They prowl the oily shores of the Gulf of Mexico, moaning for caaasshh.
Their stupid has gone viral.
And if they win, humanity loses.
I'm tracking Climate Zombies: every Republican candidate for House, Senate, and Governor who doubts, denies, or derides the science of climate change. Today, I visit the Gulf of Mexico states -- Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida -- with a hypothesis to be tested against a small coastal state.
I began with the hypothesis that so many of the Gulf Coast Republicans are in thrall to the petroleum industry that I'd find more Climate Zombies than the rest of the country. Watching the upside down politics of the slowly unfolding horror in the Gulf of Mexico -- sand berms good! moratorium bad! -- left me with a bad taste in my mouth and a sense that politics in that region are more oil-dominated than the rest of the country.
I was wrong. But first, the evidence:
Alabama
Incumbent senator Richard Shelby wanted to both listen to scientists and not rule out that warming is part of a natural cycle; in 2008, he noted significant debate in the scientific community in wondering whether warming is part of cyclical patterns.
Incumbent Robert Aderholt (AL-04) doesn't even have a Democratic opponent, but he does believe this:
I fall into the second group of people who believe, as do many very credible scientists, that the earth is currently in a natural warming cycle rather than a man-made climate change. Many scientists believe that natural cycles of warming and cooling have existed since the beginning of Earth. If we take the current models of climate prediction and apply those same models to what actually happened in the last thirty years, the models are shown to be very flawed. In addition, what knowledge we do have of a warming period in the Middle Ages cannot be explained by current models which are focused on greenhouse gas reductions.
Former Sierra Club member and candidate Mo Brooks (AL-05) visited Left in Alabama to query whether global warming is man-made or a recurrent weather pattern. He's also signed the Americans For Prosperity/Koch "no climate tax" pledge. I'm counting candidate Martha Roby (AL-02) as a likely climate zombie based on her signing of the AFP/Koch pledge. I don't have any information on the attitude toward climate science of incumbents Jo Bonner (AL-01), Mike Rogers (AL-03), or Spencer Bachus (AL-06), or candidate Don Chamberlain (AL-07). I also don't have any information on the attitude toward climate science of gubernatorial candidate Robert Bentley, although Left in Alabama notes that he wouldn't even discuss recycling in a recent debate.
Semi-final score: three confirmed and two presumed Climate Zombies, four unknowns.
Florida
Candidate for governor Rick Scott does not believe in global warming. Neither does candidate for Senate Marco Rubio. Both have signed the AFP/Koch pledge. So have Representatives Jeff Miller (FL-01), Connie Mack IV (FL-14), Bill Posey (FL-15), and candidates Steve Southerland (FL-02), Dan Webster (FL-08), Mike Prendergast (FL-11), Dennis Ross (FL-12), and Sandy Adams (FL-24), so I'm counting them as presumed to deny science. Candidate Karen Harrington (FL-20) has not only signed the pledge, but also believes that the "radical environmental lobby seems to control Congress."
Incumbent Cliff Stearns (FL-06) gave a House floor speech on global cooling, concluding: "Madam Speaker, the fact that so many experts were wrong about global cooling in the seventies does not necessarily mean that they are wrong about global warming today, but it does at least show that experts are sometimes incredibly, incredibly wrong." Mario Diaz-Balart (formerly FL-25, now running for FL-21) repeated the same talking points, but because he phrased it as a question he wins Planet Jeopardy I'm counting him as a presumed denier and Stearns as a definite denier.
Candidate Mike Yost (FL-03) believes that the science is flawed, and candidate Joe Budd (FL-19) wants to stop spending money on a "phony global warming debate." Candidate Allen West (FL-22) wants President Obama and Al Gore to apologize to God for "man-made global warming/climate change."
I don't have any information on the attitude toward climate science of incumbents John Mica (FL-07), Gus Bilirakis (FL-09), Bill Young (FL-10), Vern Buchanan (FL-13), Tom Rooney (FL-16) or candidates Rich Nugent (FL-05), Bernard Sansaricq (FL-23) or David Rivera (FL-25). The GOP is not running a candidate in FL-17.
I also don't have information on the attitude of Ander Crenshaw (FL-04) toward climate science, but did learn that he opposes EPA regulation of a creek in his district that's heavily polluted by Koch-owned Georgia-Pacific, after accepting a $5,000 donation from Koch. Not that there's anything wrong with that under current campaign finance/lobbyist rules.
Which brings us to Ileana Ros-Lehtinin (FL-18): "Global warming is real and man-made." (She doesn't like cap and trade.)
Semi-final score: six confirmed and ten presumed climate zombies, nine Republicans lacking sufficient information, and one sane person in a state to be heavily affected by sea level rise.
Louisiana
Incumbent Steve Scalise (LA-01) told Al Gore that the science behind climate change is suspect. Incumbent Rodney Alexander (LA-05) sponsored H.Res. 974, declaring that "impacts of climate change and proposed resolutions, tainted by the recent uncovering of climategate, are not universally accepted...." Incumbent John Fleming (LA-04) has signed the AFP/Koch pledge, so is presumed to be a denier. So has candidate Jeff Landry (LA-03), who has one of the odder segues I've seen: "I will fight to preserve and protect the Second Amendment rights guaranteed by our Constitution. I believe in conservation, not big government environmentalism." I often feel the need to mention Second Amendment rights and environmentalism in tandem, don't you? I don't have sufficient information on the attitude toward climate science of incumbents Bill Cassidy (LA-06) and Charles Boustany (LA-07).
David Vitter (LA-Sen) ridicules "pseudo-scientific garbage" of climate change, and his staffer calls climate change the greatest act of scientific fraud in history.
Only Anh Cao (LA-02) concedes that global warming is real, especially for New Orleans, although I haven't found evidence that he attributes climate change to human activity.
Semi-final score: three confirmed, two presumed Climate Zombies; three lacking sufficicent information.
Mississippi
I'm presuming candidates Alan Nunnelee (MS-01) and Steven Palazzo (MS-04) to be Climate Zombies, although neither has spoken on the subject; the former has taken the APF/Koch pledge and is endorsed by Sarah Palin, and the latter is a Tea Party candidate. Incumbent Gregg Harper (MS-03) has both signed the AFP/Koch pledge and has cosponsored H.R. 391, to exclude carbon dioxide from the definition of "air pollutant" in the Clean Air Act, also known as rewriting science. Candidate Bill Marcy (MS-02) in his own words:
I will not allow our country to be crippled by the so called "Globe Warming Environmental Terrorists". Like our other enemies, the environmental terrorists are not trying to protect our environment but rather "fundamentally change" our country by using an energy crisis to push their belief in a world government.
Semi-final score: two confirmed and two presumed Climate Zombies.
Conclusion and Bonus Mystery State:
These four states' number of Republicans who deny science is comparable to the rest of the country. Compare Alabama and Mississippi to Oregon, roughly the same size, with an environmentalist reputation but seven out of seven climate science deniers. Compare coastal Florida to inland Illinois and Michigan, with roughly the same numbers of deniers, unknowns, and sane person (singular).
Still not convinced? I selected a small bonus state: along the mid-Atlantic, nowhere near the heart of Red America, with a history of electing Democrats and moderate, reasonable Republicans. Its candidate for the at-large House seat, Glenn Urquhart, has taken the AFP/Koch pledge. That state's candidate for Senate has no opinion on whether global warming is human-caused -- and that's the sanest thing to come out of her mouth since winning her primary.
There's no regionalism to denying science. Rather, denying the reality of climate science is a deliberate political calculation across the Republican party, all across America.