Climate Change Is a Bigger Threat Than Terrorism
Which Image Displayed Here Came From Argentina?
Creating false equivalencies is an important tool in the MAGA war on truth.
The latest example of this manipulation technique involves manufactured outrage over the Biden administration continuing to view climate change as an existential threat in light of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
This does the concept of ‘truth’ a disservice in two ways; by conveying a false sense of threat immediacy and skipping past the connections between terrorism and global climate change.
This falsehood surfaced during an interview with White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby. on (ta-da!) Fox News when the interviewee was asked if, following Israel’s declaration of war against Hamas, President Biden stood by previous comments calling climate change the greatest existential threat to humanity, and calling climate change “more frightening than a nuclear war.”
The NSC representative said yes, the President stood by this declaration, adding that climate change “actually threatens and is capable of wiping out all human life on Earth over time."
“I don’t know how more existential you can get than that, but that doesn’t mean that we walk away from our obligations or our national security interests.”
The fuse to the right wing faux conflict was lit. Other Fox personalities chimed in, the fact that the original question came from Fox was forgotten, with GOP Sen. Tom Cotton saying “...Kirby is talking about climate change at a time when Hamas has cut off the heads of babies in Israel."
The right-wing outlet Gateway Pundit jumped on Kirby’s statement, proclaiming “The world is inching toward nuclear war and the Biden Regime is obsessing over non-existent climate change.”
Biden’s not obsessing over climate change instead of a global crisis. Republicans, on the other hand, have a verifiable track record of using terrorism to attack domestic climate programs.
In 2003, the GOP claimed investments in Green Jobs programs would detract from the post-911 War on Terror.
In 2014, when the Pentagon reported on the threat of climate change to national security, GOP Sen. James “snowball” Inhofe was quoted in the New York Times saying then-President Obama should be focusing on ISIS.
In 2015, Republicans tried to tie responsibility for a wave of terrorist attacks in Paris to Obama’s efforts on climate change distracting from national security.
At the start of Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion, the GOP was pushing the sentiment holding President Biden’s programs expanding renewable energy as being supportive of Russian President Putin’s agenda. With so many elected Republicans switching sides, we’re not hearing this silliness any longer.
This week on Monday, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy went after President Biden’s climate policies in a press conference about the war in Israel and Gaza, saying “[Biden] believes the number one threat to America is climate change. That is not true. The number one threat killing Americans is terrorism.”
Of course, if McCarthy knew how to use a search engine, he’d know that right wing terrorism leads the pack (133) of ideologically driven people killers in the U.S since 9/11.
According to Scientific American, annual deaths from extreme temperatures over the 2010s averaged 12,500, and –at the current rate of climate change–will be something like 63,000 annually. 911 calls across the country for heat-related illnesses and injuries in July were nearly 30% higher than average, according to federal data.
From the HEATED Substack, which inspired and informed this post:
In addition, climate change is far more likely to harm the average American than terrorism. “I would say terrorism is kind of a distant threat to the United States,” said [Marcus] King [ an environment and international affairs professor at Georgetown University, and senior fellow at the Center for Climate & Security], “whereas the impacts of climate change are immediate when it comes to these increased storms, heat waves, and flooding.”
But even still, King doesn’t like to compare one problem to the other, because climate change and terrorism are linked. When the former gets worse, so does the risk for the latter—which makes Republicans’ tactic of pitting the two concerns against each other not only wrong, but dangerous.
“Climate change should actually be on the agenda of those who are interested in combating terrorism,” said King.
***By the way, the lead images for this post were BOTH taken in Cordoba, Argentina, currently experiencing out-of-control wildfires. Credit: Marcos G. Fotografía
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Meanwhile, in the Rest of the World….
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It’s Déjà Vu for the Disarrayed GOP by Jay Kuo at The Statis Kuo -
(The quest for a speaker continues; Scalise doesn’t have enough support to win a full House vote)
Despite the urgent need for leadership in the House, and at a time when funding for three countries (including our own) is on the line, the Speaker pro tempore, Rep. Patrick McHenry, gaveled out the session, softly this time, without a House floor vote for a new Speaker.
Why? Scalise needed 217 votes to become Speaker. That meant he could only afford to lose four votes. And he knew that, once again, there weren’t enough to carry him through. The GOP wanted to avoid yet another embarrassing, public loss.
If this sounds terribly familiar, this is the precise situation ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) faced in January, when it took 15 rounds of balloting and a series of humiliating concessions to elect him, including the one that felled him in the end: allowing a single member to bring a motion to vacate the chair.
How is it that, after all of this, the GOP finds itself right back where it was in January, and the nation is once again without a House that can move any critical legislation forward? Let’s take a look at what was and remains at the heart of GOP dysfunction and paralysis. It would be more comical if it weren’t also very dangerous, with implications not only for the U.S. but for two regions now engulfed in conflict.
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Laphonza Butler has options Via Politico California Playbook
Sen. Laphonza Butler has captivated the political class as she weighs a run in 2024. Her decision is expected any day now. But there’s growing chatter over another groundbreaking option with perhaps even higher upsides: A historic run for governor in 2026.
Even if she decides to run for Senate and loses, several top Democrats, including some close to Gov. Gavin Newsom, say they really want Butler to consider the further-off governor’s race.
“Come on,” said one Butler friend from California, talking specifically about a run for governor. “How great would she be?”
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Fossil Fuel Power Plants Kill 35x More Birds Than Wind Turbines Via Michael Thomas at the Distilled Substack
Over the last year, I've been tracking and reporting on more than 50 clean energy opposition Facebook groups. In this reporting, I've seen one argument over and over: Wind energy is bad because it kills birds. I’ve seen dozens of images of birds killed by wind turbines and links to studies on the topic.
As I've written in past stories, these images and posts can have real-world impacts. They change voters’ minds. And they can turn clean energy supporters into passionate opponents.
But there's a problem with the bird argument. It fails to put the number of birds killed by wind turbines in context. Given that wind energy is an alternative to fossil fuel energy, we also must ask: How many birds do fossil fuel power plants kill?