Gee, That's Too Bad - GQP Delegation Visit To COP-26 Undermined By Their Party's Continuing Idiocy

[hatrack]

A handful of Republican members of Congress have arrived at the UN climate talks in Glasgow in an attempt to portray the party as engaged on the climate crisis, with this message already badly undermined by colleagues back in the US who have downplayed and even dismissed the impacts of global heating during the summit. A delegation of five Republican lawmakers arrived at the talks, known as Cop26, on the weekend and will depart on Tuesday. Garret Graves, a Louisiana Republican, said that the politicians were “not going there just to drink” and will hold a number of meetings to stress a different approach to climate change than Joe Biden.

EDIT

But the tone has been markedly different from the bulk of elected Republicans back in the US, who have either ignored the landmark talks, which scientists say must deliver rapid cuts in planet-heating emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change around the world, or sought to dismiss its importance. Highlighting the dismissal of climate science that permeates the GOP unlike any other major political party around the world, Steve Scalise, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, said last week that “it gets warmer, it gets colder – that’s called Mother Nature”. Scalise added that “carbon emissions have been around from when before man walked the Earth … the idea that hurricanes or wildfires were caused in just the last few years is just fallacy.”

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Other Republicans attacked Biden’s attendance at the talks. Senator John Barrasso, of Wyoming, questioned the emissions of flying a “bloated US delegation” to Scotland while Senator John Kennedy, of Louisiana, said that Biden, his climate envoy John Kerry and “other Trotsky-like wokers” want to “buy natural gas and oil from other countries, and basically give countries that hate us more money, so they’ll have weapons to try to kill us”.

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Despite the calls for change from sections of the Republican party, it still has yet to put forward any sort of substantive plan that would deal with the climate crisis, nor set out how its focus on innovation and voluntary action will hit emissions reduction targets scientists say are urgently needed to avoid disastrous global heating. With this lacking, critics say the party’s gradual change in rhetoric is little more than a superficial rebrand to avoid alienating the growing number of American voters, battered by several years of worsening fires and floods, who say they are alarmed about the climate emergency.

Republicans also remain closely aligned to the fossil fuel industry, with a recent Congressional questioning of the oil and gas companies that knowingly caused dangerous global heating resulting in several GOP members apologizing to executives for the hearing and refraining from asking them about climate change.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/08/republicans-cop26-glasgow-un-summit-climate-talks

[Alexander Of Assyria]

1. Having republican fascists at climate change talks is like the devil at the Vatican.

And is there anyone more stupidly mealy mouthed than this John Kennedy asshat?

[Magoo48]

2. Actually, it was the perfect place fo them.

Republicans spread PR laden—greenwash lies, and misdirection. They kick the green can down the road.

COP26 was a PR event where world powers polished up the green can and then kicked it down the road while cheering themselves for doing something.

The only truth at COP26 was out on the streets.

[2naSalit]

3. +1

Same as it ever was.