There are absolutely no Republicans in the House who believe in man-made climate change, and only a few in the Senate. Even though the recent National Climate Assessment documents significant effects caused by global warming that are already happening, Republicans are in denial. But with huge campaign contributions coming from the fossil fuel industry, I think the old maxim applies: it is impossible to convince someone of a fact when their paycheck depends on them refusing to believe it.
7 Comments
Amazing what “positive thinking” can’t really do! The brainwashing was entirely successful. I don’t mean to just “snark” here, but the talking points of these extremists are beyond rationality!
I know I’ll open myself up to a lot of criticism here but I have my own thoughts on this.
Climate change is real, and has been going on for 4 billion years give or take. We are contributing to these changes, just like mother nature through volcanoes, changes to the solar cycles and shifts in deep water currents have been doing more millenniums. Yes our CO2 emissions have increased, 7 billion people alone will increase them just breathing.
What I disagree with is how much the human race is effecting climate change and if we can’t get the emerging economies who are building coal fired plants at an astronomical rate to change, what if little effect will our policies have.
Ok let me have it.
I think we are having the wrong argument.
Is there anyone who doesn’t believe (other than fossil fuel companies) that it would be better if we could get our energy from renewable sources? Think of the benefits! Less pollution, less strip mining, less fracking, fewer wars for oil, less dependence on foreign sources of energy, less energy price volatility, more energy security, green jobs, and on and on. Less global warming could be considered to be just icing on the cake!
You point out that we need to get emerging economies to stop building coal-fired plants. Easy! Just get the price of renewable energy to drop below the price of coal-fired energy. It is almost there now; just needs a little push. That push could be as simple as stopping subsidizing oil companies. Even better would be a national campaign, like the one that we did to get a man on the moon in the 60s, to drive down the price of batteries, solar cells, wind turbines, tidal, etc.
The bottom line is it really doesn’t matter if climate change is man made or not. There are plenty of reasons to dump fossil fuels. (But there are plenty of reasons to believe it is man made).
Exactly IK. Ask not, what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country. Build a safer more sustainable tomorrow, today! But it has to be a goal of human kind, not just the US of A and other forward thinking countries.
Why not flip your question around PatriotSGT? instead of putting the onus on developing countries to adopt green tech, why not show them the way? (Oh, and make bucketloads of cash exporting US green technology, techniques, cars, trucks, aircraft, solar panels, power storage tech, and wind powered whatever to people following the curve.)
As IK pointed out, there are no downsides to getting off fossil fuels. We decrease our dependence on unstable regions, increase the health of our towns and states, give other countries a viable path to follow for getting away from energy czars like Putin, and if American businesses make a buck or two or three billion, isn’t that just gravy?
Think of it with almost anything else. Cell phones, the internet, cars, and just about any other ubiquitous widget started in one place and spread because they worked. Places adapted to them, not the other way around. The spread of Earth-friendly technology will be the same way, and the folks who figure them out first stand to benefit immensely both from the warm-and-fuzzy sense of accomplishment and do-gooding, but also financially.
But instead we’ll have the first argument of “is it really happening?” and China or Germany or Canada or whoever will beat us to the punch and profit because we’re too concerned with political grandstanding and engines that go VROOM. (PSGT, not saying that’s your argument, clearly it isn’t.)
1/4 of Americans don’t believe in man-made climate change. John Oliver put that another way on his show last night: “1/4 of Americans are wrong about something.” But what’s worse than that is they won’t even consider the benefits of getting off fossil fuels.
Sounds like a great idea THATGUY, a win win for us.
China’s side of the emissions argument is that, each Chinese citizen should be allowed to pollute exactly as much as each citizen of every other country AND use as much energy as each citizen of every other country.