Tag: climate change

How Republicans Made Climate Change America’s Most Divisive Political Issue

GOP-led climate denial threatens the future of the entire world.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Reynard Loki

Emphasis Mine

“Human kind …cannot bear very much reality.” —T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

It’s been over a year since polling data found that climate change has emerged as America’s most polarizing political issue. The survey, conducted by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, found that the divisiveness characterizing the climate debate is so strong it has eclipsed such longstanding hot-button issues as gun control, evolution, the death penalty and even abortion. And with President Obama recently making an historic visit to Alaska to speak about the urgency of acting on climate change just as Republicans strive to derail his climate agenda, there is little sign that the climate gap separating the nation’s two major parties will be bridged any time soon.

In 2009, the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans’ views about the state of science and its impact on society. They concluded that “the strongest correlate of opinion on climate change is partisan affiliation.” Two-thirds of Republicans (67 percent) believe that global warming isn’t actually happening — or if it is, it’s not from man-made causes. By contrast, most Democrats (64 percent) say the planet is heating up mainly due to humans.

Climate change should not be this polarizing: Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s climate arm, reported that scientists are more than 95 percent certain that the primary cause of global warming is human activity.

American Pipe Dream

When it comes to the general election, the climate issue poses an electoral problem for the Republicans: A majority of Americans say they are more likely to support political candidates who promise to tackle climate change, according to a recent poll. Conducted by the New York Times, Stanford University and Resources for the Future, the poll found that two-thirds of Americans say they would support candidates who promised to take action to combat climate change. Almost half of Republicans (48 percent) say the same thing. The poll also found that a solid majority of U.S. voters, 83 percent, believe global warming poses a serious threat to the world.

While there are climate deniers across the globe, this anti-science stance is a particularly American phenomenon. In the U.S., elected GOP climate deniers are commonplace; several of them are seeking the presidency. It’s a different story in other industrualized nations. “In Europe, climate change denial is seen as the preserve of the crackpot,” writes London-based finance and economics writer Imogen Reed. “Few political figures or members of the news media would dream of mentioning it, as doing so often receives the same contempt from the European public as denying the Holocaust.”

Even citizens of emerging countries are more attuned to the realities of global warming. The 2010 Pew Global Attitudes Project found that the majority of consumers in China (91 percent), India (73 percent) and South Korea (71 percent) are willing to pay higher prices to address climate change. Not so in America, where a mere 38 percent of consumers would do the same. “In this sentiment, people in the U.S. are out of step with the world,” the report’s authors write. “In most of the countries surveyed people are more likely than Americans to be willing to pay for efforts to slow global warming.”

“In this sentiment, people in the US are out of step with the world,” according to the Pew survey. “In most of the countries surveyed people are more likely than Americans to be willing to pay for efforts to slow global warming.”{4}  – See more at: http://www.justmeans.com/blogs/if-you-had-to-choose-solve-the-climate-cr…

The GOP’s climate denial, buoyed by a massive social, financial and political machine oiled by conservative think-tanks and activist groups, has created a potentially disastrous situation in which climate change — arguably the most pressing global issue of our time — has also become the most polarizing topic in the nation whose leadership is absolutely critical to finding a solution. While Obama committed to an 83 percent reduction in carbon emissions on 2005 levels by 2050, that goal faces a massive hurdle: a rich and powerful Republican machine that seeks to dismantle the president’s climate agenda. With the two major parties locked in a seemingly intractable adversarial stance on the topic, truly meaningful action seems almost like a pipe dream.

If it is a dream, it’s because the GOP refuses to accept reality. The Carsey poll found that party-line gaps on science-related questions “equal or surpass those of historically divisive social issues.” The division is primarily driven by the Republicans, 70 percent of whom don’t believe in global warming. This position stands in stark contrast to the world’s scientists, 97 percent of whom agree that global warming has occurred in the last century. Lawrence Hamilton, a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire who conducted the Carsey poll, wrote that the findings represent “a changing political landscape in which scientific ideas and information that are accepted by most scientists are, nevertheless, highly controversial.”

Media Misinformation

The controversy is fueled in part by misinformation coming from the media. Last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released its analysis of 2013 climate coverage by the three major American cable news networks. The researchers confirmed what most environmentalists had already guessed: Fox News leads the pack in climate misinformation. The right-wing mouthpiece presented misleading statements in almost three out of every four (72 percent) of its climate-related segments. Bucking that trend is Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, who has acknowledged anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change, though he is one of very few voices at the network to do so.

See: http://www.alternet.org/environment/climate-change-more-divisive-abortion-blame-republicans?akid=13476.123424._E9pRg&rd=1&src=newsletter1042399&t=2

Post Republican Debate Reality: GOP Field and Base Dominated By Right-Wing Extremists

No matter who’s leading, the agenda is far to the right.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Stephen Rosenfeld

Emphasis Mine

Presidential debates matter but follow-up polls tracing shifting fortunes can also miss the big picture.

That picture isn’t whether or not Donald Trump is still the Republican frontrunner for the 2016 nomination, or whether Carly Fiorina has surged, or whether Jeb Bush has stalled. It’s that a majority of Republican primary voters are supporting candidates who share many extreme right-wing views.

That evidence is not found in Trump’s numbers, which slipped from 26 percent in pre-debate national polls by Rasmussen Reports, which specializes in GOP campaigns, to 17 percent after the confrontation with Fox News’ moderators and his competitors. Rather, it comes from adding up the percentages of the candidates with 5 percent or more, and realizing that 70 percent of likely GOP primary voters favor right-wing extremists.

The polls’ fine-print tell one story—of shifting fortunes in a crowded field. Nationally, Trump now has 17 percent, followed by Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, each at 10 percent, according to Rasmussen. Then Scott Walker and Carly Fiorina each have 9 percent, followed by Ben Carson at 8 percent, and Ted Cruz at 7 percent. State polls find even more movement, such as Trump pulling ahead of Walker in Iowa and John Kasich climbing in New Hampshire.

But no matter who is out front now—or who might be leading as the fall campaign looms, when you add up the shares up of the GOP candidates pollings at 5 percent or more, fully 70 percent of Republicans want a candidate who is authoritarian and anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-science, anti-tax, anti-government, anti-labor, and more.

