- Banned
- #1
The battle waged on climate change is an ideological one. Was it always so? A few facts before your knees jerk and you settle into denial mode. It is driven by views on public policy. Think about what was the mainstream position of the Republican Party less than a decade ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/b...blicans-to-the-climate-change-table.html?_r=0
Eli Lehrer, who runs the R Street Institute, a fairly conventional conservative research firm except that it supports a carbon tax to combat climate change, argued that the Republicans’ stance was “a direct reaction to the Democrats’ efforts to use scientific facts to try to dictate public policy.”
Sure, climate change is real, Mr. Lehrer acknowledged. Yet “the science doesn’t — and can’t — demand any particular public policy and certainly doesn’t dictate that we do what the left wants.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/b...-republicans-to-the-climate-change-table.html
For the angry supporters of the Tea Party, opposed to government spending in almost any form, the prescription is anathema. “If you decide climate change is real, there must be a role for government to combat it. So the only way out is to deny it exists,” Mr. Karpinski said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/b...blicans-to-the-climate-change-table.html?_r=0
Eli Lehrer, who runs the R Street Institute, a fairly conventional conservative research firm except that it supports a carbon tax to combat climate change, argued that the Republicans’ stance was “a direct reaction to the Democrats’ efforts to use scientific facts to try to dictate public policy.”
Sure, climate change is real, Mr. Lehrer acknowledged. Yet “the science doesn’t — and can’t — demand any particular public policy and certainly doesn’t dictate that we do what the left wants.”
The climate has been changing forever. It will continue to change. Some scientists believe that humans have a direct impact on it. But trying to curb carbon emissions to slow the change could destroy the economy, eliminate millions of jobs and cast Americans into poverty.
This is what’s known today as the moderate Republican position on climate change...
Then there are Republicans like James Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate committee responsible for the environment, who calls global warming “the greatest hoax,” and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, another presidential contender, who argues that the scientific case for seeking to curb climate change is nothing more than a liberal plot aimed at “massive government control of the economy, the energy sector and every aspect of our lives.”
It wasn’t always so. These views, in fact, stand in sharp contrast to the mainstream position of the Republican Party less than a decade ago.
This is what’s known today as the moderate Republican position on climate change...
Then there are Republicans like James Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate committee responsible for the environment, who calls global warming “the greatest hoax,” and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, another presidential contender, who argues that the scientific case for seeking to curb climate change is nothing more than a liberal plot aimed at “massive government control of the economy, the energy sector and every aspect of our lives.”
It wasn’t always so. These views, in fact, stand in sharp contrast to the mainstream position of the Republican Party less than a decade ago.