Folks, it’s getting scary out
there. Everywhere you look,
the climate is acting up.
The first 10 months of 2010
have been the hottest on record
for the planet, tying with 1998.
We’ve had record temperatures
all around the U.S. this year, as
well as some record floods,
according to NASA and
NOAA. Summer global land
temperatures were the highest
ever recorded.
Record wildfires destroyed
20 percent of Russia’s agricultural
crops; record cold
destroyed 20 percent of
Mongolia’s livestock; and,
record floods displaced millions
of people in China,
Pakistan, and India.
An iceberg four times the
size of Manhattan recently
broke off of the Greenland Ice
Sheet. Eastern Canada’s oil
rigs may have to be shut down
and moved to prevent more
Deepwater Horizons.
Thousands of the world’s
leading climate scientists have
long been telling us that we
need to reduce our emissions
of greenhouse gases before we
create a climate disaster which
might take the human race
hundreds or thousands of years
to recover from, if ever.
Within the past year, scientific
organizations representing
over 10 million scientists
implored the Senate to take
action on climate control.
But the politicians don’t
seem to be listening. Senate
Republicans have repeatedly
blocked the Democrats’ somewhat
anemic attempts to pass
climate change legislation,
even when the Democrats
watered the legislation down to
suit Republican objections.
A 2003 Pentagon report, ” An
Abrupt Climate Change
Scenario and Its Implications
for United States National
Security,” found that that
abrupt climate change could be
a bigger national security
threat than terrorism.
For a party that is supposed
to be the standard bearer on
national security, the
Republicans haven’t been paying
attention. They pretend
that there is a significant
debate on the impact of manmade
global warming,
although 97 percent of leading
climate scientists agree that
immediately addressing climate
change is critical, as do
the National Academies of
Sciences of the U.S. and 14
other countries.
Republican office holders
who once saw the light have
either been defeated by Tea
Party activists or are descending
into darkness. Rep. Mike
Kirk (R.IL), who voted last
year for cap-and-trade legislation
to curb carbon dioxide
emission, says he now opposes
it. Sen. John McCain, R. Az.,
another former cap-an-trade
supporter now opposes it also..
Incumbent Pennsylvania
Senator Pat Toomey opposes
the EPA’s proposed finding
that CO2 is a pollutant that
should be regulated under the
Clean Air Act, although it was
the conservative U.S. Supreme
Court that found it should be
regulated under the act.
One Republican who got it
right (“we must act now to mitigate
the impact of global
warming pollution”) ,Rep.
Mike Castle of Delaware, was
defeated in the Senate primary
by Tea Party activist Christine
O’Donnell.
Conservative Republican
Representative Bob Iglis
recently blasted the GOP for its
blind eye to climate change
issues. He testified at a hearing
that the Chinese, who are
steadily developing technology
to deal with climate change,
“plan on eating our lunch in
this next century.”
Alluding the fact that 98 percent
of climate scientists agree
that human-made climate
change is real and about to
cause a catastrophe, Iglis
warned that the U.S. might
wake up in a climate crisis one
day and say “‘geez, this didn’t
work very for us. The two doctors
didn’t turn out to be so
right. [The other] 98 might
have been the ones to listen
to.'” Iglis was defeated by a
tea party activist.
Things are so bad that
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Cynthia Tucker of The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
recently blogged: “The GOP
is now a party of know-nothing
flat-earthers.” This might be
laughable if we weren’t talking
about the possible destruction
of the Earth as we know it.
Will Republicans wake up in
time? I seriously doubt it. The
Republican Party has become a
one-trick pony. They oppose
any meaningful regulation of
big business or pollution as a
‘tax’ that will cost jobs. it.
They have prevented meaningful
action on climate change in
the U.S. and worldwide for
over a decade.
The Republicans pretend not
to notice that the air we
breathe, the water we drink,
the food that we eat and the
land it is grown on is becoming
dangerously polluted, as is the
entire atmosphere surrounding
the Earth.
They have their heads so far
in the sand on global warming,
climate change and energy policy
that perhaps they should
use the ostrich as their party
symbol and not the elephant.
Any questions concerns,
responses or comments about
this editorial can be emailed
directly to the author at
[email protected] or
[email protected].