Stop being ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’ with these people

First of all, let’s get the terms straight. They’re not climate change “deniers”. They’re climate change enablers. And I don’t care if they’re sincerely misinformed Christianists, Teabaggers, plutocrats or just stupid. Stop treating them as if they might have a point. They don’t.

This legalistic game of insisting that no particular weather event can be linked to global warming is just a strategy, and if we play by their rules (and God knows, liberals are nothing if not rule followers), they will win. They’re winning now. Ask the citizens who are waking up to devastation in the Philippines this week.

We need to call out, harangue and punish every single politician who even hints at the idea that global warming is not settled science, that nothing can be done, and is not doing everything in his or her power to stop it. (i.e. anyone who supports the Keystone XL pipeline).

They need to be trained, like the dogs they are.

Like Chris Christie, for instance. I mean, here’s this governor whose crummy ratings ironically went sky-high as the result of a monstrous storm amplified by global warming — something for which his policy decisions are at least partially to blame.

That’s right: He’s to blame. I don’t care if it’s one fraction of one thousandth, because our world is dying the death of a million paper cuts. After meeting with David Koch, the New Jersey governor suddenly pulled his state out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a regional cap-and-trade program for 10 states working together to meet carbon emission goals. Think Progress:

Yes, Christie showed his “commitment to the free enterprise system” by pulling out of a market-based system invented by Republicans and economists, championed by President George H. W. Bush, and originally supported at a regional level by GOP Governors like Pataki of New York.

At the time of Christie’s move, people monitoring RGGI were baffled. The program had raised tens of millions of dollars for clean energy projects without noticeably raising rates. But after acknowledging that climate change was real and then raiding $65 million from the program in order to close a budget gap, Christie actually had the gall to say the program was “gimmicky.”

But now the reasons for Christie’s awkwardly hypocritical stance on RGGI are becoming more clear. Perhaps the program wasn’t “working” for the Koch Brothers, the oil billionaires who have spent of millions of dollars trying to tear down cap and trade and any other programs related to clean energy?

Here’s the audio tape of Koch introducing Christie:

Five months ago we met in my New York City office and spoke — just the two of us — for about two hours on his objectives and successes in correcting many of the most serious problems of the New Jersey state government. At the end of our conversation, I said to myself, “I’m really impressed and inspired by this man. He is my kind of guy.”

Another example of Governor Christie’s commitment to the free enterprise system is that only a few weeks ago he announced that New Jersey would be withdrawing from the [Regional] Greenhouse Gas Initiative which is a [cheers and applause], which would have raised energy costs, reduced economic growth and led to very little, if any, benefit for the environment. [A ‘boo’ is heard.]

At the time of Christie’s move, people monitoring RGGI were baffled. The program had raised tens of millions of dollars for clean energy projects without noticeably raising rates. But after acknowledging that climate change was realand then raiding $65 million from the program in order to close a budget gap, Christie actually had the gall to say the program was “gimmicky.”

But now the reasons for Christie’s awkwardly hypocritical stance on RGGI are becoming more clear. Perhaps the program wasn’t “working” for the Koch Brothers, the oil billionaires who have spent of millions of dollars trying to tear down cap and trade and any other programs related to clean energy?