Repealing Science, Punishing Those Who Still Believe in It

 

We’ve already witnessed how Florida’s DeSantis-led legislature stripped Disney of its privileged governance and tax status in Florida because it openly supported its LGBTQ employees and opposed the “don’t say gay” law in that state. But we are now witnessing a massive movement to punish corporations that are gravitating away from fossil fuel-based energy and embracing green alternatives. As the August 5th New York Times notes:

“Climate change isn’t a partisan issue in many countries. Both right-leaning and left-leaning parties favor policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even if they fight over the specifics of those policies. This consensus allowed the European Union to cut emissions sharply over the past few decades, as the threat of global warming became clearer.

“In the United States, of course, climate is a partisan issue. Nearly all elected Democrats favor actions that slow climate change. Almost no Republicans in major policymaking positions — including members of Congress and the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court — support these policies.” You have to wonder if Republicans don’t feel the searing heat, experience the more intensive tornados and hurricanes, face rising wildfire or flooding risks and are exempted from the desertification of once productive farmlands.

We’ve witnessed the politization of medical science during the struggle against COVID. But the anti-science movement is growing. For example, there has been a significant policy shift among nominal Republicans against physical science when encountering unequivocal proof of the cost of failing to contain climate change. Apparently, because the commonsense response requires big business and long-maintained fossil fuel extraction states to lose money, fighting climate change is “bad.” Notwithstanding trillions of dollars of consequential damages, tens of thousand of lost American lives and a massive degradation of health and quality of life for virtually all Americans.

You hear words like “woke” (but wasn’t Jesus Christ profoundly “woke”?), even as entire forests go up in smoke, taking homes and businesses with them, as farmers simply lose their livelihoods, and as major cities flood (Houston, Miami, etc.) and large swaths of state land (e.g., Kentucky) are underwater. It’s bad enough when Republicans do not vote to solve and contain climate change, but when the reach out to punish corporations willing to take responsibility for the consequences of unbridled climate change, these malign states simply go entirely too far.

As New York Times journalist, David Gelles points out (August 5th edition): “Nearly two dozen Republican state treasurers around the country are working to thwart climate action on state and federal levels, fighting regulations that would make clear the economic risks posed by a warming world, lobbying against climate-minded nominees to key federal posts and using the tax dollars they control to punish companies that want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Over the past year, treasurers in nearly half the United States have been coordinating tactics and talking points, meeting in private and cheering each other in public as part of a well-funded campaign to protect the fossil fuel companies that bolster their local economies.

“Last week [end of July], Riley Moore, the treasurer of West Virginia, announced that several major banks — including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo — would be barred from government contracts with his state because they are reducing their investments in coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel… Mr. Moore and the treasurers of Louisiana and Arkansas have pulled more than $700 million out of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, over objections that the firm is too focused on environmental issues. At the same time, the treasurers of Utah and Idaho are pressuring the private sector to drop climate action and other causes they label as ‘woke.’…

“At the nexus of these efforts is the State Financial Officers Foundation, a little-known nonprofit organization based in Shawnee, Kan., that once focused on cybersecurity, borrowing costs and managing debt loads, among other routine issues… At conferences, on weekly calls, and with a steady stream of emails, the foundation hosted representatives from the oil industry and funneled research and talking points from conservative groups to the state treasurers, who have channeled the private groups’ goals into public policy.

“The Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute and the American Petroleum Institute are among the conservative groups with ties to the fossil fuel industry that have been working with the State Financial Officers Foundation and the treasurers to shape their national strategy.

“Many Democratic state treasurers support efforts to combat climate change and want banks and investment firms to be clear about risks posed to returns for retirees and others. Democratic lawmakers in California and New Jersey are working on legislation that would require their state pension systems to divest from fossil fuels. But Democrats have not mounted anything like the national campaign being orchestrated by the State Financial Officers Foundation.

“The Republican treasurers skirt the fact that global warming is an economic menace that is damaging industries like agriculture and causing extreme weather that devastates communities and costs taxpayers billions in recovery and rebuilding. Instead, they frame efforts to reduce emissions as a threat to employment and revenue, and have turned climate science into another front in the culture wars.

“‘This is a departure from their traditional roles,’ said Robert Butkin, the former Oklahoma treasurer and a professor at the University of Tulsa. ‘There used to be a strong nonpartisan and bipartisan ethic among treasurers, but you’ve seen a lot of that erode over the past several years.’”

Just tallying the global “natural disasters” literally caused or intensified by climate change should be enough to convince even the reddest of the red states that failing to contain global warming, particularly encouraging fossil fuel practices that make it profoundly worse, is to ignore the biggest existential threat mankind has ever faced. These fomenters of heat-driven misery need to be removed from office and banned forever from any leadership roles in our nation.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s beyond time for us to take steps to make sure that science fiction does not become scientific fact, before it is irreversibly too late.