It is 60 degrees on December 18th in New York City. I'm hardly relieved I didn't have to bundle up my daughter and trudge with her through ice and now to go see "The Nutcracker" today. The temperature is terrifying. I want to crack some sense into the nuts who tell us there's nothing to worry about. Ozone, schmozone. Just enjoy the balmy weather.
Bush won't even use the term "global warming." He occasionally makes reference to the world's "climate change." Conservative politicians and pundits chalk up global warming to the next liberal bully pulpit, a rehash of "political correctness" or outcries from the "feminazis."
I don't understand why Christian Conservatives aren't gloating about global warming like they do the AIDS epidemic. Why aren't they warning that global warming will kill all the sinners and usher in the second coming of Christ? It's a much more convincing harbinger of apocalypse.
Here's why.
Conservative columnist Debra J. Saunders, writing in TownHall.com, the Heritage Foundation's self-described "first conservative web community," says: "Global warming has become so politicized that scientists must believe in it. If they predict dire consequences, they win praise from true believers and grants for their important research. Scientists who question the prophecies of doom can expect to be marginalized."
In other words, the landslide of scientific evidence which proves we are at imminent risk of more frequent and more devastating tsunamis and hurricanes and the depletion of the ozone layer are hired guns, front men, profiting off of junk science. A National Review article called "Gorey Truths: 25 Inconvenient Truths for Al Gore," says that Gore twists the facts. "Record temperatures--hot and cold--are set every day around the world; that's the nature of records," the National Review explains. As for tornadoes, "records for numbers of tornadoes are set because we can now record more of the smaller tornadoes," just an outcome of technological progress. Furthermore, the increasing occurrence of mega-hurricanes and tsunamis has nothing to do with climate temperature. And polar bears are definitely not going extinct.
Pat Buchanan says that liberal politicians who buy into global warming occupy the "Chicken Little Chair of American Politics." He's convinced: "Their goal is power; their ambition is to take control of the destiny of nations in the name of preserving and exalting their goddess: Mother Earth."
The only way to understate the dire consequences of global warming is to distort the scientific conclusions. Herein lays the real profit motive. Exxon Mobil has funded what can only be described as backlash research that says, essentially, the ice caps are fine, hurray for fossil fuels, who needs Kyoto? Philip Cooney, the White House official exposed for editing reports on greenhouse gases that the Administration found unfavorable, now works for Exxon.
Daniel J. Popeo, head of the corporate front group Washington Legal Foundation, has accused environmentalists of conspiring with "envious foreign competitors and international bureaucrats" to destroy the American economy and "satisfy an ideological agenda."
There's nothing ideological about global warming and the necessity of a policy agenda to protect the planet. We shouldn't need another call for bipartisanship to unite behind aggressive environmental protection policies that are so glaringly necessary.
We need tax reform that reinstates the windfall profit tax on oil companies; taxes energy consumption and CO2 emissions; and removes tax breaks on gas guzzling SUVs. We need tax incentives for fuel-efficient and clean-fuel vehicles, ride sharing, public transportation and clean and renewable energy.
The new Democratically-controlled Congress may see such tax reform as a political death wish. But they will avoid fighting for policies that aim at preventing and reducing global warming at great peril. Theirs and ours.