I don’t have an informed opinion about the replacement of Jim Jones with Tom Donilon as National Security Adviser. But I do think something in the following clip is newsworthy.
…Jones, former commandant of the Marine Corps, was committed to the inter-agency process he oversaw and to the structure of the National Security Staff he helped create. This was deliberate on Jones’s part: he believed the policy-making process was so “20th century” (in his words) and was committed to the new process he helped create, one that elevated issues like cybersecurity and climate change to the spectrum of issues that the National Security Staff wrestled with on a daily basis.
Jones elevated climate change to an issue the national security staff wrestles with on a daily basis. As Cynthia Tucker notes:
One of the greatest crises of our time is climate change, which threatens to create food shortages (as the Russians learned this summer), change geography, eradicate entire eco-systems and even wipe out cities and towns in coastal areas…
…But we’ve reached the odd and depressing point in American politics where not a single Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate supports aggressive action to mitigate climate change. The last science literate, Delaware Congressman Mike Castle, was defeated by tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell.
The blog Think Progress did a survey of GOP Senate candidates, and it found that even those who had previously supported policies that would curb carbon emissions have backed away, fearing a backlash from their know-nothing constituents.Many others have simply chosen to be ignorant anti-science flat-earthers. Alaska’s Joe Miller, who defeated incumbent Lisa Murkowski in the GOP primary, is an example of the latter category. He told an Alaska newspaper, “We haven’t heard there’s man-made global warming.”
How do you think the national security team of a Republican administration would treat the issue of climate change?
That’s a rhetorical question, right?
yeah, but I’d like to see how we define it as a national security issue.
Can we invade them?
the changes?
I strangely can’t even imagine a republican administration. I also almost think they don’t want majority power. They can achieve their goals simply by blocking progress, lying about it, having a biweekly freak out about some ignorant horseshit, and periodically buying off unreliable blue dogs for corporate bonanzas. Why add the burden of actual responsibility, the burden of which was lately so well demonstrated by GW? At least why right now, when the economy is so poor?
to save the frozen embryos. Sheesh. Haven’t you been paying attention? Also, too, RAPE BABIES!!
isn’t there still some looting to be done? or more countries to invade? how about taking over some Latin American water supplies? lots of projects for republicans out there
yeah and this whole BP thing down in the Gulf has probably slowed down their North America open water oil drilling campaign. Gotta get that thing in high gear again!
Bomb the crap out of it, then install an occupation government full of idiot third sons and Regent University grads.
Next.
yeah, the theme seems to be that the Republicans wouldn’t actually ignore climate change; they would try to bomb it.
Like the Bush administration treated the threat of terrorism from January through August 2001. “OK, sonny boy, you’ve covered your ass. Get out of here.”
And then there would be a secret Energy Summit that would enshrine the oil companies’ bidding.
And when calamity hit, the response from the US would be like that for the aftermath of Katrina.
And if climate change caused a war in the wrong place, the budget would be busted to let our soldiers get in on it.
Next question.
The next world war will be fought in the India/Pakistani region, and it will be over water.
Hahahahahaha! That’s simple! Just nuke it!
Build thirty bazillion new nuclear power plants for energy needs and another thirty bazillion new nuclear weapons to bomb anyone who isn’t willing to take our nuclear waste.
I’m going to weigh in on this one : and am going to have to make it past the Disinformation Squad proposing Poisoning the Well Argumentation ( a Logical Fallacy ) plus systemic false reporting before establishing myself as swimming against the current. Too bad.
Dec 4 last year I posted at opitslinkfest.blogspot.com an expanded version of an entry I had made Dec 1,2009 at my.opera.com/oldephartte/blog/ noting an old article on how Anthropogenic Global Warming was a Hoax related to national security objectives. I expanded on that from the standpoint of geopolitics Dec 20 in a post ‘Afghanistan,etc.’ relating to the Energy Wars.
Simplifying the ongoing nonsense which was once posited against Iraq ( see the website/movie Leading to War ) and is now levied against Iran is by itself a tall order. CASMII is the ‘go to’ on that one – though certainly my Geopolitics – Perception Alteration is based on that premise.
Rather than try to reiterate volumes of material, see the Topical Index in the sidebar of opitslinkfest.blogspot.com to find posts on Climate in Contention. That is a different list on a brouhaha posited on a false dichotomy between those waving the flag of ‘science’ and environmental responsibility ( and if Mom’s Apple Pie was possible, that would be in there too ) while decrying all contrary propositions as anti-science proposed by commercial interests plying pollution.
Well, there is institutional ‘denial’….and a good deal more. It becomes a chore to find sense among caterwauling causing a din : politics, not science.