This big-picture is largely lost in the campaign commentary and analysis, such as Nate Silver’s recent post at fivethirtyeight.com, entitled, “Donald Trump Is Winning The Polls – And Losing The Nomination.”

Silver’s points are all good—but he’s looking at the microcosm not the macrocosm. Yes, the Iowa caucuses are nearly 175 days away. And states do vote one at a time; there is no national primary. And of the 17 GOP contenders, some will drop out. And many states do not award delegates on a winner-take-all basis. And many poll respondents may not end up voting.

“This is why it’s exasperating that the mainstream media has become obsessed with how Trump is performing in the polls,” he wrote, then citing other historic and political factors why performance this early in a race is not a strong indication of who will win.

But what’s also exasperating is that the media’s fine print focus of post-debate polling is missing a very big point about the nature of the Republican field and the party’s current base: it’s filled with right-wing extremists, no matter how you parse it.  

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America’s retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections. He is the author of “Count My Vote: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting” (AlterNet Books, 2008).

See:http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/post-republican-debate-reality-gop-field-and-base-dominated-right-wing-extremists?akid=13379.123424.eR2xum&rd=1&src=newsletter1040825&t=4

Paul Krugman: GOP Candidates Can’t Attack Obama Because of Party’s Disastrous Record of Predicting His Failures

The president’s ‘failure to fail’ has left the field scrambling to find an angle the party hasn’t already ruined..

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Scott Eric Kaufman

Emphasis Mine

In his column on Monday, Paul Krugman tackled the problem that the GOP candidates in last week’s first presidential debate couldn’t — the fact that President Barack Obama’s signature policy, the Affordable Care Act, is an overwhelming success.

It was only mentioned nine times during the debate, which is — depending on how you tally efforts to defund and repeal it — at least 45 fewer times than Republicans have voted to dismantle it. There was a good reason that the candidates skirted the issue, Krugman said, and that’s because “[o]ut there in the real world, none of the disasters their party predicted have actually come to pass.”

“President Obama just keeps failing to fail,” he continued, and the fact that more people are insured, and that they are, “by and large, please with their coverage,” means that Republicans can’t go after the program and have any chance of winning the general election.

Republicans love to talk about how liberals with their environmentalism and war on coal are standing in the way of America’s energy future. But there was only a bit of that last week — perhaps because domestic oil production has soared and oil imports have plunged since Mr. Obama took office.

What’s the common theme linking all the disasters that Republicans predicted, but which failed to materialize? If I had to summarize the G.O.P.’s attitude on domestic policy, it would be that no good deed goes unpunished. Try to help the unfortunate, support the economy in hard times, or limit pollution, and you will face the wrath of the invisible hand. The only way to thrive, the right insists, is to be nice to the rich and cruel to the poor, while letting corporations do as they please.

According to this worldview, a leader like President Obama who raises taxes on the 1 percent while subsidizing health care for lower-income families, who provides stimulus in a recession, who regulates banks and expands environmental protection, will surely preside over disaster in every direction.

But he hasn’t. I’m not saying that America is in great shape, because it isn’t. Economic recovery has come too slowly, and is still incomplete; Obamacare isn’t the system anyone would have designed from scratch; and we’re nowhere close to doing enough on climate change. But we’re doing far better than any of those guys in Cleveland will ever admit.

See: http://www.alternet.org/economy/paul-krugman-gop-candidates-cant-attack-obama-because-partys-disastrous-record-predicting?akid=13370.123424.nAKUWt&rd=1&src=newsletter1040687&t=12

George Lakoff: Why Pope Francis Killed It on Addressing Climate Change

The Pope combines science, morality and politics.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: George Lakoff

Emphasis Mine

Beginning with my book Moral Politics in 1996 (Ch. 12), I have been arguing that environmental issues are moral issues. There I reviewed and critiqued conservative metaphors of nature as a resource, as property, as an adversary to be conquered.

Instead I argued that we needed to conceptualize nature as the giver of all life, as sustainer and provider, as having inherent value, imposing responsibility, and deserving gratitude, love, adoration, and commitment.

I suggested alternative metaphors of nature as mother, as a divine being, as a living organism, as a home, as a victim to be cared for, and a whole with us as parts inseparable from nature and from each other.

Pope Francis in his Encyclical used all of these and then went much further. First, he got all the science right — no small task. I have been writing for some time about role of systemic causation in global warming and the environment. The Pope not only got the ecological system effects right, but he went much, much further linking the environmental effects to effects on those most oppressed on earth by poverty, weather disasters, disease, ocean rise, lack of drinking water, the degradation of agriculture, and the essential aesthetic and spiritual contact with unspoiled nature. And more, he spoke of our moral responsibility toward animals.

He spoke in metaphors that might sound strange coming in a scientific or political speech, but somehow seem entirely natural for the Pope.

The title of the encyclical is “On Care for our Common Home.” This simple phrase establishes the most important frame right from the start. Using the metaphor of the “Earth as Home,” he triggers a frame in which all the people of the world are a family, living in a common home.

This frame carries with it many assumptions: As one family, we should care for each other and take responsibility for each other. A home is something we all depend on, physically and emotionally. A home is something inherently worth maintaining and protecting.

164. “…there has been a growing conviction that our planet is a homeland and that humanity is one people living in a common home.”

61. “…our common home is falling into seri­ous disrepair.”

13. “Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home.”

Pope Francis explicitly states what most progressives implicitly believe but rarely say out loud: “The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.” The “Common Good” frame is about interdependence, shared responsibility and shared benefit.

156. Human ecology is inseparable from the notion of the common good, a central and uni­fying principle of social ethics.

157. Society as a whole, and the state in particular, are obliged to defend and promote the common good.

Critics of Pope Francis have attacked him as having a naïve understanding of the economy, of being anti-technology, or of denying the so-called productive role of self-interest. But he is doing much more, suggesting that business and technology can, and ought to, have moral ends, especially in the face of the looming worldwide disaster of global warming. He is further pointing out, correctly, that the global warming disaster and hugely disastrous other effects were created by the business-technology axis seeking profit above all, without being structured to serve the common good.

129. Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving our world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the areas in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good.

54. The alliance between the economy and technology ends up sidelining anything unrelated to its immediate interests.

The Pope of course realizes the challenge. An alternative religion of market fundamentalism has taken hold both in public discourse and in the minds of the public — so much so that it is hard to imagine a change in time to avert disaster.

108. The idea of promoting a different cultural paradigm and employing technology as a mere instrument is nowadays inconceivable.

Indeed, market fundamentalism has become a kind of alternative religion, with its own idea of what is natural (the primacy of self-interest) and moral (in the conservative version of the Invisible Hand metaphor, if everyone pursues his own profit, the profit of all will be maximized). Pope Francis correctly points out that these metaphors have run wild, “ending up” creating enormous wealth for some, disaster for the many, and the terror of global warming for the earth. In market fundamentalism, there is only “individual responsibility,” no common responsibility for the common good. Without such common responsibility, there will be no way to avert the coming disasters of global warming, which has been created by market fundamentalism and will be perpetuated by it, unless it is checked.

In market fundamentalism, wealth is measure of the good: an overall increase in monetary wealth is a moral triumph. But while the industrialization of China has increased the wealth of China’s capitalists, of American corporate outsourcers to China, and of the Chinese government, the Chinese have suffered an ecological and social devastation, an overwhelming “cost” — a cost beyond the measure of money. Just look at the pollution in Beijing and desertification in western China. Via global warming, they are imposing that cost on the world, just as the industrialization of the West has in the past.

Pope Francis extends his view of morality using the commonplace economic metaphor of “Moral Accounting” in which there are debts, costs, people who owe, people who are owed, and an expectation that debts should be paid. He points out that no one makes it on his own, that pre-existing resources, often taken from others and the labor of others, have made life possible for anyone who is economically well-off. We all have debts. We also all have basic rights, e.g., to human dignity. When market fundamentalism shifts the resources of others and fruits of the labor of others to the wealthy, robbing the poor of their right to dignity, the wealthy incur a debt, a moral debt.

30. Our world has a grave social debt towards the poor who lack access to drinking water, because they are denied the right to a life consistent with their inalienable dig­nity. This debt can be paid partly by an increase in funding to provide clean water and sanitary services among the poor.

51. A true “ecolog­ical debt” exists, particularly between the global north and south, connected to commercial im­balances with effects on the environment, and the disproportionate use of natural resources by certain countries over long periods of time.

159. The Portuguese bishops have called upon us to acknowledge this obligation of jus­tice: “The environment is part of a logic of re­ceptivity. It is on loan to each generation, which must then hand it on to the next.”

These are just a few examples of the many metaphors and frames used to powerful effect in this document. They have one thing in common, which they also share with the progressive value system: they are rooted in a worldview based on empathy.

This is Empathy writ large, beyond individual empathy: it is a global empathy for all humanity, all of life –– animals, fish, plants, and Nature, which provides all life. What is absent is the all too common narrow view of religion as about individuals alone, in which THE spiritual issue is whether YOU get into Heaven, and that is a matter of personal responsibility. You are responsible for yourself, not for others, not for all of life and what is life-giving. That narrow view of individual, not social or global responsibility is completely absent from the Pope’s message. The message takes morality to the global level, to an ecological spirituality. It is a message especially appropriate for American democracy, which begins with the idea of union, of citizens caring for one another and taking the responsibility working through their government to provide public resources for all, whether for business or personal life, and with freedom and dignity for all as inalienable rights.

The whole Encyclical is well worth reading. It is a remarkable document and one that needs to be taken to heart not just by the world’s Catholics, but by the world’s full population, now and for many years into the future.

I am an advocate of the separation of church and state. I don’t have a Pope. I have never tended to follow the edicts of a Pope just because he was Pope. And I am not doing so here.

It is vital to bear in mind that this Encyclical is not just a matter of church doctrine. All policy within the political domain is a matter of morality. Every politician who proposes a policy does so on the basis that it is right, not wrong or morally irrelevant. This Encyclical is overtly about politics and the role a global morality needs to play in politics.

I have long argued that global warming is the moral issue of our time. President Obama has said the same. I am thrilled that Pope Francis, spiritual and moral leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, has not just agreed, but has gone so much further, and that he has framed the issue so powerfully, often in language that flows most easily and readily from a Pope, and yet makes so much moral sense, whether you are Catholic or not, religious or not.

Moral questions are not the same as practical questions. But the fate of the earth in the face of global warming is so practical a question that it becomes a moral one. That is the lens through which to read the Pope’s Encyclical.

(N.B.: our planet will survive global warming: our species may not…)

(N.B.: Prof. Lawrence Krauss observes that the Encyclical does not address birth control, and that over population is a root cause of theses issues.)

see: http://chasdarwin.com/2015/06/19/ideology-subsumes-empiricism-in-popes-climate-encyclical/

George Lakoff is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.

see: http://www.alternet.org/environment/george-lakoff-why-pope-francis-killed-it-addressing-climate-change?akid=13263.123424.hW07xR&rd=1&src=newsletter1038718&t=13

Welcome to Global Warming’s Terrifying New Era

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Source: Slate.com

Author: Eric Holthaus

Emphasis Mine

On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announcedthat Earth’s global temperature for February was among the hottest ever measured. So far, 2015 is tracking above record-warm 2014—which, when combined with the newly resurgent El Niño, means we’re on pace for another hottest year in history.

In addition to the just-completed warmest winter on record globally (despite the brutal cold and record snow in the eastern U.S.), new data on Thursday from the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that this year’s peak Arctic sea ice reached its lowest ever maximum extent, thanks to “an unusual configuration of the jet stream” that greatly warmed the Pacific Ocean near Alaska.

But here’s the most upsetting news. It’s been exactly 30 years since the last time the world was briefly cooler than its 20th-century average. Every single month since February 1985 has been hotter than the long-term average—that’s 360 consecutive months.

