Mitt Romney Adopts Denialism

People do realize that the president doesn't control the purse strings of the country? I'm not sure the general public understands this. Even the politicians add to this confusion when making campaign promises. They make statements about altering the income tax system and such, which are in reality areas controlled by congress.

Tom

 

Very true on paper, but the Louisiana Purchase, as well as many other executive branch decisions (e.g. sent troops somewhere) make it more true in theory than practice.

 

The lines dividing the branches of government continue to creep, with the executive branch gaining. Occasionally congress issues a smack down and reclaims some power, but mostly it goes the other way around.

Tom

 

You did see the quote I posted as well as the cartoon that ItsNotAboutTheMoney posted, right?

 

Good chart, but it kind of points out a better way to get support. First don't call people deniers, I know you didn't but this is fairly common in politics and in this forum. To me a denier is someone that denies the holocost, and giving that association is unlikely to get that person to support the policy. Then push the policies that both reduce ghg and do those goals on the cartoon.

Let's take the first one. The vast majority in the US wants energy independence. Some want to drill baby drill, but the majority understand or can be made to understand that this will not fufill current oil consumption needs. There should be support for both efficiency and substitution. The bush and obama administrations have raised cafe standards and given support for EVs and PHEVs. So this is bipartisan. More could be done though. Cafe standards only make more efficient cars available, knowledge that gas prices will go up will shift people to more efficient cars. If a oil tax reduced the payroll tax or the income tax it might get some more support, but instead it gets framed as more money to be wasted in washington, which with the clowns currently in control it likely would. Then a bigger push to substitute electricity gets framed as - its just going to use coal and won't stop global warming. This is highly misleading wrong, but pusing EVs and PHEVs to use less foreign oil would get rid of this bogus argument. Pushing them to combat global warming just doesn't work.

 

I personally avoid the entire global warming "debate" because of many of the reasons you bring up. If I claim that I'm doing anything to slow global warming, there is a large segment of the population who turns off then and there. End of discussion. I'm a dupe who believes in this whole "scare hoax."

So I avoid bringing it up. There's really little reason to go down that path and beat my head against a wall. My point is that we need to do ALL the things that solve global warming even if global warming is NOT something we ever need to worry about. That's the point of the quote I posted earlier, and of the comic posted above, of course. Take GW out of the picture. It doesn't change what we desperately need to do.

You got that point, right?

"So-called “global warming†is just a secret ploy by wacko tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 21st-century industries, and make our cities safer and more livable. Don’t let them get away with it!" -Chip Giller, Founder of Grist.org"

 

I actually feel the cartoon list misses the central point, conservation of resources.