Republicans Laugh At Climate Change. What About House Democrats?

Yesterday, historian David Attenborough (age 92) addressed the the U.N. climate conference in Katowice, Poland and told delegates that "right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: Climate change. If we don’t take action the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon." That's a change in perspective for Attenborough who used to address the urgency of climate change the same way Republicans do in this country: "I'm not a scientist." By 2006 he had changed and would tell audiences that he no longer had any doubt at all. "One of the things I don't want to do is to look at my grandchildren and hear them say: 'Grandfather, you knew it was happening-- and you did nothing.'"

Scientists say time is running short to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming. Climate change is already affecting communities around the world, and a slew of scientific and policy warnings have come out in the months leading up to this meeting.

In the U.S., extreme weather is damaging infrastructure, ecosystems, health and the economy. In November, the most comprehensive federal climate assessment to date called climate change "an immediate threat, not a far-off possibility," and detailed how every part of the country will be increasingly harmed as the Earth gets warmer.

A U.N. report released in October concluded that the Earth will get dangerously hot unless people develop new technologies to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The report also said that the pledges made under the Paris Agreement are not enough to keep global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures.

Just last week the U.N. announced that there is an increasingly large gap between current efforts and what's needed to protect the climate. Global emissions slowed down between 2014 and 2016, but they rose again in 2017, despite the decline in coal in growth in renewable energy in the U.S. and Europe.

"You have all of this stuff telling people 'It's even worse than we thought,'" says Todd Stern, who led the U.S. climate negotiation team as the U.S. special envoy for Climate Change during the Obama administration. "I think the stakes are quite high."

He says the effects of climate change are increasingly clear to citizens around the world. "If you end up having a failure in this meeting, an inability to get a rule book done, I think you'd have that much more sense among people that 'Jeez, this is really going in a very, very bad direction.'"

Our problem here is that Americans have failed to obliterate the Republican Party, a group hell-bent on the destruction of humanity and Planet Earth. I know it sounds crazy... but they are. And what they're doing is following their mentally deranged party leader down rat hole to hell. While the UN forum was in full swing, the Associated Press noted that craven Republican politicians have decided to follow Trump's lead down the road to extinction-- hopefully for their party rather than for mankind. As Trump's "rejection of climate science isolates the United States on the world stage, illustrated by the small U.S. delegation dispatched to this week’s United Nations climate summit in Poland, he has also presided over a transformation in the Republican Party-- placing climate change skepticism squarely in the GOP’s ideological mainstream. Where the last Republican president, George W. Bush, acknowledged that the Earth was warming and that 'an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem,' the prevailing GOP view expressed on the campaign trail this year and espoused by many members of Congress is built on the false premise that climate science is an open question. The small number of voices supporting the science have been largely drowned out."

Matt Viser pointed to right-wing crackpot Trumpists as part of the problem:

Sen.-elect Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said falsely in the lead-up to her campaign that the Earth has started to cool, and argued inaccurately that scientists have not reached a consensus on climate change.

In Florida, which has been pummeled by hurricanes, Sen.-elect Rick Scott has acknowledged rising and warmer seas could be harmful to his state but won’t attribute it to human activity.

And Sen. John Neely Kennedy, who is expected to announce Monday whether he will run for Louisiana governor, told reporters last week that while the Earth may be getting hotter, “I’ve seen many persuasive arguments that it’s just a continuation of the warming up from the Little Ice Age.”

Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) has been been one of the strongest leaders in climate change policy throughout her time in Congress and she was one of the first members to sign onto the #GreenNewDeal. Her own OFF Fossil Fuels Act, H.R. 3671, is the most aggressive climate change legislation ever introduced in Congress. It’s supported by over 400 clean energy, climate change, and environmental justice organizations and 45 current Members of Congress. This morning, she told me that "If we continue to ignore the overwhelming scientific consensus about the direction our planet is headed, we will continue to see further stress on our already crumbling infrastructure, the health and well-being of our people threatened, and the livability of our planet further degraded. We need to make protecting our planet, fighting climate change, and ensuring clean air and clean water for all people a top priority. Last year, I introduced the Off Fossil Fuels Act to end corporate handouts to the fossil fuel industry and lay out a sustainable pathway to transition our country off of our dependence on fossil fuels by investing in a 100% clean energy economy. We can’t wait. Our children can’t wait. Our planet can’t wait. We must take action now."

But even among some Democrats, the bribes from affected industries are often too big a temptation to resist. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's #GreenNewDeal initiative has only been embraced by 18 House Democrats so far. Count on New Dems and Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party to work hand and glove with Gas and Oil lobbyists and with the GOP to put obstacles in the path of reform while the mass media calls for bipartisan "compromise." Physics doesn't compromise, amigos. Here's a list of House Democratic scumbags every bit as bad as House Republican scumbags:

• Steny Hoyer (MD)- $2,165,760
• Gene Green (TX)- $1,390,038
• James Clyburn (SC)- $1,131,843
• Mike Doyle (PA)- $996,414
• Pete Viscosky (IN)- $991,114
• Henry Cuellar (TX)- $939,677
• Jim Costa (CA)- $887,229
• Frank Pallone (NJ)- $862,516

My favorite Berniepalooza panel: Stephanie Kelton, Abdul el-Sayed, Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben