I'm sure this has been covered several times over by much better diarists than I, so forgive my redundant gushing. I can't help myself. I am a born and raised Californian and Jerry Brown has been my governor since I was a 19 year old idealistic hippy musician, voting for the first time.
Brown, at 77 is not only the country's oldest governor, but the most experienced to boot. He was first elected as California's youngest governor, the youngest since the Civil War era that is, serving two terms from 1975-1983. He earned a reputation as a progressive, energetic and eccentric chief executive who also possessed a stubborn, miserly streak. Perhaps informed by his stint in a Jesuit seminary, he refused to live in the newly completed governor's residence in favor of a modest Sacramento apartment and walked to work, or drove himself in his Plymouth Satellite.
He proved to be a fiscal conservative, who along with his Treasurer, Jess "Big Daddy" Unruh, built up a $5 billion surplus until Prop 13 wiped it out. But he was also an environmentalist, initiating one of the first rooftop solar tax incentives and was sometimes referred to as Don Quixote for installing the windmills you see along Interstates 10 and 80. His detractors also called him Governor "Moonbeam," appropriating a term of affection possibly from his then girlfriend, singer Linda Ronstadt, and using it as a moniker to ridicule him for proposing to launch a satellite--not his Plymouth!--into space for communication, crop and watershed monitoring purposes.
So now, in the final years of his fourth term, after leading California triumphantly out of the Great Recession, along with fellow Jesuit, Pope Francis, the irascible and irrepressible governor has been leading the charge against climate change. In a move this entirely biased progressive patriot can only characterize as brilliant, Jerry Brown called would-be Republican presidential nominee Ben Carson's bluff on climate change. As most of us know by now, when Carson visited California last week he claimed he had never seen scientific evidence for man-made climate change.
“I know there are a lot of people who say ‘overwhelming science,’ but when you ask them to show the overwhelming science, they never can show it… There is no overwhelming science that the things that are going on are man-caused and not naturally caused. Gimme a break.”
Governor Brown delivered the proof on a flash drive, along with a devastatingly concise cover letter that I believe will go down in history as an important turning point in the battle against climate change denial, because in a stroke of the pen it effectively removes not only Carson's, but all the other Republican candidate's cover of ignorance about the overwhelming scientific evidence -- I told you I was an idealist. I absolutely love Brown's closing sentence.
When asked to comment on Saturday, Carson's campaign communications director Doug Watts said the candidate had not yet received the letter. But Watts maintained that Carson is not a "climate denier" but what he called a "climate questioner."
"He has a different standard of persuasion and proof. Nothing more," Watts said. "He questions (climate change) and cares about the environment."
Watts said Carson would read the report with an open mind when it arrives.
"He could be persuaded," Watts said. CNN Politics
Well, at least Doctor Carson can't claim he hasn't seen the evidence anymore!