Worried that “there is something catastrophic” that will happen to the economy within years, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) pleaded for action on the budget deficit in a Fox News interview today, using incipient climate disasters in a forceful metaphor. Gregg sharply criticized those who would “do nothing” about a metaphorical “force-five hurricane in five years”:
I genuinely believe there is something catastrophic, I can’t tell you that it’ll happen within the next 2 years. I can tell you within the next five years it will happen. If there’s a force five hurricane in five years, and you know it’s going to hit your shoreline in five years, do you do nothing about it?
Watch it:
Like the rest of his caucus, Gregg has taken a do-nothing policy when it comes to the threat of actual climate disasters, even though they have been dramatically increasing in his own state.
In March 2009, Gregg slammed Obama’s proposed climate action outline, calling it a “non-starter.” A month later, Gregg voted repeatedly to preserve the filibuster for green economy legislation, even if “the Senate finds that public health, the economy and national security of the United States are jeopardized by inaction on global warming.”
After the House passed major legislation to reduce the threat of climate disasters, Gregg again stood up to do nothing. “I think cap and trade has a long road here obviously,”, Gregg said in February 2010, opposing the work by Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to draft climate policy. “I think it’s more logical to focus on those things we can do in the short term.”
He then co-sponsored and voted for Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) failed attempt to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific finding that greenhouse pollution is an imminent threat — which notes the “conclusion in the assessment literature that there is the potential for hurricanes to become more intense with increasing temperatures (and even some evidence that Atlantic hurricanes have already become more intense).”