Push-Back on Climate Crisis Denial Follies

Some notable push-back on the Climate Crisis denying that is endangering the future by providing excuses for not dealing with either the causes or effects of climate change.

What's getting the most attention is Al Gore's oped piece today in the New York Times. Sympathizing with the impulse of denial, Gore is brutal about the consequences. If only the Climate Crisis weren't real---

"But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands."

"I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer. "

After disposing of the UN panel controversy and the DC snows red herring, Gore notes the record of recent failures:

"Though there have been impressive efforts by many business leaders, hundreds of millions of individuals and families throughout the world and many national, regional and local governments, our civilization is still failing miserably to slow the rate at which these emissions are increasing — much less reduce them. And in spite of President Obama’s efforts at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting in December, global leaders failed to muster anything more than a decision to “take note” of an intention to act."

The lesser noted but even more direct push-back came from U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello of Virginia, who went after the Senate for failing to even consider the Climate Crisis legislation that the House passed:

" I’m sick of starting with what can we get through the Senate; let’s start with what solves the damn problem. Until the Senate gets its head out of its rear end and starts to see the crisis we’re in, our country is literally at risk."