Weather systems that bring moisture to the southwest U.S. are forming less often, […]
Tuesday, February 9th, 2016
Stephan: One of the most extraordinary aspects of this election, and it gets almost no discussion, is the fact that uniquely in the developed world we have a major party -- the Republicans -- who deny the existence of climate change. As this report points out only Senator Rubio, of all the party's Presidential candidates, acknowledges climate change is real. And he has so many qualifiers it's hard to know what he means.
This willful ignorance ought to disqualify all Republican candidates from office. The fact that it does not, and that something north of 40 per cent of Americans also believe climate change either does not exist, or is not the result of human activity, is why we are not going to be prepared as a country for what is coming. We should be upgrading infrastructure including incorporating climate change in our planning. We we build now is what we will have. Century old infrastructure, such as we have in most of the country, is simply going to break down. Look at the report I just ran about how many cities in Pennsylvania have more lead in their water than Flint, Michigan. The infrastructure is breaking down anyway, climate change will just accelerate the process.
Ted Cruz speaks, as Donald Trump, left, and Ben Carson, right, look on, during the Republican presidential debate hosted by ABC News at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, February 6, 2016. Credit: Stephen Crowley / The New York Times
Of the Republican presidential candidates currently leading in the polls – Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz – only Rubio has acknowledged that climate disruption is real.
However, even Rubio’s position should be taken with a grain of salt, as he continues to deny the reality of anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD). In other words, he doesn’t believe that people are to blame for planetary warming. On May 11, 2014, Rubio said, “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.”
Cruz’s stance toward ACD is no secret: He has received much media attention for regularly rejecting climate science, and even more attention for his more famous statement that “Climate […]
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“I know if I was a parent up there, I would be beside myself if my kids’ health could be at risk,” said President Obama on a recent trip to Michigan. “Up there” was Flint, a rusting industrial city in the grip of a “water crisis” brought on by a government austerity scheme. To save a couple of million dollars, that city switched its source of water from Lake Huron to the Flint River, a long-time industrial dumping ground for the toxic industries that had once made their home along its banks. Now, the city is enveloped in a public health emergency, with elevated levels of lead in its water supply and in the blood of its children.
