it helps their clients.
7
Denial of climate change is larger than the GOP. A 2015 Monmouth survey put the percent of Americans who do not believe in global warming at 70%.
What is central to the issue that Mr Gillis omitted is the demand placed upon people to change their life styles. Reduction of individual transportation, more mass transportation. Dietary change of less red meat. Less AC in the summer and gas heat in the winter. Less dependence upon fossil-fuels.
Give up our cars and trucks? Endanger our jobs? Take my steak? Fundamentally change our very society?
And what of our world-wide military presence? If oil is no longer valued, how does this impact our foreign policy? Kill and die for Saudi Arabia? Attack Iran?
Concern about the earth is old news—Walter Cronkite back in the 1970s championed it and the first Earth Day. In 2008, the British scientist James Lovelock addressed this issue. His book The Revenge of Gaia predicted that by 2020 “extreme weather” would be normal. Worse, Lovelock told The Guardian that we are too late. Action should have taken in 1967.
Congress will not take action because of disbelief. It will not because the overwhelming majority of Americans will not surrender their life style. Preposterous? Wasn’t it Rumsfeld who argued that the USA either engage in war or give up our way of life just before the Iraqi invasion?
We’re passed prevention. We better start thinking about damage control.
121
@doughboy is exactly right on all counts. But rather than be encouraged that there Closet Republicans exist, they are far, far too late and will continue to be behind the curve. Lovelock was correct 50 years ago.
31
@doughboy
At this point everything we should have been doing IS damage control. Saying otherwise is like saying that since it's too late for our brakes to stop us from hitting a tree we might as well not bother with them at all.
I for one would prefer to hit the tree at a lower velocity.
34
@doughboy
Agree.
Although I need to refresh my memory re Lovelock's points, I suspect that human population control was critically important to achieving whatever climate goals he sought. We've failed big time on that one, too.
Just like stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it's much earlier to acknowledge the problem than to do something productive to counter it.
Most people don't see themselves as connected to or part of "Gaia."
9
Since when did the Republicans lose the moral high ground on conservation and environmental issues? Teddy Roosevelt and our national parks system, Nixon and the EPA, Bush I and acid rain....
The opportunity for leadership on this issue is ripe for the picking. The party can take and should take back this issue as theirs.
The very definition of political cowardice. Remember that all those "toadies in federal agencies" were approved by a republican senate. They're not "beginning" to do anything and silence isn't golden. They could have spent the last 20 years educating the electorate (even slowly). Instead they panned the science with every megaphone they could find. That oath to preserve, protect and defend the country always has a re-election component to it.
195
"The Republicans — some of them, at least — are starting to sense political risk in continued climate denial."
What does it say about these so-called leaders that, when confronted with an existential crisis such as climate change, they are only motivated to take action when they face sufficient "political risk"? As the ice sheets and glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, storms and wildfires are growing more frequent and intense, and species are dying, these folks are busy calculating the political benefits of doing something about it or continuing to fiddle while the world burns.
Well, excuse me if I fail to give the Republicans credit for taking the most modest of measures to address this crisis. If your house is on fire, you don't offer a high five to the firefighters who sneak around back to pour thimblefuls of water on the flames. You don't congratulate people for barely doing the job they were hired to do.
Time is a luxury we do not have, in the fight against climate change. Only bold and immediate action will mitigate the severity of what we all will too soon face. That will require bold leadership, of which the Republicans have none. They would rather endanger their constituents and even their own children and grandchildren than risk political fallout.
Bravo!
494
@David J. What is says about them is that their primary motivator is personal power and wealth, and not the good of the country.
35
@David J.
Just so. But to acknowledge the 'clarified' thoughts of the Great Lord of the Perversion of Language, Frank Luntz is a bit much as well. More than anyone else except Grover Norquist, Luntz has contributed eagerly to the fever of foaming-at-the mouth types who cannot think anything through for themselves and act accordingly.
Now, he sees vulnerability? For him and the gop?
We always need to ask: What about the planet, what about us?
21
@David J.
But it does help their talking points when climate change eventually punches their constituents in the face. “Look at all the legislation we passed.” And their constituents will all repeat in perfect Orwellian unison, “Republicans have always been at war with Climate Change.”
15
As long as nobody in those red districts back home is really watching the Republicans can actually sneak in some good things. Never considered that keeping one's constituents in the dark or diverting their attention could have some advantages with respect to good policy. Who knew.
1
When will the NYTimes report honestly and objectively on the issue of climate change? we can easily find i the NYT archives numerous stories from the past warning of potential climate change such as polar ice cap melting, sea level rising etc that generally turn out false after 10 or 15 years.
climate change does occur the question is how much of a role does mankind play in it? I suspect very little if any. the climate changes on a cyclical basis and has for thousands of years. The current climate change hysteria is based upon computer model predictions which have never come true
1
@pak152. Keep going back. It’s very amusing. They have stories in their archives from the 1979s warning of catastrophic cooling, and stories going back to the mid-19th century warning of both catastrophic warming and cooling. So far, they have been dead wrong about every single environmental disaster foreseen for the last 170 years. Yet this fact gives no one any pause whatsoever. Deadlines come and go, tipping points never tip, and the Climate Faithful never waiver. It’s really quite amazing.
"...If we really decided to commit the nation in all its might to solving this problem, do you not believe that American ingenuity and American industry could get the job done?..."
In other words, do Republicans still believe it is possible for our country to set large goals and achieve them in less time than predicted? The transition from a peacetime to wartime economy during WWII is a case in point. Industries and common citizens alike were encouraged to help defeat the Axis powers in what was truly an existential struggle for many peoples of the wold.
Maybe in the process, Republicans will remember that the Axis was composed of three authoritarian dictatorships like the one Trump wants to create.
2
Most Republicans I know are not "climate change deniers."
We only deny that man is the main cause of the warming and associated sea-level rise which began mid-19th century--long before CO2 started spiking.
Our beliefs are reinforced by the failure of nearly all climate models of the past 35 years to predict what has (or better yet hasn't) happened. One need only to replay Gore's famous "inconvenient Truth" speeches to see how ridiculous his forecasts have proven to be.
Moreover, contrary to what the mainstream media alleges, there is clear empirical data showing any increase in the frequency or severity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts or forest fires.
The only provable result of heightened CO2 is the record global crop yields. So one can relax about wild-eyed forecasts of famine and starvation. The opposite is provable.
2
@Harvey L. POppel
This writer needs to work on his physics. Models aren’t perfect, but they have improved markedly, and modelers say one cannot make models work without taking increased CO2 into account.
Moreover, models are only one line of evidence. Paleoclimate is another. Perhaps the most persuasive is the physics: The physics of how CO2 affects global temperatures is well understood, and is not controversial even among the few scientists who are skeptical. Water vapor is almost as well understood, and in some respects is an even more important greenhouse gas.
Hurricane specialists (e.g., Kerry Emanuel, (http://eaps4.mit.edu/faculty/Emanuel/) say that severity of hurricanes is likely to increase, but we won’t know empirically until we have better statistics. There is no reason to expect that the number will increase. Likewise, there is no reason to expect any effect on tornadoes. And so on.
In short, one can understand how the writer might react skeptically to some of the more extreme pronouncements one hears. But the evidence for global warming and its long-term effects is more extensive, and more persuasive than he appears to realize.
@cagmn Similarly, astrologers say that their models are not always perfect, yet they cannot make their astrological models work without taking the constellations into account. And from this we know that the constellations must be driving our destinies, correct? If only those “skeptics” had the logical acumen to understand this argument....!
Some people seem to be under the impression that the Republicans, or even Donald Trump alone, are the only thing standing between us and saving the planet.
In fact the US is not all that important, producing 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 42% for the so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, etc).
In addition, while voters may tolerate tinkering with wind and solar and so on they are not prepared to make significant financial sacrifices in the cause of decarbonizing. No one is going to accept a real cut to their standard of living - not here, not in France, not in India. People - everywhere - want to be better off, or at least stay the same. That means fossil fuels. Climate comes second.
What US Republicans do is a very small piece of the puzzle.
2
The act of stepping out by the Republicans is more of a political gambit rather than a conviction-based call for action. Too many of their electorate are still holdouts and most them are more concerned about their reelection. In congress they will pay lip service to diverse proposals, but I bet under Democratic control they will again don their fiscal responsibility cap and severely limit spending under the guises that the problem needs further studies and we have to address the national debt. Seriously impacting global warming will require both heavy financial commitments and enormous life-style changes- the latter particularly for the wealthy and therefor the very politically influential people. Americans are overly fond of gas-powered toys -big cars, boats, yachts and watercrafts, private airplanes, snowmobiles, etc. all activities with influential lobbies in Washington. Most of these toys would need to be eliminated or make their use so expensive that only the wealthy could afford them. Housing is another category where mandated changes could have a huge impact on reducing carbon emission- but again at a huge cost to the consumer. Such changes would be strongly resisted by both the fossil fuel industry and a subgroup of consumers through political means by electing their supporters to Congress, or through the court system, ending at a very conservative SCOTUS. It will be a lengthy and expensive battle before we even achieve a major impact on climate change.
1
I was exposed to some of this recently at a formal dinner in honor of a branch of the military in Washington. I expected the speakers and the attendees, mostly Republicans, to deny climate science. The keynote speaker, a now retired republican marine, governor, and Dubya appointee, said it was "high time that science dictate policy, not the other way around." Speaker after speaker from the Coast Guard and Navy discussed the coming challenges posed by climate change. I hope, for our childrens' sake that the little actions they take, clandestinely, may add up to something.
3
By the time republicans stop denying climate change, it won't matter. The damage will be irreversible for humanity. We need nature, nature doesn't need us.
5
As I read and write this, the Trump administration is trying to kill the Endangered Species Act.
The fossil fuel industry controls our government right now and they will the destroy the earth and every living, breathing, creature on it for profit.
They don't care.
6
Frank Luntz, the Joseph Goebbels of the late 20th and early 21st Century, is much the same as Trump, just not quite as cruel. Luntz has supplied the talking points for the GOP for the past 25 years, kind of a behind-the -scenes Limbaugh, Savage, Beck, ALEC,et al. Check out Luntzs' book about "Winning". It's about winning at all costs. It the the later day Machiavellian screed, and the GOP from top to willfully ignorant bottom slurps it all up. We must be the most ignorant country on earth.
4
Unfortunately I believe the author is too optimistic. Climate change denial is alive and thriving. All one has to do is read the comment section on articles like this to see it first hand. Mind boggling.
2
@zipsprite
Everyone should be issued a card indicating whether you deny climate change or not, that way we know who to tax more.
Don't fool yourself. The door to the closet is locked. The key has been thrown away. The planet begins to die.
2
"When will believers in global warming come out?"
As soon as you stop making Global Warming into a Religion!
"Believers" support myths, fiction, & religion, based on nothing but faith.
"Thinkers" support science, facts, & reality!
2
Morally-bankrupt cowards is how I’d describe the GOP. From climate to guns to debt to immigration - all of the big issues of our time, GOP is on the wrong side.
6
The odd thing is that the modern GOP has no core beliefs. No core principles. No core ethics. They are completely and utterly for something, and then the next day, they are completely and utterly against it. Lowering the deficit, then exploding it. For states rights, then against them. For family values, then against them. And on, and on, and on, like a revolving door.
Now, the reasons for these 180's is usually obvious - the change somehow serves their greed, corruption, and political fortunes. But, in this case, I fail to see what benefit climate change denial brings them.
The oil companies have admitted climate change is real and are trying to adapt. Even automotive companies are trying to outflank the Trump Administration's lowering of emission and fuel economy standards, etc, etc, etc.
So, who's paying for the GOP intransigence on this? It's not like allowing mass-murderers unfettered access to military-grade weapons because the NRA pays them to do so. So, what's driving it?
Trump lies constantly. His position on major issues can change as fast as a baby can fill a diaper. So, what would happen if the GOP came out and said, "We now accept that climate change is real"?
It's not as if they have any face left to save. Everyone knows their party is nothing more than a bunch of self-serving shills. So, what gives? Heck if I know.
My only guess, is that it's because someone isn't paying them to do a flip-flop. That Mother Nature won't cough up a big enough check.
5
@Chicago Guy
Au contraire: the modern Republican Party has a core belief that trumps (heh!) everything else:
THE RICH SHOULD NOT PAY TAXES
That's it. Everything else is secondary.
4
Those firmly locked in the closet are either lairs, dumb as bricks and / or so corrupted by fossil fuel money that they are dead souls who don't even care about their own children and grandchildren. Science is science, not a religious belief.
Frankly, trump is locked into a corner of his own stupidity - he is a climate denier, a climate huckster. Since he takes money from any and all, the fossil fuel folks own him along with pharma and and others with money to buy him and McConnell.
The good news here is that November 2020 is on the horizon and those with a brain and soul who've been skeptics are finally seeing the "light", that global warming is a fact and it is mainly caused by humans burning fossil fuels, over consuming and over packaging. The wildfires, droughts, heavy storms and the 100s of billions we spend each year on disaster relief for growing numbers of Americans is not a hoax - we see it with our own eyes. Trump and his cronies must think the American people are dumb as bricks - and some are, the vat majority are not stupid.
Stay in your corner donald trump - that way you and yours will be crushed in 2020 and remembered for your ignorance, your criminal and immoral behavior and your extreme corruption.
Time to say "goodbye", little donny trump. Enjoy the dustbin of history.
1
There is only one race aka human.
And there is only one national origin aka Earth.
The birds and the bony fish were the evolutionary vertebrate 'winners' of the last major climate change mass extinction that occurred 65+ million years ago. And the rodents and bats were the mammalian 'winners'.
Are Republicans as smart on climate change as birds, bony fish, rodents and bats?
Certainly not the high school graduate entertainer bigoted ignorant stupid dim bulbs Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck.
5
@Blackmamba
Thank you! Best and most accurate comment of the day!
1
“Surely they’re not all that crazy.”
Maybe not. But they’re all that feckless.
5
A few comments on language.
"Global climate change" first of all is the more precise term, otherwise, idiots throw snowballs in Congress to demonstrate their "disbelief" in "global warming."
Second, these scientifically verifiable and data-driven facts, are not about "belief." Rather, they relate the scientific method, re-tested and verified over time. Stop using the words "believers in global warming." It is problematic and imprecise, on both counts.
marylouise markle
state college, pa.
7
"When will believers in global warming come out?"
This must be a Freudian slip, because global warming aka "climate change" is not supposed to be a religion.
Or is it?
2
Never happen, the are now the party of profit over planet with idiotic oligarchs thinking they will colonize space after they destroy the planet. They are guilty of murder by refusing to act and they are in fact killing themselves along with everything else.
1
Nice, but the Repubs are literally worse than useless because the problem of global warming is not liner. Multiplier effects weren't dormant during the lost decades.
Their stupidity and cupidity has cost society dearly.
2
The issue isn't belief in global warming. That has been established beyond any reasonable doubt.
The issue is whether it is an important and urgent problem, or whether, when all effects are taken into account, even harmful at all. That is unknown.
2
Hi, have you been watching the news?
Climate change is already impacting all of us directly.
All of us, on a global scale.
Denise
3
@Denise
You have not addressed Jonathan's key and crucial point: is the impact harmful?
And I am sorry: a hurricane or a tornado does not signify climate change.
1
@Jonathan Katz It seems rather "important and urgent" to people living in tropical regions that can no longer support crops, or those living in permafrost now collapsing beneath them, or on islands soon to disappear.
Americans have had the luxury of complete indifference to those people. Americans can say things like "we don't know whether, when all effects are taken into account, climate change is even harmful at all." Americans haven't had to notice who they're consigning to death or misery. Heck, we're finally gonna get a Northwest Passage, so it's all good!
You sometimes hear the argument: "we've had climate change before, and people survived." Yes, they did: by migrating en masse. If your conscience is comfortable with building a thousand-foot wall and machine-gunning the millions who'll attempt to cross it inorder to survive, then sure: not important or urgent.
Just turn the air conditioner up and stay inside. You might well avoid the tropical diseases headed our way. Get your own weaponry: maybe you'll avoid the higher crime rates typically associated with hotter weather. More global geopolitical instability? No biggie: it'll all net out in the end, right?
https://e360.yale.edu/features/redrawing-the-map-how-the-worlds-climate-zones-are-shifting
1
The US intelligence chiefs have included global warming in their security threat briefings for years. The Republican Party should be asked to address this. They should not be given a free pass to cherry pick which threats to take seriously.
2
Thanks for noting the few glimmers of light flickering through the G.O.P.s cloak of darkness on the global warming issue and their obfuscation of the catastrophic impact on the global climate and food supply starting with the ocean food web.
I worked as an energy policy person in the Navy and later as a Senate staffer to a Democratic chairman but I would like to respond to your final question. If I did not believe that the problem of global warming could be solved my adult life has been wasted.
I was introduced to the issue by the late Senator Pat Moynihan, who as a domestic counselor to President Nixon reported in a 0/17/69 memo to John Ehrlichman the global warming effect of CO2 emissions.
In 1987, Senator Moynihan, discovered a no-emissions, 300 mph, all-weather, Superconducting Maglev transport for passengers, freight, and trucks invented in 1966 by Drs. James Powell and Gordon Danby but ignored for budgetary reasons and invited them to a committee hearing. I was invited and met Powell and Danby.
The Senator's committee saw the need for a better national transport and proposed a Superconducting Maglev system to be built along the rights-of-way of the Interstate Highway System. www.magneticglide.com
The Senate approved his bill to authorize development, but it was defeated in the House by existing transport interests.
My friends and I believe Maglev can also cheaply launch solar satellites to orbit to beam cheap electricity to virtually any place on Earth.
3
@james jordan
Anyone pushing that forward now?
1
@Butterfly
Thanks for reading my comment. Quick answer: I am pushing and will submit a proposal at every opportunity. The 2nd generation SC Maglev has the capability to carry fully loaded highway freight trucks. Highway freight trucks is the gaiting factor for the future growth of the U.S. We think just by carrying 1/2 the freight between NYC and Chicago can generated enough freight haul savings to build a National Maglev Network to every state in the lower 48 and 75% of the population will be withing 15 miles of a terminal. This rolling friction free system can carry freight at 10 cents per ton mile and passengers for 5 cents per mile.
My interest is in developing the Magnet manufacturing and vehicles. For about $200 million over 5 years of testing the public carrier, I believe we can attract the investment to build a major Maglev guideway route and begin to earn enough money to build out the Interstate Guideway System.
Jim Powell, Gordon Danby and I described this technology in "The Fight for Maglev", and "Maglev America". We also did two other books to describe the application of this technology to space launch payload to orbit, "Silent Earth" and "Spaceship Earth".
Obviously, I take global warming seriously and will urge our next President to get involved in taking this technology to the U.N. so that we can cost share the development of a international system of satellites to capture solar energy and beam it to Earth and wholesale it very cheaply.
The most important issue of our generation. Period.
3
"But they’re not all that crazy." is an extraordinarily low bar of achievement. I assume that you're commendation of some begrudging Republican cooperation in dealing with the existential challenge of our time, while at the same time being ashamed to admit that they are assisting in even a very few good policies, is meant to shock and remind us of how "crazy" Republican orthodoxy has been for several decades.
If this article is in fact expressing sincere appreciation for some Republicans consenting to some of the good things needed the done, despite fears of retaliation from their suicidal base, then it is simple confirmation that we're doomed by accepting so little. As long as fossil fuel lobbyists, Fox "News" and every Republican (regardless of what they privately admit to) continue to hold such a strong sway on public discourse, we're in deep trouble.
3
You have one of the major U.S. political parties built on a lie. The Republican elites placate the unwashed masses to get their votes. That is why they embrace Trump. Say what you will about the liberals, but at least they are honest.
4
@tanstaafl
You nailed it.
Anyone who lived in NYC in the 80's or 90's and from there on knows only too well that Trump has always been a pompos, self dealing spoiled rich boy from Queens. He sorely hated being from the bridge and tunnel crowd.
His father bankrolled him to the point that he really believed that he was a self made billionaire.
Delusions then and delusions now.
He learned how to lie, cheat and steal from Cohn who was the worst of the worst.
Never apologize and never explain was his mantra.
Sounds like Trump?
2
The overwhelming evidence is that Republicans have abandoned common sense and human decency. The indelible proof is the willing descent of the GOP into the Trumpian abyss.
Until Trump and his Republican lackeys are thrown from office, we will all be on the endangered species list.
4
Sorry, but climate change is not a belief. It is not a religion. It is science. There are beliefs and there are facts. Climate change is factual.
1
It has taken decades for the petroleum and coal industries to demagogue global warming and climate change. They won and the environmentalists lost -- for now.
The chances of confronting the dire consequences of climate change are low considering the inaction on another major issue, gun control, which is supported by 94% of the American people.
Though climate change impacts are being felt worldwide those concerns are dwarfed by the Trump-Fox News cacophony of "caravans of illegal immigrants" propaganda which will again be amplified and timed to coinicide with the coming national election.
Neither global warming or gun control it seems can get enough votes from an impotent congress to gain traction, especially with a science-illiterate con man Donald Trump whose executive orders have stifled empirical scientific evidence subsumed by his zeal for votes in the dying coal industry in places like W. Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
Trump's empty promises to his Rust Belt constituents who yearn for those "millions of jobs coming back to America" to fulfill the fantasy of cradle-to-grave security, liveable wages and bygone pensions remain a staple of his ubiquitous campaign rallies no matter how detached they are from the real world.
Besides, toxic sludge is good for you even if you get sick with cancers and black lung disease as long as you have a job with Big Coal and Big Oil.
To say that John Barrasso is an "advocate for climate action" is like saying Donal Trump is an advocate for doing something about immigration. Please.
2
This is the result of the current Republican mindset: They seem to feel that their job in government is to “win” for “their side”, like an athletic team. What’s good or bad for the people who live in our country is not really their concern. It’s all about “beating the bad guys” - foreign countries, ethnic and religious minorities, Liberals, etc. It’s following the Law of the Jungle: Kill or be killed.
