The right-wing position on climate change has nothing to do with science. Like everything else, it’s part of a meta-position, one that says business can do no wrong. If business is crippling workers through lack of safety, safety rules are the enemy of the right. If dumping toxins in the water is one cent cheaper than proper disposal, clean water rules are the enemy of the right. If doing anything, anything at all, to address carbon emissions affects the bottom line, then climate change is the enemy of the right.
Just ask “what generates the greatest profit for existing CEOs of existing corporations without one thought to how it affects workers, the public, or the future” and it’s easy to predict the right’s position on almost any subject. Don’t let thoughts of improving technology, shifting needs, or any trend longer than a week interfere. All that information is discarded.
To disseminate these positions, the right depends on strong leaders to set the guidelines that the rest will follow. On climate change, leadership’s position is clear.
Vladimir Putin has said humans are not to blame for climate change - and that the melting of the ice in the Arctic could be used for Russia's “economic ends”.
Yes, yes, there may be less ice here and there, and winters may be warmer but … that’s a good thing. Certainly not the fault of humans that pump 10 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere annually. In this position, Putin mirrors Trump. The two define the “humans aren’t to blame” school of climate change, which is now replacing the “there is no climate change” position … because there’s so obviously climate change.
And where there are leaders, there must be followers.
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt still doesn’t agree with the vast majority of climate scientists who say humans are the primary cause of climate change.
Putin has his own “data” to support his position—climate change started too early.
Speaking at an Arctic forum in the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk, Mr. Putin said: “The warming had already started by the 1930s.
"That's when there were no such anthropological factors, such emissions, and the warming had already started.
Oddly enough, though his claim is based on a secondhand account of a likely mythical “Arctic explorer,” Putin put his autocratic digit almost exactly on the start of a sharp rise in world energy consumption and use of fossil fuels, one that began not too long before the first signs of global warming and increasing atmospheric carbon.
Meanwhile, Pruitt’s response is even less detailed than Putin’s. It’s just hand-waving.
Pruitt has previously denied that humans are a primary contributor to climate change, but most climate scientists agree that humans in fact play a major role.
Far from being upset about the warming that threatens to drive species to extinction, flood coastlines around the world, and disrupt the lives of billions, Putin sees nothing but an upside—one that makes him eager to consummate that $500 billion deal with Rex Tillerson.
Earlier in the day, Mr Putin was shown a video of an ice-breaking tanker docking for the first time at Russia's Arctic port of Sabetta to test a new route for ships carrying oil and liquefied gas, according to CBS News.
Energy firms are eager for the route to open in order to extract resources such as oil and gas.