How to Die of Dumb [View all]

[WilliamPitt]

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), right, listens to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) speak at
a news conference in Washington about their opposition to the climate change bill on Wednesday,
June 4, 2008. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski / The New York Times)

How to Die of Dumb
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Sunday 08 March 2015

Sen. James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma since 1994, took to the floor of the Senate the other day with a snowball in a bag. Because it was cold in Washington DC, he said, because there was snow on the ground, that proves climate change is a hoax. "In case we had forgotten," he said, pulling the snowball from the sack, "because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I ask the chair, do you know what this is? It's a snowball, just from outside here. It's very, very cold out." He went on to denounce what he called the "hysteria on global warming," and then threw the snowball at the presiding officer.

James Inhofe - who believes snow in DC disproves climate change - is the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, because of course he is. He won with 57 percent of the vote in his last re-election campaign, because of course he did.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky since 1984, has been urging state officials all across the US to refuse to comply with the new EPA rule on carbon emissions that was championed by the Obama administration. The rule requires existing power plants to cut their carbon emissions by 30 percent, based on the 2005 requirements, by the year 2030. Senator McConnell is having none of it. "Think twice," he said, "before submitting a state plan, which could lock you in to federal enforcement and expose you to lawsuits, when the administration is standing on shaky legal ground and when, without your support, it won't be able to demonstrate the capacity to carry out such political extremism."

Mitch McConnell, as Senate Majority Leader, has the power to keep any bills he dislikes from coming to a vote. Until January of 2017 at least, that means any legislation seeking to address the issue of climate change will never see the light of day, because McConnell thinks giving attention to the threat of carbon emissions - what is eventually going to kill us all - amounts to "political extremism." Because of course he does.

(snip)

I don't have an easy answer for how to deal with this. How to explain people like Inhofe and McConnell, how to explain people who have voluntarily returned them to Congress for a combined total of 52 years, would require a political, economic and sociological treatise that I have neither the space nor the time to compile at this juncture. The short version, however, is that our cannibalistic economic model, indifferent news media, sagging voter turnout, general cynicism, religious derangement and fundamental addiction to a cognitive dissonance that motivates so very many to slap aside stone-carved facts staring them in the face, is going to put this whole human experiment into a shallow, unmarked grave.

People talk about "Destroying the planet," which is a hoot. The planet isn't going anywhere. Even the environment may recover in one form or another. The equation we are busily erasing from the blackboard - for profit while encased in a suffocating bag of ignorance - is ourselves.

This is how you die of Dumb.

The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/29508-how-to-die-of-dumb