GOP Path To Climate Self-Lobotomization Began With Weak, Politicized Response By GHW Bush

[hatrack]

EDIT

After his decision on the Clean Air Act amendments, Bush had to be "dragged kicking and screaming" to international climate talks and ceded a chance to make meaningful policy at a time when the world had not yet politicized climate science, said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University geosciences professor who attended some of the early climate talks as an observer. "I wish we had gotten more leadership out of him, the kind of leadership that he showed on acid rain," he said. "If he had exerted the same kind of leadership on climate change, we would be further along today."

The Bush presidency was a "debate over denialism in microcosm," said Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center and a former climate skeptic who now works to convince conservatives about the dangers of climate change.

Conservatives around the world, including former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, were worried about climate change and looking for policy solutions. Instead, skeptical forces grew stronger, pushed by Washington-based think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. While Bush ignored those groups on acid rain, he acquiesced on climate change. "The GOP during the Bush presidency pivoted from a position of being torn on how to respond to climate change," Taylor said. "This issue could have gone either way, but we know which way it went. The party could have been on climate change where the party is on acid rain, which is accepting it as a real thing and with some responsibility for a government response and total peace with the decision."

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So, for all his talk, Bush's climate legacy is that he walked away from pushing a policy that would restrict greenhouse gases at the very moment that the top scientists in the world were saying it posed a crisis for humanity, said Oppenheimer, the Princeton professor. The resulting void was filled with political fights that have worsened under the Trump administration. "The real shame is that we saw this coming and we had a chance to get ahead of the impacts of climate change before they manifest themselves, and we just didn't do it," Oppenheimer said.

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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060108785

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Well ... it was Saint Ronnie who *removed* the solar cells from the WH roof, after Carter left.

Carter knew their installation was mostly symbolic. Reagan knew their removal was even more consequential.