Paul Krugman has a
must-read article in today's New York Times on this past Friday's pathetic display by House Republicans on arguably the most important environmental bill in U.S. history. Here's an excerpt:
So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.
But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.
And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.
[...]
Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.
I have nothing much to add to this right now, having written about the subject extensively. For the moment, I'll simply leave you with the top-rated comment so far on Krugman's article. I couldn't agree more.
It's fitting that the shrinking, largely regional GOP has been leading the fight against this. Climate change skepticism, in some ways is the perfect convergence between the most rigid kind of fundamentalism and the most short-sighted version of capitalism. Confronting climate change will create new industries, new technologies, and other ways to advance the economy. The GOP clearly sees no reason to confront the future or even the world in which we live. Yet, they will be the first to complain when their entrenched interests are threatened by changes in climate.
