Republicans And Other Fools Keep Fiddling While the U.S., Europe, Africa and China burn
Record busting, boiling temperatures around the world, rising sea levels, massive rainfall and flooding, wildfires and suffocating smoke from Canada to the Greek island of Rhodes while in Algeria, wildfires killed 34 people in Algeria including 10 soldiers.
It is dystopian and it’s real and the Republicans in Congress are playing the proverbial ostrich, burying its collective head in the sand or better yet, those monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.
In response to the latest Republican plan, Rep. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was simply stating the obvious in a recent tweet, “Climate change is real. In places all over the world, you don’t even have to turn on the news to see it — you can just look out your window.”
Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, tweeted a poster with the words “House Republicans’ “let the world burn” Interior appropriations bill is aggressively anti-environment + pro-pollution. It’s a non-starter.”
The poster includes recent headlines as one from NPR which reported, “some of the hottest place in the U.S. may see their hottest day ever.”
From Forbes, “July 4 was Earth’s hotted day in over 100,000 years, breaking record for 2nd day in a row.”
The N.Y. Times noted “Extreme heat: Phoenix breaks record with 19 consecutive days 110 degrees or higher.”
And CNN reported “The planet saw its hottest day on record this week. It’s a record that will be broken again and again.”
A new study by World Weather Attribution, an international group of scientists who measure how much climate change influences extreme weather events, shows that climate change has played an “overwhelming” role in the heatwaves this month and that European and North American temperatures “would have been virtually impossible without the effects of climate change.”
The heat has severely effected human health, while it has caused large-scale crop damage and livestock losses, with U.S. corn and soybean crops, Mexican cattle, southern European olives as well as Chinese cotton all severely affected, according to the World Weather Attribution team.
The scientists estimated that prolonged periods of extreme heat were likely to hit every two to five years if average global temperatures rise 2C above pre-industrial levels. Average temperatures are currently estimated to have risen more than 1.1C.
“As long as we keep burning fossil fuels we will see more and more of these extremes,” said Friederike Otto, a scientist with the Grantham Institute for Climate Change in London. “I don’t think there’s any stronger evidence that any science has ever presented for a scientific question.”
A major heatwave is sweeping across North Africa, with temperatures of 49 Celsius (120 Fahrenheit) recorded in some cities in neighboring Tunisia. In Tunisia, wildfires swept through the border town of Melloula. Fires that had begun in mountainous areas had reached some people’s homes in the town and forced hundreds of families to flee.
More than 100 people have died this summer in Mexico of heat-related causes, according to the national health secretary. Last summer, around 61,000 people died across Europe because of heat waves, according to another recent study.
World Weather Attribution said that in the U.S., temperatures in Phoenix have reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly 43 Celsius, or higher for more than 20 days in a row. Many places in southern Europe are experiencing record-breaking, triple-digit temperatures. A remote township in Xinjiang, China, hit 126 degrees, breaking the national record.
The Climate team at the non-profit, Corporate Accountability program reported that just 100 fossil fuel corporations are responsible for 71 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“And those corporations are doing everything in their power to continue polluting and extracting,” said a statement from The Climate Team. “Big Polluters and their industry trade groups have been watering down promising policies, promoting half-measures, and pushing false solutions. They fund junk science to sow doubt and confusion about the reality of the climate crisis. And they fund politicians who stonewall climate policy for them.”
The backlash to climate policies is gaining steam in the U.S. as well as in Western Europe. German policymakers have been more aligned with green objectives than anywhere else in Europe. Yet popular pressure in Germany and other nations is forcing governments to curtail measures designed to quickly progress toward net-zero carbon emissions.
Nothing very earth shattering there. One might think that with all the obvious environmental sturm und drang that there would be little room for disagreement about the oncoming climate change tornado. And that there would be bi-partisan agreements to act.
Don’t say that to these blockheads.
Someone calling himself @NooYawkahMan, responded to Warren.
“Yeah.. hi….Pocahontas?,” tweeted @NooYawkahMan. “It’s called W-E-A-T-H-E-R. Every few eons or so the planet, aka Mother Nature, ADJUSTS the weather patterns to correct and adjust itself. It has NOTHING to do with “man-made” pollution.”
@hhussein_nyc tweeted his observations.
“Biggest fraud ever masterminded by the elite to get even richer!” @hhusesin_nyc tweeted.
And then there were the pithy comments by ⚒The DC Hammer⚒ with the twitter handle of @REALdcHAMMER.
“The more you try to convince us its real, the less we believe you,” @REALdcHAMMER tweeted.
TurtlePower98 tweeting @sstaedtler98 has it figured out.
“This is called a mantra. Say it over and over and you and others will believe it even when it is overtly false and cannot accurately be objectively verified. This should be classified as a new religion. Because it is. The Climate Cult,” TurtlePower98 tweeted.
