What do conservative policy intellectuals think about climate change? The Republican presidential field consists of people who refuse to accept the science of climate change and people who just don’t want to do anything about it.
This is partly because the most popular right-wing pundits on Fox News and talk radio, like Rush Limbaugh, attack Republican politicians who do trust the overwhelming scientific consensus. No surprise there, since anti-intellectualism is intrinsic to the appeal of right-wing talk radio. But what about conservative intellectuals? Do they have anything more to offer? In an attempt to find out, I looked through their op-eds, opinion magazines, and policy journals. Carbon taxation is gaining popularity among conservative policy wonks. For this piece, I focused on public intellectuals, meaning writers and think tank scholars, who are relatively high-profile, who would be cited by other conservatives as well-regarded thinkers, and who are associated with mainstream conservative institutions or large media outlets. The Adapters. California drought: governor tells climate-change deniers to wake up. As his state faces the worst drought in its history, with mandatory water rationing for residents and fears of destruction to the agricultural sector, California governor Jerry Brown had a message Sunday for climate-change deniers: wake up.
“With the weather that’s happening in California, climate change is not a hoax,” Brown said, on ABC news. “We’re dealing with it, and it’s damn serious.” Snow pack in California this year, which historically has renewed the state’s water reservoirs each spring, has been measured at just 8% of usual levels. Reservoirs sit mostly dry, with 38 million residents downstream wondering where water for showers, dishes and drinking will come from.
Earlier this week, Brown announced new rules for the amount of water California residents and municipalities can use, with the aim of cutting statewide water usage by 25%. “It is a wake-up call and it should be for everyone,” Brown said on Sunday. Santorum cites Westboro Baptist Church in debate over Indiana law. The former and possibly future Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Sunday offered a provocative analogy in defense of a controversial Indiana law that opponents say opened the way for discrimination by businesses against gay and lesbian customers and employees.
Appearing on CBS, Santorum said the Indiana law was meant to protect the same kind of autonomy for businesses that a hypothetical gay owner of a print shop would wish for if he was hired to create a placard for the Westboro Baptist Church reading “God hates fags”. “It’s a matter of accommodation,” Santorum told CBS. “Tolerance is a two-way street. If you are a print shop, and you are a gay man, should you be forced to print ‘God Hates Fags’ for the Westboro Baptist Church – because they hold those signs up?
Should the government force you to do that? “And that’s what these cases are all about … And that’s where we just need some space to say, let’s have tolerance be a two-way street.” Prague Explosion Injures 35 People - New Yorker Times. CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News. Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. The Seattle Times. Seattle news, sports, events, entertainment.