If there are any climate deniers who truly don’t believe in
the human causes of global warming, I have compassion and respect for them. They
are not really the problem. The problem is the machine run by polluters who pay
lawmakers to hustle their talking points from “I’m not a scientist” to “I don’t
think the science is conclusive” to "I don’t believe there is any climate
change.” This is reminiscent of the tobacco industry of the eighties and
nineties who orchestrated a denial campaign by assembling it’s own cadre of
scientists, lawyers, and PR people with the express mission of pushing the
company line that there was no provable link between tobacco and
tobacco-related illness.
Eventually, Big Tobacco's pageant of feigned ignorance ran its course when they agreed to pay $246 billion to 46 participating states in an unprecedented
settlement to. Was their denial budget worth it? Perhaps it bought them a little
time. And now Big Pollution is at that very juncture of budgeting their denial
until the preponderance of evidence creates a gravity so great that the most venal climate
denier can’t escape.
Republicans have positioned themselves as the political
guardians of Big Pollution. There was nothing in the 2012 Republican Platform about
global warming. Talk about denial. In his acceptance speech at the 2012
Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney successfully used Barack Obama’s
commitment to fighting global warming as comic relief and the obliging
Obama-hating crowd that night rewarded Romney’s “joke” with rousing laughter
and applause.
If they had any sense of history, I would ask if Republicans
really want to be wrong about yet another issue. Bans to gay marriage are
falling like dominos in the states, to cite one example of conservative
misalignment. I am truly perplexed as to what inspires them to fight against what’s
right again and again. Do they really want to do nothing about global warming
forever or are they just providing cover until a groundswell forces Big
Pollution to become an unwilling partner in environmental reparations? Either way, they come off as bereft of conscience.