aNewDomain — Rick Santorum was on Real Time with Bill Maher recently. He still doesn’t believe in climate change. Or a lot of real-world phenomena, probably.
I mean, he could be lying to appeal to a particular kind of voter. Yet that’s an even-scarier thought than just accepting that Santorum doesn’t believe in science. So I’ll take him at his word.
Santorum’s excuses – aka reasons — for not believing in climate change are thin. He doesn’t like the “97 percent of climate scientists agree” number today. Whatever.
See, their opinion doesn’t really matter anyway.
Bill Maher knows climate change is real.
See, it’s not a secret anymore. NBC is doing a special on climate change ahead of Mr. Obama’s visit to Alaska. He’s there now to film a show with Bear Grylls on the topic (I hope Bear doesn’t make him eat any bugs or cuddle a sheep for warmth or something).
That’s right: NBC has footage of Alaskans slowly losing their homes due to climate change. The temperature is rising in the Arctic circle twice as fast as anywhere else. Glacier loss, melting tundra, erosion, and winds are all problems for remote villages up there. The news noted we were on the verge of accepting our first American climate-change refugees.
The argument is over. It was over a long time ago.
Dear climate change deniers: You were wrong
The question is, really, why. Why espouse clearly false beliefs?
Yes, this has been clear to rational minds for a long time. The village in the NBC report already moved once to higher ground because of climate change. They did this 10 YEARS AGO. Low-lying island nations have been petitioning for a similar amount of time for some land grants to preserve their national identities when the waves finish swallowing up their territories.
What might we have done to help 10 years ago if obstructionist politics, merchants of denial, hadn’t muddied the waters for the average low-information voter?
But it doesn’t matter. Your opinion does not affect the weather. Or the rate at which the sea level rises, the rate at which dangerous storms spawn in the ocean, how quickly species go extinct. That’s all going to happen independent of your beliefs.
I guess your opinions might matter just a little, in terms of who you vote for and why. State houses get work done. At the moment, lots of work to make it harder for women to access contraception and health care and, yes, abortions, and lots of work to bust unions and kick those damned public teachers off the gravy train.
Think if all that effort was pointed at mitigating climate change.
Think of how many communities are vulnerable. Small ones. Georgian coastal towns. Martha’s Vineyard. Big ones. New York City. Basically everything anywhere near Washington, DC. Sea walls might help, for a while. Long enough to get evacuations seriously started, anyway.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to pay for it, or grab a shovel and help.
See, we can do this work now, or we can do it later when it’s an emergency.
Pay now or pay later.
Most of the crazies have gone pretty quiet on this issue now. There’s only so much plausibility in denial. Time to change the subject. Vaccines don’t cause autism, climate change is real and gluten isn’t killing you. So let’s talk about something else.
It doesn’t matter.
For aNewDomain, I’m Jason Dias.
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