So who are you going to believe? Will it be the scientists at World Weather Attribution or will it be TurtlePower98, NooYawkahMan,hhusesin_nyc and REALdcHAMMER?
Want more proof of the lunatics running the asylum? Most Republicans no longer call climate change a hoax but they still won’t agree to the solution that is cited by scientists around the world, which is simply to cut emissions.
The Republicans have their own deranged solutions: Increase fossil fuel, oil and gas emissions, boost oil and natural gas drilling, emasculate environmental protections and plant 1 trillion trees, that’s trillion with a “T.”
In a column in Monday’s Washington Post, Henry Olsen had this sobering comment.
“If proponents of climate policies thought this year’s scorching summer temperatures and extreme weather events would propel the world to embrace rapid action to lower greenhouse gas emissions, they were sorely mistaken,” Olsen wrote. “If there is to be any hope that governments might address this issue, they will need a new strategy.”
In the U.S., Republicans say that economic growth is more important than climate policy. Olsen said it is not surprising that poor or developing countries like India or Indonesia worry more about their economies than the climate. But it is counterproductive in the world’s largest nations, like the U.S. and China.
“But it’s also true of the economic powerhouse of China, which — despite its large investments in renewable energy — is still dramatically increasing approvals for coal-fired electricity plants,” Olsen wrote.
There is no disagreement among reputable scientists that heat-trapping gases released from the combustion of fossil fuels are pushing up global temperatures, upending weather patterns around the globe and endangering animal species.
In the U.S., Democrats and environmental advocates have called for government action to force emissions reductions. To Republicans, the idea is a poisonous non-starter.
The latest GOP claim is that climate change can be stopped or limited without restricting American-produced energy that comes from burning oil, coal and gas, and the resulting emissions that feed climate change. The solution, the GOP says, is to plant a trillion trees, on land roughly the size of the continental United States.
The idea of planting a trillion trees flows from a 2019 study that suggested that planting trees to suck up heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could be one of the most effective ways to fight climate change. The idea has drawn support from major conservation groups, and from trump, although as president he told Americans that the earth will suddenly just cool down by itself, miraculously.
At the same time, Republicans have pushed for expanded energy production. But as Lena Moffit, executive director of Evergreen Action, an environmental group that promotes urgent action, said, “you cannot say you are committed to putting out the house fire while you pour more gasoline on it.”
The Republican tree planters fail to note that the authors of the original study have clarified that planting trees does not eliminate “the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
The issue is moot for far right Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., who leads the uber right wing House Freedom Caucus. Last week, Perry grilled U.S. climate envoy John Kerry before Kerry’s trip to discuss climate change with Chinese officials. Perry accused Kerry of drumming up a “problem that doesn’t exist” in global warming. Kerry asked Perry why the world’s scientists and the 195 global governments behind the Paris climate accord would make up global warming. Perry responded, “Because they’re grifting, like you are.”
Environmental groups have been uniformly against the Republican plans.
“Instead of doubling down on critical investments to protect communities, lower emissions, safeguard biodiversity, and clean up pollution, House Republicans have done the opposite,” said Raúl García, vice president of policy and legislation for Earthjustice.
The GOP bill would cut $7.8 billion in funding for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund which is designed to to help marginalized and disadvantaged populations fight climate change in their communities.
The bill also would cut $1.4 billion specifically meant to address environmental health impacts in underserved communities that predominately include communities of color and those of low-income.
The bill would give energy companies a special gift by speeding up the permitting processes for new energy projects; it would severely defund the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “to a historic low while jeopardizing clean air and clean water”; and would eliminate endangered species protections, García wrote.
The bill additionally would block clean energy development while opening more public lands and waters to dirty fossil fuel and mining projects. Funding for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service overall would be cut by $236 million below FY 23 levels.
Instead of listening to lunatics like trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Color., and all the rest, we should pay attention to lawmakers like Chellie Pingree, Jan Schakowsky and Pramila Jayapal. They are not exactly household names but they have some positive ideas on the environment.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., is co-sponsoring a bill “to protect the fundamental rights of the nation’s children given the accelerating human-caused climate crisis.”
The proposed bill “recognizes that the current climate crisis disproportionately affects the health, economic opportunity, and fundamental rights of children, and demands that the United States develop a national, science-based, and just climate recovery plan to meet necessary emissions reduction targets.”
The act requires creation of a climate recovery plan that will put the U.S. on a path toward reducing global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels necessary to uphold children’s fundamental rights.
“Young people have the right to be angry with a world that hasn’t protected our planet for their generation and future generations,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.
The Children’s Fundamental Rights and Climate Recovery resolution has 64 co-sponsors in the House and 13 in the Senate.