PLANK AUGUST 31, 2012
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Nothing in Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech better encapsulated the spinelessness of his presidential candidacy than the following line: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”
This was a sneering reference to Obama’s statement before a St. Paul, Minn. crowd, after he became the presumptive nominee in June 2008, that “if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when ... the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
Romney’s dig has received little commentary, other than the observation that this was a swipe at Obama’s supposed rhetorical grandiosity. But of course it was primarily a snicker at the idea that anything can or should be done to reverse climate change. Romney’s own views on climate change are, well, a little hard to pin down. A little more than a year ago, at a campaign appearance in New Hampshire, Romney said:
I believe the world is getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that. I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past, but I believe that we contribute to that. So I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.
Indeed, as TNR’s Alec MacGillis has demonstrated, as Massachusetts governor Romney was a “smart growth” advocate who, after his lieutenant governor called for suspending the state’s gas tax during a 2006 price spike, said, “I don’t think that now is the time, and I’m not sure there will be the right time, for us to encourage the use of more gasoline.” By this past October, though, Romney was saying, “We don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.” Perhaps he'd been speaking to his press secretary, Andrea Saul, who previously represented climate-change “skeptics” hired by energy companies.
Romney has become reluctant to say that human activity causes global warming, and even in his greener days he was always somewhat cagey about which remedies he’d support. Now Romney is saying that anyone who would seek any remedy at all is, by definition, a fool. It’s a clear pander to the flat-earthers who believe climate change is a hoax, one that stops just short of agreeing with them. The gesture’s nihilism is contemptible.
10 comments
Thank you for mentioning this. This is the thing about Romney's speech that made me the maddest. This is part and parcel of the "job killing EPA" meme and also any attempt to regulate polluters even if they threaten to kill us all. I can't believe he said that while the Gulf Coast is under water. Appalling.
- Sophia
August 31, 2012 at 1:01pm
Forgive me if I rant some more. How can anybody be so ignorant? Romney is supposedly an educated person. So WTF. Is this a religious thing? That life besides "homo sapiens" doesn't count? What do these people think supports us? Magic? This truly makes me crazy. I have to limit my TV viewing time when Republicans are involved. Instant migraine.
- Sophia
August 31, 2012 at 1:04pm
I presume Mr. Romney knows how to swim. In my days when I struggled with learning how to stay above water, I experimented (without much success) with various swimming strokes. I presume Romney's favorite stroke is the flip-flop. As the sea rises, I presume he will get lots of practice.
- skahn
August 31, 2012 at 1:21pm
It'd be nice if TNR ran some columns that detailed & commented on what, if anything, this administration & the EPA are doing to help or harm the environment. We read plenty about how comically evil & backwards the conservatives' stance on environmental issues is. What's going on on the other side?
- Konstantin
August 31, 2012 at 1:48pm
konstantin...um Solyndra? Obama has made a concerted effort to promote renewable energy and what is a Republican response...he has done nothing but he has given money to renewable energy companies one of which has gone bankrupt. You can't have it both ways.
- blackton
August 31, 2012 at 2:58pm
Romney has clearly transformed into a know-nothing anti-environmentalist, but his line against Obama here wasn't really about the environment. It was about the hubris of Obama more broadly and his lack of focus on jobs. I thought it was very effective--probably the most effective of the night. Partly because I agree that Obama hasn't focused enough on jobs throughout his first term.
- polcereal
August 31, 2012 at 3:30pm
The new fuel economy standards are reputed to be one of the most significant actions to reduce global warming that any president has enacted. And they have the support of the auto industry, so they just might stick, even if the enviro-cretins win in November. The stimulus was the largest investment in green energy - by orders of magnitude - in US history. One whole percent of it went to Solyndra. The other 99% - ninety billion dollars - went to, among other things, "record expansions of every imaginable form of clean energy, from renewables to electric vehicles, zero-energy border stations, state-of-the-art battery factories, some of the world’s largest wind farms and half a dozen of the largest solar farms." That's from Grunwald's book on the stimulus. Of all the things future historians will find weird about the times we live in, I think one of the weirdest might turn out to be how we could manage to be so disappointed in a president who did more for the environment than any president in history, banned discrimination against gays in the military (and came out for gay marriage), got health care, consumer credit reform and financial reform, kept the Repubs from driving the nation's credit off a cliff, rescued GM and Chrysler, killed bin Laden and withdrew from Iraq. "But, he could have done so much more," we'll whine with our bottom lips protruding. "Bloody twerps!" they'll reply. I know the preceding means I've been drinking too much Kool-Aid, and I'm fully aware that President McCain would have been almost as good, if not better, and four years of Mitt Romney could hardly be worse than far more years of Obambi Obama, pushover of the corporations and the Republicans and the Tea Party, but dammit, every once in a while, I'm going to pretend the freaking glass is half-full!
- GeoffG
August 31, 2012 at 4:42pm
Here's the scoop. The Republicans set Obama up as "The Messiah," scornfully, because people like him so much; then they proceeded to try and take him down, so now because he isn't the actual Messiah he's this huge disappointment and we should vote for the Lying SOS Team, which is going to create Lots of Jobs because they are going to give themselves big tax breaks and get rid of the Job Killing EPA, lease our national lands to the extraction industries and drill, baby, drill, and also start some wars (big bucks for war contractors!) Got it?
- Sophia
August 31, 2012 at 5:14pm
I along with my co-workers thought the Oceans Rising line was pretty good. Oceans rising is measured in millimeters over decades. And would take decades to turn-around, And even if you believe it is by product of human activities, so you really think President Obama will get Russia, China, Europe, Africa and South America to do what he says? They can't agree on what to do in a small insignificant middle east country that is slaughtering it's citizens. If you don't think that Candidate Obama's speech was over wrought and BS, then you are drinking the kool-aid and nothing will get through to you.
- CRS9TNR
August 31, 2012 at 5:39pm
Oceans rising is measured in millimeters over decades. Ha ha ha ha ha. What, you mean you are serious? In that case HA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA. You have heard of something called a ruler, right? Try looking at how much a millimeter is sometime. You do realize that 25.4 millimeters equals one inch, right? From NatGeo (those raging commie kenyan liberals): Scientific research indicates sea levels worldwide have been rising at a rate of 0.14 inches (3.5 millimeters) per year since the early 1990s. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London and Los Angeles. The scientific consensus (and visual, satellite photography and actual events on what was once ground and is now not in atolls scattered across the Pacific) is overwhelming. It is you who are drinking the Kool aid (and in the future maybe the salt water) So your solution is do nothing, right? don't spend any money and hope for no technological energy revolutions, lets just bury our head in the ocean and pretend it isn't there. With attitudes like yours no wonder we are fucking doomed.
- blackton
August 31, 2012 at 9:13pm