Every year, the global mean temperature rises. Every year, more of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets disappear. Every year, the climate in different parts of the world continue to change. Every year we become more aware of the need for a global climate agreement, if we hope to survive as a species. And every year, Republicans stick their heads deeper into the sand, not to mention other locations, pretending that none of this even exists.
World leaders struck a deal last month during the Durban United Nations conference that sets a path to a global climate deal by 2015 — a precarious agreement including major developing countries like China and India. However, a report by the research branch of the HSBC bank predicts a deal would be trashed if President Obama is not reelected. With climate denial and opposition to emissions limits rampant in the GOP field, HSBC finds a global deal would be “almost impossible” if a Republican wins the White House:
[The] prospects for a new global climate deal in 2015 depend considerably on the election of a pro-climate action president. The election of a President opposed to climate action will not only damage growth prospects for low-carbon solutions in the USA itself, but will make the hard task of negotiating a new global agreement by 2015 almost impossible. If Obama is re-elected with support in both houses, we expect modest measures to introduce a federal clean energy standard for electricity; a stripped down cap and trade programme could re-emerge building on the regional scheme on the West and East coasts.
Though some GOP contenders haven’t always positioned themselves as climate zombies, everyone from Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, to Jon Huntsman have doubted climate change science leading up to the primaries… [emphasis original]
Inserted from <Think Progress>
Now, I will be the first to admit that Obama’s record on greenhouse gases is less than perfect. For example, while he favors cap and trade, I favor a carbon tax with all the proceeds targeted to subsidizing research and development of green energy. Nevertheless, Obama does favor both the development of green energy and the negotiation of a global agreement to curtail greenhouse gases. Any vote in 2012 that does not serve to keep Republicans out of the White House, the House and the Senate is a vote to kiss our planet goodbye!
25 Responses to “Do You Want a Global Climate Agreement?”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
OOOOOOhhh Tom – Laying a guilt trip and bribing a vote for Obama! I hear you – but what about the famous Pelosi/Gingrich collaboration on this “global warming” issue? (just joking) Obama is still on my probation list – but I admire your persistence in defending him – and if continued may win him my vote by November! Although – there’s always the Green Party, which I’m considering, with the knowledge that here in NY he’ll win the State, but a vote of conscience might ease my mind considerably – and might send the message of what platforms the democratic party created and expected him to champion by voting for him, he has been failing dismally with the most egregious being his NDAA – which leads me to question just how dangerous a man is he? Did the president just undermine democracy altogether? What was his motive? As Colbert said on his show -” his amendment to this act is the same as saying your mother is a whore, if she is not, disregard the previous statement.” I stand with Kucinich on this issue when he says that the president just took a wrecking ball to the Constitution! Although what really concerns me is that Obama taught Constitutional law at University of Chicago Law – he knows whereof he acts upon!!
Lee, the truth is a powerful incentive.
The NDAA is off topic for this discussion, but I repeat, let’s get into it after you have actually read the bill, because you do not know what’s in it.
do so!
Have you actually read it?
Gee, I don’t know – I always kinda thought that repubicans had their heads somewhere else …
great poster for the GOP!
Great poster Nameless, but can being a human prezel be all that important to the Republican/Teabaggers!? Stay that way long enough and the bones and muscles will naturally grow in that direction.
All they can see, hear, feel, or smell is crap, and they thimk (that is not an error) it’s perfume.
Last summer this sweetheart died of heat stroke. I have no desire for a cruise on that river in Egypt.
Excellent graphic, Nameless. I’ve used it here several times.
“Party with a Vision” is the best, most definitive GOP poster I have ever seen.
It’s accurate!
You don’t have to convince me to never vote for a RepublicanT.
Good!
Graphics — I just love the graphic! Looks like the guy is bowing to Mecca, the direction from whence that foreign oil comes. I know in actual fact you are commenting on the Republican/Teabagger denial of climate change, the head in the sand approach or as we used to say about my father, the ostrich syndrome — if I don’t look at it, I can deny it!
I heard a report yesterday that the amount of snow in the US is down between 65 and 75% this year. Here in Metro Vancouver, BC the average temperature is up 6 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Farenheit) and the rain is down, although any resident will tell you that it is still enough. Texas is in a drought for the past 1.5 years and the drought is expected to continue until at least June 2012. Glaciers are pulling back at alarming speed and the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps are melting equally quickly endangering wildlifd.
And the Republican/Teabaggers want you believe that it is all a hoax. Well the Republican/Teabaggers are the hoax!
Good. Conveying that was my intent.
I completely agree.
I would like to DEMAND a global climate change agreement world wide but I fear we’ll instead someday hear a loud “POP” as all the politicians pull theirs heads out of their asses and by then it will be too late………..God forbid everybody make nice in Washington and do the business that NEEDS to be done instead of the b.s that’s been flying around for the past couple of years on GOP side especially………I hate to see Obama have to cave in on climate and other scientific issues……
Welcome Linda. 🙂
Wouldn’t that be wonderful? As I see it, electing Democrats provides a chance to prevent your fears. Electing Republiczns guarantees them.
It’s high time we brush our greedy special interests aside and join the rest of the world in adopting a universally-binding global climate agreement!
Amen, Pope Jack!
Cap and Trade, the theory, of digging a second hole to fill in the first.
Amber, while I think it is better that nothing, I would prefer a carbon tax coupled with strict laws against pollution.
They would have to much to lose. Destruction goes well with money and power. Love the cartoon TomCat
They don’t think so, Mama.
Given the troubling environmental views of some of the GOP candidates, combined with disdain for the EPA, we have yet another reason to get politically active in the 2012 election.
My point, exactly.