Photo: NASA Goddard Photo and Video
The Republican party here in the United States has an all but official stance that global warming is a hoax. They aren’t simply opposed to cap-and-trade or a carbon tax – they took it one step further and have dismissed the scientific research as hogwash. I incorrectly assumed that this was an extremely conservative viewpoint that I simply couldn’t relate to. But that is wrong – it turns out conservatives in democracies the world over do not take the same stance as Republicans!
The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones.
It is difficult to identify another major political party in any democracy as thoroughly dismissive of climate science as is the GOP here.
It is difficult to get anything done when half the country doesn’t think there is a problem. And it’s difficult for the world to make progress combating global warming without the United States being intimately involved.
We have seen that a candidate’s chances are slim when they disagree with their political party on key issues. I don’t believe all republican politicians personally believe global warming isn’t at least partially influenced by human behavior, but given our broken two-party political system, if you are conservative you deny global warming. Even harder, you have to pretend Sarah Palin is smart.
Doesn’t it seem like the conservative approach would be to do everything in our power to stop our carbon emissions with so many unknowns? We don’t know how fast our habits are changing the temperature, we don’t know how the frequency of hurricanes and other natural disasters will be affected, we don’t know if the ocean’s carbon dioxide will be released as these global changes take place making things even worse, and we don’t know if the trend can be reversed.
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