I thought that after thousands of years of existence, the human race was at least trying to go beyond that philosophy. Apparently not. We will poison our own people rather than let “the other side” gain anything. Start listening to the things Mitch McConnell says and see what you think.
1
Perhaps there are some who see this as "The final days" and as good Christians they should welcome the end rather than do everything necessary to avoid it. After all this is a Christion Nation and Republicans don't want to upset that Christian base.
3
Just one quick thing regarding language in headline and in the comments I've read....
Climate change and climate science are not religions. One doesn't "believe" in them like one chooses to believe in a particular religion.
Climate change and climate science are "accepted", "true", and "evidence based". The sub-headline should read "When will those who accept the evidence of climate change come out?".
1
You might call it being in the closet, I call it craven political cowardice. The current situation is also an indictment of market based capitalism. This country (the world really) has had over over 25 years to assess the scientific and economic ramifications of the problem and our politicians have failed owing to so-called economic realities. But those realities were largely created by a small number of energy based companies and individuals who also knew the science well. Into this void should have stepped political leadership. Instead what you got was Republicans largely but with a few blue state Dems in their as well showing total cowardice.
2
The huge problem is that both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans have abdicated their sworn duty to educate their constituencies. Instead, they cave in to their voters' desire to feel powerful. Trump supporters feel powerless to respond to various changes affecting their lives, their health, their kids, their jobs. Reaction: deny the problem exists! Bring back coal! In their hearts, most know it won't work, but it makes them feel strong, in part precisely because it seems ridiculous. A king wears absurd clothes and demands ridiculous ceremonies because he can, and Trump voters relish the feeling they can cram even absurd, hurtful policies down the throats of their perceived opponents.
Similarly with many black voters. Demand words be changed, prohibit others, demand over-representation of mediocre black artists and under-qualified decision-makers, because it feels good to force it on your perceived opponents. Call them racist, even when you know in your heart they're not.
But each action has a reaction;more thoughtful and sensitive conservative policies on the environment and race would encourage more considered and responsive reactions from progressives. If you're a progressive, especially a minority, Trump and McConnell are a license to be loud, angry and intolerant. If you're a powerless, poor white who can't even pay for the medical care their kids need, loud, angry and intolerant minorities are a license to vote for Trump. And on and on.
1
Republicans in full control of Congress? Then why is Pelosi speaker?
....yawn....
Global warming can't be stopped.
It ias a large scale natural phenomenon that began just after the peak of the last ice age and continues today.
Man certainly contributes, but nothing man can do is going to make a meaningful modification to the warming trend.
Nothing.
Plan for it and stop wasting time.
Better yet, stop using it political propaganda.
After 40 years of climate activism, I've reached the point at which I find the position of the climate-change deniers to be more palatable than that of my pseudo-enviro pals. I'm sick of the mealy-mouthed hypocrites who cry crocodile tears over our environmental catastrophe, point blaming fingers at (R)s, China, Exxon…, send their conscience-balming check to WWF, then hop in their urban, 4WD SUV and drop off the (now useless) recycling on their way to the airport for their "badly-needed" long weekend vacation in (fill in the country).
1
One of the strengths of the GOP is that they stick together. The problem they are having is that they adopted this pathetic stance that climate change isn't real, or if it is happening (harder and harder to argue it is not) then we humans didn't cause it and we humans can't stop it. They have to stand shoulder to shoulder in public with this stance, and sadly, they are causing real harm to us all.
1
This is disgusting. All I can say is, those congressional positions must be awfully sweet, with all the perks, the Cadillac health care, the privileges, the road to lucrative lobbying jobs, etc. We really do need to find some form of term limits.
In answer to your leading question of when will all climate change believers show themselves, the answer is simple. When the Great Leader is thrown out of office and his enabling toadies join him outside of Congress and out of the Swamp Cabinet he has created--- when a complete cleansing of those who ignore science and receive money from the billionaires who gain from killing the climate---then all who now slink away in cowardice will step forward.
How does Luntz have the chutzpah to come out on climate emergency now -- after all the damage that he is personally responsible for? Has he no shame?
1
A very old Republican hypocrisy.
John Mitchell: "Watch what we do, not what we say."
Also a very old Republican scorn for its own voters.
1
They aren't believers. They are liars. They are vandals, pillagers and poisoners. Let's call them what they are. And I'm not sure they've ever been more that that for most of my life. And I'm pushing 60.
Will history will be around to record how one political party in one large but newish country could have saved human civilization and turned the tide of the sixth Great Extinction? It's anybody's guess but my money is on not.
2
It says a lot about the republican morality (or total lack of it ) that the “Republican climate closet” seems to be made up of people who don’t care at all about what kind of world their children and grandchildren will live in. They just care that they might lose re-election if they stay on the wrong side of a popular issue.
Vote blue no matter to rid these parasites from our body politic.
2
It is not about believing!!!!!
It is about living in the real world, the 21st century and having just a little understanding in science.
science is real. It is not fantasy fiction.
Climate Change, human induced, is happening at an alarming rate....always faster than predicted and with much more impact than thought possible at this time.
Could we stop using the term “believe” and use “accept the evidence”?
Trumps "Climate Closet" will come out when his administration has been relegated to the "dustbin of history".
1
The press and the Democrats joined a politically correct 'climate change' fogging. Closet 'global warming' Republicans count for less than Democrats who threw away the 'global warming' banner on day two. Democrats showed their typical selves by passing on taking a stand for facts and a real program for protecting the nation's future. Cede 92% of the ground and be defensive about it climate conscious Democrats. Climate closet Republicans are nothing.
Now I know it’s too late.
Well, Republicans in the closet do not garner my appreciation or admiration. If they know that climate change has taken a fatal turn, then they should be supporting full-throated support to combat it. It's an all or none support!
Donald Trump believes climate change is real, and is protecting his Scottish golf course from its impact. He just doesn't want his followers to have the same protections. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/donald-trump-climate-change-golf-course-223436
1
After it’s too late.
To all who have expressed anger at the Republican party and upset that the author paints them as reasonable, secretly-constructive people, I share your anger. However, to the author I still say "Bravo!" Because...
I think the author is not talking to any of us. I think he's talking to THEM. And that is one of the most potent resources we have now--Republicans talking to Republicans about these things.
And if he wants to get through to them--rather than talk to us, the choir of the converted--he needs to talk in the gentle, approachable tone he is using, or they will just shut him out.
Please let us not immediately sack him. Please let's let him get the job done. Because if we are going to address the climate crisis, it's Republicans we need to get through to--far more than we need to vent about our upset.
1
The fires of Isengard will spread. And the woods of Tuckborough and Buckland will burn. And all that was once green and good in this world will be gone. There won't be a Shire, Pippin.
1
The Republicans are following the well-known political maxim: "There go my people.I have to follow them and find out what they are saying, so I can lead them." (Or words to that effect.)
In other words, they will never do anything until it's politically safe. What a disgrace.
Mr Gillis, next you're going to tell us that Republicans, when you get them alone and totally off the record, really support Planned Parenthood and strict gun control, but they are so afraid of their base, they can't.
You know, your opinion piece didn't make me feel any better about combating global warming, knowing that Republicans are really on the right side of this issue after all. I just look at all the time wasted because Republicans have been playing wedge issue politics for political win.
For years, right wing radio and Fox news have been fear mongering about eco-nazis and tree huggers killing jobs, taking away our internal combustion engines. Recently, we've been told that the environmentalists are coming for our hamburgers!!
The problem is, their Frank Luntz inspired phrase turning propaganda has worked too well and has turned the Republican base into full throated, fire breathing conspiracy theory believers - and the Republicans now can't walk it back.
Republicans deserve to lose elections because of their mendacity, but we don't deserve the societal and environmental mess they've left behind in their wake.
2
I wish you would not use term "believers in global warming." This is not a religion or a belief system! Your secondary headline should read "When will those who still use reason and logic in their thinking come out?" Of course this is less catchy.
2
Here's what I don't get. Republicans have children and grandchildren. Do they not care that they're destroying their progeny's planet, slowly, by flood, famine, pollution and extreme weather?
Do their children not ask them why they're trying to kill the planet and their family's lives?
2
Here is the answer to the question posed by the headline: "Too Late."
The Republican Party could quite literally be responsible for the end of civilization.
4
Without a doubt the doers and shakers in the Republican party have known for years that global warming is real. They are not stupid, just evil. And is it too strong a word to call them evil? I think not. Experts on global warming science have been predicting catastrophic consequences of inaction on this problem for 20 years or more, and the Republicans chose not to act. Why? Because it may have cost them their jobs. Even John McCain, backed away from the issue. So the reality is that global warming is now producing consequences which may well be irreversible as predicted by the science. So will the GOP join with the Democrats to unilaterally attack this threat, a threat as certain as was the threat of Hitler, or should they as Gillis suggests play the " role it naturally ought to play: arguing for a national climate strategy that does the least economic damage and makes maximum use of markets to find the solutions we need."? Sorry, Mr. Gillis, but the GOP has overplayed this hand already. It is too late for playing games. Now is the time for immediate unified action by the US, joining with the international community to hopefully save our planet.
When constituents demand it, they will act. Or when their corporate owners, who pay for their votes, demand it.
Or when they become a permanent minority. First, lots of old white men need to pass on. May it not be too late, because this is the crisis that could bring down civilization.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross famously charted her five stages of grief in confronting death.
Over many decades, climate scientists have warned us that the planet was at risk of burning and melting. The Republican response has been to reduce Kubler-Ross to only two stages - denial, denial, denial, denial...and finally acceptance ("Too late now," goes their belated refrain, "nothing to be done now but accommodate the inevitable.").
I'd add a sixth stage of grief: shame on you.
4
I am waiting for the day that Republicans embrace climate science and legislation to reach net zero carbon emissions. They will claim that it is all their ideas and policies. They will deny they ever disbelieved climate change and ever obstructed legislation and ever rejected climate change treaties. They will turn the tables on Democrats and blame them for all the delay.
Mark me. The day will come.
5
Will reality and common sense trump stupidity and denial for the willfully blinkered on climate change? The benighted Republican Party has a poor record and is too slow for the important work that must take place now. Lazy and closeted will not get the job on climate change done for Republican constituents and other earth dwellers. The ruling party are happy to ruin the environment for spite.
2
We won't.
There are a lot of meteorologists who don't bray in public about it. They work at hedge funds. Climate forecasting is a huge business, and huge swathes of commodities markets as well as consumer retail march to the weather's beat. If you can predict the weather a year in advance, you can be a billionaire many times over.
These climatologists believe climate change is a crock, shot through with intellectual dishonesty and cooked statistics.
As Republicans who aren't scientists, credibility matters. The (public) climatologists have made a cottage industry out of hysteria and lobbying for more government funding and control.
If I said to you that I know of a financial disaster in the next 50 years, and needed your vote to reengineer the entire global economy / take trillions of your dollars to avert it, RIGHT NOW!!11, would you believe me? Of course not. You'd say I'm a morally compromised hedge funder who doesn't need other people's money and in any case shouldn't be trusted with any more of it than I already have.
It's no different with Republicans and the science-turned-religion of global warming.
1
@Alex
Name me ONE of these supposed climatologists or meteorologists (not counting those who depend on the fossil fuel industry for their daily bread).
The hypocrisy of the Republican Party is on full display when it comes to climate change. I agree that most GOPers secretly believe in scientific fact. After all, our own Defense Department has told them that climate change poses one of the biggest national security threats to us and the world at large. But they will never come out of the closet because science denial has become one of the pillars of what is now POT (the Party of Trump). Having chosen to worship at the feet of the most ignorant, venal, corrupt and ego-maniacal leader ever elected to the White House, a serial liar who never confesses to lying, they now have to stick to the lie that has made our government the laughing stock of the world.
4
Man is the moral ideal. The rest of nature is merely a tool for mans life and happiness. Sustain man. Exploit nature. Change the climate. Fossil fuels keep 7B people alive.
Pathetic.
Progressive politicos couldn't convince the world with song & dance or pseudo-science, so now they want to plea using those among us that could not feed themselves. The reason few if any outside the Left sphere of manipulation believe in them, is because of the what they espouse. For they declare things that no one has ever heard of, even encounter let alone counter. 'Artificial meat is better for you' - becasue it ... just should be better.
With the circus that has been the Democrat primary process, more folly is certain to stain America. Like Biden declaring the US could absorb 2 million more immigrants today. Someone should inform him that the US has yet to pay for HC administered to its own citizens 50 years ago. But The Great Society was a catchy slogan, wasn't it? 'Dick made it sing', and we now feel the sting.
The underlying problem is no integrity, no decency, and no real concern with the common good. Or listening to true experts for guidance on policy.
The 1% is all they ever care about, and staying in power.
Any repub who recognized the seriousness years ago but stayed in the closet to get elected and re-elected, is a phony and hypocrite. Someone to be despised.
And if there is a way to twist this whole story about science and where it was telling us we were headed 40 years ago, and put out the usual propaganda to their ignorant supporters that the enormous problems we face are the democrats fault...they will of course. Their standard strategy.
And their toads will as always believe them. Hope there is enough of us to vote them out.
The GOP is made up of cowards, ignorance and immoral sycophants, they are clearly not leaders.
1
Waiting for the fever to cool? The fever over climate change denial was caused by the Republican Party.
More Republican bizzaro world nonsense.
How cynical do you have to be to assume that in order to appeal to your base you must pretend to not believe what you do, in fact, believe? In the service of who is this dumbing down for? The oil companies, or the partisan yahoos who don't care what you say as long as its the opposite of them there liberals? Loving your country means doing what can be done to make it better, safer, healthier. Everything else is just grift.
4
They mutated out of existence long time ago.
I think that for the likes of Senator Graham this would be a closet too far.
1
The Republican Climate Closet
The closet is a cozy place,
all lined with fur & feather.
A place to lounge and rest your face
and never mind the weather.
Luxuriate! Ignore the doom
of hurricane and heat wave.
Why should you care if there's no room
for animals you might save?
A burning drought? Ignore it, child!
It's nothing but a dry spell...
What use is it to get all wild
about the climate's death knell?
The closet is a refuge, true,
from all the busy, worried din...
And easily converted to
a coffin to be buried in.
2
@Jimbo WOW done!!
It is absolutely imperative that we wait until all coastal areas in the world are under water. There is no sense of urgency, unless you ask every expert on climate change. Instead we are left with an ignoramus in the oval office who cries HOAX. Oh, I forgot, he's a self proclaimed expert on climate change.
1
If Democrats want Republicans to take reasonable positions, maybe calling us fascists isn't the best strategy?
Let's face it folks climate change denialism is about one thing and one thing only. It is about hate.
For twenty years the Republican party has been in the process of a cultural revolution. They hate people who believe in climate change because they hate liberal eggheads. They do not care to understand climate change and do not want to know anything about it. It is a liberal plot by college professors to get pay raises or it is a plot by the Chinese to take American jobs. Anybody who understands it or believes in it is one of them. The republican party is the anti-intellectual party now. They are like the Maoists who sent all the smart people to work the farms in communist China.
I know Republicans who would not send their kids to college now because they would not want them to be indoctrinated into "liberalism".
Climate change denialism is part of their identity they are proud of their ignorance and stupidity.
2
knowing and doing nothing is at best cowardice; at worst., treason. In America, money is everything.
1
We can have a. green industrial revolution once Dems control DC
1
Republican believers in climate change will come out when they can use it as an excuse to slow immigration and poor countries’ development.
1
If anything this OpEd infuriates me even more. It is an acknowledgment of what we all knew; that republicans are only sniffing the political breeze before acting. Well it is now becoming a hurricane. Talk about cowardice. Here we have a situation that threatens humanity and the entire planet, yet these fools are to busy plotting their next step to secure re-election to come clean with their largely ignorant electorate. At this point anyone denying climate change is either a fool or has been living in abject ignorance.
3
Reality has a way of not following an ignorant message.
1
This is not news, their "leader" has already built a wall to protect his golf course in Ireland from global warming.
This is all obfuscating nonsense, trying to sneak through a ridiculous and inherently-corrupt global system of "carbon taxation"...
Folks, If your problem is that things – as they're currently trending – are going to kill us all in our sleep one night 12 years hence when a spring tide and risen oceans conspire to spill into the Washington Mall to a depth of eleventy-seven feet...
How does charging an admission fee change the outcome – besides subsidizing the invention of magic super-batteries and solar panels that produce 6X as much energy as strikes them from the sun...
Or is it really more of a “surge” pricing mandate than a tax...
(aka Solyndra – Joe recalls that, from his last stint as Prime Minister)
What’s scary is how real this has become...
Each time reading of some country planting hundreds of millions – or even billions – of trees...
Fear that they’ve cut down the same number to make artisanal deck furniture or palm oil or make way for sugar cane, but can now zero it out on their taxes for the next – you guessed it – 12 years...
These scams are sort of like the robocalls that ring incessantly to the corded phones of old Americans – writ nation-scale...
Michael Moore actually on to this – so here’s a tax-free offer of a title for a sequel:
“No Planet for Old Countries”
Michael, do this – and I promise (not really) to plant a considerable area of Great American grass seed...
About the same size as the crabgrass patches I've been recently tearing up...
I have another name for those Republicans: Cowards. Certainly not leaders.
1
And there you have it - only "political risk" will out these shameless cowards from their closet built and financed by the fossil fuel industry. They deserve nothing but the worst.
1
"In the coming debate, a Republican Party that came fully out of the closet on climate change would be liberated to play the role it naturally ought to play: arguing for a national climate strategy that does the least economic damage and makes maximum use of markets to find the solutions we need."
This is one of my greatest fears. "It will cost too much" is already a cry of climate change deniers that can no longer stick with the "it's not happening", "it's going to be beneficial", and "it's not because of us" arguments.
So their next line of defense is "yeah, but doing anything about it will destroy the economy."
If Republicans do come around, they'll only do so part way. They will continue to block meaningful, and now desperately needed, steps, laws and efforts, under the argument that it will damage the economy.
Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! (The 21st Century Republican Mantra).
Which is equivalent to a man who is dying of cancer foregoing cancer treatments, because it would mean taking time off work and reducing his income.
And, most interestingly, I can't think of a single action on climate change that will not produce jobs and strengthen the economy. It really just means putting effort into something important, which creates jobs. The loss is that it redirects efforts from things like creating 328 more cable TV channels, or 13 cool new features on smart phones, or a 150 mph sports car model for the street that is never allowed to travel faster than 65 mph.
10
" Watching Los Angeles burn from the window of his house apparently clarified his thinking. He distributed a memo to Congress in June warning that climate change was a growing vulnerability for Republicans."
Democrats believe in science, look at the future risks, and plan.
As illustrated by the quote above:
1) Republicans don't see a problem until what were once long-term risks now are exploding in their face
2) They are concerned about the problem to the extent that it might affect their hold on power, not in terms of its tragic effect on other people's lives
13
While people are saying that this is an existential threat to humanity, to the Republicans, there’s a calamity out there that’s even more frightening - that the ending our reliance on fossil fuels will present an existential threat to capitalism. We have to get beyond that. We have to be good stewards of the earth because, in the long run, that is the most common sensical, cost-effective way and the most “conservative” approach, to ensuring a healthy and prosperous future.
6
I am fine with renewable energy. Show me a good renewable energy company to invest in that doesn't rely on subsidies for its model to work. Anyone?
1
@Not 99pct
I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
Show me an oil or coal company that doesn't rely on tax breaks and incentives , aka subsidies, to drill and dig.
12
@Larry Almost half the energy subsidies in the US go to renewable energy. The other bulk goes to the end consumer.
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf
@Larry Show me a wind or solar company that doesn’t rely on tax breaks. Show me an owner of an electric car that didn’t take a tax break.
I can totally relate! For many years, I hesitated taking a position on climate change because so much of the information out there seemed politically-biased in one direction or another to fit a certain narrative.
What changed my mind several years ago was an online article from a reputable business magazine which openly and honestly explained what we know and what we don't know about climate change. It didn't omit any of the difficulties or flaws with commonly-cited climate studies, and it didn't try to spin what we do know to fit a certain narrative. It was as unbiased and apolitical of an article as I've ever read online.
If Democrats want to convince more Republicans, like me, that climate change is a big deal, which it is, they should tone down their rhetoric. (There is still a lot of uncertainty about how the climate will change over the next 100 years.) And if Republicans want to be part of this important conversation--which they absolutely should--they need to be more open to the evidence in front of them.
6
@Colin
Thanks very much for most of what you say here. I'm all in favor of hearing this discussion taking place amongst Republicans. But there is one thing you said that I can't agree with:
You say, "There is still a lot of uncertainty about how the climate will change over the next 100 years." That is very definitely not the case. There have been a great many reputable, well-constructed scientific studies, and again and again scientists are finding that the earth is warming--and the consequent damage is occurring--at a far faster rate than anyone thought would. If there is any uncertainty, it's in the direction that things might be more dire, not less. And we very definitely don't have 100 years. Also, reports have been unequivocal about saying that this is not just a "change"; that sounds far too neutral. It's a situation in which extremes of weather will become both more common and more intense, to the point where parts of Earth will become far less-habitable. I know to some people's ears, this sounds a bit hyperbolic. But in this case, the assessment is backed up by a lot of research--and also clearly-precedented by what we are already seeing directly. This is why I don't like the term "climate change"; I prefer "climate crisis", which is a fair term for the situation, I'd say.
15
@Colin Maybe you might also "tone down" your previous ignorance. Needing for a "business magazine" to explain scientific facts to you is absurd, when a vast and convincing majority of the world's scientists have the data to demonstrate a scientific treatise on global climate change. Who cares what you now "believe." It isn't about belief , nor do we need to make science more palatable to "Republicans who want to be part of this conversation." Be part of it. Period.
@Feather
"climate change" hides the crisis. I prefer "Global Cooking" now.
