{"id":18079,"date":"2015-12-04T11:40:12","date_gmt":"2015-12-04T19:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=18079"},"modified":"2015-12-04T11:49:53","modified_gmt":"2015-12-04T19:49:53","slug":"will-republicans-destroy-our-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/12\/04\/will-republicans-destroy-our-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Republicans Destroy Our Earth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The more time passes, the more convinced I become that we need to act fast to protect our earth from the Rep0ublican war on science.  Unless we remove Republicans from control of the House and Senate, and keep them out of the White House, the next generation will inherit a poisoned earth.  Paul Krugman appears to agree.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"EarthDay1\"<\/font><\/p>\n

\"EarthDay2\"<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Future historians — if there are any future historians — will almost surely say that the most important thing happening in the world during December 2015 was the climate talks in Paris. True, nothing agreed to in Paris will be enough, by itself, to solve the problem of global warming. But the talks could mark a turning point, the beginning of the kind of international action needed to avert catastrophe.<\/p>\n

Then again, they might not; we may be doomed. And if we are, you know who will be responsible: the Republican Party.<\/p>\n

O.K., I know the reaction of many readers: How partisan! How over the top! But what I said is, in fact, the obvious truth. And the inability of our news media, our pundits and our political establishment in general to face up to that truth is an important contributing factor to the danger we face.<\/p>\n

Anyone who follows U.S. political debates on the environment knows that Republican politicians overwhelmingly oppose any action to limit emissions of greenhouse gases, and that the great majority reject the scientific consensus on climate change. Last year PolitiFact<\/a> could find only eight Republicans in Congress, out of 278 in the caucus, who had made on-the-record comments accepting the reality of man-made global warming. And most of the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination are solidly in the anti-science camp<\/a>…<\/p>\n

…More important, probably, is the denial inherent in the conventions of political journalism, which say that you must always portray the parties as symmetric — that any report on extreme positions taken by one side must be framed in a way that makes it sound as if both sides do it. We saw this on budget issues, where some self-proclaimed centrist commentators, while criticizing Republicans for their absolute refusal to consider tax hikes, also made a point of criticizing President Obama<\/a> for opposing spending cuts that he actually supported. My guess is that climate disputes will receive the same treatment.<\/p>\n

But I hope I’m wrong, and I’d urge everyone outside the climate-denial bubble to frankly acknowledge the awesome, terrifying reality. We’re looking at a party that has turned its back on science at a time when doing so puts the very future of civilization at risk. That’s the truth, and it needs to be faced head-on.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Which earth shall we pass on?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The more time passes, the more convinced I become that we need to act fast to protect our earth from the Rep0ublican war on science.  Unless we remove Republicans from control of the House and Senate, and keep them out of the White House, the next generation will inherit a poisoned earth.  Paul Krugman appears […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}