More than just being a round number, the 30-year streak has deeper significance. In climatology, a continuous 30-year stretch of data is traditionally what’s used to define what’s “normal” for a given location. In a very real way, we can now say that for our given location—the planet Earth—global warming is now “normal.” Forget debating—our climate has officially changed.

This 30-year streak should change the way we think and talk about this issue. We’ve entered a new era in which global warming is a defining characteristic and a fundamental driver of what it means to be an inhabitant of planet Earth. We should treat it that way. For those who care about the climate, that may mean de-emphasizing statistics and science and beginning to talk more confidently about the moral implications of continuing on our current path.

Since disasters disproportionately impact the poor, climate change is increasingly an important economic and social justice issue. The pope will visit the United States later this year as part of a broader campaign by the Vatican to directly influence the outcome of this year’s global climate negotiations in Paris—recent polling data show his message may be resonating, especially with political conservatives and nonscience types. Two-thirds of Americans now believe that world leaders are morally obligated to take steps to reduce carbon.

Scientists and journalists have debated the connection between extreme weather and global warming for years, but what’s happening now is different. Since weather impacts virtually every facet of our lives (at least in a small way), and since climate change is affecting weather at every point in the globe every day (at least in a small way), that makes it at the same time incredibly difficult to study and incredibly important. Formal attribution studies that attempt to scientifically tease out whether global warming “caused” individual events are shortsighted and miss the point. It’s time for a change in tack. The better question to ask is: How do we as a civilization collectively tackle the weather extremes we already face?

In the aftermath of the nearly unprecedented power and destructive force of Cyclone Pam’s landfall in the remote Pacific island nation of Vanuatu—where survivors were forced to drink saltwater—emerges perhaps the best recent example I’ve seen of a government acknowledging this changed climate in a scientifically sound way:

Cyclone Pam is a consequence of climate change since all weather is affected by the planet’s now considerably warmer climate. The spate of extreme storms over the past decade—of which Pam is the latest—is entirely consistent in science with the hottest ever decade on record.

The statement was from the government of the Philippines, the previous country to suffer a direct strike by a Category 5 cyclone—Haiyan in 2013. As chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum negotiating bloc, the Philippines also called for a strengthening of ambition in the run-up to this year’s global climate agreement in Paris.

The cost of disasters of all types is rising around the globe as population and wealth increase and storms become more fierce. This week in Japan, 187 countries agreed on a comprehensive plan to reduce loss of life from disasters as well as their financial impact. However, the disaster deal is nonbinding and won’t provide support to the most vulnerable countries.

Combining weather statistics and photos of devastated tropical islands with discussions of political and economic winners and losers is increasingly necessary as climate change enters a new era. We’re no longer describing the problem. We’re telling the story of how humanity reacts to this new normal.

As the Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger, in an editorial kickoff of his newspaper’s newly heightened focus on climate, said, “the mainstream argument has moved on.” What’s coming next isn’t certain, but it’s likely to be much more visceral and real than steadily upward sloping lines on a graph.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.

See: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/03/19/thirty_years_of_above_average_temperatures_mean_we_re_entering_a_new_era.html?wpsrc=sh_all_tab_fb_bot

How to Become a Conservative in Four Embarrassing Steps

Not that we’d want to. But many Americans, perplexingly, have taken that path in the last ten years.

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Source: Alternet

Author: Paul Buchheit

Emphasis Mine

Not that we’d want to. But many Americans, perplexingly, have taken that path in the last ten years, as 27 percent of those polled now consider themselves ‘mostly’ or ‘consistently’ conservative, up from 18 percent in 2004. (Conservatives were at 30 percent in 1994. Liberals increased from 21 to over 30 percent in the 1990s and have remained approximately the same since then.)

The language of true conservatives often turns to denial, dismissal, and/or belligerence, without verifiable facts of any substance. There is also evidence for delusional thinking and a lack of empathy. Here are four ways to be just like them. 1. Ignore Facts

Research shows that conservatives tend to modify facts to accommodate their beliefs and convictions, while liberals are more willing to deal with the complexity of multiple sources of information that help determine the true facts.

In simpler terms, numerous studies (here, here, here, and here) conclude that conservatives are not very smart.

Perhaps the best example of fact-aversion is climate change. Incredibly, even though 97 percentof climate scientists agree that climate warming is very likely due to human activities, 66 percent of Republicans say they do not believe in global warming.

It’s even more incredible that the Chair of the Committee on the Environment, James Inhofe, brought a snowball to the Senate floor to back up his earlier suggestion that manmade global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Tea Party and the Right

How to Become a Conservative in Four Embarrassing Steps

Not that we’d want to. But many Americans, perplexingly, have taken that path in the last ten years.
By Paul Buchheit / AlterNet
March 8, 2015
39 COMMENTS

Photo Credit: Alexeysun/Shutterstock.com

Not that we’d want to. But many Americans, perplexingly, have taken that path in the last ten years, as 27 percent of those polled now consider themselves ‘mostly’ or ‘consistently’ conservative, up from 18 percent in 2004. (Conservatives were at 30 percent in 1994. Liberals increased from 21 to over 30 percent in the 1990s and have remained approximately the same since then.)

The language of true conservatives often turns to denial, dismissal, and/or belligerence, without verifiable facts of any substance. There is also evidence for delusional thinking and a lack of empathy. Here are four ways to be just like them. 

1. Ignore Facts 

Research shows that conservatives tend to modify facts to accommodate their beliefs and convictions, while liberals are more willing to deal with the complexity of multiple sources of information that help determine the true facts.

In simpler terms, numerous studies (here, here, here, and here) conclude that conservatives are not very smart. 

Perhaps the best example of fact-aversion is climate change. Incredibly, even though 97 percentof climate scientists agree that climate warming is very likely due to human activities, 66 percent of Republicans say they do not believe in global warming.

It’s even more incredible that the Chair of the Committee on the Environment, James Inhofe, brought a snowball to the Senate floor to back up his earlier suggestion that manmade global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” 

If there is even a chance that humans are damaging the environment, a thinking person would consider the potential effect on his or her children and grandchildren. But the exact opposite has happened. Half of all carbon emissions have been dumped into the air in approximately the last 25 years. Even the Pentagon, much trusted by right-wingers, has warned that “the danger from climate change is real, urgent, and severe.”