1
Republicans biggest stumbling block to climate change is, “no margin, no mission”. Without a profit motive to shift the Republicans’ influential power base, Republican leadership finds no political support within its ranks. As the climate crisis spirals out of control, the climate disaster is foretelling its consequences, as farmers are trapped in an economic downward spiral. Yet recent economic analysis of the relative costs of energy generation by Lazard, an economic powerhouse (Levelized costs of Energy 2017), demonstrates the narrowing gap in solar energy production and traditional energy inputs. Today, the relative costs of power generation have further narrowed, with solar costs becoming more advantageous. With rural America being predominately agriculturally based and a known Republican stronghold, it’s time to consider how the vast rural landholdings (farms) can be put to the higher economic use in solar power generation. Developmental costs to create a solar farm are quoted as $1 per watt, or, $1 million per 1 megawatt, well within the billions of dollars given for trade war losses to the agricultural community. One megawatt of electricity can serve up to 650 or more residential homes with electricity year-round. Most surely, a way forward for the deteriorating economic conditions in rural America and a strong step forward in political climate change thinking.
11
Whether it was the Global Cooling Scare in the 70’s or the current Global Warming Silliness ...what’s the fix? Why, more Government Control of course...we must always decide what policies will be best for human flourishing.
2
@Stephen Maniloff What is the purpose of government to you? To me, it is trying to help the collective good of the people. Certainly the air we breath and the water we drink should be protected for us all. This problem is way bigger than what individuals can solve. Collective solutions may work.
27
@Stephen Maniloff
Most economists, independent of their political affiliation, argue that a carbon tax--letting markets do the heavy lifting--would be the most efficient and most effective approach.
4
I find it’s helpful to talk about “pollution” rather than “climate change” or “global warming”. These terms have become too politically charged, and as soon as they’re mentioned half the country shuts down, declares it a Chinese hoax, and talks about all the coal mining jobs they imagine being lost. No one can deny the existence of pollution, though, and it can be useful to start the discussion on an area of agreement.
5
Why is anyone wasting time typing explanations to climate science deniers? The next generation is rolling it's eyes and looking at a bleak future while some of us are trying to change the minds of people that are probably profiting from the continued development of fossil fuels. Instead, please contact your political reps and democratic nominees and ask for debate and solutions. We are out of time.
11
@claudia the next generation rolling their eyes? Probably not STEM majors who've taken the time to look at all the data.
There are solutions. I wish every legislator* would read "Reinventing Fire" by Amory Lovins". It's a comprehensive and thoughtful plan for dealing with climate change.
I'd say "leader", but few are leading right now.
The biggest thing these GOP lawmakers can do is to use their influence and marketing potential to make it culturally acceptable in their states to support things that mitigate climate change, even if they never use the term, but instead couch the solutions in economic terms, or personal pocket-book terms. Those things just need to look different than the stuff that coastal elites do. Windmills, I think, have been a good example of this.
4
With Republicans there are lots of things in the closet. Climate change, healthcare, immigration, minimum wage, gun control, women's rights, and as soon as the Democrats regain the White House they will try to put the budget deficit back in there too.
12
@W.A. Spitzer
The budget deficit, which was a concern to the GOP when Obama was looking to pass a larger stimulus in 2009, has been firmly placed back in the closet with the tax cut. Don’t be concerned about waiting for the Democrats to come in.
3
If you don't believe Gillis' thesis that the rabid fever of the base is driving things, either because you're a Republican who thinks that the Rs are simply looking out for the economy or because you're a democrat who thinks the Rs are completely bought and sold by business interests, simply look up the Kigali Amendment. This is a win-win for climate and the American economy, so it should be one of the easy things to get behind. But Trump, EPA's Wheeler and Wehrum have all blocked the US moving on this even though industry and greens want it. Why? Because the Republicans would have to admit they believe in climate change and doing something about it.
4
Republicans will always applaud measures like carbon tax credits, which benefit large companies. It's all hypocrisy. Minutes before I read this article, the breaking news headline was "Trump Weakens Protections for the Endangered Species Act."
8
Well, he has to. It’s not like the planetary ecology is gonna break down by itself.
1
Exxon-Mobil is investing tens of billions of dollars in a joint venture with the Russians to drill for oil in the Arctic Sea. They aren’t spending these vast amounts of money because they think the Arctic is getting colder. They are making this huge investment because they know that arctic sea ice is receding and thinning rapidly.
Republican politicians may play dumb when it comes to climate change, because that is what sells to the dumb masses of their base.
But elite corporate backers of Republican politics—the Exxon-Mobils of the world—know for certain that global warming is underway, and that is where they are talking with their money.
8
Too little. Too late. Too tepid. A garden hose that may actually be aimed at the raging fire.
7
No no no. No GOP suddenly washing away their crime and getting a free pass for the immoral, obfuscating role they have played for several decades. The scientific careers they have harmed, the trillions of dollars of environmental damage that has and will result, the retardation of the progress of our world towards sustainability. So many of those 'invading hoards' at our border are from Venezuela, Guatemala and Honduras where an unusual drought had caused food shortages. They are the party of climate change denial and that title needs to stay for as long as history is recorded.
8
The first step in curing an addiction is to admit you have a problem.
And whether it is denialism and conspiracy theories about a cabal of climate scientists or a Chinese hoax the base of the Republican Party will never admit that climate change is a problem that needs addressing. If they are deign to admit it is a problem they will minimize it - pineapple trees in Wisconsin! - and then kick the can down the road. And they think they have an immigration problem now.
It is epistemic closure of a sealed bank vault variety - there is no getting through it. And as the author points out and the last few years illustrate, we know how Republicans deal with stubbornly ignorant, paranoid and overheated members.
2
Frank Luntz thinks environmentalists are "mean" because they haven't been nice to him in personal interactions. Now suddenly he believes in climate change because his own house was affected by a wildfire. If "all politics is personsal", then isn't all climate change denial simply a reflection of a selfish and myopic population that will never care until the consequences are right at their front door?
14
It is utter nonsense to defend republican efforts to mitigate Climate Change. The elephant in the room is a republican president aided and abetted by a republican controlled senate, who work for big oil and coal. In contrast, Ds are willing to work on Climate Control yesterday.
So rather than listen to lies spewed forth in this article, vote Rs out of office so we can engage America's creative genius and solve the greatest problem of our generation.
Better yet, emulate Hong Kong and demand R resignations now.
8
First off, global warming doesn't require "belief". It requires the rational thinking that inspired modern science about 500 years ago. As we dither under The Dirty Don, the planet is "in fact" warming wether you "believe" it or not.
8
IMHO-
We should carefully consider that “belief” in climate change is not an accurate statement of the fact that the theory of climate change is based upon objective factual data.
It’s not based upon belief. It’s based upon objective thought.
The subtitle of this piece could have been written “When will those cognizant of climate change come out?”
5
We don’t need Republicans out of their closet. We need them out of the White House, out of the Congress, out of the Legislatures and out of all positions of influence.
9
Anyone who has been paying attention fully recognizes the "staged retreat" strategy of Republicans. It goes something like this, in the following order;
1. Deny global warming is happening, until the evidence makes you look like a fool.
2. Finally admit that it's real, but suggest it's a natural cycle and not man-made.
3. Eventually admit that its man-made but it will be beneficial (Just imagine how the plants will love it!).
4. Admit that it's bad after all, but too expensive to fix.
5. Admit that we could have afforded to act, and it would have been cheaper than the consequences... but now it's too late. Whoops!
6. Blame liberals and scientists for not doing something sooner. Can't you hear it now, through their sneering lips; "Well if you people thought it was so important, why didn't you do something?"
15
Let us rise and applaud these Republicans - profiles in courage, one and all!
1
I don't care what they do. These sleazes still need to be removed from office for what they've done (or not done).
5
Conservatives think the science behind global warming is a hoax, but are convinced Jesus is coming back from the dead Endgame-style any day now. Makes sense.
7
Climate change is a false premise for regulating or taxing carbon dioxide emissions. Political or business leaders who advocate unwarranted taxes and regulations on fossil fuels will be seen as fools or knaves. Climate change is NOT caused by human fossil fuels use. There is no empirical evidence that fossil fuels use affects climate. Earth naturally recycles all carbon dioxide into carbonate.
Fossil fuels emit only 3% of total CO2 emissions. All the ambient CO2 in the atmosphere is promptly converted in the oceans to calcite (limestone) and other carbonates, mostly through biological paths. CO2 + CaO => CaCO3. 99.84% of all carbon on earth is already sequestered as sediments in earth's crust. The lithosphere is a massive hungry carbon sink that converts ambient CO2 to carbonate almost as soon as it is emitted.
The Paris Treaty is now estimated to cost more than $100 trillion -- $15,000 per human being. A colossal mistake. All the wealth that ever existed. And will not affect climate at all. A modern coal power plant emits few air effluents except water vapor and carbon dioxide. Coal remains the lowest cost and most reliable source of electric energy, along with natural gas.
Coal & gas dominate electric energy generation because they are cheap and reliable. Without the CO2-driven global-warming boogeyman, wind and solar power will be relegated to the niches they deserve.Using renewable energy is like paying first-class airfare to fly standby.
2
@Miner49er
There is evidence that the CO2 in our atmosphere is from fossil fuels and not from some other source: the isotope profile of the extra CO2 matches that of fossil fuels. The CO2 is not coming from somewhere else.
As for the recycling of CO2 into carbonate rocks, you're right, and this will remove the CO2 we've already pumped into the atmosphere over the next 10,000 years. Is that fast enough to save our economy and society?
13
@Miner49er What about the elevated carbon dioxide levels currently in our atmosphere?
6
@Robbie why would you argue with someone like this? We are running out of time.
8
The title of this article employs the word "believe", as if it's a fairy tale or Santa Claus we're talking about. How can so many adults and an entire political party deny the facts and reality that's visible for all to experience and see and is confirmed by science? Is it their religious orientation that conditions them to believe in something that can never be proven/demonstrated as being real?
What would these same people do if their children refused to do their homework are participate in their math classes because they "don't believe" in the principles of addition or subtraction?
Grow up, people.
13
I don't care what they really think or "feel." It's what they do that matters and that is the opposite of nothing. Therefore, they are, each and every one of them "the climate denial, let the children burn" party and that is what they will be until they decide that it's electoral suicide to continue on that path. The only way to change them is to beat them, and beat them badly. Only when their current strategy loses will they realize that they aren't gonna get anymore tax cuts for rich people from it and start compromising. What will they be compromising for? Why smaller tax increases for rich people of course. It's all they will ever really care about.
15
Republicans "could" but will they? trump "could" realistically lead the charge for gun control but will he? Stephen Miller whispers in trump's ear and new hardship falls now on legal immigrants. Mitch McConnell blocks the Senate. Why all of this? These leaders are beholden to and fear a vocal minority of the electorate and every action or inaction is targeted to this minority. The majority of Americans want action on the climate, want gun control, want a compassionate immigration policy and want the House and Senate to do some actual work together.
But no, we are being held hostage by this minority, the famous "base" we hear so much about. There is no time to wait for republicans to come out of the climate closet, it is time for change in 2020: vote them out at every level. The majority needs to speak at the ballot box and speak loudly.
10
If and when the experts, right and left, agree that nuclear is the sole base load technology that can radically effect CO2 emissions without wrecking the global economy start to fret. Until then stay dubious.
1
@clarity007 - Unfortunately the actual market cost on non-subsidized nuclear is nearly 3X that of gas and solar, and 4X that of wind on a per KWH basis. I would wager that increasing the cost of electricity by 300%-400% would in fact wreck the economy... which is why it is important to max out the solar and wind capacity first, and use nuclear only as baseload where the others fluctuate too widely.
5
@Jim
Yes, Jim, it is important for people like clarity007 to actually "do the math" and stop spreading the fossil fuel propaganda.
Until they can offer a way for nuclear to compete with fossil fuels, they come across as disinformation trolls.
But I would also suggest that people stop using the phony term "baseload", which has no functional meaning in this discussion. Electricity 101:
nuclear plant = "source"
your house = "load"
Different loads have different requirements. If you are charging your Tesla battery, wind and solar as a *source* will do the trick just fine. Cars are parked what, 20 hours a day on average?
If you are running an aluminum smelter, then you may need a *source* like hydro or a nuclear plant or a coal plant.
Big difference.
2
@clarity007
Recommend you check out the work of former Secretary of Energy Ernest J. Moniz to see a very scholarly vision of how deep decarbonization in the coming decades could work: nuclear (and new techniques for using natural gas) will play a large role in filling in the holes of renewable technology, but renewable technology has reached the point that it is extremely economically viable and pragmatic. And it is improving every day, along with carbon sequestration and battery tech. Simply assuming that nuclear alone can furnish a solution, and masking that lazy fantasy in faux open mindedness, sets back the all-hands effort we need.
1
Hate to let facts intrude --
The US accounts for 5% of the world's population and 15% of global emissions. If we reduced our total emissions 10%, the impact if the ROW remained constant would be a 1.5% reduction in total global emissions. A minimal impact.
Unfortunately, the ROW isn't static. Since 1990 total global emissions have grown by 70%. The US (in 2017) was flat with 1990 in total emissions and reduced per capita emissions by 25%. And the demand for a better life style, made possible by fossil fuels, is growing, particularly in emerging economies, where the bulk of global population lives and where populations are growing faster than the US.
In essence, from an emissions standpoint we are now rounding error. What we do here from a policy standpoint will mean nothing in terms of total global emissions.
So, if you truly believe that we're all going to die because of global warming unless we do something, I think the right response is to focus our energy and $$$ on adaptation and mitigation technologies and quit subsidizing solar and wind which will never replace fossil fuels. Right? Or are you too partisan to fact the facts.
1
@Ralphie Solar and wind are now cheaper than coal and gas.
9
@Ralphie
....because those who urge that we take action limiting greenhouse gas emissions don't believe it is a global problem, said nobody ever.
In fact, solar and wind are replacing fossil fuels, and they could replace them much faster, if we stopped subsidizing fossil fuels.
2
@Ralphie
All that Ralphie .. merely to state that which is patently obvious, namely, that no one country can stabilize the global temperature just by stabilizing its own emissions? As a factual matter, the U.S. is the largest emitter historically in terms of the one degree [Celsius] of global warming that we’ve already had.
All countries need to work together to reduce emissions. That's why we have Accords. Withdrawing from them is foolish. Doing nothing, or less, doesn't cut our own emissions any faster. I suggest you read the following article that details what other countries are doing .. that we might do .. if our leadership had any integrity.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/13/climate/cut-us-emissions-with-policies-from-other-countries.html
4
When Republicans--or more accurately their corporate paymasters--conclude there is more money to be made with zero-emissions technologies, renewable energy, and other solutions than in continuing to burn fossil fuels, they'll get on board. And the jabbering of know-nothing scientific illiterates won't be enough to stop them. Self-preservation is their first priority and only priority, and the key to that is money.
9
@Richard True. And solar and wind are now cheap enough to displace large sections of coal and gas infrastructure. Go with this. Accept the win.
2
The problem is with heavily Republican local governments, like that in Utah, and their relationships with heavily polluting industries. Due to geography, we have a major problem with Winter pollution in SLC. We also happen to house the largest open pit mine in the world, an oil refinery, and a gravel quarry releasing an unregulated amount of silica into our air every day. Rather than cleaning up these heavy polluters, our local government decided that wood burning stoves and people driving are the sources of the problem. Rather than effectively imposing high fines for emissions on heavily polluting industries, we ended up with a useless wood burning ban, and unenforceable anti-idling laws.
5
The last sentence Gillis writes is key: "If we really decided to commit the nation and all its might to sovling this problem, do you not believe that American ingenuity and American industry could get the job done." Yes! I do believe! While many Republicans believe that ingenuity (entrepreneurship) and industry (read: business not government) can and will solve the problem, there is a corresponding skepticism to creating national and international government structures that tax us to solve the problem. Where will those tax revenues go? I suggest into the pockets of corrupt government officials, or into the coffers of businesses connected to corrupt government officials. It's really not a matter to many of us whether there is a problem. Instead, it is a matter of to whom do we trust to solve it.
@Craig R. Hersch
You're doing nothing to solve it, and that is what you'll continue to do, using your "distrust of Government" as your excuse. You'll enjoy explaining the philosophy to your grandkids I'm sure.
@conesnail where there is a problem there is an opportunity for entrepreneurs. You believe the same people who brought us the United Nations or the Veterans Administration can solve the problem?
I agree that some Republicans are starting to come around. However, I still believe addressing climate change in any large or systemic way will still require a Republican president willing to spend significant political capital on it, as many environmentalists I know have been saying for more than a decade. Why? Because a GOP president can get some conservative votes for massive climate change legislation, whereas any proposal under a Democrat will be opposed by all Republicans on general principle. That still has not changed. It is only when they can sneak legislation through, or nibble at programs around the edges, that the GOP are willing to take a stand. Note that John Barrasso is working to reduce emissions from vehicles . . . which don't use the coal on which his state is so dependent. Start regulating power plant emissions and you might get a different response.
2
There will never be a time when Congressional Republicans will ever admit to believing in climate change. There will never be enough evidence to satisfy them. I wouldn't even bother with these folks. Just vote them all out.
4
I can't remember where I heard the phrase "Reality is that which still exists when you stop believing it." I think it's a thought-provoking idea and one that might be important to keep in mind when dealing with the semantics of this article.
A recent article in the Washington Post posited that over 99% of reputable scientists ACKNOWLEDGE the reality of climate change. Climate change is not a matter of subjective "belief" but an acknowledgement of objective reality.
I think language matters here and that Republicans need to step up and ACKNOWLEDGE reality. Irrefutable data doesn't require you to take a leap of faith. It just is (assuming you believe that there are objective facts).
I oft wonder if some Republicans and working their ways toward "believing" in gravity.
4
My fear is that they’re continuing their strategy of climate change denial, first from outright denial, then to skepticism, and ultimately to delaying any solution by disingenuously arguing about it. If we are lucky, a half-dozen will be helpful, but they will be fighting the Republican propaganda machine all the way.
3
The Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated that they value their own power and influence over the well-being of the populace they are supposed to be serving. Twenty years from now with the entire planet embroiled in crises of food and water shortages, unrelenting natural disasters and immigration wars will they look back and ask themselves “what if?”
3
To those who argue that the US can't do it all because population growth and China and India are the real problems I say: why not step up and be a global leader? The use and development of fossil fuels has increased life expectancy and improved the lives of billions of people. To a large extent it was American ingenuity that led to way to a better world. But achieving all those advancements depended on the indiscriminate use of fossil fuels. Now the true costs of that better world are coming home to roost. It is not an exaggeration to say that unchecked climate change risks the future of civilization - not in centuries, but in decades. We must act immediately and hope it is not too late.
The US may not be the biggest emitter, but it leads the world in per capita emissions. The wealth generated in the 20th century relied on energy that has a steep price we couldn't have imagined a hundred years ago. The science is clear and Republicans and and Democrats should be able to agree that this is a crisis. They should also be able to agree that if anyone can lead us out of this mess, it will be America.
6
You really can find what has been anticipated if you try.
The climate of the north is determined at the margins by sunlight. The north will always have shorter growing seasons than the areas farther south.
The issue of determining general facts from specific facts is problematic. Science is our most reliable means. The global atmosphere is warming. That is the reality with which we are faced. Some day the reality will become another age of ice, but not now.
The irony is that much of the renewable energy generation including hydroelectric, wind and solar, is in republican congressional districts. For example, Steve King's Iowa congressional district has over 5,000 MW of installed wind capacity as of 2018. Over a year that amount of wind power will generate just over half of what New York hydro, wind and solar combine will generate.
Could you imagine owning a Midwest farm with lots of wind turbines - only to be lectured by a young sign carrying liberal arts major with seemingly no appreciable skills relating to climate science or climate change mitigation technology advancement?
Now add all the wind in red districts from Texas to North Dakota and from Wyoming to central Indiana. The same is true for hydroelectric. While coastal Washington state is blue, much of the hydropower it relies on all comes from red-red eastern Washington.
And solar? The biggest new market for solar is in agriculture areas of the country. This is where wind, solar and batteries are combined to add a much clearer and smoother electricity onto the grid.
Addressing climate change isn't too dissimilar to addressing any environmental problem. What you need are remedies and good policies that help spur implementation of well thought out remedies. A weak climate change mitigation rider on other unrelated policy is better than no climate change policy at all.
@Michael Berndtson - The biggest new market for solar is anyplace with houses that have roofs.
1
@Jim
While that may feel right, the data just doesn't support your comment. Rooftop solar for residential and commercial is improving nicely after several sputtering years. However, dominant market remains utility scale. This would be large PV plants in big open spaces.
And as far as total MW growth goes, the excitement is with combining PV solar with batteries on wind farms located on agricultural lands . Outside of Florida the hot new solar market is Texas and Midwest wind states.
From SEIA 2019 Q2 market report:
https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-market-insight-report-2019-q2
Copy/pasted from link:
During this time, utility PV also becomes increasingly competitive with wind. As the wind-focused federal Production Tax Credit steps down, solar begins to fall below the cost of wind on a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) basis in many traditional wind states such as Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan and the Dakotas by the mid-2020s. (Wood Mackenzie’s LCOE calculations for solar take the ITC incentive into account.) This is likely not only to drive more solar procurement in wind-dominant regions of Midcontinent Independent System Operator and Southwest Power Pool, but also to make solar the preferred renewable technology for corporate offtakers. Oklahoma Gas & Electric’s recent RFP for solar-plus-storage is the first example of what is likely to be a trend in solar procurement in the Prairies and Midwest.
It seems to me that the old adage of "if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging" is appropriate here. At a bare minimum, we should stop subsidizing the most egregious CO2 emitting activities. Common sense suggestions would be to require shipping to pay for the cost of military protection outside of US waters (especially the Middle East), eliminate government subsidies for air travel and air travel infrastructure, and to eliminate industry specific exemptions to environmental laws. Given that we have not even been able to "stop digging" I suspect that humanity is in for a rude awakening.
