Having tried, and largely failed, to turn public opinion against President Biden’s infrastructure plan by claiming it’s all about climate change (something the vast majority of people want action on) the right is still struggling to find an attack that’s actually relevant and will stick.
For example, Benji Backer of the American Conservation Coalition, a group that appears to be using climate concern as a way to rehabilitate the GOP’s image with The Kids These Days (by lying about democratic socialism) was recently on a podcast of the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal to discuss how conservatives can “reclaim the narrative on environment.”
Backer went on the dirty-energy-funded, climate-denial-peddling outlet to deliver the usual platitudes about how the right needs “an all-of-the-above strategy that really leads with American innovation and capitalism in showing how the market can lead.” A truly dramatic break from the GOP’s usual rhetoric on climate!
Seriously though, while the far left focuses on systematic change instead of individual action, Benji has real solutions, like asking himself “how can I make tea at home instead of having to go out and buy tea every time that I need a caffeine break?”
Ah yes, having to ask oneself “how can I make tea at home,” the pinnacle of conservative climate solutions! Whatever would we do without this brilliant free market environmental wisdom?
(Oh and just in case anyone at ACC sees this — while it might be fun to re-up Backer’s embrace of leaders of predatory delay from last Earth Day, you might want to consider dropping your Earth Day 2020 praise of Rep. Matt Gaetz, as a “conservative environmental leader,” given that Gaetz is an alleged underage sex trafficker who Venmo records suggest funds “tuition” and “school” for girls in $300 increments.)
Somehow, though, that wasn’t even the dumbest climate content on the Daily Signal lately, as appearing right next to Backer’s interview is a hard-hitting investigative piece showing that Biden’s “Environmental Justice” appointees actually understand environmental justice.
After four years of corrupt and unqualified Trump appointees (many of whom Heritage has since hired, because what is the organized climate denial machine but a jobs guarantee for lying racist Republicans?) it’s apparently quite a shock to the Daily Signal’s system to see people actually know what they’re talking about.
Because what the Daily Signal, and whoever sent the exact same pitch resulting in a nearly identical story in the also-dirty-energy-funded Daily Wire, are mad about is the fact that some of these appointees have accurately talked about the connections between fossil fuels and racism.
For example, in an interview with a student newspaper of St. Edward’s University in Austin in 2019, Susana Almanza had a Che Guevara poster! And, (prepare to gasp here) Almanza said that her organization’s work holding fossil fuel giants accountable is “fighting big monsters; they’re not little ones.”
The horror!! In another instance, Tom Cormons wrote in C-Ville, Charlottesville, VA’s local news website, that “fossil fuels… are one of the greatest threats to our children’s future.”
Most offensive, apparently, though was Beverly Wright of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, who “linked the legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow era with energy development.” Her top billing in the story was followed closely Jade Begay of the Indigenous Environmental Network who, according to the Daily Signal’s Fred Lucas, “co-wrote a 2018 op-ed in EcoWatch contending that climate change is ‘colonialism’ and ‘cultural genocide.’”
Lucas didn’t link to the op-ed, but fortunately the Daily Wire’s version of the hit piece did, so give it a read and decide for yourself if this is the kind of person you want advising the President on environmental justice.
Because we certainly do!
