A coal fired plant in staunchly
pro-pollution West Virginia
How Republicans Are ‘Weaponizing’ Public Office Against Climate Action
A Times investigation revealed a coordinated effort by state treasurers to use government muscle and public funds to punish companies trying to reduce greenhouse gases.Nearly two dozen Republican state treasurers around the country are working to thwart climate action on state and federal levels, fighting regulations that would make clear the economic risks posed by a warming world, lobbying against climate-minded nominees to key federal posts and using the tax dollars they control to punish companies that want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Over the past year, treasurers in nearly half the United States have been coordinating tactics and talking points, meeting in private and cheering each other in public as part of a well-funded campaign to protect the fossil fuel companies that bolster their local economies.
Last week, Riley Moore, the treasurer of West Virginia, announced that several major banks — including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo — would be barred from government contracts with his state because they are reducing their investments in coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.
Mr. Moore and the treasurers of Louisiana and Arkansas have pulled more than $700 million out of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, over objections that the firm is too focused on environmental issues. At the same time, the treasurers of Utah and Idaho are pressuring the private sector to drop climate action and other causes they label as “woke.”
And treasurers from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Oklahoma joined a larger campaign to thwart the nominations of federal regulators who wanted to require that banks, funds and companies disclose the financial risks posed by a warming planet.
At the nexus of these efforts is the State Financial Officers Foundation, a little-known nonprofit organization based in Shawnee, Kan., that once focused on cybersecurity, borrowing costs and managing debt loads, among other routine issues.
Mr. Moore went on to offer a classic denial of the overwhelming scientific consensus that the continued burning of oil, gas and coal will lead to planetary catastrophe.
“The climate has been changing in the world since Earth was created,” Mr. Moore said. “Whether these greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to the warming of the globe, I’m not sure I necessarily agree with that.”
The Republican Party’s one and only statement of concern about climate change in Rick Scott’s 11 point plan to make America fascist and kleptocratic again, with rivers occasionally spontaneously erupting into flames:
“The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs.”
So in addition to chronically rejecting and lying about inconvenient truth and constantly attacking and subverting democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties, the Republican Party is hell bent on turning the environment into hell on Earth. The reasons are the usual for the Republicans, power and wealth. According to Republican and polluter propaganda, concern for climate change and the environment is just socialist wokeness. The morally corrupt, fascist, pro-pollution Republican Party will have none of that nonsense.
The GOP, the go-to party for polluters like Exxon-Mobile and coal companies to exercise their free speech rights (campaign contributions). There will be no nutty policies while the Republicans are in charge. But there will be gigatons of pollution and trillions in environmental damage.
What nature should look like according
to the Republican Party
No comments:
Post a Comment