Given Rick Santorum's views on climate change, which he reiterated at a slightly higher wacko level than previously in a guest essay today at the right-wing web site Redstate, he probably thinks that there's a studio out in the desert someplace where all the equipment and backdrops used to fake the Apollo moon landings are decaying under lock and key.
But while Santorum reiterates his global-warming-is-a-hoax-calculated-to-destroy-jobs-and the-American-way-of-life, many who agree that massive climate change is happening, is human-caused and is already having a negative impact across the planet haven't yet been motivated to push hard to do something serious about it. That includes most members of Congress, who presumably could do something about it if they had the political will and a sense of urgency. It also includes many on the left who don't see climate change as an issue of immediate concern.
Solutions Journal has interviewed Naomi Klein about the right, the left and climate change:
Q: What is the political philosophy that underscores those who accept climate change versus those who deny it?
A: The Yale Cultural Cognition Project has looked at cultural worldview and climate change, and what’s clear is that ideology is the main factor in whether we believe in climate change. If you have an egalitarian and communitarian worldview, and you tend toward a belief system of pooling resources and helping the less advantaged, then you believe in climate change. And the stronger your belief system tends toward a hierarchical or individual worldview, the greater the chances are that you deny climate change and the stronger your denial will be. The reason is clear: It’s because people protect their worldviews. We all do this. We develop intellectual antibodies. Climate change confirms what people on the left already believe. But the left must take this confirmation responsibly. It means that if you are on the left of the spectrum, you need to guard against exaggeration and your own tendency to unquestioningly accept the data because it confirms your worldview.
Q: Members of the left have been resistant to acknowledging that this worldview is behind their support of climate action, while the right confronts it head on. Why this hesitancy among liberals?
A: There are a few factors at work. Climate change is not a big issue for the left. The big left issues in the United States are inequality, the banks, corporate malfeasance, unemployment, foreclosures. I don’t think climate change has ever been a broad-based issue for the left. Part of this is the legacy of siloing off issues, which is part of the NGO era of activism. Climate change has been claimed by the big green groups and they’re to the left. But they’re also foundation-funded. A lot of them have gone down the road of partnerships with corporations, which has made them less critical.
The discourse around climate change has also become extremely technical and specialized. A lot of people don’t feel qualified and feel like they don’t have to talk about it. They’re so locked into a logic of market-based solutions — that the big green groups got behind cap-and-trade, carbon markets, and consumer responses instead of structural ones — so they’re not going to talk about how free trade has sent emissions soaring or about crumbling public infrastructure or the ideology that would rationalize major new investments in infrastructure. Others can fight those battles, they say. During good economic times, that may have seemed viable; but as soon as you have an economic crisis, the environment gets thrown under the bus, and there is a failure to make the connection between the economy and the climate crisis — both have roots in putting profits before people.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005:
Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public. [...]
Among those implicated in the killings at Bagram were members of Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C. The battalion went on to Iraq, where some members established the interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib and have been implicated in some abuses there.
My question is this, given the events in Afghanistan, how could this battalion have been moved to Iraq and given any role in prisoner interrogation before this investigation was complete? Cynical minds might say it was because of the events in Afghanistan that some members of this battalion were tapped to establish the interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib.
Tweet of the Day:
#Romney Won't Sign Up for #Medicare: "Why Bother? The Crappy Vouchers I'll Introduce Under the Ryan Plan Will Soon Be Worthless"
— @TheDailyEdge via web
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