Gail Collins has a terrific piece in how the GOP used to be concerned about the environment, but now, not so much.
The whole column, “Cooling on Warming,” is worth reading, but one thing in particular caught my eye:
… earlier this month, a deeply noncontroversial Senate resolution commemorating International Women’s Day had to be taken back and edited because someone objected to a paragraph — which had been in an almost identical version passed in the last Congress — stating that women in developing countries “are disproportionately affected by changes in climate because of their need to secure water, food and fuel for their livelihood.”
You may be wondering who the objecting senator was. Normally, these things are supposed to be kind of confidential, but in this case the lawmaker in question is proud to let you know that he is — yes! — Ted Cruz of Texas.
“A provision expressing the Senate’s views on such a controversial topic as ‘climate change’ has no place in a supposedly noncontroversial resolution requiring consent of all 100 U.S. senators,” a Cruz spokesman said.
Note that the offending statement doesn’t even spell out what caused these “changes in climate.” It merely states that when such changes occur, women in developing countries are disproportionately affected. Kind of a “duh” statement.
But not for the Senator from drought-stricken Texas. Thank goodness Cruz swooped in to make sure that even purely ceremonial resolutions don’t contain any words that people might associate with the threat of human-caused global warming. I suppose his ultimate goal is to erase any Congressional reference to climate change whatsoever because what you don’t know can’t hurt future generations, right?
And speaking of future generations Collins notes:
There was a time, children, when the Republican Party was a hotbed of environmental worrywarts. The last big clean air act of the Bush I administration passed the House 401 to 21. But no more, no more. You’re not going to get any sympathy for controlling climate change from a group that doesn’t believe the climate is actually changing. As Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, used to say, “Only nature can change the climate — a volcano, for instance.”
It’s sort of ironic. These are the same folks who constantly seed their antideficit speeches with references to our poor, betrayed descendants. (“This is a burden our children and grandchildren will have to bear.”) Don’t you think the children and grandchildren would appreciate being allowed to hang onto the Arctic ice cap?
I’m sure our children and grandchildren would like to live in a world with a livable climate that could actually sustain its projected population, too, but that isn’t where we are headed if Cruz has his way.
And yes, the see-no-climate-burden Cruz is also one of the GOP’s hate-the-debt-burden hypocrites, as this recent tweet shows:
Seriously, we need a reminder to put an end to our irresponsible life-style that threatens our children’s future….