McClintock Attacks Gore, Conservationists; Disputes Global Warming Science

In an October 12 speech to the Western Conservative Political Action Conference, California State Senator Tom McClintock mounted a persuasive, and yet poorly informed attack against Al Gore, conservation, and the most widely accepted scientific theory of global warming.

 

This is fortunate: McClintock’s comments have assured his well-deserved fate of political irrelevance and ignominy.

 

McClintock repeated well-worn Republican jokes about personal jets and Gore’s electricity bill. He mentioned several laughably out-of-date theories about the causes of recent climate change. He even proudly admits that his knowledge about climate change has its most profound roots in his grade school musings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If Tony Strickland, the Republican running for McClintock’s hotly contested District 19 seat, adopts these backward views, any Democrat running for the seat will receive a boost in popularity.

 

The entire text of McClintock’s speech was posted on his blog, Citizens for the California Republic.

 

What is discouraging is that so many loyal Republicans–petulant at the world’s recognition of Gore’s contribution to the fight against man-made climate change–are susceptible to the the alluring but factually erroneous arguments advanced by McClintock.

 

Contrary to what he asserts, McClintock’s arguments are advanced by only a slim minority of scientists, but they are enormously popular among Republicans.

 

This position is damaging to the Republican party and will cause it to lose votes in California and nationally.

 

Democrats, if we can brand ourselves as the party of responsible environmentalism, stand to gain enormously from such Republican foolishness.

 

I urge all Conejo Valley residents concerned about global warming to attend the Democratic Club of the Conejo Valley‘s meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 14, at the Goebel Senior Center in Thousand Oaks.

 

Speakers will include Perrin Pellegrin, Sustainability Manager at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Gayle Kaufman of the City of Thousand Oaks.

 

The night’s topic will be sustainability and how to be environmentally responsible.

 

The Goebel Senior Center is located at 1385 E. Janss Road. Click here for a map.

 

All those interested in countering McClintock’s failures of logic should do two things: (1) educate yourself about the facts of climate change and (2) post rebuttals to McClintock’s blog by visiting his post here.

 

Below appears my hastily dashed-off response to McClintock, which I posted on Saturday night:

 

Senator McClintock’s attack of Al Gore is crude and impolite.

His attack of global warming, although beguilingly laced with half-baked science, is incorrect. I quote the “Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change,” published one year ago by Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of the Government Economic Service for the United Kingdom: “The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response.”

Furthermore, McClintock’s argument that limited man-made global warming is overly burdensome on the economy can be discarded, as Stern indicates:

“The world does not need to choose between averting climate change and promoting growth and development. Changes in energy technologies and in the structure of economies have created opportunities to decouple growth from greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth.”

Shame on you, Senator McClintock, for your seemingly sagacious dissembling. I hope you will change your opinion on global warming and the feasibility of fighting it.

Elected officials should be advocating the best science, not placing obstacles in the way of the best science.

Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus to Speak at Pepperdine

Democrats everywhere are basking in the glory of Al Gore’s recent Nobel Peace Prize, but another Nobel winner, Muhammad Yunus, will speak at Pepperdine University in Malibu at a free event next weekend.

 

 

 

The event, titled “Social Enterprise: Doing Well by Doing Good,” will be held on Saturday, October 20, from 10-11 a.m. at Pepperdine in the Caruso Auditorium. The address is 24255 Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

 

All seats at the Caruso Auditorium have been filled, but you should register here (http://www.pepperdine.edu/yunus/), show up anyway, and you might get lucky. Even if you don’t get into Caruso, you can watch the speech live in designated classrooms.

 

Yunus and Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for their efforts to provide microcredit, small person-to-person loans, for very poor people.

 

Banks had previously refused to lend money to poor Bangladeshis, fearing they would never see their money again. So, poor people sometimes turned to loan sharks, who, naturally, would charge exorbitant interest.

 

Yunus proved that some among the very poor are indeed enterprising capitalists like any others, and just need a bit of help to get going.

 

Unlike traditional banks, the Grameen Bank did not ask for collateral for loans. Instead, small loans were made, typically to women, who would then buy the materials needed to support a small business, such as a mobile phone cart or a sewing enterprise.

 

Instead of signing contracts, people simply agree to pay the money back. It is a system based on trust carried out between people who know each other.

 

And 99% of borrowers pay the money back.

 

This was taken from the Nobel Committee’s 2006 news release:

 

“Every single individual on earth has both the potential and the right to live a decent life. Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development.”

 

“Micro-credit has proved to be an important liberating force in societies where women in particular have to struggle against repressive social and economic conditions. Economic growth and political democracy can not achieve their full potential unless the female half of humanity participates on an equal footing with the male.”

 

I urge everyone who can to attend Yunus’s lecture at Pepperdine. Listening to him speak in his charming and understated fashion about helping the poor in a way that ennobles them and helps them to become independent will make you feel hopeful about humanity again.

 

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