Republicans on Climate Change
When he left the climate talks in Paris a few days ago, U.S. President Obama said: “I mean, you travel around Europe and you talk to leaders of governments and the opposition, and they are arguing about a whole bunch of things. One thing they’re not arguing about is whether the science of climate change is real and whether or not we’re going to have to do something about it.”
From this article: Proving him right, GOP leaders wasted no time in exposing their idiocy.
New Jersey governor and presidential candidate Chris Christie said Tuesday on MSNBC, “The climate has been changing forever, and it will always change and man will always contribute to it.” The same day, former Florida governor and fellow candidate Jeb Bush echoed Christie’s talking points, saying that the earth’s climate has “been changing forever.” He flippantly remarked, “I’m not sure I would have gone to the climate summit if I was (sic) president today.”
Jeb: I’ll let you slide on the incorrect verb use (“was” should have been “were” insofar as it’s the subjunctive mood, stating something contrary to fact).
I will point out, however, that this is one of the many, many reasons that your presidency will forever remain a contrary-to-fact conditional. Even if the American people had any affinity for you, which they don’t, they aren’t stupid enough to want to be led by a climate change denier. You people are standing on a tiny island that’s getting smaller every day.
Now, if this were a case of a legitimate scientific debate, say, one concerning string theory in physics, I’d have some sympathy (though I’d still be a bit bewildered why anyone could possibly care about the opinion of someone with no training in the subject). But this is a debate about the very legitimacy of science itself; those studying the subject say we have a serious and near-certain problem; you and the oil money behind you are saying the opposite. That just shameful.
My advice: to go anywhere in politics in the 21st Century, the very first thing you need to do is to stop holding onto the untenable. Once you accept that, you might explain it to the guy also on the debate stage (who has three times more support than you) that the Egyptian pyramids were not built to store grain.
