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Go Home Republicans Unanimously Reject Climate Science

JONATHAN CHAIT MARCH 15, 2011

Republicans Unanimously Reject Climate Science

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

Well, this is depressing:

House Republicans rejected amendments offered Tuesday by Democrats that called on Congress to accept the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring, that it is caused in large part by human activity and it is a threat to human health.

The amendments, offered at an Energy and Commerce Committee markup of legislation to block Environmental Protection Agency climate change rules, are part of an effort by House Democrats to get Republicans on the record on climate science.

Committee ranking Democrat Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) offered an amendment Tuesday that called on Congress to agree that climate change is occurring. The amendment failed on a party-line vote of 20-31. No Republicans voted for the amendment. 

Conservatives who attain higher levels of education become more likely to disbelieve climate science -- essentially, they're becoming educated as to what their side's view of the issue is:

I suppose it would help if your centrist elites focused more attention on this issue, but they're all focused on the national debt. There's very little connection between the concept of "let's leave a better world for our children" and "a better world for our children would entail a less-dramatic spike in average global temperature."

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Next they'll declare smog to be a sham and acid rain a mere figment of the moonbat liberal imagination.

- Bukharin

March 15, 2011 at 2:15pm

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Well of course they did. This IS the House, after all, home of the extreme and looney. And even "dogmatic" (as in dogma ridden). And these ARE the Republicans we're talking about, walking in lock-step over the cliff as they did all during the Bush-II years. I suppose it's nice to have a confirming data-point though. It's one thing to SAY "Republicans are irresponsible lemmings", but you do need experimental evidence to make it stick.

- AllanL5

March 15, 2011 at 2:33pm

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I hear the sound of this ignorant thundering herd and it is alarming.

- liberalref

March 15, 2011 at 2:35pm

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What is really depressing is the Democrats talking points. They don't fight. They say "well, they are on the record for being on the wrong side of history" like Republicans care. They DON'T care. Their primary purpose is to make profits for Koch, for T Boone Pickens' natural gas and drill in the Marcellus Shale while socializing the costs of sending millions of gallons of toxic wastewater into the rivers that provide drinking water to millions of people. Republicans stand for natural resource extractors and endless sprawl (which had its incredible run, but that run will end on over $100 a barrel oil). No Democrat has a serious proposal unless they fight for the proposition that carbon emissions and other toxic pollutants be included in the costs of their commodities. Oil should be priced at over $20 a gallon because of the defense costs it takes to maintain oil shipping routes and allies in the Middle East. Thenyou'll see changes, oh you will see changes in consumer behavior when the TRUE COST OF OIL is included. Including utilities. Coal miners, to residents who live near natural gas wells, to the inner city children surrounded by rings of smog and ozone and the 24 million asthmatics in this country frequenting our hospitals because of our air--if you can price those abusive externalities, then you will see wind, solar and geothermal soar indeed. Democrats are trying to shame Republicans when Republicans' motivation is increasing the bottom line of polluters. We all know Republicans are quacks when it comes to the environment!! There will be no cap and trade, but there can be regulation. But if we are so focused on the primacy of the private sector allocating resources, then by all means expose what the government pays for all the pollution that industry causes. Then the private sector will allocate resources in a way that ensures survival indeed.

- RedState

March 15, 2011 at 2:45pm

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Imagine all the money bills a member of the House of Representatives could no longer vote for after agreeing to the climate change proposal. It is shocking

- Doug12

March 15, 2011 at 2:48pm

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"....while socializing the costs of sending millions of gallons of toxic wastewater..." There's your Democrats' cudgel. The GOP: Socialism and welfare for corporations and the rich, poison and bankruptcy for the rest of us. I also suggest dragging out "BLOOD FOR OIL, The GOP Way" as a slogan. Alarmist? Perhaps. But there's more truth than alarm in those statements. Time's way past to play nice and use reason. When the slime scream "class warfare" just retort 'sure is and you've bastards have been waging it since Reagan'.

- tmmats

March 15, 2011 at 4:35pm

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"I suppose it would help if your centrist elites.." JC, quit calling them "centrist". They're elites for sure but nothing centrist about them at all.

- tmmats

March 15, 2011 at 4:36pm

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I have a question that I'd like to see polled: how does one assess whether or not anthropogenic global warming is an actual phenomenon? At least that's something where being educated means actually knowing the issue instead of just know what the talking heads on your side say.

- sighthnd

March 15, 2011 at 5:07pm

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We went to war in Iraq over WMD's with no reliable proof, but when it comes to climate change, one little tiny misconstrued email causes great doubt.

- Nusholtz

March 15, 2011 at 6:29pm

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I am reminded of the 1897 Indiana Assembly, attempting to establish by legislative fiat the possibility of squaring the circle, and by corallary, that pi = 3.2. One expects the next initiative will be to declare nuclear power inherently safe.

- IowaBeauty

March 15, 2011 at 6:51pm

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I read about that "pi" debacle, embarassing. But what do you mean by "next"? Isn't that what they've been saying all along, that the waste was no big deal just toss it someplace no one lives and its all good?

- GSpinks

March 15, 2011 at 8:13pm

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There is everything centrist about the centrist elites. You couldn't possibly have thought that Jonathan was describing conservative global warming deniers with this term, could you?

- liberalref

March 15, 2011 at 9:20pm

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These guys are nuts. They will then turn around and complain about Muslims, some of whom have declared fatwas against telephones and the roundness of the earth.

- Sophia

March 16, 2011 at 1:52am

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The Republicans are not nuts, they are owned. And if they cannot be owned, they are immediately replaced. This is no longer a functioning party, but a carcass that responds to a governing elite which has little interest in what most Americans need or want. The industries that would be harmed by responding to climate change are some of those that dominate the Republican party.

- keepin_on

March 16, 2011 at 3:14am

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"Conservatives who attain higher levels of education..." This statement in and of itself explains the self-contradictory nature of the Conservative movement. Need I say more than Michele Bachmann to make that point? Their definition of higher education is buying alternate history books by Glenn Beck and reading "policy" papers from right wing "think tanks" and alternative learning centers like Bob Jones University. The Right are so elitist that they create their own education systems because they're too good to attend the state schools that us working plebs have to make do with. Republicans new slogan should be "We screw America so you don't have to."

- singlspeed

March 16, 2011 at 11:23am

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