Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Saturday, June 04, 2011

Romney and Huntsman on Climate Change: A Difference in Belief Isn't A Real Difference Unless It Makes A Difference in Conduct

Republican Presidential hopefuls Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney are seeking to solidify their credibility as the grown-ups in the GOP field by conceding something as obvious as conceding that smoking huge numbers of cigarettes is a contributing factor increasing the risk of getting lung cancer, namely, that human petrochemical-industrial civilization pumping unprecedented bazillion tons of carbon into the atmosphere is a contributing factor increasing the risk of catastrophic climate change.

It is true that in conceding this obvious thing Huntsman and Romney distinguish themselves from many of their colleagues, who vociferously deny and deride the obvious in this matter, as many of their colleagues in the past denied and derided the dangers posed by cigarettes at the behest of the tobacco lobbyists who contributed to their livelihoods. Possibly, this difference might make the difference that in the Republican primary process, beholden as it is a to Movement Republican Base that is dangerously insane and belligerently destructive, that Huntsman and Romney will be penalized for their modest genuflections toward reality and passed over for the more fulminating and fascistic fiends in their field.

But for the rest of us, here suffering pointlessly in reality because of the obstructionism and deception and fraud and disinformation campaigns of frankly evil GOP nutcases, it would be quite mistaken to treat Huntsman's or Romney's modest admissions as anything particularly significant.

Inasmuch as these two characters concede human-caused global warming but refuse to propose any concrete policy to address this epochal planetary crisis, beyond completely vacuous platitudes about "concern" and "something must be done," all the while sharing in the madhouse atmosphere of their colleagues in deriding and excoriating any actually going proposals to address the crisis, including even the anemic inadequate cap and trade proposals that originated in their own party to ward off more radical (and adequate and therefore actually necessary) proposals involving structural changes in our unsustainable economic system and industrial policy, then there is not in fact a dime thin difference between the "grown-ups" in the GOP presidential pre-school pen and the squalling dirty-diaper set who share it with them.

The assertion of belief is vouchsafed in conduct: to change your mind without changing your conduct in a substantive way is not really to change your mind, to differ in belief from another while conducting oneself in a way that is indistinguishable from that other is not to differ from them in a way that makes a difference.

Huntsman and Romney may sound for the moment a smidge more sane on climate change than their peers -- and you can be sure they will pay quite a price for that -- but they show little sign of conducting themselves more sanely than their peers in respect to this belief, and hence we have no reason to pretend they mean what the say or can feel the least confidence in what they will do. Dangerous loons and scoundrels, the lot of 'em.

No comments: