Tell 37 Dead In Kentucky Floods That There Is No Climate Change
The application for the card-carrying, right wing nut job asks the applicant if he or she agrees with the following principle tenets:
Climate change is a hoax, humans are not responsible.
Life begins at conception.
Creationism is fact, evolution is fantasy, and we must be proud of our Christian heritage, the only true heritage.
Tump really won in 2020.
The Jan. 6, 2021, uprising was no big deal and was “legitimate political discourse.” Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.
Being a member of the LGBTQ community is a sin against god.
White European culture and racial superiority is the bedrock of our nation and Democrats are trying to flood us and take us over with immigrants.
Sex is determined at birth and can’t change.
The government is trying to take away our guns.
The “Deep State” is running the government.
Whoops, my bad, these were the questions for the card carrying run of the mill Republican. But the one that troubles me most is the widespread belief among Republicans that climate change is a hoax and that humans are not responsible for the ongoing catastrophes. There is room for debate to argue that the cost to fix climate change is too much for the economy to bear; but to say that climate change is a hoax is nothing less than insanity.
Yet that is the message of an ongoing effort by Republicans to frame climate science into another part of the “woke” culture wars. The battle against climate change is going on numerous fronts. Climate change deniers won a major volley last month when the U.S. Supreme Court limited the Environmental Protection agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions.
The latest effort in the Republican battle to halt spending to limit climate change comes at a moment when Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W. Va., and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have agreed to support the most ambitious climate action ever taken by Congress, a plan that could reduce air pollution and save up to 3,900 lives per year by 2030, according to a study from the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation. The bill includes spending $369 billion over 10 years to address climate change, close tax loopholes and put a lid on the rate of increase in the cost of prescription medication.
The latest anti-climate science efforts are being led by an organization of conservative Republicans who are working to shape national policy against efforts to reduce greenhouse gases by cutting funds to companies that are trying to act to stem climate change. The focus of the Republican campaign is that efforts to reduce emissions are a threat to employment and revenue. They don’t mention that climate change is causing extreme weather that has been wreaking havoc and costing many lives and billions in recovery and rebuilding around the country.
A N.Y. Times investigation showed that nearly two dozen Republican state treasurers around the country “are working to thwart climate action on state and federal levels, fighting regulations that would make clear the economic risks posed by a warming world, lobbying against climate-minded nominees to key federal posts and using the tax dollars they control to punish companies that want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
One example cited by the Times involved Riley Moore, the treasurer of West Virginia, who announced that several major banks including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo would be barred from government contracts with because they are reducing their investments in coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.
“The climate has been changing in the world since Earth was created,” Moore is quoted in the Times story. “Whether these greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to the warming of the globe, I’m not sure I necessarily agree with that.”
Moore’s comments fly in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus that the continued burning of oil, gas and coal are causing planetary catastrophe that will continue unabated.
Other key findings in the Times story include:
The treasurers of Louisiana and Arkansas have withdrawn more than $700 million out of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, over objections that the firm is too focused on environmental issues. The treasurers of Utah and Idaho are pressuring the private sector to drop climate action and other causes they label as “woke.”
Treasurers from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Oklahoma have enlisted in a larger campaign to block nominations of federal regulators “who wanted to require that banks, funds and companies disclose the financial risks posed by a warming planet.”
The campaign is being guided by the State Financial Officers Foundation, a conservative Republican group based in Shawnee, Kan. The foundation has been working other groups with ties to the fossil fuel industry, including the Heartland Institute, a conservative and libertarian public policy think tank that is one of the nation’s leading promoters of climate change denial. The institute also is known for rejecting the scientific consensus on the negative health impacts of smoking. Also helping in the campaign is the conservative Heritage Foundation, that is heavily funded by oil billionaires Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch.
Also on board to help strategic planning is CRC Advisors, a Virginia-based public relations firm, known for working with right-wing clients, as well as fossil fuel companies such as Chevron. CRC was founded in 1989 and it became prominent in 2004 through its campaign with the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” organized by Republicans to cast doubt on Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s war record.
The CRC president is Greg Mueller, a climate science denier who has tweeted favorably about another climate science denier, Richard Lindzen, who has said that claims of warming are “nonsense,” “irrational, and “lead us down false path.” Mueller also has close ties to Leonard Leo, the vice president of the right wing, Federalist Society that has worked with the Kochs to support conservative nominees to the Supreme Court. In September 2017, CRC purchased The Polling Company, a public opinion company founded by former trump campaign manager and White House Advisor Kellyanne Conway.
The leadership team of the State Financial Officers Foundation includes state treasurers of Republican states including Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Utah, Louisiana and Kentucky. Alumni include treasurers and attorneys general from other deep red states including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Washington, Wyoming and the only blue state of New Jersey, represented by Ford Scudder, who was acting treasurer under former Republican Gov. Chris Christie.
The national advisory committee includes Adam Andrzejewski, an author and writer for RealClear Politics, a right wing, trump supporting publication; and John Ashcroft, a former Missouri governor and U.S. Senator and attorney general under President George W. Bush.
Also on the committee is Rep. Ron Estes, R-Kan., who is a former Kansas treasurer. Estes was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the U.S. Supreme Court contesting trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Another member is Andrew Puzder, the former chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants, parent company of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. As a lawyer, Puzder was heavily involved in the anti-abortion movement. His nomination by trump to serve Secretary of Labor was withdrawn because of a lack of votes for his confirmation. Puzder contributed $332,000 to trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and was a delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention and as the chairman of the Platform Committee’s “Restoring the American Dream” sub-committee on the economy, job creation, and the debt.
The final member is Jonathan Williams, the chief economist and executive vice president of policy at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative advisory group.
The perverse crusade to block spending on climate change programs comes at a time when parts of the nation have been enduring powerful hurricanes, seemingly endless droughts, sprawling wildfires and torrential rainstorms that have caused recently deadly flooding in St. Louis and eastern Kentucky.
In a recent assessment of the current state of climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted that as the planet grows warmer, more and potentially harsher events await.
“We will experience extreme events that are unprecedented, either in magnitude, frequency, timing or location,” the panel wrote. “The frequency of these unprecedented extreme events will rise with increasing global warming.”