What do we want? BIG OIL money OUT of the conversation.

If I were of the tinfoil-hat-wearing persuasion, I might be wondering if the confluence of recent GOP-backed bills to curb voting rights, coupled with the SCOTUS declaring that corporations are people, weren't just some giant conspiracy to hand control of the country over to the corporations, and render the people powerless to change the course of America's future with their quaint, mean-nothing little "votes."  After all, the fire hose of corporate and "dark" money into the election cycle recently has a lot of folks worried - very worried - and the folks who are worried know a lot more about all of this than little me.

And yes, I'm worried too.

So allow me to don my tinfoil hat, just for giggles.

How about this one?  It's a conspiracy to enrich the Koch brothers and the rest of their one-percenter ilk enough to build a giant off-world retreat where they can resettle once their incessant mining of carbon-based fuels has fattened their wallets enough to design, make, and buy that retreat and fund the ship to get them there (without the rest of us).

Or it might be

And so the conservative backlash begins.

GOP stalwarts across the nation are yelping that President Obama’s sensible new EPA rules will cost thousands upon thousands of jobs and cost millions upon millions of dollars.

I’d like to consider what the implications of that would be, if in fact they are correct (which they very decidedly are not).  What if these EPA rules will cost jobs?  What if they will cost money?  What if energy prices will go rocketing up for local consumers?

Well – what’s the alternative?

If the alternative is that we have NO regulations – that if the US doesn’t lead on climate change and make great strides towards reducing our emissions – then we will have unchecked, runaway climate change.  And the consequences will be catastrophic.  And that will cost us a LOT more money, as well as lives.

So if the GOP is right about this, and if the EPA regulations will take an economic toll, then we need to ask ourselves – will the economic toll from climate change be even worse?

I didn't have to watch Cosmos last night to know the answer.