MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough — former Republican Congressman from Florida and, as of late, shameless advocate for the mendacious climate-change denying billionaire David H. Koch — took to the airwaves this week to defend another mendacious figure, and another member of my former party: climate-denying extremist Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL).
In doing so, Scarborough revealed an inconvenient truth about America’s divided politics on climate…
Watch the full segment here, if you like, but the central gist of the panel discussion, and what it reveals about Republicans follows below it.
First, Scarborough began by attempting to downplay the amorality of Rubio’s rejection of climate science on ABC’s This Week on Sunday…
Scarborough went on to say that people on “the far left” (who?) have been “televangelists” on the issue (I thought Scarborough’s party liked televangelists!). He stated that he didn’t agree with Rubio’s full-on rejection of mainstream climate science, insisting that one could accept the abundant evidence of human-caused climate change without believing “we need to adapt job-killing regulation” to deal with the problem.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski and panelist Jon Meacham challenged Scarborough, asking why it is that members of the GOP base need to hear such over-the-edge anti-science rhetoric. Scarborough responded:
Scarborough continued:
Panelist Willie Geist then weighed in:
Scarborough insisted that he wasn’t “bashing Al Gore”– even though he really was — and once again called him “a televangelist for climate change.” He continued:
Brzezinski replied:
To which Scarborough responded:
Scarborough is, in essence, admitting something that his fellow Republicans rarely, if ever, acknowledge: that the political right’s rejection of climate science is based heavily on the right’s fevered, foaming-at-the-mouth contempt for anything associated with the former Vice President. It is not based on a serious evaluation of the science, or concern about future generations. It can’t be. The science is in and they are choosing to ignore it. It is simply about the right’s longstanding wingnut grudge against the man who won the popular vote (as well as the electoral vote, had the U.S. Supreme Court allowed all of the ballots in Florida to be counted) in the 2000 Presidential election.
Of course, Scarborough never cited evidence of an alleged “overreach” by Gore or other climate activists (probably because there is no such evidence). There is, however, significant evidence that we are heading over a climate cliff — and that Scarborough’s fellow Republicans are so blind with anti-Gore rage that they cannot see themselves heading right over it.
D.R. Tucker is a Massachusetts-based freelance writer and a former contributor to the conservative website Human Events Online. He has also written for the Huffington Post, the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe, ClimateCrocks.com, FrumForum.com, the Ripon Forum, Truth-Out.org, TheNextRight.com, and BookerRising.com. In addition, he hosted a Blog Talk Radio program, The Notes, from August 2009 to June, 2010. You can follow him on Twitter here: @DRTucker.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying it is exclusive to Anti-Gore thinking. I think it is a rejection of any kind of policy that would be driven by “progressive” environmental issues over “traditional” business interests. He does not want decisions made by something as abstract as what might be beneficial for the planet for the next 7 generations, but is OK with making decisions based on something as abstract as what is best for the bottom line for a select group of companies (Not the majority of companies but a select group that has political influence).
Gore is a symbol of that mindset of progressive thinking that they are automatically opposed to, so Joe tries to undermine the science by calling it a cult, or insinuating it is more belief than tested theories. They reject that environmental oriented companies created by new policies to change our energy usage and other practices would have a positive impact and employ as many or more people as the current energy system. They just see that we are consuming less of the products that they understand so then it must be bad for the economy. Republicans like Rubio and Scarborough are ones that would have said 100+ years ago that “this new automobile gadget is just a fad, and won’t amount to anything.” Or like the IBM executives who rejected the personal computer when Apple tried to shop it around.
The problem with Scarborough, Rubio and their ilk is that they keep saying “we need to wait and see how this all pans out”. The problem with waiting is that if we wait too long the consequences will be more severe than if we act now. This is not a scam, it is not the Bush administration telling us that we need to invade now or we will have mushroom clouds. Let’s look at who is being scammed. In the last 20 years when climate scientists have been wrong in their projections of how bad it will be in the future if we don’t do something about it, it always seems to be that they were too conservative in their estimates, and that newer models show it will be worse than we thought. So when they talk about Gore and his “Inconvenient Truth”, the science that went into that documentary is old and is less dire than what scientists now are saying. The science behind the documentary was not overplaying it’s hand, it was trying not to frighten you too much. Sounds like Scarborough and Rubio have been scammed by their sponsors, and don’t want to admit it.
