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hatrack

(59,439 posts)
Thu Apr 29, 2021, 08:32 AM Apr 2021

Phony "War On Meat" Claims Shred Whatever Is Left Of GQP Credibility On Climate Policy

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“Bye, bye burgers” was an on-screen graphic on Fox News, which ran the false claim that Biden would, tyrannically, allow Americans just one burger a month. Larry Kudlow, a former economic adviser to Donald Trump and now Fox Business host, baselessly envisioned Fourth of July celebrations where people would only be allowed to “throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts” on the barbecue.

Prominent Republicans seized upon the supposed Biden climate diktat – which does not exist. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, retweeted a claim of a 4lb-a-year meat allocation with the comment: “Not gonna happen in Texas!” The far-right conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican representative, called Biden the “Hamburglar” while Garret Graves, ostensibly a more moderate House Republican, said the president’s plan amounted to “dictatorship”. The unfounded claims, which appear to have somehow sprouted from a University of Michigan study on the impact of meat eating, do not reflect Biden’s actual proposals to tackle global heating, which make no mention of personal meat consumption. But they have dealt a hefty blow to Republicans’ latest efforts to present themselves as committed to taking on the climate crisis.

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Aware of growing voter alarm over the climate crisis – a majority of Republican voters now support the regulation of carbon dioxide – McCarthy has brushed aside the objections of some colleagues to recast the party’s beleaguered environmental reputation by promoting tax breaks for renewable energy, making it easier to import minerals for clean technology, and supporting a push to plant a trillion trees around the world. Critics, however, say the proposals are wildly inadequate to avoid disastrous global heating, which scientists say must involve sharply cutting emissions this decade before reaching net zero by the middle of the century. In lieu of any mention of phasing out fossil fuels – the primary cause of the climate crisis – the Republican plan instead calls for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, an oil project halted by Biden.

“Getting to net zero requires extraordinary and sustained effort across all of society, not just the federal government, so you can’t just take a piecemeal approach like this, clap your hands and say, ‘We’re done here’,” said Nate Hultman, an expert in public policy at University of Maryland who helped draw up emissions reduction targets for Barack Obama’s administration. “This is a sort of mishmash of proposals, not a comprehensive strategy. I just don’t see how you get to a 50% cut by 2030 or to net zero with this.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/28/joe-biden-climate-crisis-republicans-meat

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