Gail Collins has a great piece about climate change in the Times today (click here to go to it)
She says:
There was a time, children, when the parties worked together on
climate-change issues. No more. Only 3 percent of current Republican
members of Congress have been willing to go on record as accepting the
fact that people are causing global warming. That, at least, was the
calculation by PolitiFact, which found a grand total of eight Republican
nondeniers in the House and Senate. That includes Representative
Michael Grimm of New York, who while laudably open-minded on this
subject, is also under indictment for perjury and tax fraud. So we may
be pushing 2 percent in January......In Congress, Republican environmentalists appear to be terrified of what
should be the most basic environmental issue possible. Whitehouse
blames the Supreme Court’s decisions on campaign finance, which gave the
energy barons carte blanche when it comes to spending on election
campaigns. It’s certainly true that there’s no way to tick off
megadonors like the fabled Koch brothers faster than to suggest the
globe is warming.
So, between the externalities and the political failures, Louisiana, Florida, and other areas are seeping away.
Some of the comments on this article are fascinating. One person writes: "Gail, that seawater seeping up from the drainage system is actually a visual trick perpetrated by the Liberal media to terrify us" and another: "Miami like New Orleans, Norfolk Va were built on swamp land that was drained. So it is just about mother nature reclaiming land that never should have been built upon"
ReplyDeleteIt is a little shocking to me that because of agendas and donations there is a denial that humans have an adverse and irreversible effect on our environment. Why is it that only recently global warming has been associated with a party, and not recognized as an issue that effects us all? When donations are attached to strings then money becomes the biggest political motivator rather than the well-being of our citizens, but it seems like there is no alternative.