Last month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that it will require states seeking billions of dollars in U.S. preparedness funds to sign off on plans to mitigate the effects of climate change.
“The policy doesn’t affect federal money for relief after a hurricane, flood, or other disaster. Specifically, beginning in March 2016, states seeking preparedness money will have to assess how climate change threatens their communities. Governors will have to sign off on hazard mitigation plans.”
One of the governors who this will affect is Rick Scott of Florida, who not only denies there is man-made climate change but has barred officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection from using the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” “in any official communications, emails, or reports since shortly after he came into office in 2011.” At least one employee was ordered to get a medical evaluation for considering “climate change.”
Even though President Obama noted this month that climate change is hurting our health, I don’t see that anything substantial will happen on this front in the United States any time soon. The moment which crystallized that belief for me happened in February 2015, when Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, used a snowball as a prop on the Senate floor… “to show the recent spate of cold weather in the Northeast is a sign that human activity isn’t causing climate change.”
Yes, it snowed in Washington, DC, in February, and it was cold, too. However, the fact, is that this past winter was the warmest on record, and 2015 had the second warmest February on record, despite what happened in the eastern US.
Moreover, a majority of Americans don’t think climate change will affect them personally, even though it already is.
It may already be too late for Vanuatu, the Pacific island nation, which was devastated by the deadly typhoon Pam last month. Moreover, big shelves of Antarctic ice are melting faster than scientists thought.
Happy Earth Day.
Crackpot weirdos like Inhofe (and possibly Rick Scott) seem to really believe the nonsense they spout, but the problem is that many of the other climate change deniers in the Republican Party spew that idiocy only for political (and, of course, financial…) gain. Their party’s base expects them to be anti-science, and they happily oblige to get votes and campaign contributions (in a similar way that plenty of Republican politicians aren’t actually opposed to marriage equality but pretend to be just for votes and money). How can any voter possibly tell the difference?
Then, there are the politicians who claim to care and pretend to act, but who do absolutely nothing. We have that situation in New Zealand with the current conservative National Party government. But at least in our case, no one took National seriously when they claimed they’d help fight climte change; US voters can never be sure what their politicians really believe. At least in the USA campaign conributors may provide a clue.
The closer that that human idiocy brings us to disaster, the number I get. We will live like privileged pets until it all falls apart. And then life will go on without us. Have a nice day!