Rick Santorum-- Crazy Enough, Craven Enough, to Hasten The Destruction Of A Finite Planet?

John Amato called yesterday, fuming about Santorum's hat tip-- more like a big wet smooch-- to right-wing religious zealots who believe the BuyBull dictates that we should use up the earth... literally. John hates it when politicians try starting religious wars to advance their partisan prospects-- and that's exactly what Santorum has been up to (which has a lot to do with why his lead in Michigan is rapidly evaporating).

Santorum, wrapping himself in the vestments of "religion," has been babbling incoherently-- unless you're one of the zealots who understands the code-- about how Obama is offering a “phony theology … not based on the Bible” when it comes to the environmental movement. John's a Catholic as well and this isn't something that makes him comfortable-- nor does it make any normal Americans comfortable. But it's exactly what the nuts and freaks want to hear.

Romney has said before that he believes the earth is getting warmer though he’s cast doubts on how much man’s role in that may be. Santorum has also tried to characterize Romney as a supporter of cap and trade policies to lower greenhouse gas emissions, though Romney, as governor, declined to participate in a regional cap and trade system because of the economic costs involved.

By invoking religion, Santorum is playing to his strength with evangelicals and self-described very conservative voters, two blocs which could play a role in deciding who wins Michigan on Feb. 28 and Ohio on March 6.

Santorum says Obama is pushing a radical environmental agenda that unwisely limits energy production and turns its back on science.

Santorum told voters in eastern Ohio on Monday that science is on the side of those who want to aggressively produce more oil and natural gas in America. He said the notion of global warming is not climate science but "political science."

Santorum said Obama and his allies want to frighten people about new oil-exploration technologies so they can get your dollars and turn it over to politicians to win elections "so they can control your lives."

Hoping a "drill-baby-drill, hypofracturing, pro-pollution agenda is going to please the fundamentalist extremists who claim "god" gave us the earth to exploit, Santorum is playing with fire and hoping there are more morons who vote than people with brains. In his brilliant book, Agenda For A New Economy, David Korten emphasizes the unbreakable bond between the biosphere and the well-being-- the continued existence-- of mankind.

Astronauts hurtling through space understand that their well-being depends on secure and adequate stocks of oxygen, fuel, food, water, and other essentials. Minimizing flows and recycling everything is essential to their long-term well-being. Because nothing can be replaced, nothing can be wasted. Consuming faster than stocks regenerate is actively suicidal.

The frontier is no more. Now we must live by Earth's rules or die.

...We humans have been living an illusion that our world is an open frontier of endless resources free for the taking and have organized our economies accordingly. Assuming ourselves separate from nature, we have too often attacked or sought to destroy or subdue her as though she were our enemy.

We are awakening to the reality that we inhabit a wondrous but finite living planet and that our lives are inseparably linked with all of Earth's species. We must learn to live by the biosphere's rules and restructure our economic systems accordingly, which presents an epic test of our human capacity for creative innovation, collective choice, and self-organization.

As we consider the transformation ahead, we must recognize that our individual choices are constrained by collective societal choices beyond our individual control... In most U.S. cities, and certainly in most suburban or rural locations, the layout of our built spaces combines with the lack of public transportation to create a powerful incentive for households to buy and maintain at least one car. This happens to be a lack of choice that works well for the Wall Street corporations that make and sell automobiles. The story of how General Motors successfully killed the streetcar as a once widely available public transportation option is well documented.



Contrary to capitalism's claim that unregulated markets maximize consumer choice, Wall Street corporations go to great lengths to limit our choices to those most profitable for themselves. One of the more telling examples is Wall Street's drive to create an unregulated, borderless economy in which goods and money move freely at the discretion of global corporations that operate beyond the reach of accountability to any government.

This worldview is blasphemous to Rick Santorum, who wasn't in the Senate when NAFTA was voted on but was an enthusiastic backer of CAFTA and every other trade policy that has stripped middle class jobs out of America and sent them to low-wage hellholes that have no meaningful environmental protections. That's the world the GOP envisions for America... for as long as it can cling to existence. He's running around the country lying his ass off about this stuff.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we need someone who understands, who comes from the coal fields, who comes from the steel mills, who understands what average working people in America need to be able to provide for themselves and their families," Santorum said to a crowd of about 500 people in the Democratic-leaning eastern edge of the state.

Santorum's claim to have come "from the coal fields" is a stretch - by two generations. He has never worked in a coal mine. His parents' professions were psychologist and nurse, and Santorum is a lawyer who has spent all of his adult life in politics.

But he frequently invokes his grandfather, who worked in the auto factories of Detroit and then the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania after he immigrated to the United States from Italy.

In his remarks Monday, Santorum went beyond his usual discussion of the importance of increasing domestic energy production to deliver a blistering attack on environmental activists. He said global warming claims are based on "phony studies," and that climate change science is little more than "political science."

His views are not "anti-science" as Democrats claim, Santorum said. "When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones. We are the ones who stand for science, and technology, and using the resources we have to be able to make sure that we have a quality of life in this country and (that we) maintain a good and stable environment," he said to applause, and cited local ordinances to reduce coal dust pollution in Pittsburgh during the heyday of coal mining.