2. Make Up Your Own Facts 

This is the opposite of ignoring facts, for in this case conservatives are inventing new ones. A prime example is the stubborn belief in supply-side, trickle-down economics, and in the supposed power of the free market, as summarized by Milton Friedman when he said, “The free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people.”

The “Laffer Curve,” named after economist Arthur Laffer, hypothesizes that tax rate increases will eventually reach a point of diminishing returns for tax revenue. Conservatives have contorted this economic theory into the ‘fact’ that all tax reductions are beneficial.

But there are numerous reputable economists, research groups, and tax analysts who have concluded that the maximum U.S. tax rate can and should be about twice its current level. 

Adherence to supply-side beliefs may help to justify 35 years of trickle-down persistence in the minds of the people getting rich. As conservative analyst Michael Barone once said, “Markets work. But sometimes they take time.” 100 years, perhaps?

3. Display No Empathy for Others 

Conservatives tend to blame poor people for their own misfortunes. Like when John Boehner voiced his perception of people without jobs: “This idea that has been born…I really don’t have to work; I don’t really want to do this. I think I’d rather just sit around.”  Almost all healthy adult Americans, of course, want to work. But in 2011 Senate Republicans killed a proposed $447 billion jobs bill that would have added about two million jobs to the economy. Members of Congress filibustered Nancy Pelosi’s “Prevention of Outsourcing Act,” even as two million jobs were being outsourced, and they temporarily blocked the “Small Business Jobs Act.” In April, 2013 only one member of Congress bothered to show up for a hearing on unemployment.

When asked what he would do to bring jobs to Kentucky, Mitch McConnell responded, “That is not my job. It is the primary responsibility of the state Commerce Cabinet.”

It gets worse beyond our own borders, where American neoconservatism leads to behavior that is shockingly devoid of empathy. A 13-year-old Yemeni boy told The Guardian about the drones buzzing incessantly overhead: “I see them every day and we are scared of them…day and night…we even dream of them in our sleep.”  That boy was killed by a drone in early 2015.

4. Shout Down Your Opponents 

If nothing else works, belligerence will. Many of the top right-wingers use this strategy. John McCain told Code Pink protestors to “Get out of here, you low-life scum.” Michael Moore has reportedly received death threats from both Glenn Beck and Clint Eastwood. Bill O’Reilly bashed Mother Jones chief David Corn as a “liar” and an “irresponsible guttersnipe,” and then assailed New York Times’ Emily Steel in an interview about the Falklands controversy: “I am coming after you with everything I have. You can take it as a threat.”

The bully tactics are especially frightening at the global level. “All of Russia,” notes Paul Craig Roberts, “is distressed that Washington has destroyed the trust that had been created during the Reagan-Gorbachev era.” And as noted by The Nation, “There’s the perception across the Global South that, while the United States remains embroiled in its endless wars, the world is defecting to the East.” Toward China, that is, as their New Silk Road opens doors of cooperation from the far east all the way to Europe.

Our conservative-controlled nation’s self-serving belief in “exceptionalism” is taking us further and further from the rest of the world. And closer to a world of trouble for our children. 

Paul Buchheit teaches economic inequality at DePaul University. He is the founder and developer of the Web sites UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org and RappingHistory.org, and the editor and main author of “American Wars: Illusions and Realities” (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.

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See: http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/how-become-conservative-four-embarrassing-steps?akid=12865.123424.f8FV99&rd=1&src=newsletter1032964&t=8

Reflections on Dec 7, 1941: What we need today is another ‘Sputnik moment’…

chasdarwin1 Comment

There have been two ‘great awakenings’ in US history: Pearl Harbor Day, of which today is the 73rd anniversary, and October 4, 1957, when the USSR launched the first artificial earth satellite.  The former jarred the USA out of its isolationist mindset, and launched the mammoth government effort to spend the money and organize the resources to defeat the fascists; the latter jarred the USA out of its superior mindset, made science and engineering credible and primary, and the government committed the money and resources to win the ‘space race’.  Science was recognized as truth, engineering became the career to have, and new curricula were  created in physics, chemistry and biology.  Many of us who were in high school in October of 1957 were part of the team on July 19, 1969 that landed men on the moon.  (Evolution was restored  to biology courses until teaching it became a religious/political issue in the late 70’s, and the PSSC physics course which I had in 1959-60 was still taught – with updates – to my son in 1994-95.)  Necessity was not the mother of invention but rather the mechanism which turned on the lights in the Department of Truth and Reason.

If science still held a place of respect in our country, climate change denial would have zero credibility.  What we need is another ‘Sputnik’ moment to turn us away from superstition and look for Answers in Science and Technology.  Perhaps the melting of the polar ice caps is such a moment, but it remains out of the headlines, and ‘below the fold’ on a back page.

 

 

 

 

Obama is having a really good week for a lame duck President

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Source: New Republic

Author: Jonathon Cohn

Emphasis Mine

The failed Obamacare presidency continued not to fail this week. Twice.

The first time it happened was on Tuesday morning, when Craig Spencer left Bellevue Hospital in New York. Spencer is the Doctors Without Borders volunteer who famously rode the subway and went bowling a day before developing Ebola symptoms. The president and his advisers, including Centers for Disease Control Director Thomas Frieden, assured the public that everything would be fine. Spencer had not been symptomatic while traveling around the city and only symptomatic people can transmit the disease (and, even then, only through bodily fluids).

Obama’s critics said that the Administration was under-reacting—that it needed to ban travel to West Africa or at least quarantine returning health workers. Obama, worried that such actions would deter health care workers from going overseas, resisted the pressure. Twenty-one days later, Spencer has recovered from Ebola, nobody else in New York has gotten the disease, and workers remain free to help fight the epidemic in Africa—where it remains a potent threat not only to locals, but also to regional and eventually global stability. New cases might yet show up in the U.S., but the public health infrastructure seems prepared to handle it. You can read more about it here.

