Dirty Ways

Republicans in the United States Congress submitted a bill last week that would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating the emission of greenhouse gasses. Since last year’s Republican landslide victory in the elections, this is yet another manifestation of their suicidal stupidity.

Ever since they recaptured the majority in the House of Representatives and amassed a large number of new governors’ seats, the Republicans have decided to make a full frontal attack on U.S. environmental policy. Their recent federal budget proposal does not just stop at curtailing the EPA.

A selection of their offerings: Funds for protecting salmon in the San Francisco Bay and for purifying sewage that ends up in Florida lakes would be abolished, regulations against mercury pollution would be relaxed and to top it off, they would halt the practice of using hundreds of millions of dollars from oil rights to benefit national parks.

But it is the fight against climate change that most awakens Republicans’ wrath. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma called it the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the American people. Now, the Republicans want to take away not only the budget for the White House climate change advisor but even the budget for the U.N. special envoy on climate change.

This is not surprising, because denying climate change has become an inevitable condition of making it as a Republican politician over the last couple of years. Whoever wishes to survive election to this party has to be against abortion, for free possession of firearms and proclaim that global warming is a figment of the imagination. Thus, almost no Republican in Congress is willing to admit that the planet is indeed warming from human activities.

According to Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, “[t]he earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood.” Shimkus is a member of the Subcommittee on Environment and Economy.

Some among them actually do know better but are unable to admit this in the current political climate. Back in 2008 when he was a presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain did believe in global warming. The same is true for potential presidential candidates for 2012, like ex-governors Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

But at that time, there was no tea party yet. This movement, which has proven on multiple occasions to be of potentially significant weight in the Republican primaries, has made climate change denial one of their central beliefs. In fact, it is, not coincidentally, kept alive with money from oil companies.

An excellent example is Koch Industries, owned by brothers Charles and David Koch. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, they are a larger political donor than oil giant Exxon Mobil. One of the Koch brothers’ protégés is the new governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker — the very same person who targeted the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions in his state.

He is planning to make the construction of wind turbines virtually impossible, has refused money for a new high speed train, which would take thousands of cars off the road, and wants to relax several environmental regulations, including that for phosphorus pollution.

Gov. Walker even plans to decimate his state’s budget for recycling household waste. Result: Many communities will no longer be able to recycle, and thousands of tons of perfectly reusable glass and cans will end up in landfills.

Does this make sense? Of course not, unless you are solely targeting political gain. Behaving like a Neanderthal in environmental and climate matters is clearly how one can gain votes. After all, it fits the tea party’s recent trend of resisting the allegedly condescending leftist elites who want to impose on ordinary Americans how they should live.

In short, wasteful and dirty ways have become a political statement in this country. And this is how Wisconsin — and by extension the entire United States — ends up sitting in its own filth. This is a rather juvenile, self-destructive way to teach the pretentious snobs in New York, Boston, San Francisco and Washington a lesson. Take that, Obama!