2
So some in the GOP are starting to think about climate change, not because they know it is really happening, but because it MIGHT become a political liability? This speaks volumes about Republicans, their political courage (or lack there of) and their stewardship of the environment.
7
Climate change proponents have several credibility issues:
1. They never mention that some areas of the earth may actually benefit from climate change,i.e., Canada, Siberia, etc may become habitable. Even if my area's temperature were to rise 5-10 degrees, the Finger Lakes may be able to produce a decent red wine economically. So yes, the status quo may be upset by climate change, however, mankind has migrated in response to climate since the beginning and will continue to do so( i.e., baby boomers' retirement to the Sunbelt). So , let's hear about some of the areas that will benefit from global warming as part of the conversation;
2. Climate change proponents assume in their models that they can predict ( and hold constant)weather that is unrelated to greenhouse gases. At the end of the day however, Mother Nature is going to do what it wants to do; we may be plunged into another Ice Age( as we were in the 1400s) without any help from humans. So yes we all want to breathe clean air today but we don't want to bring down the world economy in the face of these issues. Therefore,our response to climate change should be measured and a matter of degree.
1
In the first place, science doesn’t ask us to “believe,” anything at all, exceot that the physical universe exists.
In the second, nice logic after you untangle the spaghetti: it’s not happening, if it is it’s just natural cycles, and anyway because it’s happening that’ll be a Real Good Thing.
In the third, try looking at the cost estimates on your Good Thing, aince you’re so protective of “the economy.”
And this just in: complex ecosystems that you unbalance very quickly tend to crash. You depend in every way on an ecology that is in balance, like a pole and a dish on a juggler’s nose.
Learn the basic science, okay?
2
@pete
Have you counted the hundreds of millions of the world population who live at sea level? Does their displacement (due to sea levels rising) and the terrifying loss of resources fit into your calculations or are you focused on red wine production increasing in your region and the potential for decent housing in Siberia? The reality is you have to deny a massive amount of suffering (of our species and many others) to get cozy with global warming.
@pete A fine Finger Lakes' bordeaux. I can't wait. So there (!) all you "existential threat" pearl clutching climate change Cassandras! And you thought the end of the planet was all bad!
"When will believers in global warming come out?"
When their corporate sponsors let them, they will start trying to convince their base.
Republican leaders are not stupid, they're cynical. They can see trends as well or better than anyone else, but the will to power overrides their conscience and they convince their base that man-caused global warming is a hoax. They'll have to be careful; U-turns can be dangerous.
The real hoax is that they care about people enough to govern in the interest of the people.
4
@mlbex - Bumper sticker version; "When will Republicans believe in global warming? When they are paid to."
2
The modern Republican Party is based on lies; lies about what it stands for and lies about what it does. It is an authoritarian cult that punishes those who step out of line and blames its failures on scapegoats.
To openly acknowledge climate change would also require them to acknowledge the role they and their backers in the shadows with dark money play in making it worse. They will not willingly give up power or accept accountability.
A deathbed conversion is not a luxury we can afford. We don’t have the time to indulge them while they wrestle with their alleged consciences. For once George S. Bush has an appropriate quote:
“You’re either with us or against us.”
5
@Larry Roth
And if you like your health plan you can keep it.
Obama
As soon as China and India sign onto the New Green Deal. Naive to think that if we do everything according to the New Green Deal Wish List that it reverses the trends that y'all say are irreversible in 12 years. Facts are a terrible thing when you are talking to the New Green Deal crowd - the US has actually been reducing CO emissions for +12 yrs, and continues to reduce emissions despite the rhetoric directed at #45. And don't hide behind the Paris Accords w/respect to India & China, their "agreements" are no stronger than the paper it's written on. Until China & India show measurable progress, you won't find a single Republican interested in making Al Gore more $$ on this hoax he implemented when he was going through his mid-life crisis.
1
@MTM,
China is doing something, it's developing the technology to deal with it while we dither under The Dirty Don. Over half of the CO2 in the atmosphere was put there by the US.
1
Climate change is a global challenge not something American ingenuity and American business will solve on their own. More chauvinistic, isolationist thinking.
3
If the Republicans had an about face on the issue and really grabbed the bull by the horns, I'd be first in line to lead the parade in their honor.
But I'm not holding my breath.
First, consider the Clean Water Act. The CWA is amazing... but due to long standing conservative and industry lobbying, we still have massive issues such as the Gulf's dead zone. Loopholes abound, and they will continue to abound for as long as Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) refuse to truly stand strong on environmental issues.
Then consider just how limited conservative leadership is on environmental matters. That Mr. Barrasso at least recognizes the athropogenic nature of climate change is a step in the right direction... but his "advocacy" is for industry-led innovation, when the world-wide consensus is that stronger, faster reductions are needed immediately. Allowing for industrial innovation and self-regulation is not progressive leadership, it's the status quo. We've had over 50 years - 50 YEARS - for industry to self-regulate. Their time to resolve these issues sailed a long time ago.
Last, I give you this: The Paris Accords, and the almost complete lack of backlash from the conservative community on us pulling out. Healing the environment is not an easy process, where someone is going to have to bite the bullet - and Republicans are not willing to do so.
So come out of the closet, folks. But prove me wrong, and really get something done. I'll throw you that parade.
2
I'm conservative and I whole heartedly believe in climate change, but not global warming.
Odd that this columnist would choose to revert to old language (global warming) vs. the more woke phrase "climate change."
I'm also a luke-warmist, meaning I believe us humans may be contributing somewhat to the warming of the planet, but also realize that CO2 is not the demon it's intended to be by the likes of Dr. Mann.
We've doubled the amount of CO2 output the past 20 years yet the global temperatures have 'paused' for those 20 years.
A scientist would ask "why did this happen"?
A global warming alarmist would say "see...more proof of global warming...quick NOAA and IPCC...go back and change the historical temps again so we can prove THIS year is the hottest on record..even though it's the same as the last 20 years.!!"
If you're going to be credible in your arguments, you have to choose facts over "Truth."
The world isn't ending in 10 years unless we get hit by an asteroid the size of Rhode Island.
This "movement" with the GND isn't about climate. It's about replacing capitalism with socialism.
Sad part is..these kids who don't know anything about anything are being weaponized by the adults in the adults' desire to gain power over society.
It's like the annual "Do it for the Kids" campaign to raise property taxes for schools.
We're onto your gig. So is the rest of America.
You leftists might not realize it, but we all get Twitter.
1
@Erica Smythe
Temperature rise hasn't paused. Problem solved.
6
@Erica Smythe - But the rate of temp rise is increasing, not pausing. Even cherry picking El Nino dates such as 1998 won't work anymore, The last 5 years have been the hottest ever recorded by a wide margin.
4
I recommend that you learn what your own “gig,” is; that temp pause, which really wasn’t one, ended years ago. Might be good to learn some science basics too, as the mindless repetition of Sean Hannity talking points really isn’t gittin’ it.
1
The charade of this country being the greatest has pretty much been destroyed. It's been destroyed by the light of day and will continue to be dismantled once politicians come out of hiding. For the most part it's the Republicans who need to step up but don't think there aren't corporate loving Democrats that will side with Wall Street and big pharma, who will have to be voted out of office or shamed into doing the right things. The world has many great things and people in it, unfortunately most of them are not in politics. The progressives are branded as outcasts and socialists by the right and even some on the left. The average American doesn't know what socialism or a socialist is. The reason the right will throw everything it can at progressives is because they know that these new fresh faces with new fresh ideas will begin to chip away at their money. The money they have gotten through unchecked greed and at the expense of the average American. Regulation, which should be in place to protect has been made out to be the devil. Make no mistake people, the Republicans with help from foreign adversaries who also want to continue to make billions at the expense of you and me are ready and waiting to try to stop the progressives. Only if the progressives can win in 2020 and the Senate flips will you start to see a handful of Republicans come out of the shadows and get a spine. Until then they will be the cowards they have shown themselves to be.
Both the Republican base and Republican politicians do what they are told to do by the billionaires who run this country.
Forget the GOP base and the politicians, we have to politically neuter the billionaires who are taking us down the path to ruin.
Know thy enemy.
2
Well, one good thing we can look forward to is the fumbling around for excuses by the climate change deniers when the world comes to an end.
1
I don't know about global warming/climate change and whether it is induced by human activity but I do know that depleting the earth's resources and irresponsibly filthying the place up are not good.
As far as the protesters go are they going to protest in China and India, the world s worst pollution offenders?
2
Look. Global warming and climate change associated with it will not bring about the end of the world. The Earth will soldier on like it has for over four billion years, whether a molten ball, a frozen block of ice, a biologically diverse world teeming with life, intelligent or otherwise, stripped bare or covered in concrete. It will only end when the Sun enters old age and, as a red giant, absorbs most of its rocky progeny, or some other galactic scale catastrophe occurs. We, however will either adapt, migrate, or become extinct ( probably, the latter).
2
@HKS
Will this be before or after Jesus comes down from heaven and carries us all away?
I didn’t think it was supposed to be all of us. Just self-righteous, evangelical Republican Christians. Hey, maybe that’s the reason they’re not concerned about global warming!
What does it say about the character of the GOP that they either ignore the climate crisis for short term profit or are too fearful to take action against a true existential threat?
The Republican Party has squandered their legitimacy as a partner in governance. The only way forward for this country and the planet is to vote these morally depauperate cowards into the cesspool of history where they belong.
Mr. Gillis, follow the money. Do a deep dive into Koch and their entry into the political bloodstream of the Republican Party.
3
Science and reason don’t sit well with a Republican ideology based on self-dealing via corporate handouts and ludicrous tax breaks, papered over with a thin veneer of fake patriotism and even faker religious piety.
Expect Republicans to embrace science, um, never.
2
As I contemplate the moral universe, I wonder who is worse: the ignorant who have allowed themselves to be easily brainwashed by snowballs being tossed in congress or those who know the truth but are so enamored with their positions in life that they can be bribed to not speak it. A seat in congress vs. future death and destruction? An easy choice for most of us, but apparently not for those who represent us. Politics should never trump reality and hiding from the greatest challenge of this generation until the political winds have shifted is disgraceful.
2
Nope. As Jung famously observed, "You are what you do, not what you say you'll do." Waiting for corrupt Republicans to change their behavior is a fool's errand. Our only hope is to go to the polls and defeat them. All of them. At every opportunity. Vote early and often in 2020!
Its not just corporate self-interest. It’s religious ignorance. I say that, by the way, as a confessing Christian.
White, conservative, evangelicalism, has misappropriated the biblical message, as if human beings are somehow masters of the planet, not God. “The earth is the Lord’s” says the Psalmist. No, the earth is ours, say evangelical apologists.
And they utterly reject modern science, as is now evident in the GOP anti-science agenda of the GOP.
Why is the GOP against the science of climate change? Because it made a bargain with white conservative evangelicals in 1980. Since then, the two have very nearly merged.
They will stand or fall together in 2020
1
If Republicans were truly capable of leadership they would have worked effectively to transform the debate. Instead they hide in the closet fearful of upsetting their "base" of ignorant people.
You give John Barrasso to much credit. I have watched him for years and it is usually an eye rolling head shaking moment when I hear his comments. By the time people like him become fully awake to the danger it will be far too late. Maybe it already is!
This article shows that the Republican cowards are more interested in preserving their cushy jobs than doing what is right and needed. If this continues, and I'm sure it will, we are doomed as a nation and as a planet. People should think twice about bringing kids into this freight train of a disaster.
"waiting for the fever to cool."
Cowardly, and hardly the attitude of real leadership, is it?
1
“You cannot get a man to understand something when his job depends upon his not understanding it”
-Upton Sinclair
3
True believers, eh? Tell you what. When the likes of this eco- Cassandra admit the 2+ billion Chinese and Indian emerging middle classes are NEVER going to forsake the consumptive lifestyles this columnist's plutocratic friends gave to them, paid for by the vanished American middle class, then we will see how much traction his nostrums have. The world IS a zero-sum game and there is no way around that. The West has been living off the sweat of the rest of the globe since 1492. So admit what the reality is -- either you win the game and live as Americans have for the last century -- or you lose and live like Somalia. Sell THAT to the voters.
1
I admire the sort of touching, childlike faith with which you approach the question of whether the shabby likes of Donald J. Trump will invite you into the limo when the consequences of your sort of mindless, selfish consumption start flocking onto your doorstep.
The headline "The Republican Climate Closet, When will believers in global warming come out?" seems to hold out the hope that members of the GOP will eventually wake up to the climate crisis and do the right thing.
But that is unlikely, given that their refusal to act on climate change is because "At least $90m in untraceable money has been funneled to Republican candidates from oil, gas and coal interests in the past three election cycles, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics."
Once again, we have Republican members of Congress doing the bidding of those who bribe them the most heavily. And of course Mitch McConnell is right up there at the top of the heap in the well over 1 $million he has received directly from the fossil fuel industry (never mind the additional funds he receives from the Koch brothers).
Our current Congress is perhaps one of the most corrupt in our history, with Republicans accepting bribe money from many, many special interests.
6
If this trajectory continues the GOP should change their name to the Too Little, Too Late Party.
2
Fossil fuel industry money plays a big role in keeping Republican politicians from being climate hawks as does the fear of having to run in a primary against a climate denier. Basically Republican politicians want to keep their jobs. The only real hope of adequately addressing climate change is electing a Democratic president, maintaining Democratic control of the House, and gaining Democratic control of the Senate and eliminating the filibuster. For all these things to happen is a long shot. And to make matters worse, even if they do happen adequately addressing climate change at this point is a long shot. Long-term planning to try to survive in a 4C world and beyond should begin.
2
Sending off $1.00 to the campaign of Washington's governor, Jay Inslee, would help to send a message to voters that basing a campaign on all the perils of ignoring climate change is critically important.
$1.00--even if another candidate is their favorite--if Inslee doesn't qualify for the September debate, GOP liars get more ammunition to disparage scientific proof and ridicule those who say they will make it a priority.
Help Jay Inslee be a part of the debates, at least once more.
3
Ironically, when you go even further right (to the right of the Tea Party) and arrive at the extreme right, there are many who most certainly believe in the calamitous effects of climate change. The so-called "survivalists" (and their slightly more benign cousins, the "preppers") are getting ready for a dystopic future where climate change is one of the key drivers.
Of course, there are many variants of these groups, and if you drew some Venn diagrams, they would not all overlap. Those survivalists who are of the "rapture" type (who may be called the "eschatological evangelicals"), do not believe in climate change because that is not the way the world is supposed to end according to the Book of Revelation.
But many American survivalists and preppers are actively communicating with their British, Australian and European counterparts, where the "rapture" type hardly exists at all. And for all these extreme right groups, globally speaking, climate change is a key component, in addition, of course, to immigration (i.e. "racial replacement"), and the stockpiling of assault weapons and ammo.
2
Let's correct one thing. This isn't a question of belief. It's a conclusion supported by mountains of data.
5
SO THE GOPPERS Who support climate change have been roasting in the closet of their own making, forced to hide from others in the party who have no interest in the future survival of the planet Earth. There is something profoundly wrong when champions of what is true, humane, just and decent have to hide in a closet like criminals. Rather than announcing proudly that they support the future survival and health of our democracy, they conceal their good deeds. Thanks to the anonymous donations to campaigns, honest, open debate is stifled, sacrificed at the altar t greed, grime, degradation and ingratitude for the freedoms in our great nation. If we survive this wave of domestic terrorism, encouraged at the highest echelons of this administration, those who support the good will be able to join their fellow representatives in our government who place the survival of the planet ahead of their personal and political greed.
1
It's really not about whether the Republicans think climate change is a hoax or not, it's that they don't want to spend a dime to fix it. The Republicans are all about pocketing money for themselves and their polluting donors, however they will spend untold billions on useless wars because they profit from the military complex.
2
“Believers” in climate change? Climate change is a fact. Belief doesn’t come into it.
I remain flummoxed by the willingness of Republican elected officials to sell their souls to Trump. Trump would not wield the power that he has if he did not have his minions to do what he says. The willingness—no, eagerness—of the Republicans in the House and Senate to do anything, including destroying the world, to stay in power is the most horrifying lesson of our day. Tragically, these modern Fausts are not just selling themselves. They are selling us and our futures too.
8
Carbon tax abd r3yce subsidies so young engineers and scientists make decisions instead of old politicians.
Essential pillars of the GOP: we won't do anything about guns, we will get Row v Wade overturned, science and history will take a back seat. The latter is the most dangerous over time. The GOP has benefited greatly from the dumbing down of America
3
Why is it that so many important issues like climate change and gun control are put into this so called closet by Republicans and their politicians? Could it be that they know what they espouse, that climate change is a hoax and sensible gun control is against the 2nd amendment, is a lie?
Trump and his enablers have made lies a matter of policy and admitting that Democrats may speak the truth is something that Republicans for political purposes will never admit. The ACA is a case in point. It was a Republican policy until Democrats got a hold of it then it became toxic, but in their heart of hearts they know that it has done much good for the nation and dread the moment that a court may negate it. Honesty has never entered Republicans completely political consciousness.
2
There is no doubt that temps are warming. Read a fantastic book, "Sapiens" or otherwise educate yourself. The climate is ALWAYS changing and oscillating between cold and hot. With or without humans. Pretty much all the handwringing, even spending trillions on Green New Deal are and would be useless against the global climate rhythms. Unfortunately. Move inland, humans.
2
How could you possibly write this article -put these words in this order and process that arrangement- and still believe there are good Republicans waiting in the wings to stop the apocalypse? Truly breathtaking levels of either naivety or willful ignorance.
It's fairly simple: the Republicans represent the will of the capitalist class. The capitalist class reaps material benefits from the conditions that create and exacerbate global warming. Therefore, there is no incentive for them to fight for change. It doesn't matter if these alleged "smart" Republicans _believe_ in climate change; they can believe whatever they want, but they _know_ where their bread is buttered and that butter is made almost entirely out of carbon emissions.
2
Come out?
I have great admiration for republicans (er, that would be white people, religious right people, white-only America people, and a scattering of others who add flavor). Because they understand - better than democrats do - that nothing comes for free.
In order to precipitate a white-only America (or at least, a white-domination), in order to see "others" squirming and denied access to everything - they are willing to make major sacrifices. And, America does not appreciate the sacrifices they are willing to make.
See our farmers; they see the results of global warming (which will require investment in green), the floods (which will require investment in infrastructure) - but would rather let their preachers in churches, TV and radio tell them that the most important thing to do is stop the invasion, and keep everyone else in their place, so they can freeload.
Americans are willing to change the curriculum to reduce the influence of science and math, willing to inhale, eat, and drink pollutants, ensure the super rich become duper rich, charge up the national debt to stick it to our grandchildren, start insane wars - just to feel assured that their status in the socioeconomic hierarchy is preserved. Not a peep from the religious right, or educated republicans (many highly educated) at anything Trump does (who provides daily evidence of deviance, infractions, treason, cruelty, cluelessness, and varied forms of insanity).
Don't hold your breath. Please.
3
To the right, climate change denial, in fact science denial, is defended with religious fervor. Many actually tie their absurd beliefs to religion- God will protect the planet. I have often raised your same questions- how can purportedly intelligent Congress persons openly reject that which cannot be denied? Are they ignorant, or are they willing to sacrifice the planet to remain in office? Do the answers to these questions even matter? We live in a time where neither reason nor compassion prevail, circumstances that will lead to our demise one way or the other.
4
The GOP created a base who believe that climate change is a hoax. They pounded that same base with false 'scientific studies ' and rogue scientist's denials. They ridiculed and pigeon holed reports supporting climate change.
Now one of those same Republican manipulators tells this writer that they are waiting for their voting base to come round to the reality of climate problems, before they can act decisively.
"Catch 22' anyone?
4
The use of the word "believers" is wrong. The climate is warming. Scientists unanimously agree it is most likely caused by humans. There is no debate, and the media should stop labeling as if there were one.
3
Looking at the dysfunctional governments in the US and UK, I am beginning to wonder if democracy is up to the challenge of modernity.
4
After visiting the Greenland Ice Sheet with a dozen US lawmakers the renowned glaciologist Richard Alley said he thinks lawmakers are very frustrated people because this problem is bigger than them.
3
when will they come out?
when their stock portfolios suffer badly for not doing so.
Stock boycotts are coming.
When will climate warmer believers come out? When they stop believing and start thinking. I never use belief in discussions of science.
The whole idea of planting trees to eliminate carbon is stupid because once the tree is grown it has to be cut down. Trees use up the most carbon when they're growing. Then, heavy industrial equipment is used for harvesting them: carbon footprint. Once decaying, trees return carbon to the air.
The next "brilliant" thought is managing CO2. If we don't cut CO2 down dramatically, it doesn't matter if we control it. The climate changes, and we are dead.
The only practical solution is to build industrial carbon absorbers to reverse CO2 into C and O2. We have the technology. We use it in oil refineries. Use renewables to counteract the thermodynamic disadvantage.
And, one more thing: don't think conservation helps. We could all go vegan; walk 30 miles to work everyday and still want to eat cows, and absolutely need internal combustion.
As we say in engineering: "Work the problem. Don't let the problem work you."
I can't support an incompetent and xenophobic Trump and I can't support a party that denies arithmetic. But if they stopped being the party of stupid I would go back, because I don't define my politics based on doctrine from Women and African-American Studies Departments, and I don't believe in pursuing policies that gesture towards high-minded principals while achieving little or nothing.
Practical Climate Policy: Climate change is happening, and will continue happening for centuries because of the decades long time constants in the physics involved. Any implementable policy for reducing carbon emissions that we can undertake now will have no significant effect over the next 50 years because of the long lags involved. Clean air, clean water, and recycling policies have nothing to do with climate change. We cannot reduce energy usage significantly while still increasing global well-being, because using energy to transform matter for our purposes is what well-being is for most people. To avoid the temperature rises over the next 100-200 years, we will have to engage in some geo-engineering, which we should be working on. Solving the climate problem requires the development of cheap carbon-free energy, so we should be spending more on fusion, advanced fission, and large scale energy storage R&D than we do. A carbon tax of $50-75/ton will encourage energy tech development, but beyond that point is ineffective and will hurt poor and rural citizens, causing a backlash.
