Charlie Pierce On Why The Gop Is Going Bat-Shittier Than Ever On Climate

[hatrack]

EDIT

It's been an interesting week in the climate wars. For example, the Green New Deal seems to have driven the Republicans as crazy as its primary proponent in the House does. Right up to the president*, the primary response has been to ooga-booga-death-panels! the whole notion. In El Paso, for example, the president*, because he doesn't know anything about anything, told his gathering of bot-minded fans that AOC plans to ban automobiles, airplanes, and cows. (We'll return to the cows later.)

Mitch McConnell has decided again to be a clever dick and put the proposal up to a vote, figuring that it somehow puts Democratic candidates in a bind. Tom Cotton, the bobble-throated slapdick from Arkansas, thinks the media is giving AOC a Stalinesque free ride on the monumental scandal best summed up as something-something-FAQ. Howard Schultz, the sole occupant of his own political universe, calls it "immoral." The denizens of the lower reaches of the conservative lint-trap are even more exercised.

Let's leave aside for a moment the fact that the idea of a GND is wildly popular among the people who will be voting for the next 40 years, so maybe McConnell isn't as much clever as he is a dick on this one. The GND forces on people two realities with which their 30 years of climate denial has managed to insulate them. First, the problem is so severe that it is going to require a massive national response even to mitigate the effects of the crisis which are affecting us now. (This is why the Pentagon has taken the crisis as an existential one.) Second, the denial argument itself is completely out of steam. This is why you're hearing so much from Republicans about how "innovation" and "entrepreneurship" are going to bail us out. Senator Ben Sasse is one of the leading illusionists on this front at the moment, as is Cory Gardner of Colorado, who faces a ticking doomsday clock on his re-election in 2020. Last Sunday, on Fox News via The Hill, Sasse said:

“What the U.S. needs to do is participate in a long-term conversation about how you get to innovation, and it's going to need to be a conversation again that doesn’t start with alarmism. But that starts with some discussion of the magnitude of the challenge, the global elements to it and how the U.S. shouldn't just do this as a feel-good measure but some sort of innovative proposal.”

A number of things jump out here. First of all, we may not have time for a "long-term conversation" about how we confront this impending catastrophe. Second, we already are losing pieces of Alaska and Louisiana, Miami turns into a lagoon with some regularity these days, and Sasse's home state is being battered by wild swings of extreme weather, so maybe a touch of alarmism is warranted. And last, I don't even know what that last sentence means, except that Sasse seems to be reiterating that we should all relax and talk about it some more, chilling until the next Ice Age. One thing I do know: we aren't going to laissez-faire our way out of it, no matter how hard Republicans pray to the Deregulation Fairy.

EDIT

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a26329716/green-new-deal-climate-change-denial-republicans/

[watoos]

1. One thing is for certain,

Democrats in the Senate need to be united in voting for this Green New Deal if McConnell brings it up for a vote.

I wish Speaker Pelosi was in charge but she isn't, c'mon Chuck, hitch up your pants and pull off a Pelosi, unite your members.