Here’s what may turn out to be an inconvenient poll for Trump and his (still unconfirmed) Acting EPA Administrator. Former coal lobbyist and early member of Trump’s new “Acting Cabinet,” Andrew Wheeler recently had this to say:
Asked if he agreed with the president’s past statements that climate change is a Chinese “hoax”, Wheeler said he would “not use the hoax word, myself”.
But Wheeler said he would “not call it the greatest crisis”.
“I consider it a huge issue that has to be addressed globally,” Wheeler added.
Sound convincing? Didn’t think so.
Wheeler has been Acting EPA Administrator since July of last year. Why has he not yet had a confirmation hearing? Ask Mitch McConnell. IF you can find him.
Yes, putting an ex-coal lobbyist in charge of “gittin’ er dun” on climate change sounds perplexing. But just as Wheeler (at least in word) moves from “hoax” to “huge issue,” the people (VOTERS) of the United States have come on board in a BIG way.
The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago finds
74 percent of Americans say extreme weather in the past five years — hurricanes, droughts, floods and heat waves — has influenced their opinions about climate change.
That includes half of Americans who say these recent events have influenced their thinking a great deal or a lot.
About as many, 71 percent, said the weather they experience daily in their own areas has influenced their thinking about climate change science.
“I look at it every day,” Gregg said from Salt Lake City, where winter days with some of the country’s worst air starting a few years ago dinged the city’s reputation as a pristine sports city and spurred state leaders to ramp up clean-air initiatives. “You look out and see pollution just sitting over the valley.”
For a long time, the idea that the acrid black billows from car and truck tailpipes and power plant smokestacks were altering the earth’s atmosphere still seemed abstract, with any impacts decades away.
“With the extreme events that we’ve been seeing, we’re increasingly able to attribute, or pull out, how human-caused climate change is making those more severe,” Roop said.
When wildfires get bigger and more frequent, floods bigger and smog more entrenched, it begins to hit “the things that we all hold dear, and that’s when people get affected and begin to connect the dots,” Roop said.
I may be way off base here, but in a country (world?) where marketing is everything, calling this crisis “Climate Change,” is a MASSIVE under-sell. It sounds like you’ve just taken a vacation from North Dakota to New Mexico. “Global Warming” sounds quite pleasant as well.
No, really, I’ve overheard people joke that “I could do with some of that global warming. I need to get more sun-screen.”
Why not re-brand the damn thing to “Climate Crisis,” or “Global Overheating?”