Reading time – 31 seconds . . .
That is what Nebraska State Senator Beau McCoy said. He is running to be the next governor of the Cornhusker State and I’m guessing that he thinks his Luddite position will play well to Nebraskans, figuring that most are low information voters. You know the drill: treat people as ignorant, learning-hating rubes and exhort them to distrust science and anything they cannot immediately see with their own eyes. In sales it is called the “scare ’em and save ’em” method and it is very manipulative.
Of course, he speaks for dozens – perhaps hundreds – of other Republican legislators in state houses across the country and in Congress as well. I’ve singled out Republicans only because this lunacy is not commonly heard from Democrats, although there are a few examples. Most of these people are well educated and know better. Nevertheless, they dread the impact of doing something – anything – about global warming, fearing that doing so will come back to harm them at the polls. Here is how that works.
Should these legislators pass laws to combat this Earth-threatening danger, the wallets of their BIG campaign contributing benefactors would likely be lightened a bit. Those BIG money folks wouldn’t like that and would look for other candidates to back in the next election, candidates who will carry their water. That would result in today’s legislators losing their jobs because they had the spine to stand up for positive action to protect our children and grandchildren.
So, it comes down to a choice for each legislator: Bravely do something about the increasingly severe weather that will wreak havoc all around the globe in just a few short decades, or myopically focus on their short term self-interest to keep their jobs and pretend against the awful reality predicted by 97% of climatologists around the world.
Sen. Beau McCoy has decided on the spineless route in hopes of being elected to higher office. He says that he doesn’t subscribe to global warming. Maybe not, but it is being delivered to his address anyway.
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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue. Please help by passing this along and encouraging others to do the same. Thanks. JA
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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2 Responses to “I Don’t Subscribe to Global Warming.”
Frank Levy April 14, 2014
The segment of the Showtime series – Years of Living Dangerously – that focused on Plainview, TX is all the evidence we need to understand why the likes of Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, and others castigate science and those that make decisions based on facts not belief.
Frank Levy April 14, 2014
Part of the mistrust of science demonstrated by Republicans like Beau McCoy, Rick Perry, and others comes from their literal, fundamentalist understanding of the Bible. Unlike people of all faiths and political parties that do not see a conflict between religion and science, these people follow the words of the Bible literally. They are “taught the Bible” by fundamentalist clergy that teach that all that happens in the world is by God’s hand, and God’s hand alone, and is preordained in their version of the Bible. These clergy feast on convincing people that they have no control over their lives, let alone global warming, hunger, the economy, war, or social injustice and hatred. They have no control and should not be bothered trying to fix these ills because all of these things, and more, are pre-ordained in the Bible – as they read it. These clergy and their low information followers (and there are a lot of them) believe that they did not cause these problems and catastrophes; God did, and therefore they have no responsibility to fix them. God will do that when God is ready to do so. Everything that happens is by God’s hand – God’s will. With that mind-set there is no way well intentioned, well educated people, using science and facts as their argument, can ever change the behaviors of politicians like Cruz, McCoy, Perry, Santorum, Jindal, and others, and the their faith-base, low information voters.