Kate Aronoff at
In These Times writes—
The Death of Climate Denialism—Soon the Right will have to abandon its head-in-the-sand strategy—but its next tactic may be more dangerous. An excerpt:
The U.K’s New Secretary of Energy and Climate Change, Amber Rudd, has this to say about wind farms: “I personally quite enjoy seeing them.” A Conservative Party MP, Rudd received a promotion last month when David Cameron’s Tories beat out Labour. Less bland than her sentiments about wind farms are her policy proposals for them: They will receive no new federal subsidies, she says, and decisions on whether to build them will rest in the hands of local governments.
Therein lies the contradiction of Rudd, a former investment banker and self-professed “Thatcherite when it comes to climate change”: She believes ardently in global warming and the necessity of mitigating it—so long as those efforts don’t dip into public coffers.
To U.S. progressives, a Department of Climate Change like Rudd’s might sound like a dream, let alone a conservative heading it who accepts the reality of anthropogenic global warming. This winter, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chair of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, threw a snowball on the Senate floor to disprove the 97 percent of “eggheads” in “science laboratories” who cite evidence of climate change. Not all U.S. conservative denialism is as quaint as Inhofe’s: Oil barons Charles and David Koch have poured $79 million into talking heads, bogus scientific studies and front groups like Americans for Prosperity—all aimed at convincing the public that climate change is a bugaboo. A Drexel University study found that between 2003 and 2010, conservative foundations invested $900 million in climate-change denial campaigns.
Despite all this, right-wing acknowledgement of climate change in the United States might not be far off. There are signs that conservative elites’ opinions on global warming may head the way of their stance on gay marriage: Stalwart opposers will mysteriously “evolve” their views as it becomes politically expedient. The danger is that the shift will be accompanied by an American version of Rudd’s “climate Thatcherism,” in which deregulation and deep cuts to the public sphere go hand in hand with a move away from fossil fuels. [...]
Vox Media’s David Roberts has done an impressive job mapping the Right’s shift on climate science and predicting its trajectory. As climate denialism begins to falter as a political strategy, he writes, Republicans may move to “apocalyptic warnings about the high cost of government action. That is the GOP’s native territory.” Indeed, while there is bipartisan support among voters regarding the need for some type of action on climate change, a January Pew Research poll found that the question of what such action should look like is more divisive: 59 percent of Republicans responded that “stricter environmental laws and regulations have a negative economic impact.”
Last month, Roberts interviewed libertarian Jerry Taylor, formerly of the “climate-skeptical” Cato Institute, about his idea for a carbon tax. “Taylor,” Roberts writes, “has proposed a grand bargain of sorts: in exchange for the elimination of EPA carbon regulations and state renewable energy mandates, Congress would adopt a substantial and rising economy-wide carbon tax, made ‘revenue-neutral’ by reducing other taxes.” Taylor went on to argue that this kind of governmental action is a win-win for libertarians, mainstream Republicans and even centrist Democrats: Emaciate the EPA and continue making high returns, all without a drop of federal spending.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—Elizabeth Warren blasts corporatization of federal courts:
Corporate interests are increasingly winning their day in court, Sen. Elizabeth Warren told the American Constitution Society in a speech Thursday, and it's getting worse.
| Here in Washington, power is not balanced,” Warren said on the opening day of the 2013 ACS Convention. “Instead, power is becoming more concentrated on one side. There are powerful, deep-pocketed corporate interests lined up to fight to protect their privilege and to resist any change that would limit corporate excesses.” [...]
“These big corporate interests are savvy,” Warren continued. “They fight every day on Capitol Hill and in the agencies, devoting enormous resources to the task of bending legislation to benefit themselves. But they also devote enormous resources toward influencing the courts.
“Why? Because they know that influencing those who interpret the law is another extremely effective way to achieve their goals. In our democracy, when we write our laws, reasoned debate, public opinion, and political accountability are all factors that can thwart the efforts of powerful interests.” [...]
“Follow this pro-business trend to its logical conclusion, and sooner or later you'll end up with a Supreme Court that functions as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce,” Warren said.
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Tweet of the Day
Jeb is all about the future. He wants to brand unwed mothers with digitalized scarlet letters that have cool fonts.
— @FrankConniff
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show: Hillary's in. So's Jeb!. Several crazy and/or stupid people shot up various parts of the United States over the weekend.
Greg Dworkin informs us that Colt and a few other gun manufacturers are going bankrupt. Phil Mattingly Tweetsplains TAA/TPA/TPP. America's Worst Governor blows a lot. The snarky version of the TAA/TPA/TPP story, plus the KITM fine-toothed comb is brought out to parse the parts of the procedure story that even the explainers don't explain. Finally, some Bernie Sanders coverage, thanks to
WillaGorilla, who sent us his recorded contribution to the show. Be the radio show you want, people!
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