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A look at 11 key Senate races where Republican candidates give the finger to climate scientists [1]
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Date: 2022-09-13
Once again, for the record, climatologists tell us that we Earthers need to be on a trajectory of getting off fossil fuels by 2030. Not completely off by then, of course. But on a path with a near-term possibility of zero emissions by mid-century in order to avoid even worse impacts than those our species has already baked into the climate with the toxic byproducts of our civilization. Every hour of delay getting onto that path ahead of the deadline lowers the odds of stopping or lessening the worst impacts of climate change
The League of Conservation Voters Action Fund endorses candidates based on its assessment of their environmental views and actions.
Scientists can’t tell us the exact timing of each of the constituent catastrophes of the climate crisis they predict will happen if we don’t get serious about addressing it. But we already have plenty of examples befalling us right now. The headlines these days look an awful lot like the litany of potential bad stuff you can find in all six of the U.N. climate assessments published over the past three decades.
Nor can scientists tell us when irreversible tipping points might kick in, only that they certainly will without a change of direction, and that we may already have passed more than one. They don’t say we’re inevitably doomed. We’re not. If, that is, drastic action to cut greenhouse gas emissions is undertaken immediately. If not, civilization itself is at risk, the human casualties will be enormous, and countless species will join the estimated million that are already headed for extinction. This isn’t hyperbole. It’s not socialist plotting.
Ignoring the evidence and actively arguing and voting against even modest policies designed to lessen or avoid various climate impacts isn’t the work of fools, but of scoundrels, of which the Republican caucus is brimful.
Of course, the polls never put the climate crisis at the top of the national priority list. And, of course, there are plenty of reasons beyond continuing to wreck the climate for defeating this particular pack of scoundrels, some individuals of which, despite dissing Donald Trump in the past, are now his converted lickspittle—at least until November 9. Trump aside, they’re cogs (or wannabe cogs) in Mitch McConnell’s machinery of obstructionists and power abusers with all its destructiveness. That obviously includes the climate crisis that they don’t view as a crisis, as we saw when not a single Republican member of the House or Senate voted for the Inflation Reduction Act.
Five of the 11 contests pit incumbent Democrats against Republican challengers, two of them pit Democratic challengers against Republican incumbents, and four are for open seats.
It should be noted at the outset that although several of the Democrats in these races aren’t climate hawks, none is a climate science denier. The League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, a pro-environment PAC, has endorsed every one of the them. A number have also been endorsed by the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, Sierra Club Independent Action, and Climate Hawks Vote.
Pennsylvania
Mehmet Oz is the perfect starter for this review. This guy who once railed against herbal and other scam and sometimes dangerous supplements but then got super-rich from peddling tons of the stuff also once believed that human-caused climate change was real but has now has made a U-turn on that, too. It’s easy imagine that someone who casually tossed away the “first, do no harm” part of his oath as a physician would willing violate his senatorial oath.
There was a time back before Oz was making money from advocating hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 cure on his show, he acknowledged climate change as a health problem. But at a March candidate forum in Erie, Pennsylvania, Oz said, the “ideology that carbon is bad” is “a lie. Carbon dioxide, my friends, is 0.04% of our air. That’s not the problem.”
This was long ago debunked and flies in the face of what scientists have been telling us about the greenhouse effect since physicist John Tyndall in 1859 and chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1896 concluded that even at low concentration, CO 2 absorbs infrared radiation and heats the planet. Arrhenius estimated that doubling the amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere would cause almost 6 degrees Celsius of warming, not far from what more meticulous calculations of modern scientists have found.
Oz makes no mention of climate change on his campaign website, but rather:
Pennsylvania is a leader in the production of natural gas and coal. The Biden Administration has launched an attack on the energy industry stifling domestic energy production and weakening the U.S. position in energy production. These attacks have resulted in skyrocketing gas and energy prices and made our current energy options less reliable. Dr. Oz will work to overturn these heavy-handed regulations that are hurting Pennsylvania jobs and our local communities.
The League of Conservation Voters includes Oz on its 2022 Dirty Dozen list.
John Fetterman
His Democratic opponent, John Fetterman, says climate change is an “existential threat” and notes at his campaign website:
I believe that climate change is an existential threat, and we need to transition to clean energy as quickly as possible. But we must do it in a way that preserves the union way of life for the thousands of workers currently employed or supported by the natural gas industry in Pennsylvania and the communities where they live. We need to make sure that as we transition we honor and uphold the union way of life for workers across Pennsylvania, and create thousands of good-paying union jobs in clean energy in the process. [...] I have never taken a dime from the fossil fuel industry, and I never will. So you can be assured that any vote I take when it comes to energy production and climate will be what I believe is right — not what fossil fuel executives tell me to do.
