On August 5, the New York Times published a front page-story entitled, “G.O.P Blueprint for ’25: Gutting Climate Progress.” It seems the Heritage Foundation (a right-wing think tank) just published a document which represents a “battle plan” for the first 180 days of a Republican Administration should they win the 2024 election.
[The article is available at here.]
I quote the Times: “The plan calls for shredding regulations to curb greenhouse gas pollution from cars, oil and gas wells and power plants, dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels.”
Legislatively the plan calls for repealing the Inflation Reduction Act (which just celebrated its one-year anniversary). That law appropriated $370 billion to support “…wind, solar, nuclear, green hydrogen and electric vehicles.” It appears that even giving carrots to businesses to increase the supply of carbon neutral energy is anathema to today’s Republicans.
In other words, they have decided to put their thumb on the scale of the choices made by the market --- subsidizing fossil fuels and denying similar aid to new less dangerous technologies.
[For a positive analysis of what the inflation reduction act accomplished over its first year see Center for American Progress: “A Year of Impact: The Anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act” available here.]
Speaking more generally, the Republican plan calls for “ …. Revers[ing] … a 2009 scientific finding at the Environmental Protection Agency that says carbon dioxide emissions are a danger to public health.”
THIS IS TRULY MADNESS!
What I just wrote should be obvious. Carbon dioxide emissions have raised global temperatures and changed global weather patterns. At the most basic level, they make it harder to breathe. (In the long run, global warming will cause more melting of perma-frost which will release dangerous methane gases.). In the short run, the changing weather and rising sea levels are harbingers of great suffering down the road.
Hawaii’s historic Maui Island just suffered a devastating wildfire, with drought created tinder combined with hurricane force winds to create the worst fire disaster in that state’s history with over 110 dead as I write this.
The fire is a DIRECT RESULT of climate change as emphasized by Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson in a recent opinion piece.
“Scientists have warned that flash droughts will occur more frequently because of climate change. The Maui fires were greatly intensified by high winds, caused by the combination of a strong high-pressure system to the north of the island and the powerful Hurricane Dora to the south.” (Eugene Robinson, “Opinion: Climate Change Came for Maui: The Rest of US are Next.” The Washington Post, August 14, 2023.)
In addition, invasive non-native grasses were a perfect tinder for the fire.
People who follow the trends that climate change is bringing to our world now --- not in 20 years but now --- say that it is important that we stop thinking of things like the Maui fire as “freakish” “once-in-a thousand-years” events. There is a “new normal” and because things will only get worse due to how much carbon is already spewed into the atmosphere and how much temperature change is already baked in, there is in fact no “normal” any more --- just an ever-increasing set of catastrophes. That’s the point of Robinson’s article.
And so, the waters off of South Florida are at 100 degrees. The South from Texas to Florida just suffered from deadly heat waves – and 100 plus temperatures are back in Texas now. Vermont has experienced billions of dollars of damage from a flood of “biblical” proportions.
About a month ago, I woke and saw that the air over the northeast had turned orange with smoke from Canadian wildfires --- giving northeasterners like me a taste of what Californians have endured for years. Last year was the hottest for the globe in recorded history.
I cannot stress this enough. The climate crisis is now --- not 30 or 50 years in the future! And these Republicans want to reverse recent efforts to do something about it. They want to take steps to actively make things worse!!
The GOP blueprint caught the eye of NY Times columnist Paul Krugman who wrote that “Climate is now a Culture War Issue.” [available here.]
Krugman noted that when the opposition to taking steps to stem climate change was spearheaded by the greed of fossil fuel corporations and their enablers, it was an easier battle to fight. Demonstrating the advantages of investing in sustainable energy like wind and solar, and touting electric vehicles over gas guzzlers would lead investors themselves to follow the incentives of the market and in the end, replace fossil fuels.
But now, according to Krugman, opposition to climate control actions has become part of the general anti-science culture war that fueled Republican opposition to vaccinations.
[And that opposition had lethal consequences. Here is one example summarizing research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association:
“Today in JAMA Network Open, researchers publishedmore evidence that personal political leanings may have contributed to excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research builds on previous work that has shown that right-wing "red" counties had higher death rates during the pandemic than more left-wing "blue" counties. The study looked at deaths in both Florida and Ohio during the first 22 months of the pandemic and found the overall excess death rate of Republican voters was 15% higher than that of Democrats. The gap widened further once COVID-19 vaccines were introduced.”
For the rest of the article see: Stephanie Soucheray, “Political party affiliation linked to excess COVID deaths,” published July 24, 2023, available here. ]
It would be nice if the only victims of this denial of science were the cynical politicians who fostered anti-vaccination sentiments but unfortunately there are countless innocent Republican victims --- people who honestly fell for the lying disinformation and paid the ultimate price.
Krugman writes: “As recently as the mid-2000s, Republicans and Democrats had similar levels of trust in the scientific community. Since them, however, Republican trust has plunged as Democratic trust has risen.” He notes that many Republicans see the push for fossil fuels not just as a way of making oil companies rich ---(let’s face it not many ordinary folks derive significant income owning stock in oil companies) --- but instead, it’s just a way to “offend the elites,” or “own the libs!”
“Look at the hysterical reaction to potential regulations on gas stoves … The elites want you to get an induction cooktop, but real men cook with gas.” Of course, Krugman is being facetious but he has hit on something very dangerous.
The willingness of too many of our fellow citizens to see efforts to stop the burning of the world and reverse the predicted rise in global temperatures as a conspiracy by elites to destroy society as they know it is incredibly dangerous. It may actually succeed in leading to the destruction of our civilization during our grandchildren’s lifetimes.
[The best short book I have read predicts (in fictional form) the collapse of modern civilization based on global warming trends. See Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, The Collapse of Western Civilization, A View from the Future (NY: Columbia University Press, 2014).]
The willingness of too many Americans (and let’s face it, our country is an outlier when it comes to world public opinion about how serious the climate crisis is) to buy into this paranoia is of a piece with other “worries.” Politicians are coming to take your guns. There is a massive crime wave often committed by hordes of immigrants coming over open borders – borders that have been “opened” by the Biden Administration. Librarians and school teachers are pushing elementary schools to teach critical race theory and grooming kids to be gay and/or transgender.
[Check out this doozie from Trump xenophobe Steven Miller. The title says it all!]
Meanwhile, transgender men-to-women are using women’s bathrooms and invading girls’ sports.
Every one of these fears is based on dishonest gaslighting
Meanwhile, the climate crisis ---- something we really need to fear --- is here and now. Thinking that the warnings of scientists is just a fake elite plot will contribute to a hellish future for our kids and grandkids. The maga-madness has to cease.
Luckily, it appears the younger generations are not buying this. Most polling data indicates young people, even in the US, understand the dangers posed by climate change and they want the rest of us to join them in actually doing something about it. I am very enthused by the growth of the Sunrise Movement. For more information, check out https://www.sunrisemovement.org/about/
I was also very excited to read about the victory of a group of young people in Montana who successfully sued the state for failing to protect them from the carbon pollution created by fossil fuels. Amazingly, the State of Montana officially argued before the judge that fossil fuels do NOT cause global warming. Unbelievable. Luckily, the Judge didn’t buy it. Check out the NY Times article available here.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author with Howard and Paul Sherman of the recently published second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies
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