You don't need a weatherman...

Cross-posted here: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/31/1784861/-You-don-t-need-a-weatherman

Charles P. Pierce has a short but stunning piece up today about Kiribati, sea level rise, and ex-situ nationhood. It’s a very good quick read. And together with something Richard Haas said today on “Morning Joe,” it’s got me re-freaked out about the political state of play with climate change.

Haas’s comment, which was pretty throwaway, was also quietly terrifying. I'm paraphrasing, but it was basically,

"I don't want to be pedantic here, but as we continue to experience challenges from extreme weather because of climate change...."

He then continued smoothly talking about how we aren’t taking things like climate and infrastructure seriously as a nation, and sort of, oh heck what can you do?

Haas is a Republican. I don’t know if he’s gone on record as a denier in the past, or not. It was the almost calculated smoothness of how he rolled climate change out as an unassailable fact, and how he said he didn’t want to be a “pedant,” that sent up a warning flare.

Why that flare? Because I can vividly imagine a scenario in which all of the “it’s a Chinese hoaxsters” and climate change deniers in the GOP make the cold, calculated decision to unobtrusively roll over, throw up their hands, and decide to admit that yep — the climate is changing. Without a break in stride, just deciding that the denial battle has been lost, and they’re gonna flip — with no fanfare, and no big announcement.

I can hear them already, talking in their smooth, “reasonable,” oleaginous voices about stricter immigration policies to deal with climate change refugees, harsher controls on displaced people arriving from island nations and places like Bangladesh, and fiscal and tax policies designed to protect the rich and their property from sea level rise and wildfires.

It’s not even a tiny stretch to imagine going from the current debate between us in the reality-based community and the congressional deniers being paid by the fossil fuel industry, to complete acceptance on their part, with no middle ground where they wake the FCK up and decide we need to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

This is the perfect time and political space for that change to happen. There’s a blazing orange fire in the White House to rival the wildfires in California (and Sweden!) and everyone’s attention has been absolutely riveted for the past 18 months on what will happen next with Mueller, Russia, Manafort, Papadopoulos, Jarvanka, Junior, Trump, and Stone. Climate change? What climate change? There are battalions of other shoes to drop! Ghouliani’s on CNN, rambling incoherently about Michael Cohen — pay attention to that!

In the meantime, the weather right now (and no, weather is not climate) is being extremely convincing on the subject of global warming-driven changes to “normal.” Fire! Flood! Hurricane season is upon us, and who knows what devastation might be unleashed this year?

So it’s a perfect time for Republicans to use the cover created by the Trumpstorm to noiselessly change their tune on climate change from flat out denial and contempt to sudden tacit acceptance. They can then use that new-found acceptance (“of course the climate is changing… look around you!”) as a very convenient excuse for policy making. Which is to say, for the making of regressive policies: piss-poor policies that prop up and protect the wealthy at the expense of the poor, the brown, and the displaced.

Frankly, I think that eventuality – about which I fervently hope I am wrong – is more insidious, and much worse, than if the majority of the GOP were to stay flat-out deniers. At least folks with an opposing position can be argued with. Some Republicans have even changed their minds when confronted with the evidence!

But now, just six weeks into his tenure as NASA administrator, Bridenstine stated that he has "evolved" on climate change.

“I don’t deny the consensus," Bridenstine said at a NASA town hall meeting. "I believe fully in climate change and that we human beings are contributing to it in a major way.”

When asked why he changed his mind, Bridenstine told The Washington Post, “I heard a lot of experts, and I read a lot. I came to the conclusion myself that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, that we've put a lot of it into the atmosphere, and therefore we have contributed to the global warming that we've seen."

But a GOP that soundlessly makes the change to acceptance of the facts, without putting the slightest thought or effort into policies that would help limit some of the worst effects of the warming climate, could be an unmitigated disaster.

These are, after all, the folks famous for their “I’ve got mine, Jack” attitude. They’re the “God ‘n’ guns ‘n’ country” hacks who fight to grow an already bloated military budget while paring back the laughably few dollars the federal government spends on the National Endowment for the Arts. They’re the wretched ghouls celebrating every bite they manage to take out of Obamacare. They’re the dead-eyed bureaucrats who thought that separating children from their parents was a swell idea that would deter future refugees from darkening our doors at the southern border.

It’s becoming unavoidably apparent that something is going very wrong with our climate. It’s becoming blindingly obvious that it is going to cost one hell of a lot of money to rebuild, dig out, harden coastlines, and deal with waves of displaced people seeking terra firma as their nations drown.

If the GOP realizes which way the wind is blowing, why wouldn’t their adaptive strategy be to drop the pretense of denial and start working to saving their own – and their rich donors’ – asses? The party hasn’t done anything in the last 40+ years to convince me they’d act for the greater good. Not even Jim Bridenstine’s reversal at NASA gives me the warm fuzzies about how the GOP writ large might act, if they make a political decision to accept facts and act in concert to save their own skins (and wallets).

It’s a chilling thought. And I am taking bets on how this all plays out. After all, you don’t need a weatherman…