1
“'We know this problem is real,' he said, or words to that effect. 'We know we are going to have to do a deal with the Democrats. We are waiting for the fever to cool.'”
Your friend's remark is proof that leadership is dead, and that Washington is a town fueled by money and fear. True leaders would try to communicate the truth to their crazy Tea Party constituents, not sit on the sidelines awaiting a tipping point whose arrival might take too long and allow further damage to accrue in the meantime. Instead, Republicans prostrate themselves to the moneyed interests who line their campaign coffers.
Why run for office if you sit on your hands once you're there?!
For their climate change denial alone, no Republican should ever be elected or re-elected to public office. Add to that their kow-towing to the unethical NRA, their regressive positions on women's rights, their eagerness to meld (Evangelical Christian) doctrine with law, and their nonexistent resistance to Donald Trump, and the entire party deserves to implode.
3
@D Price: Sycophancy to bullies is all there is to Republicanism.
@Steve Bolger: Republicans cannot even fathom the distinction between public and private sectors of mixed economies. Private sectors conduct capitalism. Public sectors conduct socialism.
Saving the planet is now more than stopping climate change. That’s a symptom of a sick lifestyle that destroys nature. Everyday and everywhere by choices and lifestyles. I think the Pope’s Encyclical on the environment is foundational. It’s a moral thing this consumption. And years ago I read Worldwatch (Lester Brown’s group) reports about ALL the elements of the Environmental Crisis. America need to wake up. And show the workd The party’s over! Stop! Now!
The Republicans are enslaved and owned by the fossil fuel industry. I watched the ownership of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker by the Koch Brothers. Wisconsin is the fracking sand resource state. We the citizens must be the abolitionists who free them from their being slaves to corporate ownership. It is the grassroots education and referendum building to overturn the 2010 misleading SCOTUS ruling "Citizens United" - AKA corporate personhood and unlimited money in politics. 20 states today are on board. 34 are needed to force a constitutional amendment. Wisconsin is pending with , of course, our Republican Assembly obstructing a state-wide referendum. A few of them will need to be voted out to move ahead. This is the fight we can all be part of to free the Republicans from their corporate enslavement. This is how you bring Republicans out of the climate change closet.
2
Unnamed Republican: "“We know this problem is real,” he said, or words to that effect. “We know we are going to have to do a deal with the Democrats. We are waiting for the fever to cool.”"
So waiting for the partisan fever which was created by lying to your base to gain in a temporary political advantage takes precedent over our well being and possibly survival. In the meantime, by undemocratic means, you've decimated the only institution that might have sufficient power to tackle the problem.
Got it.
The future will regard you and your party with contempt if not outright hatred, unnamed Republican. I hope the tax and judicial goodies secured for your megadonors were worth it.
Thanks for the fine piece, Mr Gillis.
3
Republicans have also been in the closet about gay rights, immigrant rights, women's rights, and overall simply supporting policies based on evidence, although there are several Jim Jordan types out there who are anti-everything and truly believe the garbage they spew. These Republican politicians want to stay in office and the only way to do that is to reflect the naive Fox News watchers they represent. This is one of the ironies of voter suppression and gerrymandering. Instead of being able to appeal to a diverse electorate with a moderate message, Republicans often have to appeal to like-minded extreme conservatives.
2
What the GOP politicians know and many scientists know is that solar energy and electric cars will eventually be cheaper than coal and gas electricity and ICE cars. If we do not support it's development and own the intellectual property in the US it will be done elsewhere. This would be a national security issue.
The GOP is not anti-death, they are pro-death because they are Christians. They, in fact, are obsessed with death which is the real central tenet of all religion. Humans fear what comes in the unknown and they obsess about it and are fascinated with seeing the life leaving other humans, animals and themselves. All religions are, in fact, death cults. It will be god and the folly of man that destroys the world, in their view. So the extinction of humans will be seen as the work of god. In the mean time they do worry about economics, because they like money and things.
1
Well I am shocked! Republicans that do not have the courage of their convictions. Never would have seen that coming.
3
Waiting for the fever to cool? Where is the integrity? These Republican leaders want it both ways. They want to try to keep those supporters who are now having doubts without losing their base of climate changed deniers. They aren’t in the closet.
When enough people figure out how much money can be made by sequestering CO2 they will figure out ways to do it. Too bad, we wasted so much time along the way.
@Mike S. There is some progress in synthesizing hydrocarbon fuels from atmospheric CO2 and water electrochemically.
When climate change becomes profitable then it will become a mainstream republican talking point.
3
As usual, the GOP only worries about a problem when it impacts them directly.
1
Climate activists have long complained that the GOP won't approve anything unless their donors will make money from the law or policy. The oil, gas and private utility industries have controlled the GOP for more than 40 years, and they are still getting more than $16 billion in direct annual federal subsidies, when they should be fighting lawsuits for their corrupt, harmful, killing products. The scales are so horribly imbalanced that by the time the Republicans come out of the climate closet there won't be much of a world to "save."
It's not just climate-change. The Republican party has become something of a cult where members must BELIEVE in the tenets espoused by the high priests at Fox News.
Many Republicans don't own guns nor particularly care about them but the high priests say that our freedom depends on the right of citizens to have semiautomatic weapons so, by golly, they will adamantly oppose any level of gun control. The high priests say that any abortion is murder so 70 year old guys who never cared a whit about abortion now stand outside Planned Parenthood harassing patients and holding up pictures of bloody fetuses. The high priests say that (brown) immigrants are destroying the country so it's suddenly become the most important problem in the world for people who hardly ever see an immigrant, much less interact with one.
And, of course, the high priests say that climate change is a liberal plot so there it is.
1
The lust for power has blinded them to the need to manage climate risks; risk management is not a belief system! It is yet another ignored responsibility of this gop.
It is pathetic that so much of their 'coming around' is because it's good politics - rather than because it's solid science. So I'm not excited by the prospect of a GOP "liberated to play the role it naturally ought to play: arguing for a national climate strategy that does the least economic damage and makes maximum use of markets". May be way too late - and those foot-draggers will be excoriated.
It's not just climate-change. The Republican party has become something of a cult where members must BELIEVE in the tenets espoused by the high priests at Fox News.
Many Republicans don't own guns nor particularly care about them but the high priests say that our freedom depends on the right of citizens to have semiautomatic weapons so, by golly, they will adamantly oppose any level of gun control. The high priests say that any abortion is murder so 70 year old guys who never cared a whit about abortion now stand outside Planned Parenthood harassing patients and holding up pictures of bloody fetuses. The high priests say that (brown) immigrants are destroying the country so it's suddenly become the most important problem in the world for people who hardly ever see an immigrant, much less interact with one.
And, of course, the high priests say that climate change is a liberal plot so there it is.
It's not just climate-change. The Republican party has become something of a cult where members must BELIEVE in the tenets espoused by the high priests at Fox News.
Many Republicans don't own guns nor particularly care about them but the high priests say that our freedom depends on the right of citizens to have semiautomatic weapons so, by golly, they will adamantly oppose any level of gun control. The high priests say that any abortion is murder so 70 year old guys who never cared a whit about abortion now stand outside Planned Parenthood harassing patients and holding up pictures of bloody fetuses. The high priests say that (brown) immigrants are destroying the country so it's suddenly become the most important problem in the world for people who hardly ever see an immigrant, much less interact with one.
And, of course, the high priests say that climate change is a liberal plot so there it is.
I wonder about the phrase "climate change deniers." Is that what they're really denying? Or is it "man-made climate change"? To deny the melting of the ice sheets and extraordinarily high temps in the northern regions is to close one's eyes. To deny the cause of it is another matter---not quite as idiotic (though close).
It's sort of like the phrase "acid rain." There is no such thing, except perhaps on another planet like Venus. What we really mean is "acidic rain," but that's too subtle for the media.
Here's how you get Repubs on board with a green deal: tell them it's officially okay for the government to pick winners and losers, and they get to give giant tax breaks to Exxon & Shell and all the rest of their "constituents" to take the lead in renewable R&D. You'll see a faster turnaround than we had on gay marriage.
1
Just one thing in an otherwise fine piece of work: why would you write “know in their hearts”? We are at fault for the climate change that is disastrously underway. It is an empirical and scientifically certainty. Head-to-toe sweaty fear is the emotion that follows from this truth not some soapy affair of the heart.
2
All Republicans know it's real. Many will see to it that it's addressed without ever saying so, to try to have their cake and eat it too.
The Republican Party is about power and greed.
In order for them to maintain illicit, illegal and immoral power, they must dupe their masses with a rainbow of disinformation so the masses will vote to be robbed by Republicans.
The disinformation rainbow includes 'God' (the greatest hoax of all time), Guns For Public Safety, 'free-market' healthcare, hatred of higher education and science, 'government is the problem', and that billionaires and corporations require religious worship and welfare.
It's much more of a cult than a political party, perfectly happy to destroy the earth and society for profit.
Grand Old Power is nobody's friend except for amoral billionaire's.
Vote for them at your own peril.
3
This will be a yuuge problem for Republicans because admitting the inconvenient truth comes with the words that no Republican can ever say.
AL GORE WAS RIGHT!
1
I would vote Republican
if it weren’t for Donald Trump.
I would vote Republican
if the Prez is Forrest Gump.
This I said a year ago
when only Trump was mean.
But then the GOP went low
to levels yet unseen.
When they flip flopped and showed no spine,
forgot what they’re about,
when they said aiding Trump is fine,
I changed my mind, all-out.
I can’t believe how they have sold
their soul to Hate and Greed.
Where are the very brave and bold?
Now they are a new breed.
If real Republicans are left,
stand up and raise your voice.
Don’t hide, do not act so bereft.
Be strong. You have a choice.
When will republicans acknowledge global warming? I'm guessing about the same time the left acknowledges the role human population numbers play in climate change. The numbers are staring us in the face, but when you have an agenda, and both sides do, you ignore them. For the left its immigration and ignoring what adding millions of people (thru immigration) to the highest per capita co2 producing nation ( the US) on earth does to make global warming worse. You don't have to be a republican to keep your head in the sand.
Republicans/Conservatives do not deny “climate change” many question whether it is man made, and whether we can really do anything about it if it is. We certainly do not trust the wacky Left who only seeks more power over our lives and has been wrong on every issue over the past 50 years from, heterosexual AIDS, to second hand smoke, to ALAR in our apples and DDT. Just to name a few. Not a good track record, so why would we trust them know?
1
I understand Thomas Aquinas is a dead thinker as underlined by this comment. This information is cemented by the fact that this line of expression came from the ether.
1
If history has taught us anything, it’s that ‘conservatives’ are always on the wrong side of history. Too bad they always drag the rest of us down with them.
Rupert Murdoch has much to answer for.
How will the “base” get the message and when will the USA revisit the fairness doctrine?
Talk about fakers!
1
Just because we're not jumping up and down hysterically like Jay Inslee doesn't mean we're "in the closet." There's no closet. There may be a fringe that us denial about human-influence climate change, but most on the right recognize it is happening. We also recognize there is very little that can be done about it at this point. Like youre own Andrew Yang said..."it's too late." But none of this means the world is ending. Sea levels may rise...but that is manageable through engineering, or in some instances relocation. Truth is most places with any coastal topography at all won't notice sea-level rise. Climate regimes will shift...and maybe already have. Mid-atlantic heatwaves will be longer and hotter. "Droughts" (if you can say that for a place that gets 2" of rain a year) out west will be worse (when is CA going to quit crying and take de-sal seriously btw). Colorado mountains will get more snow (and that's a problem why?)
Yes...point the climate in the right direction. maybe leave some oil in the ground beneath Saudi Arabia (unlikely). But let' s also focus on adapting, and even thriving, in the New Climate.
1
The only way non-socialists can understand and support climate policy is for them finally to realize that capitalism can work well only with New Deal type regulation and countervailing power. Free market capitalism will kill us all -- with guns and heat and destruction and violence.
Perhaps the Republicans are cowering in the closet because they are spineless and want to save their jobs; perhaps they know that the guy who wins the primary when they do act on climate change will be worse than them on the subject.
The GOP has the problem that they have to figure our how to work in the nation's best interest, the world's best interest despite the ignorance of their base and their colleagues.
Slow death by ignorance is a terrible way to go. The GOP politicians who know the climate is a crisis and don't act have turned us all into frogs in an experiment. We are slowly cooking to death, unaware of it, and just as doomed as the frog in the pot, unless we grow a spine and act.
I'm sorry but this is no excuse for the complete lack of leadership by the GOP on the most pressing crisis of our time. Republicans are not "in the closet", they are simply cowards --as with gun control -- more interested in keeping their jobs than doing their jobs.
By the way, I find it a bit insulting to use the term "in the closet" to describe these losers. For the LGBT community, being in the closet is a choice many make to keep themselves safe. We cannot say the same for Republicans in Congress.
We should be taking names of those responsible for delaying the response. I'll start the list with Sen. Ron "Mankind flourishes in warm climates" Johnson, R-WI.
We don’t know who this supposed “eminent figure in the Republican Party” is but we can guess the person is a white male who is more loyal to Party than country and who will be and do whatever the Trumpian Party says, even if he knows better. If this eminent figure understands the catastrophes facing us and has done nothing it demonstrates he has little integrity and people lacking in integrity are not to be believed. But I really have to add that if this person has children and knows what he says he knows about climate change and does nothing for his children’s future sake, that this man is broken beyond repair.
But the Republican Party of Trump and Tucker Carlson no longer believes in market forces. They want the US to follow the Soviet model of 5 year plans. That worked out great!
When will believers in global warming come out?
I doubt they will. I thought the steady erosion of the very foundations of our democracy at the hands of Trump would rouse the Republicans out of their enabling lethargy, but it wasn't enough. Somehow, I don't think climate change will put the nail in the coffin. These spineless characters are cowering in fear of Trump. The party and the nation have been ransacked under their watch. History will not view them kindly!
1
The major problem with climate alarmism that puts off the majority of US citizens?
-- the hysteria -- we're all going to die in 10 years. No, if the climate warms abnormally (big if) we'll adapt.
-- the demand we change our life styles to as minimalist as we can. Particularly when publicly known climate alarmists live large
-- the insistence that wind and solar can replace fossil fuels. No they can't.
-- the insistence that wind and solar are cheap. No they aren't, not from a true cost perspective (ex government subsidies) nor from an environmental perspective
-- the rejection of nuclear
-- the politicization of climate change, trying to piggyback progressive policies on the climate agenda
-- the settled science argument -- it's not. The historical temp record (1880-Now) is so full of holes you could drive a truck through it.
-- the belief that somehow what we do in the US will affect global emissions. Our per capita and total emissions are falling. The real threat for rising emissions is emerging economies with populations and a growing demand for energy which only fossil fuels can meet
-- the conflation of environmentalism with climate change
-- the focus on reducing emissions here in the US which will have minimal impact on global emissions vs focusing on tech to mitigate and adapt
Maybe if the climate alarmists would calm down and not act like zealots there might be room for debate. But instead the left keeps ramping up the hysteria level.
1
Blah, blah, blah.
America would truly have to be a truly great nation to lead the world to solve the climate crisis. We are not that. Maybe we were in 1944 to 48. But those people, that generation, that culture is dead.
Republicans want to preserve, to conserve the status quo. More honestly they would like to reverse time to a period when the rest of the world lay in ruin and could not compete. They want the soft life.
But democrats are no better. They may admit with great self righteousness that climate change is a threat, but they want no personal sacrifice solutions—let the rich pay, not us.
When we were great we all paid—in money, in time, in enormous sacrifice and loss, hundreds of thousands even died.
That America does not exist any longer. Get real.
The main answer I get from my republican friends here in Florida is “we’ll all be dead before anything gets too bad”. That is 2019 America.
How long will it take for us all to admit that we have one political faction/portion of the populace that is ALWAYS in service to self and NEVER in service to others? Honestly, just admit it, Republicans, admit that you do not care about anyone or anything that doesn't affect you immediately and at close range.
The root of this climate denial comes from the uneducated masses that inhabit large stretches of rural areas across America. Education and logic will never govern their thought process. These dunce cap individuals will be a powerful force in our politics forever. They take a certain pride in their lack of knowledge and understanding. It is what distinguishes them and they relish the notoriety it brings.
They are in their full glory at the Trump rallies where their Lord and Master spouts complete and utter nonsense accompanied by their full throated roar of approval.
1
Not to be a wet blanket, but I have a hard time believing that republicans will do anything about climate change while still in the pockets of oil conglomerates and the Koch brothers.
I'd suggest that our current political problem is more structural than ideological, and the structures that enable this sort of ethical malfeasance (e.g., unlimited, anonymous campaign contributions) don't look like they'll be changing anytime soon.
Perhaps when environmentalists start supporting massive expansion of nuclear power and stop protesting commercial scale wind and solar projects? And start demanding the end of zoning rules limiting housing density. And in other ways act like they are more serious about climate change than about dismantling industrial society.
Because as long as the only alternative being pushed to continued (and expanded) fossil fuel use is massive reduction in standard of living, nothing serious will happen in even in places like Europe where the politicians pass laws limiting emissions. And to the extent that the pressure is to limit improvement of living standards in the third world it is downright immoral.
1
The measures listed don't solve the volume of the problem, nor the diminishing time frame for action.
As massive damages accumulate, politicians (either of the parties) may try to reframe the dire situation as "infrastructure" or "emergency management" issues that have bi-partisan support, without directly facing the urgency - necessity - to cut way back on greenhouse gases. ASAP.
Maybe they will come out when the MSM comes out and reports that it has been colder in the continental US the last 12 months than it has been in 100 years. Or when it explains that actual temps were hotter in the 19303 and 1950s than they are now, and only scientifically questionable adjustments in the last 20 years or so support a warming climate in the US. Americans are being unnecessarily frighted by a few climate chicken littles and the MSM—who if they simply analyzed their own archives, would discover it and, maybe, report it.
1
@ehillesum
I live near Glacier National Park. Because of all the “cooling” you note, many of the glaciers have disappeared. The National Park Service estimates that at current rates of loss, the remaining glaciers will be gone by 2030.
I guess the park will have to be renamed. I’m supporting Used to be Glacier National Park so future visitors will be reminded of what has been lost because of the ignorance of people like you.
Interesting perspective. If true, I'd say there are plenty of other closets GOP members are hiding in (e.g. gun reform, health care, immigration). But when it comes to climate change, this closet has been occupied for longer than 10 years. A perfect example is portrayed in NY Times magazine article (https://nyti.ms/2mWMDT8) which ran last year about John Sununu's successful effort to squash committing the US to a 1989 international climate treaty in the Netherlands.
People do ignore reasonable proof that they are wrong when they believe in contradictory concepts.
" ... do you not believe that American ingenuity and American industry could get the job done?"
No, I don't and certainly not with Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell in power.
The utterly unique aspect of this problem is timing. If it is not "solved" within the next 10 years there is no practical solution at all no matter how much we commit this "nation in all its might". In 15 years we could throw the whole GNP at it and it wouldn't make any difference. Required behavior is of the magnitude of cutting the defense budget in half starting next year!
Life on Earth as we know it is going to be very, very different as a result of doing less than what is necessary. The magnitude of social upheavals cannot even be predicted. The loss of irrigation waters for agriculture can easily be predicted to guarantee stupendous problems.
Moreover, this is an international problem. The Paris Accords getting all nations actively moving towards solutions is also critical. Trump dumped the Paris Accords and all Republicans stayed in the closet. They don't believe.
With problem of such magnitude and timing, the very idea of tapping lightly on closet doors seeing whether we can get Republicans to come out is ludicrous.
"We know this problem is real." No they don't. If they truly believed in even a minor version of the predicted upheavals they would step out as leaders rather than quivering in the closet waiting 10 or 20 years for it to get popular. Popular, but with no solutions then.
1
Republicans have spent the last 30 plus years denigrating the federal government and under trump have been hollowing out the very agencies (witness the current debacle at the USDA) that would be needed to move, on a national level, any response to this gathering storm. When they do finally come out of the closet It's going to be difficult getting anywhere when the car of state is up on blocks, all four tires and the engine missing.
2
Justin Gillis, excellent piece on GOP legislators mulling about solving the existential problem of climate change. Don't hold your breath waiting for Republicans to risk a backlash from their dystopian leader if they get on the bandwagon for climate change reform. As long as Donald Trump is our president -- and he and his malign base call climate-warming "a hoax" --is as long as we ignore Earth's demise at our own peril.
2
The author asks "do you not believe that American ingenuity and American industry could get the job done?" The answer is a resounding 'NO." This country, its ingenuity, and its politics, have been sold to the highest bidder and no longer represents the people. I would recommend the book "After the Warming" to anyone who has the courage to read it.
4
I've read that young Republicans are concerned about climate change. If the Republicans take hold of this issue and run with it the Democrats, who have moved so far left, are done!
1
@Bette Andresen Personally I don't care which party wins as long as addressing climate change with a green, sustainable economy is the key priority of the party. Conservative, liberal, agnostic, christian, muslim, doesn't matter if we don't have a habitable planet. Trump, please bring a green wave to save the planet and yes he will win the next election. He will get the support of a vast majority of americans will support him if he is genuine and will actually deliver us all from armageddon by engineering a war against climate change with existing and new technology made in american and stop subsidizing the oil industry and big agriculture which is part of the problem.
Indeed, acknowledging reality and the kind of action described here are good things. I'm glad to hear it.
Since our understanding was sufficient by the 1980s for action, and because accererated climate change due to global heating is a delayed reaction, it's all too likely that this patchwork of action is nowhere near enough. Meanwhile the demagoguery at the top - Trump/McConnell here, Bolsonaro in Brazil (cutting/burn down rainforests and doing his best to remove indigenous peoples who oppose that), and others bent on profit first (palm oil, soy and beef farms, removing other large forests at speed in the far east, Africa, and South America, let alone Canada (!) - is exactly backwards to what is needed.
