US and global warming: the lost decades ... by gimleteye

If you did a sample of global warming skeptics, you would probably find a fair overlap with radical property rights activists; in other words, people who don't believe that there is any-- and I mean, any-- regulatory function of government that should inhibit people from doing whatever they want except when it comes to bailing out their sorry asses; in which case taxpayers should do exactly what they want.

That, in short, is the "free" market that teamed up with easy credit and Wall Street billions to unlock the code leading to the housing boom and crash.

Andrew Revkin, the NY Times environmental writer, published this week, "Industry ignored its scientists on climate". The Global Climate Coalition, whose leading members are tied to conservative non-profits like the Heartland Institute and Heritage Foundation, lead the public relations campaign against the idea that carbon dioxide and other gases could lead to global warming. That is not news.

What is news is: "... a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted. “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995."

The climate of fear sowed by the fossil fuel industry is ubiquitous in the US, especially among the libertarian/conservative news and talk show bloviators. Their cumulative influence is strong enough to damage the chance for the Obama White House to fundamentally reform energy policy: objections are primarily from the Republican minority in Congress. Who can forget Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, once chair of the Senate Environment Committee, who said in 2000 that global warming the “greatest hoax” ever perpetrated and blasted the costs for the US to address climate change--$300 billion, then estimated—as enough to bankrupt the US Treasury. Hah. These days we throw around trillions with a shrug.

Today In Florida, the red state majority is pushing hard for a state policy that would move off-shore drilling forward. It is also promoting changes to eliminate the state regulatory agency charged with growth management and aiming to sharply restrict voters rights. In other words, this economic crisis is bringing out the worst tendencies of special interests to harden their own bunkers, constructed on a foundation of lies.