Bracken Hendricks has an excellent piece on the WaPo site, Don’t believe in global warming? That’s not very conservative, in which he points out in some detail why the so-called conservatives are acting in a particularly reckless way when it comes to climate change. The explanation for that claim, which many others (including me) have been making for some time, is simply that given what we know about the ramifications of a business as usual emissions path, the conservatives are betting millions to billions of lives and trillions of dollars on a very long shot — namely that the scientific consensus on climate change is wildly wrong and we can go on pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate of tens of billions of tons per year with impunity. See Hendricks’ piece for the details.

But I would take the analysis one step further. Given the impending war on science the conservatives are planning to unleash, most notably in the form of House hearings (for which, read: show trials) about whether “global warming is a fraud”, one has to ask: What the hell are they thinking? Surely they can’t believe that all these scientists and scientific organizations are wrong, could they?

The answer is simple, obvious, and depressing. They see short-term political advantage in this tactic. Even before the election, they were talking about taking a “no compromise” position on major issues, not that anyone who’s watched American politics for more than a couple of election cycles would expect anything different. They know that there’s very little chance they’ll have a filibuster-proof majority, let alone a veto-proof one, after the 2012 elections, which means they must have the presidency to do anything. That’s the big prize, and the Republican party is exceedingly good at maintaining party discipline over short time frames. (Given enough time, they inevitably overreach and cause their own collapse. It’s just as sure a bet as saying the Democrats will be spineless wimps who convince themselves yet again that they can compromise with the Republicans, only to be fooled one more time.)

In other words, we are once more faced with the awful task of trying to figure out if a politician or an entire party is dumb as a sack of rocks or evil. The science on climate change is so clear, and arises from so many lines of evidence, that I can’t believe even head-in-the-sand politicians from any part of the ideological spectrum could possess the toxic brew of arrogance and ignorance to think they’re right and the scientists are wrong.

I’m sure that in their hearts at least some of them have rationalized this situation away. They’ve convinced themselves that humanity still has enough time that we can afford to squander a few more years on petty political gamesmanship and get around to fixing the climate mess in 2016 or 2020. (This is a wildly incorrect view, of course, so on this one point they might actually be operating partially out of ignorance.)

The bottom line, I’d guess, is that most of them, for the most part, know what’s coming and have calculated that the worst impacts will happen well after they’ve retired. They consider imposing those almost unimaginable costs on future generations a cheap price to pay for gaining a few more seats in the House and the Senate, and possibly the White House in 2012. They don’t mind paying for short term gains in blood, so long as it’s someone else’s.

If this sounds like a harsh and cartoonish reading of the situation, let me ask you to pause for a second and think about some of the people you’ve worked with or for, lived near, or might be related to. Any adult has run into at least a few ruthless people, the ones who care about nothing but their own enrichment or empowerment, no matter how much money or status or fame or power they already have. These are the people I call living corporations because the only thing they care about is more. Not human values, not you or your loved ones, just getting more for themselves.

Yes, there have always been such people in the world, starting long before there was an America. What’s changed in 2010 in the US is how laughably easy it’s become for them to spin a ridiculous story that enough voters will believe to get them elected.

Normally, I would shrug at this point and say that pendulums swing in both directions, and eventually the Republicans will indeed overreach, causing the system to self-correct. But there’s one other factor that could delay that self correction by decades, the brand new ability of corporations to make unlimited, undisclosed political donations, thanks to the January, 2010 Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court. In this year’s non-Presidential election that already contributed to 40% of outside money coming from unknown sources. I fully expect that by 2012 the gush of money we saw this year will turn into an open hydrant, with most of it going straight from corporate coffers to Republicans to help them sell the next round of fairy tale to the public, because, well, it’s just good business.

 

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