I sympathize with the desire to ignore Trump's antics, and bypass, for example, the UK's reversals on renewable energy since Brexit, but the power of ignorance and hate seem great for evil. The wholesale effort to make people suspicious of reality and encourage them - in these days of 2D phony "reality" and bread and circus style entertainment - to deny the obvious and prefer illusion magnify harm.
Acting and working together to solve problems is being branded as "socialism". Lies are promoted as truth. It might be that the hectic tone of denial is reaching its endgame, but it still carries weight against the hardworking and disadvantaged truth.
That truth is that we are all in danger, sooner rather than later, and blaming victims only makes it worse.
5
@Susan Anderson: Deforesting the tropics will make the whole equatorial band as dry as the Sahara.
1
@Susan Anderson Y'all so convenient walk past the closet named India & China. Open that door and you'll see the real polluters.
The earth is getting hotter, but how much of that is due to human activity? Yes, we should try to reduce our carbon emissions, but what we can do in the United States will have a very limited effect. More important, we need to start massive infrastructure projects to cope with the increased flooding and storm damage. Move people out of flood prone areas along the costs and rivers, build higher dikes where appropriate, raise houses and roads, etc. Why, because worst storms and fires are coming.
Central Texas was covered with black smoke for weeks from the yearly crop burning in Central America. We are not going to stop that, or the burning of dung and coal in India, for example.
In addition to wind and solar for electricity generation, we need base load generation and the only clean, safe, proven base load electricity generation is nuclear.
3
There is some evidence that Native Americans helped push the great mammals towards extinction during the first millennium after they arrived. If so, it became a lesson that nature had it’s ways which must be respected.
In any case, this we will keep doing destructive stuff to make profits until everyone else stops tends to justify doing nothing until nothing can be done.
@Philip MacDonald What we do in the U.S. will have considerable impact, one way or the other. We lead the world in CO2 emissions per capita (we lead most of it by a huge margin). And we're close to the lead (and way ahead of most countries) in net CO2 emissions.
5
@Philip MacDonald Regarding the human activity question you pose, it's not natural variability. Educate yourself. https://climate.nasa.gov/
1
I agree there must be changes implemented by man to slow down the devastating process re global warming. But so many factors beyond our control re population growth, more water on the planet, and the basic reality the earth has been around for billions of years and possibly it is cleansing itself. How much impact can man actually make?
1
@Sand Dollar As the saying goes, it's never helpful to throw out the good for the perfect. So my feeling is, who cares how much impact we can make as long as we start to try? Or, would you rather we continue to stick our heads in the sand and say, "oh well, nothing we do will change anything anyway."
4
If we can measure the changes to infer the causes, we can use similar means to perturb the changes to reverse the process.
2
This piece tries to say the Rs are actually realistic and wise by waiting till their supporters catch up. Actually, the article sadly
describes a political party willing to sacrifice the health and future of children today for the financial and egotistical benefit
of its leaders and members.
21
Actions like these would be serious ethical breaches for a scientist, and they should be disqualifying for a politician. Deliberately muddying the waters around a public debate, proffering dishonest or uninformed opinions about a body of evidence, and engaging in sophistry are all bad enough, but in this case the fate of life on Earth is at stake. It's downright criminal.
These Republicans have not merely failed to rise to the occasion, they have acted in bad faith to prevent progress, and cowered when it was critical that they act with conscience. It's not enough to let a few bills slip through quietly; they should have disown the denial bloc.
As their world heats, voters will not soon forget.
5
Actions like these would be serious ethical breaches for a scientist, and they should be disqualifying for a politician. Deliberately muddying the waters around a public debate, proffering dishonest or uninformed opinions about a body of evidence, and engaging in sophistry are all bad enough, but in this case the fate of life on Earth is at stake. It's downright criminal.
These Republicans have not merely failed to rise to the occasion, they have acted in bad faith to prevent progress, and cowered when it was critical that they act with conscience. It's not enough to let a few bills slip through quietly; they should have disown the denial bloc.
As their world heats, voters will not soon forget.
1
At this point we should be cheering on the Republican efforts to help depress the world industrial economy.
Anything that depresses global production delays the crisis a bit and buys more time for renewable energy alternatives.
4
There is no better topic that illustrates why conservatives should not be in positions of public policy than AGW. They are defined by fear they inherited from evolution, thus unconsciously prioritize those fears over the well-being of the people, country and planet. The most common symptom is the sense that everyone is out to get you and they associate AGW with government out to get them. It is a survival mechanism leftover from caveman days and fully accounts for what differentiates us along the political spectrum. Never vote for a conservative.
1
Clearly the temperature today is .4 Celsius degrees above the 40 year rolling average. Less clearly this may have had some impact on weather events, although the theory of global warming envisioned climate change at much warmer levels. The question is what should we do differently in this country which emits 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. I suggest advances in battery technology and other non carbon energy advances should carry the ball in the USA and we should encourage China and India, both heavily reliant on coal, to make serious changes. The problem of course is that despite lip service they put their economies above a still unproven theory.
Thanks to the tireless commitment, presentations, campaigns, and knowledge of so many outstanding environmental movements, we are hopeful. Politics aside, the Climate Reality Project, 350.org, Sierra Club and the GCCM deserve special mention.
3
I think the hope that Republicans will 'come around' on anything is ill-founded.
They are a party of convenience not conscience.
Their interest is in pushing racist policies and religious edicts on abortion, weapons, women's rights and many other topics while ensuring that their deplorable base is satisfied.
It is the habit of their leaders to speak from the shadows, assuring the rest of the country that a conscience is intact somewhere but I believe it is intentionally misleading. And a wilful diversion.
6
I remain completely perplexed when reading the comments of climate-change deniers. Exactly WHAT is it about addressing this issue that you people find so threatening?
22
@Mike Schmidt
Isn't that obvious? Democrats mostly accept the science on climate change, so they feel they must do the opposite. I have two close family members who are ardent Trump supporters who have completely changed their feelings about tariffs, mortgage interest deductions, lobbyists getting jobs in government, etc. as they see the cheerleading change on Fox News and from politicians in their party. For most of these people on most issues, there are almost no actual policy goals and no discomfort with hypocrisy. Anything the Ds do is un-American, evil, and stupid, and anything the Rs back is right.
2
@Mike Schmidt Climate Change is a Chinese hoax designed to undermine American competitiveness and then establish a world authoritarian communist rule in which white people will be replaced by non-white people who don't like guns, cars, trucks, plastic bags or any other thing that a god-fearing American loves. Climate change is yet another attempt to steal our freedoms, freedoms of any kind, like the freedom to do what one wants on the land, the freedom to enjoy medicare and medicaid, and to turn the country into a socialist "utopia."
I thought everyone knew that.
1
Coming out is NOT enough. ACTING NOW is the only solution.
6
The problem for Republicans is that they are becoming the anti-science party. How can you ignore what “95% of scientists” agree on. (In quotes because I haven’t seen the data.)
The problem for Democrats is that they can’t agree on what to do about it. Eliminate fossil fuels? Cows? Meat? Even lawns? Sorry, but most Americans find some (or all) of these proposals ridiculous. Even the most vocal person on climate change, AOC, is reduced to arguing: “do something!” - as if yelling that makes it immediately apparent what that something is.
So where does that leave the rest of us?
It would be nice if the two parties could agree on proposals science agrees will alleviate the problem, at least in the near future. But it appears that is asking too much from our current leaders. Maybe handing everything over to the Democrats will accomplish something (even on guns). It seems we've done that before. But this time their serious! Yea.
2
"Why should I be ethical when others sin?" has been one of the most pernicious excuses for rationalizing doing nothing since the risks and causes of climate warming were discovered.
It is sad that the Republican party hides behind the mantra that the US is "special" but chooses not to lead when the issue is inconvenient.
7
The immediate need is to plant some 2 Trillion trees world wide in the next ten years. Nothing else will put the breaks on unless you are will to stop eating meat and flying.
With that many new trees, and the stopping of destructive forest practices, climate change can be stopped and atmospheric CO2 concentrates can be lowered.
8
Mr Gillis suggests that Republican leaders believe and have believed for a decade that climate change is real and that we have to do something about it, and so they have passed or proposed or at least not repealed some very tiny steps in that direction. They hesitated to do more because of the "fever" of the mob that a decade ago was a significant sector of the party's electorate. Then that mob swallowed up nearly all the rest of the party, and that mob of a party has a powerful leader. Trump of course preaches that climate change is a Chinese hoax.
As others have noted, the Republican Party of today has become like the Communist Party of generations ago. When the Leader says deficits are bad and free trade is good, they all yell that. When the Leader wants even more enormous deficits and says trade wars are good, they suddenly all change their positions. So the hidden opinions of people like McConnell and Barrasso matter not one whit. When it counts, they are Trump's minions and until he falls, Trump they will obey.
3
Whoever the "eminent Republican" that Mr. Gillis talked to was, the person likely has been marginalized in the Trump GOP.
Right-wing America shows nothing but contempt and denial for climate science and for the majority of Americans who understand that climate change is real and a threat to our civilization. The main funders of the GOP are people like the Kochs who actively undermine science and environmental policy for the purpose of protecting their fossil fuel and mining companies.
The sad truth is that climate policy is going to be hobbled by right-wing politicians until they are no longer in the White House or in control of the Senate. One hopes that public support and action will eventually overcome right-wing opposition and subversion of climate change policy, but it is probably going to take a long time.
2
I am a democrat and a believer in Climate Change. I have also been at the forefront of been investing for nearly 30 years.
From my perspective denial comes not for the science but that the solution requires central government solutions and international solutions. To a Republican right based on the presumption that big government is bad, handing more power to the federal government is worse and that international action is somehow us surrendering our our sovereignty, how can you admit to a problem that requires a solution that is contrary to your fundamental belief of limited government?
Until the right, and not just in the US, agrees that there are some things that require big government solutions and shared international solutions we will get nowhere. It is the ideology and not the science that blinds the right.
9
@Tom Murley
Among the many reasons that skews denial towards the Republican side of the aisle, this belief that all problems can be solved locally (except military ones) is one I have latched onto also. And I say this as a physicist who is more comfortable arguing the science. Happy to have some company.
The mind boggles at the craven ignorance of the Republican Party when in 2019 one of the two major political parties in the world's largest economy denies scientific fact.
The rest of the world needs you, America, if we are to win this fight and we look on aghast at what is happening in your country.
25
I'm a Republican. I don't deny the climate might be warming. I also accept that it might be due to human activity, rather than just cyclical climate changes.
However, no one has yet proved to me that anything we, as Americans, can do will make a single bit of difference.
As long as China, Russia, India, and Pakistan continue to pollute the atmosphere, nothing - absolutely nothing - we do in this country will make any difference whatsoever.
So, what's the point again? We in the US deprive ourselves and make ourselves into a third-world country, while actual third-world countries just go on about their merry business of killing the planet anyway?
China is the economic superpower it is today because it tooled up and took the dirty, polluting manufacturing we didn't want in our country anymore. We also didn't want to exploit labor here, so we outsourced the exploitation of workers and even children.
You can't have cheap, environmentally and morally clean products on the scale we demand them. That's a given.
We have literally outsourced industrial pollution and child slavery, all so we can have cheaper stuff and not have to think about where it comes from.
The issue is deeper than this article implies. Folks on all sides need to start thinking about it that way or we're going to be a very bad way.
That's what needs to happen. Will it? I don't know, but I seriously doubt it.
2
@Elfego el Gato
This viewpoint makes sense, but the article is correct that the current outward stance on climate of the Republican party is not just about practicality, economic impacts, etc. For example, see the Montreal Protocol. Business has been pushing for us to join it - it will increase the number of American jobs and add to our economy, while slowing climate change. Yet this administration has stopped the US from joining (while India and China have) because to do so would mean admitting they're acting on climate. If there's a win-win for American business and the climate, why else have Wehrum, Wheeler, and the White House stopped this?
4
@Elfego el Gato
Everything you state may be true (though I do not believe that) - however, that is not an argument to oppose the idea of creating a bipartisan effort to identify areas where we realistically CAN deal with the problem. There are economic benefits in doing so, and one would think that the party of Main Street would champion expanding our economy in this manner (supporting the coal industry is akin to steadfastly supporting the buggy whip industry in 1900).
The first step is to accept that there is a problem.
We cant even do that, and the "why" is outlined in this article.
Hypocrisy reins supreme, to our peril.
3
@Elfego el Gato
We're the ones who dropped out of the Paris accords.
(Also the ABM treaty, INF treaty and the Iran nuclear agreement.)
The petrochemical industries and the military/industrial complex are in charge. What a world!
6
It is claimed that global warming causes the oceans to warm and ice to melt into them. This would cause the density of sea water to go down. However a quick review of data from a Google search shows a slight increase in density from 1965 to 2000. Prove anything, I don't know but I have a problem with accepting the past ocean measurements up the present. Maybe satellites could provide over time accurate Eularian measurements rather than the Lagrangian measurements used today.[ I know show off, google them]. But I suspect it has more to do with changes in electromagnetic radiation reaching the earth due to the physics of the sun and/or changes in the celestial gymnastics of the earth and sun.
1
@h dierkes
We have good knowledge of the changes in the sun and orbital mechanics that lead to long term changes in the radiation reaching Earth. None of these factors act anything close to the speed at which we have measured warming.
And even if glaciers aren't melting, the seas would still be rising. What happens to a substance when it gets hotter? It expands - that's why there are expansion gaps built into the bridges we all drive over. Same applies to the water in the oceans; as they get warmer, they get bigger, even without all the added water from melting ice.
5
@Robbie The seas have been rising for about 20,000 years, and the current rate of rise is a minute fraction of the rate from thousands of years ago. See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Holocene_sea_level_rise#/media/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
As for solar and cosmic radiation, we do not, in fact, have a very clear understanding of exactly how these fluctuations affect cloud formation. A small change in global cloud cover, either letting in or blocking a small fraction of sunlight from the Earth's surface, could in and of itself account for all of the warming observed in the past century.
@h dierkes: keep Googling. Much of the ocean (the deep part) is below 4 degrees Centigrade. Up to that temperature, water expands as it heats. Let's look at obvious cause-effect relationships before philosophizing about "celestial gymnastics."
The idea that Republicans know they must do a deal with Democrats on climate change is disappointing.
They should be doing a deal for people that are already being affected by climate change and will be facing future more drastic consequences of climate change. One argument that Republican state is that they don't want to hurt the economy. Well guess what Republicans, climate change will affect everyone's economy.
17
The US has economic dominance due to the Petrodollar, it is also a net exporter of energy products, it goes aginst the short term and long term fianancial interests of the powers that be to acknowledge climate change.
7
The fever will not pass. The Republican assault on science and thinking of all sorts is endless. What is needed is the destruction of the Republican Party and a replacement.
73
@Daniel A. Greenbaum Or just stop voting for those willfully ignoring climate science.
4
Yes, we are hearing that several Republicans in the House are ready to do something on climate, but they don’t have the political cover yet. We are meeting with them regularly. They know their party is vulnerable and on the wrong side. They say they will move together, in numbers, when they think it’s safe. Right now, it’s not safe, so they stay in the herd.
I understand this thinking. The predators they are scared of are really vicious. Mother Nature can be so inhuman.
4
@Heard That Too--You mean they don't have any spine, and their seats are still more important to them than any lives, or futures, that will be lost or forever disrupted.
19
@Heard That Too
"We really, really, really want to do that but we just can't" means "We won't do that".
There's no comfort there, nothing positive about Republicans or their party.
All there is is confirmation that their seats, and their party, are more important to them than their country, their oath, their constituents, their own families.
Maybe somewhere within that black cinder of a heart lies a warm core of goodness. That only makes them worse: they know what's happening, they know what to do; they know a crisis when they see one; and theyre not gonna do a thing.
“There’s no question that we’re experiencing climate change and that humans are a significant contributor to that,” Romney In my view, the course forward is going to require innovation and technology breakthrough because nothing I’ve seen is going to reverse the warming trend other than that.
The science is clear: we’re experiencing a change in our climate. The U.S. only accounts for about 15% of the global emission of CO2—it’s an international problem. Even if we eliminated all of our cars and airplanes, countries like China and India would continue to grow their carbon emissions. We must focus on encouraging investment in breakthrough technology relating to new sources of energy or ways to recapture CO2 from the environment if we’re going to tackle this global problem."
All from Mitt Romney who is not exactly a minor GOP member. Talk is cheap of course but these statements are sure done in the closet.
4
@jgury. Only 15%?! We are only 5% of the worlds population. We are far and away the worst offenders per capita and since the industrial revolution we are cumulatively the biggest contributor by far to co2 emissions. A reduction in human population, especially in the west, is the easiest way to reduce emissions because we are such outsized contributors. Example. Each American is worth ~ 3 Chinese and almost 10 Indians in co2 emissions.
5
@jgury
The fact that China and India are important contributors long term is exactly why we should be engaging with them and not backing out of Paris.
3
The article does not explain why Republicans would publicly oppose climate-change legislation in the first place. It's because some industries will be harmed by the legislation, and they have bribed Congressmen to block it. ( There seems to be a taboo in the news media on saying the word "bribery"). Since they can't admit that they're doing it for the money, they have to pretend that they don't believe in climate change.
And the evangelical leaders have been bribed to cooperate. One of them, when intervened, said people don't have to worry about human-caused climate change because God will work a miracle and heal the environment. Meanwhile legitimate religious denominations take climate change seriously and talk about "stewardship", a moral imperative not to harm the environment. Of course, you don't read about this in the Times because its policy is to ignore religious groups outside the evangelicals and Catholics..
4
Check the charts. Iowa and Texas do better than most Blue states in renewable energy. The big story is Europe experienced the hottest summer ever. The attached graphs only go back to the '60s. A similar repeat of what was done with California's forest fires last where the journalist provided a graph of including the entire twentieth century. The claim was it was the worst ever but the graph clearly showed it was the the hottest thirties.
I'm not saying there isn't any climate change. I'm saying they're lying about it every chance they get. The Red List isn't enough where we're losing 6000 species. Greenpeace to the rescue with 1 million "could be" endangered list. It's always a nice round number.
Now we have a 16 year old with Aspergers as voice of the planet. The reality is what happens while China goes to the developing world and builds power plants, infrastructure and industry while the wealthy white people in EU and Europe say they can't?
1
@JoeG
Backing away from the table of international climate negotiations cedes the massive economic growth and influence of future-facing industries to the Chinese. You have it backwards that taking a stance on climate cedes anything to China - they want to dominate the economy of the future, not of the past.
4
The Republican Party is financed by fossil fuel interests, and as long as that is the case, the bulk of the party will do nothing but encourage fossil fuel development. As long as they're making money hand over fist for themselves and their families, they just don't care; believing that they will simply have to "move to higher ground" with their ill-gotten gains. What they don't understand is that, when the entire world's economy collapses due to sea level rise and the concurrent collapse of agricultural systems worldwide, even their gated communities won't protect them.
12
@dave They'll be burned out, or washed off, of their "higher ground". There will be no escape.
Imagine a Republican solution to stemming climate breakdown. Taxpayer-funded bailouts for favored corporations to relocate their facilities to more stable terrain & continue polluting. Tax breaks for the mega rich to go seasteading or build self-sufficient bunkers for themselves. An emergency framework for burning down the rest of the social safety net. A response to climate refugees that would make our current border camps look like paradise.
A "serious" Republican plan for the climate crisis would be all but identical to doing nothing, letting the world heat, and allowing civilizations to collapse.
A Green New Deal is the only effective way to mobilize against the climate crisis that favors the vast majority of us over profits and billionaires.
21
If we still have a functioning civilization in 25 years we may need to hold a Truth and Reconciliation process for these Republicans.
20
I am pleased to read that the author detects some signs that Republican elected officials at the federal level are coming to their senses with regard to the reality of climate change. However, the reality at the state level here in North Carolina suggests something different. First, the Republican-controlled legislature has passed a law that prohibits state agencies from incorporating climate change research into their work. Second, they more recently have legislated a distinct tax on electric cars because of the loss in revenue from gas taxes. The North Carolina legislature isn’t harboring closet climate realists. It is stocked with “true believers”, another wonderful by-product of our gerrymandered system of undemocratic “elections”.
15
The other side of climate denial is the assumption by activists that restrictive measures in Europe and the USA will solve the problem of climate change. They may help clean the local environment but two huge factors remain untouched.
1. Billions of people aspire to our prosperity and they will not be denied. Already China produces about double the US greenhouse gasses. They are opening coal mining in Australia to export to India.
2. Some forces want warming to get at the resources of Greenland and Antarctica and to open sea lanes in the Artic Ocean.
The conclusion is inevitable that geoengineering is necessary--say starting with re-purposing NASA and making an emergency project out of it.
4
@Bruce Williams All true - so the obvious conclusion is 'we-all' do whatever we can. Every bit helps.
2
@Bruce Williams
As to point #1, retreating from international agreements like Paris and the Montreal Protocol is only going to reduce leverage of the developed world to slow massive emissions growth in the rest of the world. Both polcy and rhetoric out of Washington provide cover for leaders in other country to avoid advances on climate.
As for your conclusion, it may be true even if the US and the rest of the world really starts shrinking emissions. Even if we magically stopped all GHG emissions today, there's already enough CO2 in the atmosphere that, absent some geoengineering, sea levels will still rise 2 meters over the next millennium. Of course, that's a very long time, and it's the speed at which that happens that will determine how damaging it will be, so action is still important. ( Zickfeld et al. 2017 PNAS https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/4/657.full.pdf?with-ds=yes)
3
If only the Republican enthusiasm for whatever-it-takes geo-political national security could be re-harnessed to take on the fight against global warming, conservative mantras about the market's magic hand , and the the depravity of government spending directly on a problem, would be filed away for future use.
War is war, especially serious against an enemy that has no intention to negotiate, and cant's be cowed by our massive arsenal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
And with the massive spending this war will demand, no GOP patron will will go wanting. A rising tide floats all boats, including yachts.
