Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speech Gets Cheers When It Comes to Accepting Global Warming

This is only a portion of Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech from Thursday night. In less than two minutes, and mostly using political code words such as “protect the sanctity of life” and “honor the institution of marriage,” The GOP nominee touches on themes meant to fire up the base of the GOP: taxes, gay marriage and abortion. You would think that any of his pledges on these hot button issues would bring the house down.

            It is when he gets to the environment and its protection, saying, “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet . . . My promise is to help you and your family,” that the crowd in the convention hall is truly electrified.

This is big crazy if ever there was big crazy. As I’ve pointed out before, this has been going on with the Grand Old Party for over 30 years, politicizing the environment. It is nonetheless surprising—and I have to admit, a little scary, too—to see an entire convention of people cheering on the warming planet, the rising oceans, and a political system that is incapable and unwilling to do anything about it.

Todd Akin: Is He Any More Stupid and Insensitive Than Other Politicians?

This is apparently big news. I’ve been hearing about it just about any time I turn on the radio. Defending his stance against abortion rights, Todd Akin, the Missouri representative who is competing with Claire McCaskill for her Senate seat, said during an interview with a Saint Louis television station this past weekend that pregnancies do not result from “legitimate rape.” Besides the absolute ignorance of basic biology he displays with this statement, he’s also showing a great deal of insensitivity with the terminology of calling any sort of rape legitimate.

            So there is an outcry and calls for him to drop out of the Senate race against McCaskill. I tend to agree with the folks who say he should drop out of the race. A person who would say such a thing, whether or not you think that access to abortions should be restricted or outlawed, is too stupid to hold any sort of public office, from the U.S. Congress down to your local school board.

            But, compared to other congressional representatives, is Akin all that stupid? Despite some of the best science ever performed in the history of the empirical method, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe denies that there is any evidence for global warming. As a matter of fact, he goes so far as to say that all the science on climate change is a fakery, a hoax, perpetrated on the world by mendacious scientists. This is a scenario that, if it were a movie, would contain thousands of Doctor Frankensteins in cahoots with a sort of covert Trilateral Commission working with a great PR department.

            Obviously crazy or really stupid, maybe even paranoid. Where are the calls for him to resign?

            Then there is Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky, a state in which mountaintop removal coal mining has destroyed hundreds of mountains, ruined ecosystems, and has been shown to cause kidney stones, tooth loss, diarrhea, learning disabilities, and some forms of cancer,[i] as well as numerous forms of birth defects.[ii] Rand said of the mining practice that, “I don’t think anyone’s going to be missing a hill or two here and there.”

            People are getting sick and dying, and as far as Rand is concerned it all amounts to “missing a hill or two here and there.” I don’t think much consideration is needed to find this statement stupid and insensitive. Once again, where are the calls for his resignation?

            I could go on and on. The list of things said that are stupid and insensitive is long: equating Islam with terrorism; blaming poor folks for their plight; classifying vandalism as terrorism; calling any kind of coal production “clean.” There is a lot of stupid getting in the way of real political progress.

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[i] Holzman, David C. “Mountaintop Removal Mining.” Environmental Health Perspectives Vol. 119, Issue 11 11/1/2011 electronic journal

[ii] Ahearn, Melissa M. et at. “The association between mountaintop mining and birth defects among live births in central Appalachia, 1996–2003.” Environmental Research Vol. 111 Issue 6. Aug 2011, p 838-846 electronic journal

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama: What Their Campaigns Say About the Environment

As it is that I’m concerned about the environment and how our thinking about the environment affects the manner in which we live our lives and how those actions affect our rivers and streams, the air we breath, and the creatures that share this planet with us, I venture into the political from time to time to examine the thinking behind new or proposed legislation or the rhetoric about the environment that comes from candidates and parties. I have pointed out that some of the rhetoric of the GOP over the last 30 years runs counter to its traditional conservationist attitude toward the environment. And some of what the Grand Old Party says and does also strikes me as weird or crazy.

            That being said, it piqued my curiosity to look at the websites of the presidential candidates governor Mitt Romney and president Barack Obama to see what they both had to say about the environment.

            Energy and the environment are listed as issues addressed on Obama’s campaign website. Clicking into that webpage, topics include wilderness protection, increasing the fuel economy of our automobiles, as well as improving the quality of our air. Some of the ideas listed on this page I consider dubious. With the environmental destruction of modern mining methods, no kind of coal is ever clean, no matter how many times you scrub it. Constructing great wind farms in the desert can also affect the land and be deadly for birds and bats.

I don’t’ believe that Barack Obama has a great environmental record. But whether or not I agree with the policies and actions he endorses, the President has established the environment as a campaign issue.

On the other hand, clicking over to Mitt Romney’s website, of the 24 subjects that his campaign lists as issues, the environment is not mentioned once. If you look at the Energy issue page, it says that Mitt Romney, as president, will “make every effort to safeguard the environment.” And yet a familiar trope of “regulatory reform,” which means loosening or doing completely away with environmental laws appears further down the page.

Even among Democrats the environment is not a big issue right now, overshadowed by jobs and pocketbook concerns. And yet it seems so odd to me that someone could run for president and expect votes from a constituency that is unconcerned about the health and safety of our waters or our ability to breath clean air.

Congressional Hearings on Climate Change: Did Anybody Hear About This?

There was a Congressional hearing this past week on climate change and the connection that climate change has to the extreme weather we’ve been having. Except for a 75-word piece in the Washington Post that announced the participation in the hearing by Senator Benjamin Cardin from Maryland, the hearing received no U.S. press. I read about the hearing in the Guardian, a paper from Britain.

Perhaps this country’s press was correct to pass on reporting on this hearing. After all, maybe there was nothing newsworthy in the hearings. That there was nothing new in earnest scientists telling Congress once again that, yes, global warming is really happening, and yes, that some of the freakish weather that has brought drought to half of the United States and wildfires throughout Colorado can be connected to that warming.

            And maybe they know that there is no news that Senator James Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate’s environment and public works committee, continues to claim that the science of climate change is a hoax. And they also know that there is no news in reporting that two of Inhofe’s biggest campaign contributors are Koch Industries—which has made its fortunes from oil, gas, and other extractive industries, as well as the Koch brothers being the financiers behind the T Party—and Murray Industries, the largest privately owned coal company in the United States.

            We know that big oil and King Coal are to blame for the inaction of our government to take steps to reduce carbon emissions and that shills like Inhofe are the most egregious enablers of this dangerous charade. The press, particularly the major papers and television networks, are also partly to blame for leaving important hearings and other news on climate change unreported.