Let's Talk About the Weather

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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.