This week has seen a remarkable batch of sane conservative opinions agreeing on the reality of, and need for, climate change action.
Alas, Sarah Palin is not one of them. Just as she did with her spurious "death panel" claim, she's now spearheading Congressional Republicans' attacks on all things climate-related. She's specifically urging President Obama to boycott Copenhagen, generally demanding that the entirety of climate science be thrown out because of the manufactured "climategate" scandal (a better term is SwiftHack -- click this link for EnviroKnows' encyclopedic collection of all SwiftHack related news), and more generally spreading the virus that is created at the precise center of the merger of staggering stupidity, greed, and ego. And her virus is contagious.
Update(h/t Calchala): President Obama is listening to better minds than Sarah Palin's, and is going to Copenhagen at the end of the conference, not the beginning. Details below.
First, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs announced that he was parting ways with the Right because, among other things:
- Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)
- Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)
In that vein, the Times of London has a thoughtful confession from a former skeptic on how he evolved into believing that global warming is real. And quickly following Johnson, Andrew Sullivan beautifully articulated the case for conservatives to, uh, you know, conserve the climate:
a conservative will surely also want to be sure that he conserves this inheritance, for its own sake and also for his future use. He will want to husband the natural world, not rape it and throw it away. He will see the abandonment of all values to that of immediate gratification as a form of insanity, if not evil.
And he will want to ensure that his children will enjoy the world as he has.
These are deeply conservative instincts, humble in the face of nature, conscious of the need to preserve for the future, aware of the limits of exploitation.
Today's Washington Post contains an opinion by David Murdoch (son of Rupert), chief executive of European and Asian divisions of News Corporation: Clean Energy is a Conservative Cause. Again, quoting as much as I can:
You do not need to believe that all climate science is settled or every prediction or model is perfect to understand the benefits of limiting pollution and transforming our energy policies -- as a gradually declining cap on carbon pollution would do. This is the moment to champion policies that yield new industries, healthy competition, cleaner air and water, freedom from petroleum politics and reduced costs for businesses.
And then there's Palin.
Her Facebook page contains a call for President Obama to boycott next week's Copenhagen hearing "in light of the unfolding Climategate scandal." A Siegel has already pointed out the many specific factual errors in her piece; shorter, she's Sarah Palin, therefore she's wrong.
Unfortunately, just as her flatly false claim of "death panels" spread virally far beyond her facebook page, so are her demands that all of climate science be reexamined, and all United States policies on energy and environment everywhere be revised. Four Republicans (Representatives Sensenbrenner and Issa and Senators Barasso and Vitter) have demanded that the Environmental Protection Agency cease all work on greenhouse gases (e.g., carbon dioxide) until the Twelfth of Never the "Agency can demonstrate that the science underlying these regulatory decisions has not been compromised." Senator James Inhofe (R-River In Egypt) has likewise called for hearings, as have Congresscritters Joe Barton and Greg Walden.
For anyone not yet aware of the claimed scandal, the emails at the heart of SwiftHack were obtained from the Climatic Research Unit of a British university, and the basic conclusions of that university's work have been independently corroborated by three sets of American and Japanese researchers. So these Republican demands amount to throwing out the baby because bathwater on the other side of the pond might be -- but really isn't -- contaminated.
I never thought I'd be expressing the slightest bit of agreement with a Murdoch, but it's going to take voices like his to combat the Palin contagion.
Update: Obama will attend Copenhagen at the end, not the beginning of the talks, which is good news. He believes the parties can specifically reach a deal on adaptation and mitigation aid to less developed countries to the tune of $10B/year. Senator Kerry has unveiled, as the Foreign Relations Committee's contribution to the Kerry-Boxer bill, $3B/year from the US. The remaining $7B/year would come from the EU and others.