Today's Republican politicians laugh at climate-change concern. Tomorrow's won't -- or at least had better not, not if they want to win votes. From today's Politico:
You wouldn’t know it from listening to President Bush or most GOP congressional leaders, but a lot of smart Republican thinkers are coming to the same conclusion as [newly green Rep. Bob] Inglis.The changing politics of global warming will be a useful gauge to measure change in Washington. Two questions loom.
The first is how Republicans will reposition themselves for a post-Bush era in which it appears that many ascendant issues — the environment and health care especially — are historically favorable terrain for Democrats.
The second is whether even powerful shifts in public opinion, as have clearly taken place on global warming, can force action in a Congress where partisan stalemate has been the operating mode on most difficult issues for over a decade.
Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia has said his top goal for his remaining days in office is passing legislation to combat global warming.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is warning that Republicans will get whacked in swing suburban areas if they keep acting like global warming does not exist.
And Ken Mehlman, the former top Bush strategist and one of the more innovative minds in GOP politics today, has been telling anyone who will listen that Republicans risk losing young voters if they do not seriously deal with the issue.
Last fall, I heard the former top Bush political adviser Matthew Dowd tell an Austin audience that environmentalism was going to be a major issue in US politics in years to come. It sounded weird to hear him say that, though I was certainly encouraged. It doesn't sound so strange anymore. Good.
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...his top goal for his remaining days in office is passing legislation to combat global warming...
One of two things are possible here:
a) the politicans are just lying and are just giving lip service, or b) they are serious about cutting carbon emmisions, and we will enter a new dark age and the economy will actuall shrink
Chemistry reality check: carbon is a necessary by product of burning all fossil fuels. All.
What an incredible waste of time, money and mental energy. The global warming hoax and the damage done in fighting it may yet prove to be the greatest disaster of the 21st century. I've got no problem with level-headed environmentalism and crunchy concerns: clean air, clean water, alternative energy, conservation, cruelty-free meat, etc etc. But the idea that we're causing global warming and that, even if we were, it's uniformly bad, and, even if it were, we could somehow reverse it through our own actions is nuts.
Query: Why am I not terribly concerned about global warming?
Answer: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/opinion/24caldiera.html
Even if political realities make meaningful CO2 emissions reductions impossible, a backup plan exists. (No, it's not perfect, but an emissions-reduction strategy wouldn't exactly be a picnic either.)
I am a GOP ward leader, and infrequent local amateur conservative pundit. I also recently installed a wood-burning stove 'cause oil is so darned expensive, and it's easy for me to find free wood. So long as I burn some fossil fuels with the chainsaw. I also do a fair amount of other fairly crunchy things.
While mingling with some lefty types at the polls on election day I discovered that incanting the phrase "environmentally responisble Republican" causes a cognitive disconnect to many people. Eventually, perhaps, it won't be so strange.
It's not that hard to keep the American Democrat party from demogogueing the environmental issue. This is indeed one of Gingrich's new hobby-horses, too.
In fact, there's an opportunity for the GOP to *own* the issue. Voters like trees and open space. But they're scared and annoyed by the alarmists.
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