In his many years as mayor of Braddock, Pa., Fetterman pushed clean energy policies. In his unsuccessful 2016 campaign, Fetterman favored a statewide fracking moratorium. But he’s not saying that now, arguing that “energy security” is a paramount concern. Last year, he said, "I have a position on fracking, that I clearly articulated, that Democrats must confront and be honest about energy and Republicans must confront and be honest about the environment." [If fracking were banned] "Well, where does 40% of our energy come from? Now I would love all of that to come from wind and solar and renewables, but the reality is that's not a switch you can flip and change overnight." He also said that he believes there will be a “de facto” moratorium on fracking as the nation makes the switch to renewables.
wisconsin
Sen. Ron Johnson gets a 3% score on his environmental votes from the League for Conservation Voters and is included as one of LCV’s 2022 Dirty Dozen. His campaign website has nothing on climate change. If that isn’t enough to make his stance clear, here’s Johnson in June, “I don’t know about you guys, but I think climate change is — as Lord Monckton said — bullshit.” He didn’t say the word, but mouthed it and added, “By the way, it is.” Lord Monckton is a notorious British science denier given to expressions like “climate communists” and comparing them with Hitler Youth. At a 2016 event in Kalispell, Montana, Monckton said “[Y]ou don’t have to worry about the cuddly polar bear. They are going to be just fine. Because what this means is that global warming will not affect us for the next 2,000 years, and if it does, it won’t have been caused by us. I therefore declare the climate scare officially over.”
Sen. Ron Johnson
From The Hill:
“It was all about creating the state of fear as they tried to do with global warming. Oh, I’m sorry. It’s climate change now. Yeah. Whatever works,” Johnson said, according to CNN. “Whatever works that they can, you can set up a state of fear so they can step in and alleviate their fear.” “Mankind has actually flourished in warmer temperatures,” Johnson said in 2016. “I just think the question always is what is the cost versus the benefit of anything we do to try and clean up our environment.” “I am not a climate change denier, but I also am not a climate change alarmist,” he said. “Climate is not static. It has always changed and always will change.
The “climate is always changing” is a truism that many science deniers—particularly politicians—have shifted to after years of asserting that climate change was a hoax.
Mandela Barnes, Johnson’s Democratic opponent, is a climate hawk. Said Government Affairs Director Jennifer Giegerich of Wisconsin Conservation Voters, which endorsed him and gave him a 100% rating for his efforts in the Wisconsin State Assembly before he was elected lieutenant governor: “Mandela Barnes has championed climate action his entire career, including leading the Governor’s Task Force on Climate Change. Our communities in Wisconsin deserve leaders in Congress who will prioritize all communities, fight for environmental justice, and lead Wisconsin through a just and clean energy transition. Mandela Barnes will represent our state in the fight for clean water, healthy air, and a resilient climate for everyone in Wisconsin.”
This video appears on Barnes’s campaign website
x YouTube Video includes 55 recommendations focused on limiting negative impacts of the climate crisis and boosting the economy with renewable sources of electricity. The recommendations cover energy, transportation, agriculture, education, forestry, food, jobs, and environmental justice. In 2019, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers appointed Barnes to head a state task force to develop a blueprint to address climate change. The report from the task force In his letter introducing the report, Barnes wrote: In his letter introducing the report, Barnes wrote: The climate crisis has been hundreds of years in the making,and we know that we will not solve it with one set of recommendations or one biennial state budget, but our state has let this crisis go unaddressed for too long. The people are ready for change.The people are demanding change.Farmers are choosing more sustainable agricultural practices. Utility companies are investing in renewable energy. And our local communities are reforming their policies to promote greener, cleaner economies. . We can and must make Wisconsin a place where everyone can grow up in a safe and clean environment and has the opportunity to thrive, no matter their ZIP Code.
GEORGIA
Herschel Walker’s campaign website has nothing to say about climate change. However, at a Republican Jewish Coalition event in July, Walker said days after President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law: "They continue to try to fool you like they're helping you out, but they're not. They're not helping you out, because a lot of the money is going into trees. You know that, don't you? It's going into trees. We've got enough trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?”
Herschel Walker
Besides its other climate-related funding, the IRA includes $150 million annually for “urban forests” in cities—like Atlanta—where, among other things, development cut down trees and increased potential flooding.
Walker also has said, “Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then—now we got we to clean that back up.”
Steven J. Davis, a professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, said in an email that the “way countries and regions improve their air quality is by reducing emissions of criteria pollutants.” A co-author of a study published in PNAS that found that as much as 12% to 24% of sulfate pollution over the western U.S. comes from export-related Chinese air pollution, Davis noted that there “can be inter-regional transport of air pollution across long distances, but air pollution doesn’t displace clean air,” but added that “It’s more like pee in a swimming pool: it dissipates and becomes less concentrated over dimensions of time and space, but no one is better off because of it.”
Sen. Raphael Warnock, on the other hand, received a 100% rating on the League of Conservation Voters’s most recent National Environmental Scorecard, which has, since the 1970s, evaluated incumbents’ votes on issues in the House and Senate.
Sen. Raphael Warnock
From Warnock’s campaign website, under the heading “Climate: Stewardship Of Our Children’s Planet”:
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