by Laurence Lewis
Attempting to repeal insurance reform would be bad enough. Attempting
draconian budget cuts during a halting recovery from a deep recession
would be bad enough. Making fools of themselves by wasting time
reading selections from the Constitution while doing absolutely
nothing to create jobs would be bad enough. Launching a war on women
would be bad enough. Whining about deficits while proposing policies
that would actually increase them would be bad enough. The entire
Republican approach of knowing nothing and doing nothing, unless it is
to attempt a return to the prevailing values of the Thirteenth
Century, is so corrupt and irresponsible that it would defy credulity,
were we not already so accustomed to it as to take it for granted. But
it's even worse.
Imagine there was an impending global crisis that was estimated to
displace up to 200 million people, worldwide, and imagine the
geopolitical consequences of dealing with such. Imagine its damage
would cost global GDP from 5 to 20 percent. Imagine it was expected to
devastate global plant life, including dangerously reducing crop
yields and causing devastatingly increased wildfires. Imagine if the
very base of the food chain was threatened. Imagine if the scientific
evidence was overwhelming, and pretty much every significant
scientific body in the nation was warning about it. Imagine if other
nations were charging ahead on developing the new technologies it
demands, while irresponsible inaction in this country already was
costing billions in lost investments. With all that, you'd think
responsible politicians might want to do something about it. You'd
think they might want to save lives and the economy and ecosystems and
the food supply. But that assumes that the politicians themselves were
capable of thinking.
When faced with the greatest crisis in known human history, this is
how the Republicans are responding:
Republicans on the House of Representatives energy committee on
Wednesday aired their proposal to block the Environmental Protection
Agency from reducing greenhouse gases and to reverse the agency's
scientific finding that climate change is dangerous.
While the plan might be blocked in the Senate or vetoed by President
Barack Obama, the comments during Wednesday's hearing were a fresh
indication of the depth of opposition in Congress to action on
reducing U.S. carbon pollution. Supporters of the measure to revise
the Clean Air Act to take away the EPA's authority to regulate this
type of pollution said that curbing emissions would be too costly.
Too costly. Compared to a loss of 5 to 20% of global GDP?
The EPA's planned regulations "would boost the cost of energy, not
just for homeowners and car owners, but for businesses both large and
small," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., the author of the legislation.
"EPA may be starting by regulating only the largest power plants and
factories, but we will all feel the impact of higher prices and fewer
jobs."
Higher prices and fewer jobs? Compared to a loss of 5 to 20% of global
GDP, the endangerment of the base of the food chain, and hundreds of
millions of people displaced, worldwide? Is it possible to think
smaller? Is it possible to be smaller? It's not only that Republicans
don't seem to understand what's really happening to the climate, it's
that they don't even seem to care to find out. It's one thing to be
uninformed, it's another to be willfully ignorant-- about the most
dangerous crisis humanity has ever faced.
As recently written (firewalled) by Bruce Alberts, the Editor-in-Chief
of the leading scientific journal, appropriately named Science:
Over the long run, any nation that makes crucial decisions while
ignoring science is doomed. Consider, for example, the decision about
how much arsenic should be allowed in drinking water supplies. There
is no one "right answer" to this or many other policy questions, but
it is critical that national legislation be based on what science
knows about potential harm. It is therefore disturbing that so many
lawmakers elected to the new U.S. Congress reject the overwhelming
scientific consensus with respect to human-induced climate change. It
will be difficult to make wise choices with such attitudes. The
question now facing the United States is not only how to effectively
reinject the facts of climate science back into the core of this
particular debate, but also how to ensure that good science underlies
all legislative decisions.
And distilling it to the pure political calculation, Andrew Leonard has this:
Bush's EPA refused to regulate greenhouse gases, dragging its feet
even after the Supreme Court ruled, by a tight 5-4 margin (with
Anthony Kennedy the deciding vote between liberal and conservative
justices), that under the terms of the Clean Air Act, greenhouse gases
qualified as pollutants. The Court not only found that the EPA had the
authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, but would be required
to do so if the agency determined that there was scientific evidence
that greenhouse gases posed a threat to public health. In November
2009, the EPA determined that greenhouse gases did pose such a threat,
and the wheels went into motion.
And he notes that one more Bush appointee on the Court and the ruling
likely would have gone the other way. He also points out that a
Republican EPA likely wouldn't have ruled that greenhouse gases
threaten public health. The manifest irresponsibility of the
Republicans on this most critical of issues is, in itself,
justification for doing everything possible to ensure they don't soon
again have control of the issue.
Leonard:
The Republican drive to rewrite the Clean Air Act so as to make the
Supreme Court's ruling irrelevant and shackle the EPA is just the
latest skirmish in this primal battle, but all the hollering about
job-killing regulations should not obscure the fact that the EPA is
proceeding according to plan. The steady rollout of guidelines and
standards will not be easy to stop. So far, the courts have generally
upheld the EPA's authority -- Texas is 0-3 in legal challenges -- and
even if Republicans do manage to get some EPA-killing legislation
through the Senate, they'd still face the likelihood of a presidential
veto.
Slate's tireless political reporter/blogger David Weigel had the same
impression of Obama's speech to the Chamber that I did earlier today
-- the president made no concessions and signaled no real shift in
policy. He defended his signature legislation, which the Chamber
opposed, and even as he made rhetorical gestures on regulatory policy,
his EPA is hard at work enforcing limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmentalists who want the EPA to continue doing so should be
thinking hard about how to re-elect Obama, because if a Republican
moves into the White House, it will all come to a screeching halt,
again.
Congressional Democrats have been far from perfect, and they and the
White House justly have been criticized for not pushing hard enough to
pass climate legislation. But the EPA regulation of greenhouse gases
is something significant the administration can do on its own. And it
is. But the Republicans aren't satisfied with merely killing good
legislation, they're also trying to undermine any positive effort the
administration attempts. They're not only trying to prevent effective
measures from being enacted, they're trying to block any that have
been enacted. They could not be more crazed and craven. Given the
gravity of the growing crisis, they are not just shockingly
irresponsible, they are dangerous. They may be the most irresponsible
coalition of politicians ever.
More:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/13/943151/-The-modern-GOP-is-irresponsible-and-dangerous
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
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