Republicans Forced To Abandon Climate Denialism, McCarthy Unveils Plan To 'Greenhouse Gaslight Us'

I have lain awake and honestly wondered if the human species might not just be too stupid to survive. We are a species handicapped by greed, that’s nothing new. But to abandon long term survival in the service of short time financial gain has always seemed the absolute epitome of folly to me.

You can’t eat money. You can’t breathe money. And finally, money might not do you a whole lot of good if the planet becomes largely uninhabitable and economic systems collapse along with ecological ones. After a quarter century of climate denialism, surprise, surprise, the GOP is finally waking up and going into reverse gear. Dana Milbank has an outstanding column today in the Washington Post:

The Sierra Club’s legislative director, Melinda Pierce, called the plan “McCarthy’s latest attempt to greenhouse gaslight the American public.”

In fairness, the man in charge of the Republican task force, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), says the group plans to outline a fuller climate-change strategy later this year. In an interview, he told me that “global emissions as a result of our strategy would go down more than they would under Biden,” who has set a target for cutting U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions in half by 2030. No climate denier, Graves also said he wants to “try and change the trajectory and try to hit that 1.5 C target” — the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

It’s good to know that there is one Republican awake and smelling the coffee. This is certainly new information. I’m sure you remember in 2017, not all that long ago, Donald Trump announcing in the Rose Garden the United States withdrawing from the Paris accord, the handiwork of anarchist Steve Bannon. The world wasn’t going to destroy itself, after all. Anybody with two brain cells working cringed that day and now it’s only 2022. Joe Biden immediately put us back on track vis a vis the Paris Accord and the Republican party is trying to figure out a way to get on board with the existential crisis of the climate going awry due to man made forces, yet appear to still be in step with their previous policies. This is going to be one hell of a song and dance routine to watch, I feel safe in predicting that much.

That avert-your-gaze approach worked well enough when the climate debate was about theoretical sea-level models and Arctic ice projections. But now the crisis is real and present, with food shortages, electric outages and pestilence already plaguing us.[Note: Don’t forget that Vladimir Putin has tried to destroy grain silos so as to exacerbate world food insecurity.]

Last week, The Post’s Evan Halper wrote that “a large swath of the Midwest” is among the areas facing a summer of rolling blackouts of the sort seen in California and Texas — a byproduct of “extreme weather precipitated by climate change,” among other things.

The World Health Organization last week reported that climate change is accelerating outbreaks of monkeypox, Lassa fever, Ebola and other diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list of health threats increased by climate change includes anthrax, dengue fever, plague and rabies, along with disease-causing fungi in soil and algae and cyanobacteria contaminating water.

And let’s not forget my favorite, “giant spiders arriving with young that can parachute from the sky.” Used to be that you could only find the giant spiders strolling through the Mojave in 50’s sci fi movies. Not any longer. Thank you GOP. You have literally caused my childhood nightmares to manifest into reality.

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel so fine.