Posted on 03/27/2015 8:34:10 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Welcome to the nation of Ted Cruz's dreams — and the planet's nightmares.
Ted Cruz — adamantly, and against all logic — does not believe in climate change. It’s an untenable position to hold in 2015, when the world’s scientists are more certain than ever that global warming is happening and that we’re causing it; when large portions of the country are already suffering the impacts of a changing climate; and when there’s an urgent need for immediate and drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also just hard to imagine a scenario in which a candidate who is not a scientist and yet fancies himself a Galileo could actually win the nation’s highest office. His rejection of the basic tenets of science alone should, as Gov. Jerry Brown said last weekend, render him “absolutely unfit” for the presidency.
But let’s picture, just for a moment, a bizarro world in which Ted Cruz is president and, taking a cue from him, we no longer have to consider climate change or, for that matter, any potential downside to fossil fuel development. We can actually get a pretty good idea of what that would look like, thanks to the “American Energy Renaissance Act,” an omnibus energy bill Cruz introduced last year, and reintroduced just last week, that lays out his vision for a fossil-fueled, regulation-free oil-palooza.
“A Great American Energy Renaissance is at our fingertips,” Cruz said at the Heritage Action for America’s 2014 Conservative Policy Summit. “There is only one thing that will stop us from embracing it to its full potential: the federal government.”
Looking over his proposals, it requires only a small leap of the imagination to picture the headlines that would emerge from President Ted Cruz’s America…
President Cruz initiates oil free-for-all: “There’s literally nowhere I won’t let you drill.”
About 43 percent of oil and 25 percent of natural gas reserves are located on federal land, and Cruz is furious that not all of it is open for drilling. He wants to give states the power to lease, permit and regulate all energy development on federal lands (and waters) within their borders. The 19 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would be opened to developers too, as would Native American land — because, he’s explained, ”it is only the federal government” that is keeping Native Americans in poverty.
President Cruz gets his Keystone revenge by pre-approving every pipeline, ever.
The decision on whether or not to approve Keystone XL will be made before President Cruz ever takes office, but getting the pipeline built, he’s said, is only the beginning of what he envisions for America. As he told the Conservative Policy Summit, “we…need to think bigger than a single pipeline.”
“The Keystone saga imposed by the federal government,” his bill explains, “demonstrates the need to reform the process of approving oil and natural gas pipelines,” removing barriers to the development of all cross-border energy infrastructure. “The Canadians won’t leave the oil sands unmolested,” Cruz further explained — and he’d be loathe to miss out on the action.
President Cruz: The fracking industry knows what it’s doing and states totally have it handled.
Last week, the Obama administration finally introduced some regulations for fracking operations on federal lands — a small yet significant act, in that it could begin to hold the industry responsible for the environmental and public health impacts of fracking.
Unsurprisingly, Ted Cruz doesn’t think those are at all necessary.
“States have proven they can oversee hydraulic fracturing in a responsible, safe manner,” the most recent version of his bill reads, in one of its more drastic departures from reality. Any intervention from the federal government will kill the American Energy Renaissance dead.
“I couldn’t care less about some ‘international climate agreement’”: President Cruz strips EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases.
Yep, this is an actual thing Cruz would like to see happen: He’d strip the EPA of its mandate, awarded to it by the Supreme Court in 2007, to regulate climate change-causing emissions — elevated quantities of which, the agency determined two years later, threaten “current and future generations.” He would, predictably enough, undo the efforts the EPA’s already undertaken to regulate emissions from coal-fired power plants; in the future, any regulation that could possibly harm jobs would have to go through Congress and be signed into law by the president. Assuming, optimistically, that the world pulls itself together and agrees a climate pact in Paris at the end of this year, this would likely mean going back on whatever commitment the United States ends up making. (This wouldn’t be a problem for Cruz, of course, because in his world, the science, evidence and data all say that global warming isn’t real anyway.)
President Cruz blesses the world with the gift of fossil fuels.
Cruz doesn’t want America to keep its unfettered fossil fuel production to itself — he wants to streamline the permitting process for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, end the ban on crude oil exports and remove “excessive environmental reviews” for coal export terminals. It’s an important priority that would allow the entire world to have more of a hand in destroying the climate.
Largest-ever campaign donation from Big Oil ensures four more years for President Cruz!
Ted Cruz is one of the few politicians to have freely admitted that he opposes putting any cap on campaign contributions. If he succeeded in lifting all limits on direct political contributions, there’s no telling how far his biggest supporters — the gas and oil industry and a Koch-backed advocacy group — could take him.
The America of the future?
Fortunately for all of us, Cruz’s candidacy is, at best, a long shot. But his politics serve as a useful worst-case scenario for what could happen should we fail to address and instead exacerbate our dependency on fossil fuels: more oil train explosions and pipeline leaks, heightened risks to our coasts from offshore drilling and the near-inevitability of a disaster in the Arctic and poisoned air, soil and water, not least to mention the mega-droughts, monster storms and other extreme weather events that will characterize an America hit increasingly hard by the effects of climate change. An energy policy like Cruz’s could, to the incredibly uninitiated, indeed be great for the country — but knowing what we do of its consequences, we can only call it what it is: a disaster in the making.
