Global warming deniers

Posted: 1/25/2007 - Commentary by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

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No matter how much scientific consensus emerges linking human activity to global warming, there always seems to be a bunch of kooky deniers who insist that polluting the atmosphere has absolutely no effect on the planet. In the United States, these kooky deniers happen to be Republican politicians and the businessmen who fund their reelection campaigns.

Their statements about global warming remind me of the Flat Earth Society (people who still insist the Earth is flat), or Holocaust deniers. They just won't acknowledge what's happening right in front of them -- the climate changes, crazy weather patterns, melting ice caps and rising oceans.

In this cartoon, I decided to show a typical Republican global warming denier altering his statements as the water rises around him. First, it's the blatant denial, "There's no such thing as global warming." Then, as the water level reaches his waist, he proclaims, "Global warming was invented by the media!" As the water level reaches his neck, he shouts, "Global warming exists, but it's not our fault!" (Which means global warming isn't caused by human activity. This is the current defense of the Republican kooks.) And finally, in a mad rage, "We have to save the economy, not the planet!"

It takes a special set of skills to be a Republican these days. You have to close your heart, install blinders on your head and have a special knack for denying reality, even as the evidence against your position is obvious to everyone else. These skills have been mastered by many politicians in the United States today, who think that saving the Earth for future generations would be way too expensive to the people living on the planet today. Therefore, they've decided to just throw away the future and keep on polluting beyond all reason, letting future populations deal with the consequences.

We do the same thing with the national debt, chemical pollutants, groundwater supplies and fossil fuels: let our grandchildren worry about it! It's the ultimate bucking of responsibility by a political leadership that demonstrates absolutely no stewardship of natural resources.

There will be a dear price to pay for what we've done to the environment of this planet. It will be a thousand years before the climate stabilizes, and that's if we slash emissions starting right now. Truly, future generations who manage to scratch out a living amid water scarcity, food shortages and devastating weather patterns will curse the modern-day United States and China for blatantly increasing global pollution in a time when the evidence linking CO2 emissions to global warming was undeniable by any sane person.