Obama’s other non-failure came late on Tuesday night, when, while traveling in Asia, he announced that he’d secured a major agreement on climate change with the Chinese. The U.S. is the world’s second largest producer of greenhouse gases. China is the first. But Chinese officials have sometimes resisted calls for reducing carbon emissions, because they said China was still a developing nation that needed to burn carbon fuels in order to modernize its economy. Here in the U.S., conservatives cited that resistance as reason the U.S. should not act to reduce its emissions. Why bother, the argument went, when the Chinese wouldn’t agree to do something about their carbon problem?

Now the Chinese have done just that. Under the terms of the agreement, both the U.S. and China agreed to greenhouse gas targets—which for the U.S. means continued reduction of emissions and for China means slowing the growth in emissions until they stop rising in 2030 (or maybe sooner, if China can achieve that). Those are ambitious targets that will challenge both countries, albeit for different reasons. But it’s a legitimately big deal, for reasons Rebecca Leber laid out at QED on Wednesday. Among other things, she writes, it gives other countries more incentive to set their own emissions targets—a necessary precursor for reaching an international agreement on climate at next year’s summit in Paris. 

The two milestones are a pretty good proxy for the two kinds of achievements this Administration has made. As my colleague Danny Vinik has observed, Obama catches a lot of grief for his lack of crisis management. There are times he’s deserved that. But his patient, analytic approach to situations like the influx of young Central American immigrants at the Texas border seems largely to have worked. Obama sometimes stumbles at first, which may be why critics are quick to call every new episode his Katrina. But remember this: Obama actually had a Katrina, it was called Sandy, and by all accounts the Administration handled that disaster well.

The agreement with China, meanwhile, is part of Obama’s broader strategy to reduce U.S. emissions. It’s a legacy that will last long after he leaves office, in the form of a planet that is heating more slowly. Policy success isn’t the same as political success, of course. Last week’s election showed that. And ultimately the two are related. On climate, like most issues, either Congress or Obama’s White House successors could halt or even reverse progress in the future.

But the China agreement is something history will probably remember well, just as it does the Recovery Act and the Affordable Care Act—even if those two achievements, like Obama’s environmental accomplishments, get remarkably little love right now.

—Jonathan Cohn

 

See:

5 of the Most Dangerous Delusions of the Far Right

Conservatives are outdoing themselves with the crazy on issues like climate change and abortion.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Amanda Marcotte

That the conservative movement is built on a bunch of misinformation, strange fantasies and outright lies has been the subject of thorough documentation, particularly in the past few decades. Conservative leaders deny inconvenient facts, make up lurid tales to justify their beliefs, and outright lie, if it suits their agenda. But these lies and myths rarely just sit in amber. They tend to evolve and get stranger and more baroque over time. Just when you think conservative misinformation can’t get any weirder, it does. Here’s four topics where conservatives are taking the lies and denialism to the next level.

1) Climate change.The White House recently released a report on climate change outlining how climate change is no longer a “future” issue since it’s having an impact on the environment right now. Conservatives responded by abandoning all restraint. No longer content with the line that they are simply “skeptical” of the science, George Will and Charles Krauthammer (neither of whom are scientists) went on Fox News to “explain” how all this science stuff is hokum. Will basically accused scientists of making it all up for mercenary reasons, saying, “If you want money from the biggest source of direct research in this country, the federal government, don’t question its orthodoxy.” Why the federal government would make up climate change and then bribe scientists to lie about it was left unexplained.

 

But Michael Bresciani of the Christian Post may have come up with an even more entertaining, if still chilling way for conservatives to simply wave off the overwhelming evidence about climate change. Bresciani seems to accept that climate change is happening, but claims it’s for biblical reasons. “All that the Bible reveals about climate changed is part of the pre-millennial prophetic message. It does say that earthquakes and violent storms, fires and other natural disasters will occur with greater intensity and frequency as the ‘last days’ approach, but it clearly says these are ‘birth pangs’ for a planet about to meet its creator.” Instead of blaming carbon emissions, he blames “everything perverted, liberal and dehumanizing.”

So those are the two choices facing a forward-thinking climate change denialist these days: Either claim science is a lie or say climate change is real, but it’s caused by all the sex you perverts are having.

2) Abortion.Abortion has always been a topic that causes conservatives to spin off into fantasyland, but lately it just seems to be getting worse. Unable to admit out loud that they want to ban abortion to punish women for having sex, conservatives have taken to spinning fantastical tales of how abortion is an “industry” that deliberately tricks women into having abortions in order to make money. (Never mind that many abortion clinics are non-profits.)

But even that lurid fantasy is apparently not satisfying enough. Carol Everett worked in abortion clinics three decades ago and now makes a living as an anti-choice activist, and there’s no tale too tall for her to tell. Recently, LifeSiteNews, without an ounce of skepticism, printed some of Everett’s claims about how the “industry” supposedly tricks young women into having sex, by letting them know that it exists. “We had a goal of 3-5 abortions from every girl between the ages of 13 and 18,” she told the unbelievably gullible audience at an anti-choice function. She then explained that abortion clinic workers supposedly sneak into schools and trick kids into getting abortions by teaching them the name of their genitals. Knowing your genitals have a name apparently puts them straight on the road to having sex, something she seemingly believes teenagers would otherwise have no interest in.

“My goal was to get them sexually active on a low-dose birth control pill that we knew they would get pregnant on,” she triumphantly concluded. There you have it: Anti-choicers have taken to practically arguing that feminists invented sex so they can trick women into having abortions. It makes perfect sense if you’ve been knocked on the head in the past five minutes. (Research shows that contraception use is linked to lower, not higher, abortion rates.)

3) Gun culture.The great myth the right has pushed for decades is that people need guns for personal safety, to protect against home intruders who are bent on raping and murdering them. It’s hard to deny the right to self-defense, but the tactic is fundamentally dishonest because having a gun in the home significantly raises the likelihood you’re going to be murdered. But no longer content simply to lie to people about guns, right-wing media has upped the ante, now arguing that a little pre-emptive murder of teenagers who are not actually out to murder you is good for overall safety and security.