.
2
The Republican elites are fully accepting of climate change, and have developed a means, elaborating upon the mechanisms of "Continuity of Government", for about 1 million people to survive, however severe climate change may be. They regard climate change as an opportunity to resolve significant economic issues and otherwise inevitable global conflicts.
3
As long as there's money to be made by destroying the environment, which in turn is effecting most of our climate changes -- you can expect this President and the Republican Senate to do everything in their power to ignore or deny it.
Whether it's rolling back Obama-era climate rules, allowing more offshore drilling, increasing the amount of oil and gas pipelines, vacating public lands for exploration and drilling, promoting more logging which increases land erosion and depletes forests, or reducing funding for the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.), this administration has proven inept at being good stewards of the planet.
And then of course, there was the seminal decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord.
As long as huge corporations and Industrialists like the Kochs continue to have one hand on the tiller and the other hand in politician's pockets, nothing will change.
And we're running out of time.
17
@N. Smith
Much under the benign guise of "deregulation", without major push back from our Democratic representatives. Of course, much of the regulatory capture occurred under previous Republican and Democratic administrations with the illusions of good via unfettered markets and letting industry make the rules and police themselves. Democrats may have driven the ten-pennies; Republicans the 9 inch nails.
@N. Smith
But there is more money to be made from fighting climate change. Sadly the people with political power via donations are the ones who are making more money from ignoring it.
1
@vole
Let me be the first to remind you that as long as Mitch McConnell is head of the Republican Senate -- NOTHING! will be done to alter the current trajectory this country is on.
Obama found that out the hard way when he tried to set up the very same environmental laws Donald Trump is repealing right now.
Time is not on our side.
It's time to put-up or shut-up.
3
While we debate climate change, the earth is cooking itself as carbon emissions accelerate. The "new normal" -- epic hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, disappearing polar ice-- is no fluke. Over the next few decades, a determined human race MAY be able slow the process. Otherwise, global warming will accelerate on its own, no matter what we do. The equator will be uninhabitable and a 200 foot sea rise will destroy coastal cites and food sources. Humans have never faced such a global disaster. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren will likely witness this in their lifetimes. Is this our legacy to them? Only committed nations are powerful enough to turn this around. Let's elect leaders who protect the planet rather than themselves. Before its too late.
9
Thanks for the article. I've felt for years that "skeptics" of global warming who are involved with public policy have another agenda going--most likely for coal and gas companies (or those who need to sell their Miami Beach real estate). Time to put their feet to the fire--they are wasting our time when we need to be taking action.
7
Congress won't even fund 5bn for a wall. Why would you expect them to fund renewable energy in the tens or hundreds of billions? Anything that requires that much budget appropriation won't get done.
@Not 99pct
Apples and oranges. Why should they pay $ 5 billion for a wall that's basically a toy for a President who will hopefully be gone in a couple of years?
@B. Honest
Before the Dems took over in the House, the Republicans didn't care about the wall. Then they realized that they needed to rile up the basis and suddenly started talking about emergencies and walls again.
First, one does not "believe" in science. Science subjects itself to data and proof, requiring no "belief." One believes in God or the Tooth Fairy, but science requires nothing more than a willingness to study the data and the conclusions drawn from and proven by that data. This is not "belief."
Second, waiting for some confluence of events that permits Republicans to admit reality and address it is a fool's game. Climate change has occurred, is occurring and will continue to occur at an accelerating pace unless we do something substantive immediately.
I am afraid that having lost four years under Trump and, seeing the likelihood of his re-election, especially if Joe Biden is the Democratic candidate, the possibility of losing four more years, the only thing left to be done will be to measure the inexorable rise of the waters and the increasing loss of diversity in the natural world.
60
@Jonathan Penn
Thanks for addressing the "belief" problem. I also agree that Biden is too eager to go along to get along, and his life experience has not led him to the challenging scary danger that is staring us all in the face.
However, language is an imperfect vehicle, and I'm afraid we will have to go on dealing with the silly idea that science is a belief system like religion instead of an effort to find ways to observe and understand what is around us, honed through the centuries to discourage deception and self-deception.
People use computers and live with electricity and plumbing and expect things to work, but they think they can pick and choose what to "believe". Sad.
4
@Jonathan Penn I strongly disagree. If you have no appreciation of the scientific method then you will see science and the people who do science as more experts with a hidden agenda. Many people have no basis to distinguish between the soft science of macroeconomics and the hard science climatology - "its all just experts guessing". Science as a means to truth requires belief in its underpinnings in logic, reason and empirical evidence.
The longer Republicans wait for public sentiment to change, the more drastic, and therefore politically difficult, the needed solution will become. They’re essentially guaranteeing that the problem will never be dealt with. We could have just listened to James Hansen in 1988. It would have been a lot cheaper and less destructive to human life. Thanks, GOP.
22
@Greg Ruben
Republicans aren't waiting for public sentiment to change as polling already shows a decisive majority of people want to properly address climate change (and gun laws, for that matter). It's the greed of vested interest that republicans are beholden to.
4
An apocalyptic vision—
Our gluttony, and not just the greed of oil and coal companies, will be the end of the earth.
The universal human desire, formed around pure greed, to do anything, even if it means the complete destruction of the earth, to get our “fair share” and “more than our fair share,” will kill off the earth’s ecosystems.
Ecologists call these forms of greedy hunger for more “the tragedy of the commons.”
A few decades ago it was easy to imagine our common end. As a species, Homo sapiens would die off, they’d be blasted out of existence by mushroom clouds of hot smoke and invisible radiation pulsing off an exploded nuclear bomb. Today, time as it flows to our common destruction moves slower, it is more benign and dangling than the hard impact of a nuke.
The earth warms, slow but sure. It is hard to detect but the day will arrive when the earth, our human ecosystem, will be uninhabitable. Our blood will boil. Our lungs will collapse. Our fields will parch brown.
Try to use Henry David Thoreau for a shot of optimism. Thoreau, in his “Journals:” “Who hears the rippling of the rivers will not utterly despair of anything.”
Thoreau’s tonic sentence fails. The major lakes and rivers in America are polluted, filled with chemicals pouring out of factory farms, oil refineries, fracking-fields and cattle ranches. To touch the water of our rivers is to risk sickness.
18
Also, Gillis forgets that budget reconciliation is a very easy way to tax climate change emissions without bipartisan support. As we established under Obamacare, you can pass broad legislation with a simple majority so long as you include a tax. I'm sure that knowledge makes Republican politicians extremely nervous. Democrats don't actually need them to pass climate change legislation.
4
Thanks for articulating many of my concerns, Mr. Gillis. This confirms my experience with trying to get local Republican officials to publicly support a price on carbon. In private, most of them accept reality, but they won't come out of the closet. I am really frustrated, and tempted to think, like some other commenters here, that there aren't any good Republicans out there. But what Mr. Gillis says here is very true: even if Democrats take the House, Senate, and White House in 2020, they will likely need a few Republican Senate votes to pass big, durable, legislation. The ice is melting. We don't have time to oust all elected Republicans from power and to re-educate all Republican voters into environmentalists. We don't have time. Mr. Gillis is right on target when he identifies the role Republicans can play in "arguing for a national climate strategy that does the least economic damage and makes maximum use of markets to find the solutions we need." I support the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (H.R.763), which places a fee on carbon that starts low, rises fast and returns net revenues to people to spend as they wish. I support this not because I love markets, but because they are fast and powerful and the ice is melting. This bill won't in itself solve the other environmental problems of capitalism, and additional bills will be needed for reforestation, ag reform, just transition etc., but the ice is melting. We don't have time. We need H.R.763 now.
21
There's no agreement on basic questions like:
To What End? What is "victory" in climate change? Do humans really believe the Earth's climate should stay fixed forever in the same condition as Year 1776? 1901? 2001? 2050?
Rather than a bunch of intangible hubris and arm waving, would be nice to focus on concrete stuff we can agree on and hold politicians accountable for. Stuff like stop polluting our Oceans, clean up some of the messes we've made, and get our neighbors, like China, Korea, India, to do the same.
1
@Mike_S - Well here is my two cents:
Victory is reducing the effects of global heating so that millions do not die, so that hundreds of millions to do not have to try to migrate and cause wars, so that billions of dollars of infrastructure, houses, and other buildings are not destroyed, and victory is the preservation of civilization.
20
@Mike_S
We did answer that question. To what end? To prevent average tempertures from warming more than 2.5 degrees Celsius globally since the time of the last cooling period. That's V-day with climate change. Right now we're losing the war... badly.
7
@Andy
If "Climate Change" was about lowering average temps, we can drop average global temps by 4 degrees Celsius within a few months solely through injecting Sulfer Dioxide into the upper atmosphere.
If "Climate Change" is about "greenhouse" gases, we should rail against the primary culprit that's 80% by mass and 90% by volume: water vapor.
Instead, we suffer Al Gores flying around in private jets trying to make billions cornering the "carbon market" while shaming us for not riding a bus to work.
Hawaiians have wonder observation: "The missionaries came to Hawaii to do good, and they did well." Unfortunately, the same is true for the Climate Change Missionaries of our day.
I have long feared a sudden Trumpian epiphany on Climate Crisis in which he does one of those dramatic U turns, for which he is well known, issuing a full throated endorsement of save-the-planet climate policies.
He would lose support of the Koch's, but he would guarantee himself re-election, salvage his reputation and legacy, while effectively knee-capping the Democratic opposition. In all likelyhood he'd be tossing us another red herring, but it would take us a while to figure it out.
18
@Reed Erskine Maybe we need to ask the sourcing on his 'red herring', is it Russia, the Ukraine or maybe Czhecoslovakia that they are getting those from. Seems to be a consistent source, I thought they were impoverished on the natural resources in the area.
But those red herring, specialty brands there folks.
I admit, it would be funny seeing Trump pull a full U-turn on this one, but I do not see that happening with the crowd he has surrounding him now.
3
The GOP led Senate and Trump Administration might be officially in climate denial mode but in many of the Red states something very different is happening and very rapidly.
The top states for growth in renewable energy production are Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Dakota and others in the middle of the country. Renewables now make up as much as half of total production in some of these GOP strongholds.
That might be because utilities are making rational long term decisions at a time when capital costs are very low. And exporting energy from Kansas to other states looks like a big opportunity since that state alone has enough wind to power the nation.
https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/money/2019/07/26/renewable-energy-hydro-wind-solar-power-produced-by-state/1829405001/
Likewise, most of the largest automakers in the world are going all in on electric vehicle development so they don't end up like the Big Three in 2008, bankrupt or nearly so because they got caught with the wrong model lineup.
This is a rapid global transformation that is running ahead of government regulation and politics in the US. And we risk falling behind China, which currently leads in electric vehicle production and enjoys strong state support.
32
@Look Ahead,
Yes, and most of the ideas are foolish.
We've been trying to solve the battery idea for 200 years without success. We even tried fuel cells but they have their own set of problems.
Look, engineers built everything you see. Without us, you'd be scrapping out a living on a farm, starving one year, getting by the next. Engineers got you into this mess. We can get you out.
Barrasso realizes denial is not going to last much longer. Some sort of legislation on climate change is going to pass with or without him. That ten year deadline is looming. Voters want serious action and fast. Toes and feet aren't going to cut it anymore. Obviously, denial holdouts will suffer in negotiations by sitting on the sideline. However, Barrasso IS looking out for Wyoming coal interests.
Roughly 75% of all climate change is split evenly between three independent but interrelated human forces: Energy, agriculture, and transportation. By targeting transportation, Barrasso is protecting energy. He wants the federal government to cut emissions on cars in a state with very few cars. That frees up more space under any emissions ceiling for energy and agriculture. Inputs that effect Wyoming voters much more directly.
We're witnessing a similar reaction in New York's resistance to congestion pricing. Voters target energy because they don't want to change their transportation habits. Iowa is obviously all about agriculture and so on.
The truth is we need to cut all three and fast. No sector is safe from radical change. We have 10 years to drastically reduce climate change emissions and all three sectors are equally responsible. Politicians trying to push their burden onto other states is not just unhelpful, it's counter productive. We need climate legislation or humanity goes extinct. I don't really care if that inconveniences Wyoming politicians.
14
For a problem which seems increasingly hopeless, what Justin writes is progress. Some acknowledgement and closeted action is necessary. But eventually addressing this problem will take everything we have. So, yes, on the R's preferred "market-friendly" solutions. These will help and it's important to get them in the game. However, we'll have to go much further than that. We're going to have to stop playing with words. Luntz' change of heart is nice, as well as progress through "climate-change-less" policies that reduce carbon. But it will always be necessary to get to the next level and at some point there will be limits to policies that "don't dare say their names." There are more arguments out there than can appeal to conservatives--if they stop their automatic opposition to ideas coming from people they don't like, like Gore and AOC. The Green New Deal has conservative friendly-provisions that have gotten lost in the caricaturing about "socialism." See my class and my http://greeneconomynj.org/2019/06/19/defending-the-green-new-deal-recommendations-to-build-on-whats-actually-in-it-while-reaching-out-to-others/. While most of my colleagues disagree, it will be necessary to bring Tea Party voters into this fight. Unless those of us who accept climate change are willing to do multiples of our share of behavioral change, I see no path to net carbon zero without them. So, as contrarian and unlikely as it seems, we have to figure out how, including in the classroom and media.
4
With gun control, Republicans got on board with so-called "red flag" laws and background checks when those became the BARE minimum you had to support to survive in a re-election campaign. Anything less, and they'll be defeated. Expect the same on climate change: They'll get on board -- too late, of course -- when not doing so will get them voted out, and not a second sooner.
16
@MissIvonne Glad to see a Kentuckian that has figured them out. Now if enough of you will see the light and Ditch Mitch we may yet save the world and our democracy.
The problem is the political base that rejects science when it does not agree with their ideology. Unfortunately the internet allows people to communicate only with those with whom they already agree.
9
Let's be clear. The last election was about Merrick Garland, the next one is about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Conservatives will stay focused on this, and execute in lock step. They have lifetime control of the federal judiciary (and most states), and thus religious social control, within their grasp. So, anytime anyone wants to ask why they are not focused on governing just refer to what I wrote above.
14
@peh. Which is why a war is about the only realistic solution to climate change. The only way humanity can save itself is probably to bomb the United States' economy back into the stone age where it can't do any harm. Waiting for Americans to decide not to wipe humanity off the face of the earth is foolish. Humanity can't wait for this superstitious and backward people to figure this out. We humans are out of time to wait for Americans.
"For those Republicans still cowering in the closet, I have a question":
Do you believe, to really solve the problem, that we must leave trillions of dollars of fossil fuels buried in the ground and stranded assets of carbon infrastructure that have yet to return profits to investors?
I think this question poses a much greater test of Republicans (and most of us, actually, complicit by our want for other collective choices than our fossil fueled ways of living).
1
@vole Why should we Not leave those resources in the ground. Investing has always been a gamble, some win, some lose their shirts, you cannot go rigging the market to always profit and you are not entitled to a profit.
On top of that, the fuels in the ground belong to the Public at large, and it is the being able to access them that is the largest of the entitlements given, the drilling or mining rights, at astoundingly pitiful return rates for the State or National Govt, where the fuel corps profit, yet fight having to pay properly their workers or attention to the safety of their systems.
Always going for the profit and forgetting to take care of The People is the downfall of the Petroleum Party. The people that invested in the infrastructure got paid out long, long ago, the people presently riding on the system, floating on it and actually restricting their own industry to force ever higher prices even when product gluts the market.
Those investors who thought that Climate Change was not real and sunk their savings into the carbon fuels industry are going to have to take a hit on this one as they were well warned 50 years ago that this was coming, and they doubled down on Carbon anyways.
You are Not guaranteed a profit on bad business decisions, and doubling down on coal and oil was a bad choice for profit stability and pollution indices and it was on the spread sheets even then.
Cannot claim ignorant on this one, foolish maybe, but not ignorant. It has BEEN Coming.
GOP need to ask this question first:
Is my position on climate change, extreme weather, call it what they may...based on my donors support (Koch, Fossil fuel industry) or my constituents support.
Then it becomes an issue if "it happens to them". So while GOP mock, critique natural disasters in CA, their eyes open when its in their own "backyard". Heads Up: its in everyone's "backyard" !
If we can send a man to the moon with technology of the 60's (everyone marveled for the 50th anniversary) ....certainly congress can cooperatively work on solutions.
6
"do you not believe that American ingenuity and American industry could get the job done?"
Not if the goal is to facilitate endless economic growth with the very unproven theory of decoupling growth from carbon emissions.
Our very large carbon footprint comes with many other heavy footprints including all the environmental and ecological costs of food production, transportation (air, land and sea), travel, housing, commerce, and all the numerous pleasures, joys and toys and conspicuous consumptions that contribute to the GDP.
So, no, Thoreau, Muir and Gandhi -- socialists! -- will not be our guiding lights. Sunshine in America means turning the cranks to grow to fulfill the projections of increasing energy demand.
We have yet to define the real problems with the American Way of living big and meeting the demands for more. Limits are for losers. We have the American ingenuity to exempt us from limits.
Billions too to escape earth orbit. We have reached the spore stage.
8
I think it is partly a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" problem. People who are concerned about it are undermining their own cause by blaming everything on climate change.
When Katrina hit New Orleans, there was hysteria about a new era of increasingly devastating hurricanes. What followed were years of mild hurricane seasons.
A decade ago, water levels in the Great Lakes were low (but well within the historical range), and there was hype about how climate change was the cause. Today the lakes have fully recovered and then some, and now some people are starting to blame climate change for high water levels and beach erosion.
The Wolf may well be out there, but crying wolf after every natural weather event is just going to numb people to its presence.
6
@Roger There is no 'may well be out there.' That is denying what all but a handful of reputable scientists say is already here--significant environmental impacts from man-made climate change. Are you an expert and know that the things you list aren't part of climate change? Most of us are not numb to its presence and you shouldn't be either.
47
Hmm, I live in Michigan and am very connected to a climate scientists. Never once did I hear or read that short term Great Lake levels were the result of climate change. Michigan had not see that much temperature increases at that time. From what I know snow cover on the ice makes a big difference to lake levels. You perhaps forgot about Harvey, whose insane rainfall amounts probably did have a global warming component. You are right about hype, but if you read the scientific papers over oatmeal in the morning, you will realize scientists do not hype enough.
13
@Roger - what we need to do is inform more people that climate and weather are chaotic, in the scientific meaning. That is, small changes in starting positions can yield large changes in subsequent positions. Therefore, the swing from strong hurricane seasons to mild seasons, or from historic lows, to overfilled lakes are to be expected.
However, even with the chaos, trends can be seen, and the trend in climate is upward in temperature. Of the ten hottest years on record, globally, all are from 1998 on. That is with over 130 years of statistics to draw from. So there is about a 15.4% chance for any single year in the 21 years (1998 to 2018) to be in the top ten, with this data sample. Therefore random chance says that for all 10 of the hottest years to be in those 21 years is less than .00000075 to 1. Or about the chance to win a specific Powerball lottery with only four sets of numbers. (It’s been almost 50 years since I was a math major in college, but I believe I’ve done the permutations and combinations correctly.)
5
I'm getting sick and tired of various columns and articles where people are under the illusion that there are "good" Republicans who will bring the party to its senses on various issues. No they will not because there are not Republicans who care about doing anything a out the problems they created and enable.
192
@Alan Snipes Oh, on the contrary! The GOP stands firmly on the side of protecting the environment, confronting a destabilized climate and defending Earth's wonderful diversity of life.
They'll do whatever it takes to protect the environment, provided, of course, that it:
(A) doesn't cost any money;
(B) doesn't endanger their political contributions or re-election campaigns;
(C) doesn't run the risk of offending Sean Hannity, Alex Jones or Tomi Lahren;
(D) doesn't inconvenience them or their constituents in any conceivable way;
(E) doesn't interfere or clash with their political ideology in any way whatsoever
18
@Alan Snipes
Unless they need an image of deceit that will keep them in power where they do what they do best, steal our resources then salt the Earth so nothing positive will grow.
2
Lifelong Republican here. I believe climate change is a big issue and support strong, yet market based, solutions such as cap and trade to address it. I guess I’m evil too.
2
I am pretty sure we have been OUT for 40 years. Because the non believers in power have monetarian resources we normal people don't, setting the agenda and doing what ever they wishes to the climate in their pursuit of more monetary gains.
You want a change for the better? The entire social system has to be reworked, removing power from MONEY to science. No money hungry individual should EVER again be allowed to set the agenda for the rest of us. This FAKE DEMOCRACY the west have used for more than a 100 years are as already mentioned FAKE, there is NO democracy for the general public, EVERYTHING that is done is because the richest people and corporations wants it. This system is called a PLUTOCRACY (or plutarchy) and has nothing to do with power to the general population but is all about power based on wealth.
As long as that's the system we live in, most of us are going to continue being slaves in one way or another (wage slavery is a thing), wars will continue to rage, the environment is gonna lose and in the end, the system of PLUTOCRACY we live in today will, not might, it WILL, without a doubt. be the death to ALL of us.
23
You are approaching this issue from the wrong direction.
Although there's certainly evidence for global warming, there is also evidence in history for periods of glacial ice ages and thawing.
Also there is evidence for science (especially medicine in another field) getting it wrong due to extremists pushing ideas, corporate greed etc. ie the boy that cried wolf syndrome.
Better to view this as land, water and air pollution and not a holy jihad against climate change.
The former is real, people can feel, see and breathe it. The latter although having evidence is mainly theoretical.
Actually, you’re the one approaching it wrong. Why do you believe the science that tells us the earth has gone through multiple changes in temperature over millions of years, but choose to deny the very clear science that the current changes are caused by burning fossil fuels.
188
@Paul
Sorry, you have it wrong.
Yes, climate has varied in the past. Our understanding of those past climate changes is now fairly advanced. What we have learned is that in each case, the cause is changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases. In the past, those changes were natural and fairly slow. In the present, they are man-made and, geologically speaking, rapid.
