A hefty portion of the Republican contingent in Congress comprises outright climate science deniers. They aren’t all tossing snowballs around in the Senate the way Sen. Jim Inhofe has done to supposedly prove his assertion that the climate crisis is a hoax, but they nevertheless challenge the assessment of scientists who almost uniformly agree that the planet is warming and human beings are the cause. Congressional Republicans who aren’t either dumbbells or greedheads spouting the deniers’ disinformation for campaign cash nonetheless keep showing themselves unwilling to take steps necessary to ameliorate or prevent the worst impacts of what the Oxford Dictionary folks made its word of the year for 2019: the “climate emergency.”
In the latest example of this reckless myopia, they willingly cranked up spending for the Pentagon—adding an entirely new branch of the armed forces so we can fight wars in outer space—but opposed continuing to incentivize the transition from dirty energy to clean and green. As you can read below, they are determined to keep us on the path of burning every last drop of oil, every crumb of coal, every molecule of natural gas. Given their age, they can do this without fear they will be alive when the worst effects of the climate crisis envelop the planet. Apparently, none of them cares what happens to their children or their grandchildren. Nor your and my children and grandchildren.
James Bruggers and Marianne Lavelle at Inside Climate News write—Clean Energy Loses Out in Congress’s Last-Minute Budget Deal:
In the massive federal spending package that Congress passed this week, just in time to head off a government shutdown, lawmakers showed they are in no hurry for the clean energy future.
They strategically slashed most of the tax credit extenders that analysts saw as this Congress' best opportunity to accelerate renewable energy and cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. All that remained of the package at the end of months-long negotiation and debate were measures that will be politically useful to Republicans—most notably, biofuel subsidies.
It was an affirmation both of the upper hand that the GOP has with its control of the Senate and the White House and of the party's hostility to federal actions that would help displace oil, natural gas and coal. Support for solar energy, electric vehicles and energy storage all were jettisoned.
If Democrats were able to exert any influence in the energy provisions of the $1.4 trillion budget, it was only to support provisions Republicans supported—like shoring up coal miners' benefits—or to register ineffectual protest at the Trump administration. [...]
"Congress let a crucial opportunity slip by, advancing a massive government spending bill without extending one of the most successful clean energy tax policies in history, the solar investment tax credit," said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, in a statement.
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
”Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.” ~~Charles de Gaulle
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2002—Blix to US, UK: pony up evidence:
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix challenges the US and UK to reveal evidence that Iraq has WMD.
”If the UK and the US are convinced and they say they have evidence, well then one would expect that they would be able to tell us where is this stuff," he told BBC radio.
Ain't gonna happen. I don't believe they have any evidence. Otherwise, what better way to rally world support than to prove once and for all to everyone that Iraq was lying? Give the inspectors the name of just ONE facility suspected of having WMD, have the inspectors swoop in, find the evidence, and reveal it to the world. Bush's invasion would get A LOT easier at that point.
But Blix gets nothing, while Bush and Blair rant on about Hussein's lies. This was tiresome from day one, and it hasn't gotten any better since.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: A new, thinner reed has sprouted for Trump to cling to. He's "not really impeached" until the Senate receives the articles. Hmm emoji! Still more background on Lev & Igor. Oh, and on Christianne Allen, too. Plus a raft of reading material for the weekend.
RadioPublic|LibSyn|YouTube|Patreon|Square Cash (Share code: Send $5, get $5!)