And I was pretty amazed to read that in the past it was the Republicans who were yelling on top of their lungs about climate change and what we should do to limit its effects if not reversing the path. But much like their policy changes on social issues, their views on climate change slowly shifted as well. both John McCain and Romney were once big supporters of slowly climate change, and just before running for the primaries shifted gears.
Not just McCain and Romney… but so many politicians no longer subscribe to urgent action to prevent climate change. Why? Because they realize it is a pointless exercise that will cost a ton and deliver a feather IF their wildest most optimistic projections are attainable. Not a good investment. Expect continued lip service to the issue but given the state of the economy and the developing world’s disinterest in the whole exercise except as a way to loot developed nations coffers. Yawn. Oh… polar bears… yawn…
All you need to get the developing world interested is for WTO and the developed nations to implement some sort of carbon tax standard. The only reason why US doesn’t sign on to this is the big coal and gas and their lobbyists have been hijacking the nation’s policies for cleaner energy. Therefore the US ends up still being one of the biggest polluters in the world, so the US doesn’t get much benefit from carbon tax when it comes to exporting.
That’s what we need to fix, and once that is fix and WTO plus the rest of the developed world works together for a reasonable carbon tax policy, the developing worlds will have to compete with us for being able to provide cheaper/greener products. When the undeveloped countries look for greener energy solutions, they would also look to us to build it.
Your views on the matter is incredibly short sighted. Such view is stuck in the 1970s and continuing on this course will allow the rest of the world to pass us by. Also, just because you believe the current economic state doesn’t allow the US to continue regulation carbon emissions doesn’t mean climate change is false pointless exercise. If the republicans knew climate change would be a threat to the nation’s prosperity then, the same climate change will continue to be a threat to our prosperity in the future.
I still don’t get how the switch in position, even suddenly denying the existence and effects of climate change would help the republican part or its politicians. Well… upon rethinking, I guess there’s the benefit of getting gas and coal company’s donations…
Republican presidential candidates don’t stand a snowballs chance in hell of receiving the nomination if they state that global warming is real and poses a threat.
But why? that’s what I wanted to know. If it didn’t used to be this way. If it wasn’t this way when Bush Senior was running for president, what has changed since then?
The scientific data and evidence for global climate change has been more clear since then. Why did the republican voters change their mind on this if that’s the only reason why their politician backed away?
My opinion. Fox news and the tea party (as well as the radio shows, newspapers and other political pundits from the right). Between the lot of them would ruin any candidates chances who don’t lean far enough to the right during the primaries.
There might be an opportunity following this election, for a faction that isn’t so right wing to work together with Obama, and they really need to with regards a fiscal cliff that is looming. Perhaps they might be able to be more moderate in their views and could be the leading force for the party, but honestly, I don’t know enough of the internal political groups within the republican party to know if this is a possibility or not.
Right… it is only the Republicans who would not be elected if… they … um… so that is why during the entire Democratic convention and nomination process, we heard about global warming and climate change… what? twice? What happened to the Kyoto Treaty? What happened to carbon tax measures in Japan, Russia, Canada, Australia… and the EU only supports this because it benefited from the collapse of heavily polluting eastern europe which is still factored into its figures and even with these generous flabby numbers it still fails to meet its targets.
As to the developed world, it smells cash $$$ and acts accordingly. We see this when the effort is made to fight (fill in the blank) hunger, AIDS, disease, malaria, polio, human trafficking, climate change, discrimination, whatever… the money is used to fund grants which support setting up offices which seek to empower local actors to engage in dialogue to achieve consensus to promulgate a communique to outline a platform to take concrete steps to execute measurable indicators to raise awarness about the issue. Bottom line? Lots of meetings, no results. Anyway, if you all want to get your undies in a bind about why people may talk but never act on global warming, feel free to do so. Nothing is going to happen on this issue and that is because most have long ago realized, it does not matter, it is unavoidable and there is nothing that can be done short of destroying our entire economic framework to stop CO2 emission increases. Yawn. Move on.