Republicans are becoming the party of climate supervillains

[n2doc]

Dana Nuccitelli

As Politico recently reported in a news story that seems better suited for bad a Hollywood movie script, Republican Party leaders are actively trying to sabotage the critical international climate negotiations that will happen in Paris at the end of this year.

Top Republican lawmakers are planning a wide-ranging offensive — including outreach to foreign officials by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office — to undermine President Barack Obama’s hopes of reaching an international climate change agreement that would cement his environmental legacy.

Republican Party leaders have often argued that the United States shouldn’t take action to curb its carbon pollution unless China and other countries do as well.

Now these countries are working to reach an international agreement in which all cut their carbon pollution, and Republican leaders are trying to undermine it. It’s as though they’re just looking for excuses to prevent the United States from reducing its fossil fuel consumption. As Jonathan Chait wrote,

In any case, the old conservative line, with its explicit or implicit promise that international agreement to reduce emissions might justify domestic emissions cuts, has suddenly become inoperative. The speed at which Republicans have changed from insisting other countries would never reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions to warning other countries not to do so — without a peep of protest from within the party or the conservative movement — says everything you need to know about the party’s stance on climate change.

more

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/sep/14/republicans-are-becoming-the-party-of-climate-supervillains

[L. Coyote]

1. Jerry Brown's letter to Carson:

:large