Will green investment be prioritised in the economic stimulus packages that are undoubtedly needed? Will people think differently about travel or food security? Will we emerge with a politics that focuses more on a collective approach to global challenges such as climate? Or will we fall back into desperate attempts to rekindle the old economy and the old ways? – Rebecca Willis (UK), The Guardian, May 21, 2020
The shallowness of climate concern among the public and voters is a large elephant in the climate room. A recent poll by the American Energy Alliance confirmed that U.S. voters are much more interested in pocketbook issues than in the ephemeral, politicized issue of “climate change.” The same is true when it comes to politics as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) lamented earlier this year:
…There is no company that shows up in Congress on climate, except maybe Patagonia.
Governor, have an aide challenge Andrew Dessler to set up a Texas-sized climate debate against his able adversaries. This should settle things by getting the mad Professor to either put up or shut up.
Dear Governor:
In a recent op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, Texas A&M climate scientist Andrew Dessler has once again challenged you to host him and his fellow alarmists to “educate” you on what he calls the “existential threat” of man-made climate change, as well as on the merits of the Green New Deal. He has been seeking an audience with you for some time (see here), as he did prior with Rick Perry (here).
Don’t bother. This emotional, angry, highly political Professor is an outlier. He refuses to debate the uncertainty monster of global climate change, choosing to alarm his audience.…
“Hyperbole toward the Paris Climate Accord, joining that of the Kyoto Protocol, is over. Dense, mineral energies are the wave of the future, while dilute, intermittent, earth-defacing renewables are in trouble. Dana Nuccitelli–are you listening?”
“The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars,” read the Guardian headline on December 14, 2015. The subtitle to Dana Nuccitelli’s piece: “195 world nations have agreed to ignore climate science denial and cut carbon pollution as much as possible.”
This, in fact, was the same hyperbole following the Kyoto Protocol more than two decades before. “We’ve bet on the future, while others have bet on the past,” proclaimed Enron lobbyist John Palmisano from Kyoto, Japan in late 1997.
But the Paris Climate Accord would be different. “In stark contrast to the shortcomings of previous international climate negotiations,” Nuccitelli’s article begins, “the Paris COP21 talks have ended with an agreement stronger than most expected.”…