Where the Wild Resources Are

For states with massive urban populations, often politically blue, versus states whose economies are driven by mining, farming and extracting natural resources, often politically red, there is a clear conflict on climate change. Impose strict environmental controls and urban dwellers breathe better while the resource-extractors have to pay more money to ply their trade. Money seems to trump breathing.

The big impacts of fires, flooding, storm surges, droughts, and changes in disease patterns tend to be ignored by just about everybody. Too big to contemplate. Most of us are simply not willing to make the big changes in our lifestyles when burning newly-found fossil fuels make staying the course so easy. The public is so absorbed with our teetering economy that there has been very little in the way of a public outcry for massive change in our environmental policies. You don’t get elected in this country touting environmental responsibility.

Look at the track record of Republicans vs. Democrats on global warming issues. It’s easier if you simply state that there is no determinative evidence that global warming is scientific fact (even though well-north of 95% of all qualified scientists swear it’s real), which is a socially-conservative’s “proper” response to the issue. It’s a slam dunk if your campaign chest is filled with money from the “energy sector.” Here’s the way it really is.

“Democrats have twice pushed serious bills to force greenhouse gas polluters like coal-fired power plants and oil refiners to pay to pollute. Both of those bills — one by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and one by President Obama in 2010 — ultimately failed, contributing to heavy Democratic losses in midterm elections.

“Lawmakers who back such efforts, which represent a threat to the bottom lines of the fossil fuel industry, particularly coal, the nation’s top source of carbon pollution, have been criticized by campaigns from Republicans, Tea Party-affiliated ‘super PACs’ like Americans for Prosperity, and the coal and oil industries…

“During this year’s midterm election campaigns, Republicans have used carbon-control policies as a political weapon, calling Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. rules a ‘war on coal.’ The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, who is running for re-election in the coal-heavy state of Kentucky, has vowed to use every legislative tactic available to block, repeal or delay those rules if Republicans win control of the Senate this fall.

“Within that context, many in the Republican establishment think that talking about climate change — and, particularly, any policy endorsing a tax on fossil fuels — would be political suicide for a Republican seeking to win the party’s nomination in 2016.

“The United Nations report says that if the world’s major economies do not enact steep, fast climate policies well before 2030, in order to cut total global emissions 40 to 70 percent by 2050, the prospects of avoiding a global atmospheric temperature increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the point past which scientists say the planet will be locked into a dangerous future, will be far more difficult and expensive.” New York Times, April 15th.

So for most elected officials, they won’t be the ones who really suffer the nasty consequences of over-use of fossil fuels. That post-apocalyptic reality belongs to the youngest (and most helpless) people on earth. Simply put, we are betting their health, life expectancy and quality of life in a rigged game, one that they can only loose. How do politicians feel about betraying their own children, grandchildren and what might survive beyond? Obviously, not bad enough.

I’m Peter Dekom, and exactly how do you feel about your stance on the subject and what you have been willing to do about it?