Scarborough says he “believes” in climate change. It’s not a religion, Joe. You agree with the science or you find a reproducible, peer reviewed way to contradict the concepts and projections declared by the scientists. If you can’t then all the belief in the world is not going to change what the scientific community knows to be true (not believes). Get your head out of the 14th century.
This is not anti-science but plain old ignorance of science. That the climate can change globally by, say, volcanic action, or a small comet entering the atmosphere, means that the over production of CO2 and methane, etc. can also cause climate change. This is basic science.
This is classic Conservativism called a redirect, i.e. from science to fear.
Scarborough is an accurate name for his home town, and others, that have already been scarred by catastrophic climate change.
We are past some tipping points (one just reported) that will affect his sinking state even more.
Scarboroughs will spread, nations will go down, as the ignorati bloviate ill-conceived mythology.
Scarborough prefers civilization-killing inaction (when sea level rises 10 feet) to “job-killing” action — which really means “profit-threatening”. He cares if an owner receives less profit, but he could care less if that owner lays off workers to increase profit.
This “job-killing” rhetoric is ass-backwards. The climate change that we have so disastrously set in motion is LIFE-killing. Hard to get a job when you’re dead. The way we’ve lived, the way our economy “works,” all the fossil fuel industry jobs and profits are LIFE-killing.
If you want good jobs for people to work and healthy people to work them; if you want this vision of healthy people in good jobs to have a chance of occurring in something other than an eco-catastrophe dystopia, climate change requires that we fundamentally change the way we live and do business. The planetary, and thus cultural altering, changes have already left the station. We’re running late. Hedgers like Joe Scarborough only unwittingly increase the likely devastation to come.
Comparing Democrat’s hero-CLINTON–GINGRICH””versus Republican’s hero–REAGAN
———————————————————————————————————–
1.JOBS””grew by 43% more under Clinton.
2.GDP—grew by 57% more under Clinton.
3.DOW””grew by 700% more under Clinton..
4.MARKET CAP INCREASE””Clinton + 330%–Reagan + 136%
5.NASDAQ-grew by 18 times as much under Clinton.
6.S&P500″”grew by 370% under Clinton and 140% under Reagan
7.SPENDING–grew by 28% under Clinton—80% under Reagan.
8.DEBT””grew by 43% under Clinton””187% under Reagan.(995b to2870b)
9. DEFICITS””Clinton got a large surplus–grew by 112% under Reagan.
10.NATIONAL INCOME””grew by 100% more under Clinton.
11.PERSONAL INCOME””grew by 110% more under Clinton.
12.MEDIAN FAMILY INCOME-grew by 75% more under Clinton
13. DEFENSE BUDGETED-Clinton -2311B””Reagan-2062B (current $)
14.UNEMPLOYMENT””AVG””Clinton 5.2%–Reagan 7.6%
(I admit averaging averages can be dumb. I dumb.)
SOURCES””Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.BLS.Gov)–Economic Policy Institute (EPI.org)””Global & World Almanacs from 1980 to 2003 (annual issues)
http://www.the-hamster.com (chart taken from NY Times)
National Archives History on Presidents. http://www.nara.gov
LA Times 10-11-00 on Market–www.Find articles.com
Federal Budget.Com 2009
A vote for a Conservative is a vote for Less Success.
A vote to reduce the Standard of Living for all Americans.
Recall 1920’s and Wall Street under Conservative control?
Recall 2000-2008 and Wall Street under Conservative control?
Want more of those years? It will take many years to recover.
Not to mention Scarborough has been shilling non-stop for the Keystone PL.
Germany is at 74% of electricity generation from renewables. Today, not 20 or 30 years from now. And they have a very strong economy. Of course, they don’t spend heavily on military. So how do you get “job killing” from going green, Scarborough? Maybe it’s the crazy military spending that’s killing us.