George Will denying global climate change:
This illustrates what I’ve observed about how Democrats and Republicans deal with critical issues. Let’s say there’s a big honking Issue looming in the future — global warming, health care, whatever. Republicans will deny the problem exists until it bites their butts, then they blame Democrats for not having solved the problem sooner. The exception to this involves opportunities to undo some progressive program they hate, like Social Security; then they exaggerate the problem so they can spin their particular “solution.”
Democrats in general are better at recognizing an impending problem, and some of them can demonstrate considerable insight into what is causing the problem. They’ll make stirring speeches about how the problem needs to be addressed. But for the past several years, once they get to Washington their big ideas evaporate. An issue might cry out for a massive overhaul, and the Dems will offer band-aids.
Politicians of both parties are being influenced by Big Money, of course. They can’t do anything that will piss off big campaign contributors. So, nothing gets done.
But what’s Will’s excuse?
Will does not understand that threat IS NOT the melting of the Greenland icepack. The Major threat is global rainfall pattern shift and other issues concerning temperature and humidity.
It’s not all about arctic ice and polat bears.
I think Will’s problem is he hates Al Gore.
Will, like the rest of the punditocracy, is just a story teller for Big Money. That is his problem, and our problem.
Kevin
If I may play devil’s advocate…
Will quotes the scientists that Greenland’s icecap will take a millennium to melt. If so, then sea-level rise from that source is not an immediate problem. Donaldson replies with 30 years to losing the polar cap; that too is scientifically plausible, but it is not relevant to sea-level rise. (Floating ice already displaces its weight in water.)
There may be other sea-level problems; for instance, warm water expands. And warmer climate will cause weather shifts, with hard-to-predict consequences. In any case it is not ‘conservative’ to meddle with the entire planet’s climate system, if you use the word ‘conservative’ in the non-Orwellian sense.
I see the whole global-warming issue in the same way I see the global-terrorism issue; genuine problems, exaggerated for political effect. Both are related to oil. Bush’s oilmen wanted us all to focus on terrorism; but this is proving divisive, expensive and ineffective. Gore focuses on Man vs. Nature; an inherently unifying issue. (At least for humans.)
Bush, representing one-tenth of the oligarchy, says, let’s invest in oil wars. Gore, representing the rest of the oligarchy, says, let’s retool our entire industrial economy. I figure that Gore’s agenda will cost at least ten times Bush’s.
But worth it. Oil changes the climate, it’s probably peaking about now, and it funds terrorist organizations; so retooling the planetary industrial system for renewable energy makes sense. The question is, how and at what cost? I suspect that we will settle on a rather brown shade of green.