You see it with the attempts to turn George Zimmerman into a hero, even though it’s indisputable that he chased down and shot an unarmed Trayvon Martin. Sean Hannity recently experimented with pushing the envelope even further, by championing the cause of a man who entrapped his victims with the intent to kill them for stealing from him. Byron Smith knew that his victims—Haile Kifer, 18, and Nick Brady, 17—had no intention of harming anyone with their admittedly stupid teenage stunt of breaking into houses to steal stuff. That’s why he set up an elaborate ruse to trick them into thinking his house was empty (including driving away and sneaking back into his dark house on foot) for the sole purpose of shooting them dead. Smith was found guilty of murder.

But Hannity couldn’t resist trying to turn him into a hero, claiming it was somehow self-defense because the kids “broke into the guy’s house.” This goes well beyond the lie that guns make you safe. The argument here is that pre-emptive vigilantism and the summary execution of people guilty of nothing more than petty crime is somehow “self-defense.”

4) Terrorism. Your average conservative is deeply committed to the idea that the Republicans are better on security issues than the Democrats. Of course, now they have to contend with the fact that President Obama presided over the killing of Osama Bin Laden. How better to go about this than just go big when rewriting history?

During a recent discussion of terrorism, Fox News host Eric Bolling said, “America was certainly safe between 2000 and 2008. I don’t remember any attacks on American soil during that period of time.” No one bothered to correct him, even though the biggest terrorist attack in American history happened during Bush’s presidency, on September 11, 2001. Perhaps you remember it.

5) Benghazi. Fox News and various conservative pundits are notorious for going on and on with this hazy conspiracy theory trying to blame Hillary Clinton for an attack on an embassy in Benghazi that led to the deaths of Americans. But now it’s gotten to the point where every news story imaginable is being somehow linked back to “Benghazi,” no matter how tenuous the connection.

Recently, this trend reached a new low: Trying to use the kidnapping of hundreds of school girls in Nigeria by an Islamist cult to push the Benghazi hoax. Benghazi is a city in Libya, and is nearly 3,000 miles away from Nigeria. This did not stop Laura Ingraham on Fox News from implying that the embassy incident in Benghazi somehow caused the kidnapping. “I think part of the problem here is that we have a dead American ambassador,” she said, going on to suggest that the ambassador’s death emboldened Boko Haram to kidnap the girls.

Allen West went in a different, though no less disgusting, direction. Calling the attention paid to the Nigeria story “fishy,” West argued that the story is just a distraction from “all the scandals facing the Obama administration, especially Benghazi and the Select Committee.” The possibility that people might actually care deeply about what happens to innocent young girls is clearly implausible to him.

None of this should be surprising. Once the right embraced dishonesty as a favorite tactic, there’s no reason not to give into the urge to make the lies more elaborate and fantastical, all of which gets them more attention and gins up more hatred for their opposition. The lies are just going to get nuttier, as there’s very little reason for conservative pundits not to keep pushing and seeing how far they can go.

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of “It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.”

Emphasis Mine

See: http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/5-most-dangerous-delusions-far-right?akid=11815.123424.B9wocH&rd=1&src=newsletter993137&t=4

11 Most Absurd Lies Conservatives Are Using to Brainwash America’s School Kids

Now Republicans have a plan to try to recapture the youngest voters out there: Take over the curriculum in public schools, replace education with a bunch of conservative propaganda, and reap the benefits of having a new generation that can’t tell reality from right-wing fantasy.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Amanda Marcotte

” If recent elections have taught us anything, it’s that young Americans have taken a decided turn to the left. Young voters delivered Obama the election: the under-44 set voted Obama and the over-45 set broke for Romney. The youngest voters, age 18-29, gave Obama a whopping 60% of their vote.

Now Republicans have a plan to try to recapture the youngest voters out there: Take over the curriculum in public schools, replace education with a bunch of conservative propaganda, and reap the benefits of having a new generation that can’t tell reality from right-wing fantasy.

How well this plan will work is debatable, but in the meantime, these shenanigans present the very real possibility that public school students will graduate without a proper education. To make it worse, many of these attempts to rewrite school curriculum are happening in Texas,  which can set the textbook standards for the entire country by simply wielding its power as one of the biggest school textbook markets there is. With that in mind, here’s a list of 11 lies your kid may be in danger of learning in school.

Lie #1: Racism has barely been an issue in U.S. history and slavery wasn’t that big a deal.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute reviewed the new social studies standards laid down by the rightwing-dominated Texas State School Board and found them to be a deplorable example of conservative wishful thinking replacing fact. At the top of list? Downplaying the role that slavery had in starting the Civil War, and instead focusing on “sectionalism” and “states rights,” even though the sectionalism and states rights arguments directly stemmed from Southern states wanting to keep slavery. There’s also a chance your kid might be misled to think post-Civil War racism was no big deal, as the standards excise any mention of the KKK, the phrase “Jim Crow” or the Black Codes. Mention is made of the Southern Democratic opposition to civil rights, but mysteriously, the mass defection of Southern Democrats to the Republican Party to punish the rest of the Democrats for supporting civil rights goes unmentioned.

Lie #2: Joe McCarthy was right.

The red-baiting of the mid-20th century has gone down in history, correctly, as a witch hunt that stemmed from irrational paranoia that gripped the U.S. after WWII. But now, according to the Thomas B. Fordham report, your kid might learn that the red baiters had a point: “It is disingenuously suggested that the House Un-American Activities Committee—and, by extension, McCarthyism—have been vindicated by the Venona decrypts of Soviet espionage activities (which had, in reality, no link to McCarthy’s targets).” Critical lessons about being skeptical of those who attack fellow Americans while wrapping themselves in the flag will be lost for students whose textbooks adhere to these standards.

Lie #3: Climate change is a massive hoaxscientistshave perpetuated on the public.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been hard at work pushing for laws requiring that climate change denialism be taught in schools as a legitimate scientific theory. Unfortunately,  as Neela Banerjee of the  L.A. Times reports, they’ve already had some serious success: “Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change.” Other states are taking the “teach the controversy” strategy that helped get creationism into biology classrooms, asking teachers to treat climate change like it’s a matter of political debate instead of a scientifically established fact.

