From Houston, Submerged In 2017, Chronicle Editorial Lays Into John Cornyn's Bullshit Climate Tweets

[hatrack]

EDIT

Yet despite such enormous economic and human stakes in Texas, Cornyn has offered mostly silence with occasional sides of skepticism. Two tweets sent by the senator earlier this week highlight his lack of leadership. When CBS News announced it would no longer allow guests to argue that climate change is not real, he offered a Sphinx-like rebuttal on Twitter: “Science is not static.” Well of course, scientific understanding evolves. Our understanding of climate change will, too. But given Cornyn’s career-long refusal to back any meaningful response to climate change, his comment is mere casuistry.

Cornyn also used Twitter to mock a New York Times column stating, “Nothing else measures up to the rising toll and enormous dangers of climate change.” Our senator retweeted the piece with a single word of commentary: “Really.” He went on to argue other crises ranked ahead of climate worries in 2018, from North Korean nukes to Iranian missiles to the opioid epidemic. Fair arguments, in terms of subjectivity.

But we can’t ignore how Cornyn’s tweets on climate change fit so cleanly into his record of silence, sprinkled with skepticism. He has for years acknowledged the reality of climate change. Even as early as 2014, he conceded human activity was warming the planet dangerously. Many in his party were slower to acknowledge even this much.

Where he has fallen so unconscionably short is in his insistence that whatever its effects, the proper remedy to climate change is within the purview of private industry, or if regulation is ever needed, through state laws. After all, as he wrote in an 2015 op-ed, private-sector ingenuity has helped address previous environmental threats. Translation: Congress needn’t be bothered. What a dereliction of duty. He’s hardly alone among Republican leaders, but for the senior senator from Texas, the energy capital of the world and with a coastline especially vulnerable to climate change, it’s a devastating shortcoming.

EDIT

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/While-climate-change-hits-Texas-Cornyn-tweets-13504222.php

[mountain grammy]

1. K&R