Same old liberal playbook, just different scares. No different than Republicans wanting to throw Granny into the street, starve poor kids by cutting school lunch and give us all dirty water and dirty air.
LOL. I feel your pain.
Wow, Senator Ted Cruz doesn’t believe in the Holy climate change! It’s our religion at Salon! He either should convert to our Sacred religion or be put to death! Klimate Jihad!!!
Holy crap, the climate changes every day. And we are small creatures in the universe and have pretty much zero effect on it.
This chick hasn’t seen his slam down of the interviewer on climate change. That was brilliant.
Good word “distopian” I guess the implication is we were on our way to creating a Utopian Society? That is until that Cruz guy came along and messed it all up?
Hmmph. A bunch more reasons to support his candidacy.
Two “basic tenents” of science are the scientific method and peer review.
Neither seem to exist with climateology. Computer simulations aren’t “science”, at least not by themselves. And when they are looked at with observational data in a somewhat scientific way (does anyone have that great graph showing how the actual data has stacked up against the simulations over the last 20 years or so?), the models fall to pieces.
As to peer review, look at how belief in global warming has become dogmatized within the scientific community, and how they treat apostates. A Who was that well-respected climateologist who last year said that while global warming exists and is manmade, the models were off by 50%, and got completely crucified for doing so? A culture of bullying and intimidation is not one that supports legitimate peer review.
As opposed to......the current crazy world with the jug-eared jackass in the WH.
It’s funny. Someone on this thread suggested the folks at Salon can’t pass a basic science test. Indeed.
I often ask climate zealots, “How can CO2 be a greenhouse gas if it is heavier than air?”
I get the ‘perplexed dog’ look from them.
I then patiently explain, “The reason why water becomes clouds is because the molecular weight of water is lower than the molecular weight of O2. 18 atomic units to 32.”
The light starts to go on.
“. . . That’s why clouds form. . . “
Then I’m quiet for a second.
“How much do you suppose Nitrogen Dioxide weighs?”
That wasn’t fair, right? Asking a question like that.
“Nitrogen weighs 14 and O2 weighs 32, so that’s 46. You think that the reason they build really tall smokestacks is because without them all those pollutants would fall down around the places where people live?”
Now they are lost - completely.
“Nox, Sox, they all weigh more than air. If they weigh more than air, how can the make it up to the upper atmosphere so that they can hold all that warmth close to the Earth?”
Then you get anger. They can’t deal. The science is too simple, and they say it in the 8th grade or Freshman science class. “Oh, THAT’s why we took science!”
Clouds make the Earth warmer. That’s it.
“Before we start taking away freedoms and spending trillions of dollars we don’t have, why can’t we just figure out whether the heat of the sun, and the way that heat changes from time to time, is having a bigger effect on how hot the Earth is first?”
“For instance, we can measure the temperature of Mars, and even though it doesn’t have much of an atmosphere, it might track pretty closely with changes in the average global temperature of the Earth. Measuring that temp on an ongoing basis isn’t even expensive, either. Can we do that first.”
Then they look at you like, “Haven’t they already done that.”
Truth is, they have, but they haven’t monitored and documented it on an ongoing basis. The early evidence is that when Mars is hot, so is the Earth. When its cold, so is the Earth. The Sun could be the culprit.
“Wouldn’t it be cheaper to run that lead down first?”
At this point, they’re leaving or changing the subject.
I don’t believe or disbelieve in ‘climate change’. I’m just a guy that was paying attention in eighth grade science. As soon as we can construct an experiment that shows that heavier-than-air molecules like NOX, SOX, or COX can defy gravity, levitate to the upper atmosphere, and then stay there long enough to hold in all that heat, I’ll look at the irrefutability and weight of all that and accept AGW as science.
This, after all, is what science is all about.
Warm mongers?
What about the current spectacle of a Climate Lying White Mosque?
Beware of the no-warming-in-the-last-seventeen-years deniers.
These folks realize that they are advocating rule by priest-craft, don't they? They are not asking for data (particularly validated data), nor looking at the counterarguments. Their Shamans and High-Priests tell them there is Trouble in River City (and "Trouble" starts with "T", which rhymes with "C", which starts "Climate Change"...) and they start acting like a pack of salivating, unleashed dogs against anyone that threatens their masters...
I am OK if people want to accuse me of holding up the Bible as the ultimate authority - but I will still check out what it says (and it has never been found wanting). However this enlightened crowd claims that they are 'independent thinkers', yet they bow the knee - and shut off the brains and questions - when their Group Leaders tell them something is so. Strange.
Gee, a future where the U.S. is once again NOT dependent on oil from people who are dedicated to worldwide domination of a madman’s cult!
And one in which ordinary people can afford gas and electricity.
Viva Presidente Cruz !!!!!!!!!!!
It's the strangest thing - I don't remember any journalism students in my university logic classes... LOL! :)
Methinks the young newsslut banged her one too many times on the headboard when she was "studying biology" with the football team.
Of course, that was before they knew football caused CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). Rubbers AND protective headgear, Lindsay dear...
We're "Climate Deniers". They're "Climate Liars".
“Climate-lying” is what THEY do...
Anyone who uses the phrase “climate-denying” is a tendentious fool who may safely be ignored.
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