GOPers Finally Waking Up To Global Warming
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Environment, RepublicansShaun Mullen points to a growing trend among Republicans, brought about by the spectre of permanent minority status.
A politician knows he has a problem when his own children warn him that they might vote against him.That is what happened to Representative Bob Inglis of South Carolina, who like President Bush and most of his Republican peers has been skeptical about global warming despite mounting evidence that the planet is in crisis because of rising carbon dioxide levels and temperatures from greenhouse gases and other substantially man-made factors.
Inglis learned that the political winds might be shifting not on Capitol Hill but back home when his eldest son, Robert Jr., 22, told him that he’d better “clean up his act on the environment.”
Me, I’ve always been baffled at the GOP’s skepticism about global warming. Well, not baffled, but disappointed by the lack of consistency. Because their “firepower and free markets” philosophy is very much faith based, and yet they reject the huge, flashing signs that global warming is real on the other hand?
And I’d argue that our reliance on fossil fuels has been a large reason why we find ourselves in this War on Terrorism. So if we treat our environmental issues like they’re national defense issues and have another space race to find sustainable green technologies, maybe we kill two birds with one stone? Maybe billions that go to creating bigger and badder bombs can be put to better use?
Here’s the thing, I think it’s pretty clear that the only way we get 100% screwed is if global warming exists and we don’t do anything about it. There won’t be any free markets at that point. If we address it and it doesn’t exist, the worst that can happen is we go into a massive global recession, but have sustainable green technologies that wean us off of fossil fuels. The recession part would suck, but the other option is complete destruction of our planet. I know which one I’m in favor of.
In any event, it’s nice to see that some in the GOP are opening their eyes to what’s going on. Let’s hope more wake up soon.
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 and is filed under Environment, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 11th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Great article.
I keep using this example to sceptics - if you had a threat that your house may burn down, even if the reason was only suspicion, you would take action instead of losing sleep. Many aren’t losing sleep yet because the global warming threat hasn’t hit them close enough to home.
Ahh - naive self-centered humans….
November 11th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Another example, if you had the choice of losing your rights, private property, face oppressive global tax and economic deterioration of your country or that of falling in lockstep with the media, corporate and UN hard sell on the questionable “science” of manmade global warming, would you pause to consider the motives? Conservation is a must do, but creating global tax, dismantleing our water systems, locking up our resources to create shortages, transferring private property to the government(via land trusts, regulation and wilderness bills) and trying to create the fear of God in the citizenry is overkill.
There is more to the theory of manmade global warming than we are led to believe and it may have something to do with cash and control.
November 11th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I have a real problem with global warming alarmists, not because I think that global warming is nonsense, but because I think it’s shifting attention away from other vitally important environmental issues.
For example, we never seem to hear about the quality of air and water on our planet. We’re more concerned about the temperature and sea levels. Global Warming is something that will most likely be a problem for our descendants many generations down. We shouldn’t ignore it, obviously, but we should also concentrate on the other environmental hazards which have a more direct effect on us in the present day.
When people talk about Global Warming like it’s an imminent end-of-mankind event that will get truly serious within 20 years, I tend to get annoyed. We need clean air, clean water and healthier methods of agriculture and food production just as much as a less-rapidly warming global climate.
November 11th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Yes, Dalene, the black helicopters are coming soon.