The China-America Climate Summit: Expect Right Wing Hysteria

The Koch brothers - perhaps the foulest excuses for human beings out side of the leadership of ISIS and perhaps Vladimir Putin - have spent huge amounts of money to fight (i) any recognition that climate change is happening and (ii) any regulatory changes that would limit the rapacious greed and polluting inflicted on the nation by the fossil fuel industries.  Sadly, there are many in the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the Republican Party only too happy to believe these lies even as the Kochs and their allies work against the long term best interests of these cretins of the GOP base.  A column in the New York Times looks at the Kochs agenda in the light of the initial agreement between China and America to face the reality of climate change and to do something about it.  Here are highlights:

The agreement between China and the United States on carbon emissions is, in fact, a big deal.

To understand why, you first have to understand the defense in depth that fossil-fuel interests and their loyal servants — nowadays including the entire Republican Party — have erected against any action to save the planet.

The first line of defense is denial: there is no climate change; it’s a hoax concocted by a cabal including thousands of scientists around the world. Bizarre as it is, this view has powerful adherents, including Senator James Inhofe, who will soon lead the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Indeed, some elected officials have done all they can to pursue witch hunts against climate scientists.

Still, as a political matter, attacking scientists has limited effectiveness. It plays well with the Tea Party, but to the broader public — even to non-Tea Party Republicans — it sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, because it is.

The second line of defense involves economic scare tactics: any attempt to limit emissions will destroy jobs and end growth. This argument sits oddly with the right’s usual faith in markets; we’re supposed to believe that business can transcend any problem, adapt and innovate around any limits, but would shrivel up and die if policy put a price on carbon. Still, what’s bad for the Koch brothers must be bad for America, right?

Like claims of a vast conspiracy of scientists, however, the economic disaster argument has limited traction beyond the right-wing base. . . . The real war on coal, or at least on coal miners, was waged by strip-mining and natural gas, and ended a long time ago. 

Which brings us to the last line of defense, claims that America can’t do anything about global warming, because other countries, China in particular, will just keep on spewing out greenhouse gases. This is a standard argument at think tanks like the Cato Institute and among conservative pundits.

But now we have it straight from the source: China has declared its intention to limit carbon emissions.   I know, I know. The language is a little vague, and the target levels of emissions are much higher than environmental experts want. 

But consider the situation. America is not exactly the most reliable negotiating partner on these issues, with climate denialists controlling Congress and the only prospect of action in the near future, and maybe for many years, coming from executive orders. 

But the principle that has just been established is a very important one. Until now, those of us who argued that China could be induced to join an international climate agreement were speculating. Now we have the Chinese saying that they are, indeed, willing to deal — and the opponents of action have to claim that they don’t mean what they say.

Needless to say, I don’t expect the usual suspects to concede that a major part of the anti-environmentalist argument has just collapsed. But it has.