So why is President Obama addressing climate change through the executive branch? One reason is that the Supreme Court not only held that the Clean Air Act regulates carbon dioxide but also ruled that the EPA must promulgate regulations addressing it. In fact, the President had no choice.
A second reason why the President had no choice to move forward with regulations is Congress won't pass legislation. The reason that Congress won't act is because an incredible 65% of Congressional Republicans outright deny climate science. That's more than enough to paralyze Congress.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate-denier-caucus/.
More than a few of the deniers declare climate science a hoax or fraud. Others deny temperatures are rising. The "squishes" in the denier caucus concede that temperatures are up, seas are rising, moisture content in the air is increasing but reject that humans releasing large amounts of heat trapping gas into the atmosphere have anything to do with these facts.
Some wiser, "cooler" heads in the Republican party know that its climate position is irresponsible on the merits and is another reason why the GOP is struggling with those younger than 35 and moderate voters. But these cooler heads fear that only decisive election losses will make once again the GOP a responsible policy partner about what to do about our warming world.
That's why I'm voting for you John and that's why I contributed to your campaign for Governor and that's why I'm ready to start knocking on doors to get a clean energy champion for governor of Pennsylvania. It's incredibly irresponsible of the Republican Party to deny climate change. Climate change is a settled fact in the scientific community and for a politician to claim that it is a hoax carries a huge weight of liability. There is no greater threat to future generations than climate change so if someone claims to be concerned about the unborn then you definitely should be concerned about climate change. One of the most important jobs of a politician is to be forward thinking and address problems that are coming down the road so let's vote out climate change deniers and vote in clean energy champions! Fred K (Pittsburgh)
ReplyDeletetotally agree with you! My thought is that..if you accept the belief in climate change it would be very hard to support the fossil fuel as the solution to our next hundred years of energy. If the fossil fuel industry funds your campaign efforts, influences you etc. then there is the conflict. To quote a great man, Calvin Tillman, "once you know, you can't not know". Much better to deny deny climate change and continue on the "bridge to nowhere"...PA's eggs in one basket philosophy is going to create a nightmare for future citizens of Penn's Woods...that's assuming there will be any woods.
ReplyDeleteI would love to have a candidate who is willing to push for a moratorium until "safe, reliable fracking" is defined, and then, only then, after the problems are resolved to meet those defined standards, is it allowed to continue.
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