Organizing for America (OFA) is moving toward an ever-more aggressive positioning when it comes to clean energy and climate change issues.
Added this past week to the website, “Call Out Climate Change Deniers“:
Climate change is real, it’s caused largely by human activities, and it poses significant risks for our health. Some members of Congress disagree with this simple, scientifically proven fact. We need to work to curb climate change, and a big step is to raise our voices to change the conversation in Washington. Call these deniers out. Hold them accountable. Ask them if they will admit climate change is a problem.
On the page, quote after quote demonstrating an utter disdain for science and disregard for the very real threat(s) that climate change creates for American prosperity and security. Not surprisingly, some of America’s favorite Anti-Science Syndrome suffering Haters Of a Livable Economic System appear prominently in this list.
Let’s start with the Speaker of the House, John Boehner:
“George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.”
How about Rep. Ralph Hall (hint: Chairman Emeritus of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, which he previously chaired from 2011 to 2013)?
“I’m really more fearful of freezing. And I don’t have any science to prove that. But we have a lot of science that tells us they’re not basing it on real scientific facts”
Senator Rand Paul
“[Scientists] are making up their facts to fit their conclusions. They’ve already caught them doing this.”
And …
Sadly, this is a target-rich environment.
But, it is now an environment where OFA is making moves to start shooting the fish in the barrel.
Check out the OFA material on House and Senate climate science deniers.
And, as OFA asks, start doing your part to “call them out”.
We will continue updating the list below as supporters get answers to the basic question of whether their representatives in Congress accept the science on climate change. We hope that this list will shrink as members clarify what they truly believe about climate change.
OFA is taking on calling out Climate Zombies.
This is a good step.
Let’s help make it an ever-more powerful and continuing one.
Again, leverage OFA to call out and put pressure on climate science deniers.
NOTE: At the end of the page is this note:
Thanks to RL Miller for contributing to some of the original research in tracking down this information.
We all owe a serious tip of the hat to RL Miller who has done quite a bit of work tracking down material on Climate Zombies and has been pushing for years for just this sort of major political action to ‘call them out’.
Let us be clear that President Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy, with heavy inclusion of “clean coal” / fracked natural gas / expanded oil drilling, is simply a slightly slower road to utter catastrophe than a Sarah Palin “Drill, Baby, Drill” path …
And, it is unlikely (essentially impossible) that OFA will take a stance attacking the Administration’s ill-conceived promotion of fossil fuels even though that would be popular with much of the base and with OFA activists. For example, there has been (deservedly) serious pushback at OFA climate-change meetings with questions / discussion of the Keystone XL pipeline. (See this excellent discussion of one OFA meeting.)
Yet, the willingness to be actually discussing climate change/climate change denial/climate science and making it a major part of OFA’s messaging is a serious shift in what we’ve been seeing for years.
E.g., this is NOT enough …
However, while absolutely not sufficient, it is a necessary step.
I chose, in this post above the fold, to be emphasizing the positive element of really making climate change part of the discussion and the willingness to put the OFA name / brand / resources behind calling out climate science deniers.
Do not think, however, for a moment that I think the President (or OFA) should be ‘let off the hook’ re climate / clean energy issues nor that we should stop pressure on the Administration/OFA because of a web page with science denial quotes from Republican members of Congress.
On the other hand, we (collectively) can show that this is a ‘popular’ step with the base to enable those in OFA and in the Administration advocating for more aggressive clean energy action.
1 response so far ↓
1 John Egan // May 26, 2013 at 10:03 pm
I guess you didn’t notice the BC election results?
Stunning loss by the NDP when it seemed a gimme – in large part due to Dix’s categorical rejection of pipeline development. Not to mention that Alberta and Sask have overwhelmingly conservative govts. And Manitoba is angling for a pipeline to the Arctic port of Churchill in case other pipelines fall thru. (Which they won’t and which would be an even worse environmental threat.)
Meanwhile, climate change hardly registers on public opinion polls any more. The Obama administration will approve KeystoneXL with a few caveats tossed in.
It is sad that progressive forces have latched so tightly onto “climate change” as an overarching issue when basic economic access and core civil liberties continue to be eroded. One should not be surprised when working people increasingly are coopted by right-wing populism – not only in the U.S., but also in Canada, Britain, France, and Germany. And let’s not even talk about East-Central Europe.
The myopia of climate changers has had profoundly negative impacts on the progressive political movement – – not to mention that it is a losing, big-time losing political proposition.
BTW – Check out the polls in Australia. After getting skunked in NSW and QSLD, Labor is looking at getting clocked in national elections this year. Soo much for forcing thru its carbon pricing scheme.