(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
In the wake of the tornado that left Moore, OK a pile of rubble and killed 24 people, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) took to the floor of the Senate to take the climate denying Republicans to task.
“So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.” [..]
“You drag America with you to your fate,” he continued. “So, I want this future: I want a Republican Party that has returned to its senses and is strong and a worthy adversary in a strong America that has done right by its people and the world. That’s what I want. I don’t want this future. I don’t want a Republican Party disgraced, that let its extremists run off the cliff, and an America suffering from grave economic and environmental and diplomatic damage because we failed, because we didn’t wake up and do our duty to our people, and because we didn’t lead the world. I do not want that future. But that’s where we’re headed. So I will keep reaching out and calling out, ever hopeful that you will wake up before it is too late.”
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… very deep. Those that oppose climate-science must oppose it, as they see it, the entire foundation of their existence consists of needing to live in a barren and inanimate universe. Nature is just something you exploit–not because you need anything–but because that notion is central to the way these people seen themselves and others–it is a deeply moral position. Logic and science are easily jettisoned when it comes to religion–and I don’t mean the neo-Christian cults that we called “evangelical” but the general notion that everything is separate and connection is only something you do late at night or when you’ve had too much to drink. Connection to large portions of the right is something we should not think about less we become “soft.” That’s why the opposition to environmentalism is so strident and irrational.