Yes, anthropogenic climate change is "theoretical", in the sense that the physics has been understood for more than a century, but in the past several decades we have overwhelming observational evidence of it. When observations meet theory, the debate is over and it is time for action.
A scientist
329
@Paul The evidence for global warming is overwhelming at this point. Glaciers melting at a faster pace than ever recorded before, the 5 hottest years in recorded history have happened in the last 7 years, the sea ice around Alaska completely disappearing, the permafrost thawing, rising sea levels, storms with incredible amounts of rain (water vapor is one of the greenhouse gases that will cause us the most headaches) causing unprecedented flooding, etc.
Corporations being what they are, they'd rather just go along and keep making profits rather than pay attention to the science.
Your children and grandchildren will be dealing with the fallout from your denial.
As one scientist said, "At the beginning of every disaster movie, there is a scientist being ignored."
134
The neo-liberal solution -- markets -- hasn't worked so well so date. This author may have noticed the flooding, the melting and the tropical temperatures in regions formerly known as temperate. Greed does have constructive limits, in forming sane public policy.
Republicans might as well remain in the closet, if their chief goal is prevent themselves and their donors from taking losses in Exxon-Mobil. Besides, what would happen if the flights to Davos were grounded? How would our betters solve the world's problems?
8
If renewable energy was such a viable, cost effective option then why isn't it replacing natural gas? It's because it can't, not without subsidies and huge plots of land to allow for wind farms and solar farms. There is no major conspiracy. If utility companies could provide electricity to customers cheaply with renewable energy, they would do it and abandon fossil fuels in a heart beat. If investors calculated there is money to be made in investing in huge swaths of renewable energy, they would do it. The oil & gas industry can't block out global capital providers that seek to make money, they are not that powerful.
@Not 99pct, you're fighting a straw man. This article makes no claim that the oil and gas industry is conspiring to prevent customers from purchasing renewable energy. The author claims that there are high initial costs for making renewable energy viable and that those costs require subsidies to overcome. One might add that there are high indirect costs associated with carbon use that are not priced into carbon energy (i.e. carbon emissions). We don't need to resort to shadowy conspiracies to see that oil and gas companies have fought and will continue to fight against pricing those costs in through new laws, and that Republicans have abetted their efforts.
56
@Not 99pct
If you take into account the damage that fossil fuels do, which the market ignores, wind/solar are much cheaper. Roof top solar doesn’t take up land. Off shore wind farms are a thing.
Fossil fuel is being subsidized by society. Republicans and most corporate democrats are fine with that. Meanwhile, extinctions are happening and the global fever rises.
23
@Not 99pct I am sorry but RENEWABLE ENERGY IS replacing natural gas.
And coal.
Renewable energy accounted for 14.94% of the domestically produced electricity in 2016 in the United States. This proportion has grown from just 7.7% in 2001, and today in 2019 the % is even higher.
You ask "why" it isn't being replaced, but it is. It isn't going fast enough because the politicians don't want their extra income from the companies producing non-renewable energy lobbying because those companies don't want to lose their market shares and we all know how "democracy" works, most money, most power to set the agenda.
17
Climate change deniers include both Republicans and Democrats.
If this is a critical emergency, why does no political leader advocate the simplest action which is conservation and costs nothing?
Shouting "We Don't Want To Die" is easy and accomplishes nothing.
Any climate change activist who has not turned off their air conditioners, drastically reduced the use of heat in the winter, and drastically reduced their driving and flying only is not serious and committed.
4
@jck
I'm sorry, but individual virtue cannot prevent this global disaster. The matter requires internationally coordinated action and national energy policies.
Blaming air conditioners is either ludicrous or just more of the fossil fuel playbook. The billions the industry has spent corrupting the political discourse, buying public policy and deceiving the public wasn't to keep people running their air-conditioners.
27
@jck Most importantly of all; have they changed their way of eating to a more (or preferably entirely) vegetable diet? The easiest and fastest way to reach the international goals is if every meat eater on the planet just ate one third as much meat, and that change isn't even that big, hard to do or at any notable loss economically to anyone but the producers of meat. It would also give people longer and more productive, and healthy, lives.
3
@jrd
Advocating "internationally coordinated action and national energy policies" is easy especially when it requires no change or sacrifice in lifestyle.
Shouting "Global Disaster" and "We Don't Want To Die" in the comfort of your air conditioning while refusing to limit your auto and air travel is hypocritical.
1
From what I hear on PBS, Mitch McC is in control of what gets to the floor of the Senate. This matters because the House can talk and pass bills but nothing happens until Mitch says o.k. so from my little world, it seems we need to get rid of Mitch and his idol DT. Then we can proceed with saving the earth from ourselves.
396
I have been saying this for 3 years and have asked MANY newspapers to follow Mitch and they don’t. It’s not a headline for them. He’s the real problem always has been.
22
@kw, nurse
It's not clear climate change is caused by humans.
@Calleendeoliveira
The real problem is are the troglodytes in Kentucky who have sent McConnell to the senate 6 times, despite the fact he has done nothing for 99.99% of them, deep in his heart despises them, but has an "R" after his name. The state ranks near the bottom on almost every measure of human welfare but McConnell can read his patsies like a book. His great worry going into the 2020 election is not running against a competent Democrat, but being primaried by someone even more craven, cynical, and morally compromised than himself - and losing bigtime.
3
The Democrats should make this the biggest issue in their platform. Middle-aged people want their grandchildren to survive. Young people want to have a life. They will all vote for the Democrats when this sinks in.
164
@C.L.S.
Agree. The vast majority of Americans, Democrat or Republican, want a clean and safe environment. Democrats need to be very specific and clear about how Trump and his Republican Congress have assaulted the environment since inauguration. Americans have short memories... they need to be reminded, and for those who watch Fox News, they need to be enlightened.
11
@C.L.S. You're absolutely right. No other issue comes close in importance. The chaos and misery that are awaiting our descendants and has already begun, will make all other issues: health care, jobs, education, pursuit of happiness, etc. almost moot. The science of climate crisis tells us that even if we stopped our carbon emissions Now, they will keep increasing in the atmosphere for another thirty years before they begin to abate.
9
@C.L.S. and the democrats have made it clear that open borders and mass immigration will be a central platform of 2020. Adding to the population of the highest co2 producing population on earth (the US) is the best way to insure that we don't make progress on global warming. You cannot call yourself an environmentalist while advocating for mass immigration. They are incompatible. It's also a clear path to 4 more years of trump.
1
When will GOP believers in global warming come out? Easy answer. NEVER! The science on climate change is settled, but the politics isn't. The GOP is disingenuous when they deny the science, but let's be honest the Democrats are even more disingenuous when they deny the cost. Cap & Trade, carbon taxes, etc. are politically dead in the water. American voters simply don't want to pay more for energy. We & (the world) will continue to use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future no matter what happens. Maybe less but still in massive amounts. It's baked into our energy grid. It can't & won't be eliminated overnight. That will take decades at best. Even though our governments now subsidize clean-power sources, efficient cars, buildings, we continue to rip as much oil, coal & gas out of the ground as possible. And if our green policies mean there isn't a market for these fuels at home, then no matter: they will be exported instead. The US is extracting carbon & flowing it into the global energy system faster than ever before. For years we've tried to simultaneously reduce demand for fossil fuels while doing everything possible to increase the supply. More efficient engines enable more people to drive more cars over greater distances, triggering more road building, more trade & indeed more big suburban houses that take more energy to heat. Can we bring ourselves to prioritize renewables over cheap fuels, power, convenient goods & services? We all know the answer. Absolutely not.
9
@Ed Davis Maybe as more of these homes and there occupants are burned to the ground, swept away by floods and tidal surges or shattered by tornadoes more of us will come around to conclusion action is needed. We can pay for it now or we can pay for it later.
10
@Ed Davis. You do know that climate has always changed, right? Explain why Alaska used to be tropical. Perhaps you should be more skeptical of scientists who want their grants renewed.
1
I think you are speaking in geologic time frames. If you expect to be around for the next million or so years, then just do nothing. Otherwise, I suspect you will soon figure out, you need to move to higher ground - regardless of who is getting grants.
7
Giggling kids warning that the end times are upon us, unless!
I was a climate alarmist at their age. The earth's population was exceeding "carrying capacity," acid rain was killing all the lakes, the world was in peril.
We've been here before. Well, not WE we obviously. The earth has seen drastic climate change a dozen times in the last million years, in and out of ice ages. The last one had ice extending into what's now southern Wisconsin. One before that reached northeast Kansas.
So if I'm a skeptic today, it isn't that I don't believe humans are capable of affecting the climate; it's that the forces that have pushed the climate around, in drastic fashion, for a million years are still out there today. The latest warming is likely a normal cyclic event. Maybe it's being helped along a little by our negligence. Whatever the case, in another 1000 years (if not sooner), temperatures will begin to fade. The poles will fill with ice. Vast sheets of it will expand out from the poles. Oceans will recede.
And the kids. The kids will once again take up the cause, warning the rest of the world of certain calamity.
Honestly, you’re just flat out wrong about this being a “normal cyclic event.” If you look at the geological time scale of events for periods of cooling and warming corresponding with amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, it is incredibly obvious that since we started emitting massively in the late 1800’s we have been putting five thumbs on the scale. The acceleration of warming at current rates has never been seen on this planet before. Most likely by 2050 the equator will be unlivable. Tempering your expectations of the scale of the disaster is useless when thousands of acres of forests are burning and people in their cars and homes along with it. People need to do more sourced research instead of going with their gut and “what I was like at that age.” Maybe these kids are saying they don’t want to die because the threat is significantly larger than any faced before.
21
@smacc1 "Maybe it's being helped along a little by our negligence." Maybe it's being helped a whole lot. When I was young, we rarely had summer days in the 80's. Now, it seems like it's in the 90's half the year. In 50 years it will regularly be in the 100's. What then? Your common sense cannot replace actual knowledge. It's a wonder we're not still living in caves.
3
@smacc1
I suspect that you live in a place far from climate-change effects---in a comfortable home that's air-conditioned, not troubled by the rise of the sea, not dependent on glaciers for your water supply, not subject to punishing 100+ degree days when you step beyond A/C, etc. It's shrugging, complacent people like you who, collectively, allow our planet/society to descend into disaster.
1
Not long ago, I joined ‘Nextdoor’, an online group for neighborhoods. Naturally the subject of climate change came up in discussions.
I entered into a debate with some woman who devoutly did not believe in a warming planet. She explained that climate change was a myth because of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that plants (flora) would become more lush and verdant due to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and as far as she was concerned, climate change was a good thing.
Not only that, but because of the CO2 stimulation, in essence, it was a fallacy that destruction of the forests was harmful to the planet due to the lush atmospheric conditions that all plants would enjoy.
I now knew what the Republican narrative was. Take the science and bend it to your position.
I explained to her that this was incorrect. I explained what was really happening was an ‘intensified hydrologic cycle.’ Increased atmospheric warming was loading the atmosphere with water vapor leading to extreme weather events like more frequent and intense rainfall and flooding.
Needless to say, she stuck to her science, which I suppose is fine.
Republicans believe what they WANT to believe. They’ll twist the facts to suit their own narrative. They live in their own heads, in their own world, shut off from everyone else. And I’m sure all of this is reinforced by Fox News.
73
@PC Instead of "republicans" I believe it is a problem with "conservatives" in general. No matter what conservative, the foundation of their opinions are always "it was better in the good ol' days", "we have always done it that way, so obviously we should now and forever" and "My beliefs are of much more value than your actual scientific proof, at least I can back up my beliefs with fallacies and misinterpretations of reality".
6
@Daniel You expect me to believe, your science over my gut?
1
It’s not a climate closet so much as it is a fossil fuel closet. People who make billions on fossil fuels, hello Exxon, hello Koch Brothers, want to sell all they have. Unfortunately, US DoE says we have a 50 year supply of petroleum left in the ground and a century of coal (not accounting for growth). This means the GOP is stuck between climate denial and the needless catastrophe of running out of fuel. So being in favor of some forms of declining use of fossil fuel is the least of two evils. The top 5 states in wind generation are already red. Solar is similar though California leads. There will be no economic harm as we shift to transportation driven by solar, wind and geothermal, just the opposite. We make 17.1 million cars in North America each year lately. It will take 16 years at that rate just to replace every car now on the road. 160,000 gas stations need to be replaced by many more charging stations in parking lots. There’s more too. The people most against climate change discussion are exactly the ones who will profit from it. Read, “The Age of Sustainability.”
9
“We know this problem is real,” he said, or words to that effect. “We know we are going to have to do a deal with the Democrats. We are waiting for the fever to cool.”
Part of being a leader is actually leading. Denying an issue you know is 1) a fact and 2) important, because you're worried about your base shows you are not there to lead. Republican's could easily stand up and say "upon further review of the science it is now understood this threat is real, and I intend to work with business leaders to address this issue in a way that will continue to grow our economy while protecting the environment." The reason the base refuses to believe this issue is not because they doubt the science, but because it's something seen as an issue for Democrats. If Republicans came out and said they had a better way forward - even if it wasn't really something new - their base could laugh because they now "own the issue," and Democratic leaders in DC would vote for it because they actually do care.
The environment would win, businesses would win, and the Republican party could finally stop publicly denouncing established science. When will the base join the party? When the party stops lying to the base.
33
Of course, at least some of the republican politicians are aware that climate change is real, as it is already biting their (and our) behind, witness the marked increase in severity and frequency of natural disasters (droughts, floods, fire, you name it). And that American ingenuity may be able to cope and even solve the problem...once the will is there. Just look at what FDR did on account of the U.S. depression (1929 onwards) and WW II. Could it be that politicians have prostituted themselves to powerful corporations (i.e. oil), then 'obligated' to deny the obvious, climate change? Don't you think that our 'representatives' are more interested in keeping their miserable seats in congress, and are not, from their vantage point, telling us what must be done to save our hides?
6
Think of all the new jobs and wealth that could be created as we transition from fossil fuels to renewables. In 1900 one of the largest manufacturing industries was the production of buggy whips. Automobiles put that industry out of business. Immense wealth was created in that transition.
Come on you capitalists, get on board and make more money.
102
@Rich Pein
Fossil fuels still in the ground are assets on the balance sheets of major, international corporations. Think stock prices and CEO pay rates.
Those corporations own our elected officials -- and not just at the federal level. They are not about to walk away from those assets without a bloody fight.
A situation much different from that of buggy whips.
6
@Rich Pein The consequences of shifting from gas powered vehicles to electric alone would be challenging, because there are so many related jobs connected to the fossil fuel industry. The tens of thousands of mechanics alone would need retraining to work on electric cars, which actually need much less maintenance. The hundreds of thousands of jobs in retraining workers in the extraction and refining industries would be significant. The logistics of the transition are complex and affect workers first and foremost. These folks won't vote against their own interests unless there is a realistic plan.
1
@Rich Pein I think that’s a fake story about buggy whips. Capitalism is the cancer that had destroyed much of the nature on this planet. It’s a fairy tale. It’s lives are fairy tales. Wake up. The party’s over!
1
I was recently in western Ireland, near Mr. Trump's golf course. The club has petitioned the local government to construct a protective sea wall. The reason cited was rising ocean levels due to climate change. Perhaps recognizing an economic threat changes one's perspective.
18
When wealthy people living on the coasts begin selling their properties and moving inland and northward, that's when things are going to shift. I initially thought that was 10-15 years away, but now I think it's sooner. Wealth drives everything in this country. States on the Canadian border better gear up for a huge influx of migrants.
16
One thing that may have changed in recent years is that some Republicans in Congress likely want their presidential candidate to lose.
7
@Alan If you think the GOP actually want a socialist like Warren or Sanders to hold the WH I think you are gravely mistaken.
1
They'll come out when the delusional people in the Dems come out and agree that renewable energy can't provide the energy the US needs right now and their needs to be a realistic transition to renewable energy on a realistic timeline on a realistic budget. The GND does the opposite of this and makes people believe the delusion renewable energy can actually replace fossil fuels in the near term.
@Not 99pct
The Dems base their position on science and real economic achievement. Solar and wind energy are already bidding lower in cost than coal and other fossil fuels. It makes sense given that solar and wind energy are free, after you pay for those facilities.
If you factor in the high cost of the damage caused by climate change (like severe floods) and local air pollution (like asthma), the case for wind and solar only become stronger. Battery and other technologies address the need for electricity when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.
Fossil fuels would wither in a real competitive market, but Rebs (including Trump) put their thumbs on the scales in favor of the old dirty fuels
85
@Rich R Renewable energy, while getting cheaper, is reliant on over USD 6bn in subsidies to survive while fossil fuels get about 500mm in subsidies. Renewable energy produced about 500k BOE equivalent in energy in the US. The US produced 6bn BOE equivalent in energy in fossil fuels. It isn't even close. Renewable energy, right now is only a supplement, while natural gas is the base and will continue to be the base for a long time.
@Not 99pct
If you travel at all, you will immediately notice that the US is already far behind other nations in addressing climate change. In Wuhan, a city in China with only 10 million souls, there are wind vanes & solar panels on the street lights of the major roads. China already leads the world in the production of solar panels.
China and Norway have plug-in stations for electric vehicles everywhere. Tiny little Eidfjord, Norway, at the end of the beautiful Hardangerfjord, has a centrally located spot for electric car recharging!
Germany has vast areas of solar arrays & wind farms. Norway has a goal of eliminating fossil fuel-based cars by 2025. Britain, France, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, India & China have all set official targets for electric car sales & the banning of fossil fuel-based vehicles.
The U.S. is the outlier here.
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We are being faced with an existential threat. There is the possibility of human extinction. Could American ingenuity and American industry get the job done? No, it is too multifaceted. We are now discovering that the social, political, philosophical, religious and economic presuppositions we have believed to be "inherent truths" were built on geo ecological flaws.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
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Thanks for this necessary piece.
Noble stirrings are starting. The American Conservation Coalition launched in Florida last June, "dedicated to educating and empowering conservatives to re-engage on environmental conversations."
The ACC supports market-based approaches to combating the climate crisis - legitimate and, again, necessary.
Learn about the ACC here: http://bit.ly/2YFnvFG
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Supporting positive change of any kind is anathema to Republican thought. Unless others suffer, how could it possibly be good for them. They've got both Christianity and libertarianism backwards. Many species evolved through cooperation, not competition. The Republican’s political party isn’t one of them.
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Incapable of candor, self-awareness and honesty, the GOP uses the assiduous avoidance of these traits as a huge draw. Much like my neighbor whose golf-green-perfect lawn depends on a sprinkler system (we permanently disconnected ours upon buying our house) along with massive infusions of carcinogenic inorganic chemicals to make it "perfect." Try telling them that one is in active oncology and cannot be exposed to these chemicals, indicted in one's own cancer. Same with the GOP and its non-acceptance of manmade climate change. An inconvenient truth, indeed. Like the neighbors, all is washed away with a turn of the sprinkler switch and we'll be dead and embalmed with yet another round of toxic chemicals before the bill comes due...
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Republicans came up with the cap and trade system that successfully lowered sulphur dioxide emissions from power plants. It was their brief but shining moment of environmentalism. Never again has been their mantra ever since.
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RjW is correct that cap and trade represents a "shining moment of environmentalism". However it's not correct that "Republicans came up with the cape and trade system". That system was developed in 1967 by Ellison Burton and William Sanjour of the National Air Pollution Control Administration, predecessor to the EPA.
An introduction to this fascinating history is at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading#History
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@Dan
Thanks for that. I’ve heard it so many times that I just thought it was true. That or that they voted for it was what I confused it with.
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@RjW. Clean water and air acts both were passed during the Nixon administration. First earth day happened then as well. Don't let your republican hatred cloud your vision. You can't see facts that way.
There is a more simple explanation; the unifying principle of the Republican Party is subsidies for corporations. There is no subsidy they don't like. They don't know science and don't care to know, if the proposal involves a subsidy they are in favor; subsidies for the coal industry and for solar at the same time, as long as it's a subsidy they are fine with it.
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@PNBlanco
They do know the science. Exxon Mobile published reports in the late 1970's that urged their industry to clean up its act.
Democrats need to attack this corruption , and it's an important opportunity to call out the holier-than-thou deniers who espouse pro-"life" stands while all the while dismissing, ignoring, ridiculing or condemning all and any scientific information that concludes this is an international emergency.
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@Beverly
While "Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue," that didn't stop them from launching a nearly 40-year attack on climate science. For decades their strategy centered on disseminating false and confusing information to the public. This was explored in detail by Scientific American back in 2015.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
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@PNBlanco. Clinton worked with the republicans to get rid of "glass steagle" precipitating the financial crises. Obama bailed out banks and Wall Street ( and the fat cats kept their jobs, bonuses and tax breaks) while you lost your house and job and one guy went to jail. Everybody is a corporatist these days.
Perhaps they'll address climate change in a serious way when they've figured out a way to 1) make it seem like it's their idea, 2) blame Democrats for inaction over the course of the last 40 years, and 3) get more financial backing from the environmental community than they do from the Koch brothers.
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@syfredrick
It was their idea. Republicans came up with the cap and trade system that successfully lowered sulphuric dioxide emissions from power plants. It was their once brief but shining moment of environmentalism. Never again has been their mantra ever since.
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@syfredrick - When the Atlantic Ocean rises to the front door of Mar-a-Lago, then the GOP will suddenly declare a national emergency and award a no-bid, single source, cost-plus contract to some large corporate supporter, tasked with fixing everything … by taking things away from the 99%.
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@syfredrick They are not just failing to address climate change - they are actively blocking the solutions, e.g.
Massachusetts’ first offshore wind project has been delayed indefinitely by the federal government.
https://www.capeandislands.org/post/vineyard-wind-project-delayed-pending-federal-review#stream/0
"I believe that the Trump Administration has not dealt fairly with Vineyard Wind," Keating said. "It has instead chosen to call into question the entire future of renewable energy in this country."
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