- Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:14 am
#59208
“The pope ought to stay with his job, and we’ll stay with ours,” James Inhofe, the granddaddy of climate change deniers in the US Congress and chairman of the Senate environment and public works committee, said last week, after picking up an award at a climate sceptics’ conference.
Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic and a long-shot contender for the Republican nomination, told a Philadelphia radio station: “The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we’re good at, which is theology and morality.”
A majority of Republicans in Congress deny the existence of climate change and oppose regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Among the ultra-conservative Tea Party set, climate change scepticism reaches epidemic proportions, about 80% of those on the far right, according to the Pew research centre. Only one of the nearly 20 Republicans running for president will acknowledge the danger of climate change, another long-shot contender, Lindsey Graham.
But it gets much harder to dismiss climate change as a fringe concern of liberals such as Al Gore, and environmental regulations as a sneaky first step to sweeping regulations and a government takeover of private lives, once the pope becomes involved.
“If I were a Catholic climate denier, I would be worried about the pope,” said Patrick Regan, who teaches the politics of climate change at Notre Dame University. “And if I had a vested interest in not changing climate policy, the pope would be a threat to my political stance.”
Meanwhile, Jay Faison, a conservative Christian businessman from North Carolina, last week pledged $175m of his own money to try to get Republicans to face up to the reality of climate change and the American Enterprise Institute, the establishment conservative thinktank in Washington, gave a platform – and respectful hearing – to two Democratic senators launching a bill for a carbon fee.
“I think sceptics have their work cut out for them to overpower the pope’s influence,” said Marc Morano, a climate change denier notorious for a blog that attacks scientists. “The pope being involved in this is a huge coup for promoters of manmade global warming,” he said.
“I think it is very hard to discredit the pope,” he said. “This completely destroys most of their arguments that climate change is not real, that it is funded by a “mass UN conspiracy”, that it is all to do with Al Gore and not to do with people of world.”
Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic and a long-shot contender for the Republican nomination, told a Philadelphia radio station: “The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we’re good at, which is theology and morality.”
A majority of Republicans in Congress deny the existence of climate change and oppose regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Among the ultra-conservative Tea Party set, climate change scepticism reaches epidemic proportions, about 80% of those on the far right, according to the Pew research centre. Only one of the nearly 20 Republicans running for president will acknowledge the danger of climate change, another long-shot contender, Lindsey Graham.
But it gets much harder to dismiss climate change as a fringe concern of liberals such as Al Gore, and environmental regulations as a sneaky first step to sweeping regulations and a government takeover of private lives, once the pope becomes involved.
“If I were a Catholic climate denier, I would be worried about the pope,” said Patrick Regan, who teaches the politics of climate change at Notre Dame University. “And if I had a vested interest in not changing climate policy, the pope would be a threat to my political stance.”
Meanwhile, Jay Faison, a conservative Christian businessman from North Carolina, last week pledged $175m of his own money to try to get Republicans to face up to the reality of climate change and the American Enterprise Institute, the establishment conservative thinktank in Washington, gave a platform – and respectful hearing – to two Democratic senators launching a bill for a carbon fee.
“I think sceptics have their work cut out for them to overpower the pope’s influence,” said Marc Morano, a climate change denier notorious for a blog that attacks scientists. “The pope being involved in this is a huge coup for promoters of manmade global warming,” he said.
“I think it is very hard to discredit the pope,” he said. “This completely destroys most of their arguments that climate change is not real, that it is funded by a “mass UN conspiracy”, that it is all to do with Al Gore and not to do with people of world.”
- By johnforbes
- By brandon