The reality is that climate change is a fact that has overwhelming scientific consensus. In 2004, Science  reviewed the 928 relevant studies on climate change published between 1993 and 2003 and found that exactly zero of them denied that climate change was a reality, and most found it had manmade causes. To claim that climate change is a “controversy” requires one to believe that there’s a massive conspiracy involving nearly all the scientists in the world. So, your kids are not only not learning the realities of climate change, they are also learning, if indirectly, to give credence to conspiracy theory paranoia.

Lie #4: The Bible is a history textbook and a scientific document.

Texas passed a law in 2007 pushing schools to teach the Bible as history and literature in schools. Since that was already being done in most schools, the law was clearly just a backdoor way to sneak religious instruction into schools, and a report by the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) demonstrates that many of them have taken full advantage. One district treats the Bible stories like history by “listing biblical events side by side with historical developments from around the globe.” Many other schools are teaching that the Bible “proves” that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. The Earth is actually over 4 billion years old.

Lie #5: Black people are the descendents of Ham and therefore cursed by God.

Among the courses justified by the 2007 Bible law, TFN found two school districts teaching that the various races are descended from the sons of Noah. All the Bible really says about the sons of Noah is that Ham was cursed by his father so that his descendents would be slaves, but American slave owners used this passage to claim that Africans must be the descendents of Ham and therefore their slave-owning was okay by God. Make no mistake. The only reason this legend has persisted and is popping up in 21st-century classrooms is that conservative Christians are still trying to justify the enslavement of African Americans over a century ago.

Lie #6: Evolution is a massive hoaxscientistshave perpetuated on the public.

Creationists have an endless store of creative ways to get around the Constitution and the courts when it comes to replacing legitimate biology education with fundamentalist Christian dogma. Various states have employed an extensive school voucher system that has allowed creationist dogma to flourish. College-age activist Zack Kopplin has been chronicling the problem, and has found various schools nationwide using taxpayer dollars to teach that evolution is a “mistaken belief” and that the Bible “refutes the man-made idea of evolution.” Why do these school administrators believe that scientists are hoaxing the public by making up evolution? Kopplin found a Louisiana school principal who claimed it’s because scientists are “sinful men” seeking to justify their own immorality, and another Florida school teaching that evolutionary theory is “the way of the heathen.”

Lie #7: Sex is awful and filthy, and you should save it for someone you love.

While things are improving, even in notoriously fact-phobic states like Mississippi and Texas, “abstinence-only” education continues to persist in school districts across the nation. TFN found that nearly three-quarters of Texas high schools are still teaching abstinence-only, which is based on the fundamental and easily disproved lie that premarital sex is inherently dangerous to a person’s mental and physical health. On top of this, TFN found that many schools are still passing on inaccurate information on condoms and STI transmission, usually exaggerating the dangers in a futile bid to keep kids from having sex. Unfortunately, even Texas school districts that use curriculum that educates correctly on contraception use are still trying to spin abstinence-until-marriage as a desirable option for all students, even though premarital sex is near-universal in the real world.  Abstinence-only may be discredited with the voters, but sadly it’s still very normal in Texas, other red states, and even across the nation.

Lie #8: Dragons actually once existed. 

As much as “Game of Thrones” fans might wish otherwise, dragons are not real and have never existed. But as reported by Mother Jones, Louisiana’s notorious voucher school system has let some crazy nonsense fly in the classroom, including the claim that dragons used to roam the planet. A book being used in Louisiana classrooms titled Life Science and published by Bob Jones University Press claims that “scientists” found “dinosaur skulls” that the book suggests are actually dragons. “The large skull chambers could have contained special chemical-producing glands. When the animal forced the chemicals out of its mouth or nose, these substances may have combined and produced fire and smoke,” the book claims.

Lie #9: Gay people do not actually exist.

After being beat back by gay rights and sexual health advocates, Republicans in the Tennessee legislature are once again trying to bring back the “don’t say gay bill.” The law would ban a teacher from admitting the existence of homosexuality to students prior to the 8th grade, even if the students ask them about it. Instead, the bill would require turning a student who confesses to being gay over to his parents, with the legislators clearly hoping that punishment will somehow make the kid not-gay. The entire bill rests on and promotes the premise that homosexuality isn’t a real sexual orientation, but just the result of mental illness or confusion, and if it’s enforced, that message will come across to the students.

Lie #10: Hippies were dirty, immoral Satan-worshippers.

In the 1960s, it was common for conservatives to try to discredit the left by stoking paranoia about hippie culture and denouncing the supposed evils of rock ‘n’ roll. Forty years have passed, but in Louisiana, some school administrators are apparently still afraid that possessing a Beatles record means a young person is on the verge of quitting bathing and taking up a lifestyle of taking LSD and worshipping Satan at psychedelic orgies.

A history textbook snagged from a Louisiana school funded by the voucher program tells students: “Many young people turned to drugs and immoral lifestyles and these youths became known as hippies. They went without bathing, wore dirty, ragged, unconventional clothing, and deliberately broke all codes of politeness or manners. Rock music played an important part in the hippie movement and had great influence over the hippies. Many of the rock musicians they followed belonged to Eastern religious cults or practiced Satan worship.” It’s unclear if the book also teaches that if you play a Queen record backward, you can hear Satan telling you to smoke pot, but that kind of critical information could also be conveyed during the teacher’s lectures on the subject.

Lie #11: Ayn Rand’s books have literary value.

Idaho state senator John Goedde, chairman of the state’s Senate Education Committee has introduced a bill that would require students not only to read Rand’s ponderous novel Atlas Shrugged, but also to pass a test on it in order to graduate. Goedde claims to mostly not be serious about this bill, but instead is using it as a childish attempt to piss off the liberals, but it’s still the sort of item parents need to watch out for.

After all, Texas textbook standards require that an obsession with the gold standard be taught as a legitimate economic theory instead of the mad ravings of cranks that it is. We live in an era where no amount of right-wing lunacy is considered too much to be pushed on innocent children like it’s fact. Anyone who doubts that should just remember one word: Dragons.”

Emphasis Mine

See: http://www.alternet.org/education/11-most-absurd-lies-conservatives-are-using-brainwash-americas-school-kids