What Hurricane Idalia Forecasts For The GOP
Updated: Sep 9
Republicans love a crisis. The 'invasion' coming from the southern border. The 'lab leak' of COVID-19 from the Chinese government. Lockdowns! Masks! Vaccines! Oh my! But what they can't handle is a crisis of their own creation. One where the blame is laid squarely at their own feet. A category 4 hurricane has hit Florida sending shockwaves through the deep red country side. The scale of its impact can be seen through the flamingos that have been increasingly sighted across the U.S. Flamingo's generally do not go north but have been found in places like Ohio, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas and Kentucky.
These birds have been caught in the hurricane and dispersed like a salt shaker over a plate of hot french fries.
Ron DeSantis, one of the GOPs presidential candidates and current governor of Florida, has placed political posturing over the lives of his citizens by skipping a meeting with President Joe Biden and claiming the climate disaster was a political attack from the Democratic party. The 1600 homes that were destroyed and thousands left destitute and needing a rebuild will sleep soundly knowing that DeSantis landed a shot at old Joe. Unfortunately, this strategy could work for the GOP. Many Republican voters simply do not care about the deaths of others. The keystone example being the 1,174,558 dead from COVID-19 which is considered an afterthought to the inconvenience of a lockdown.
What DeSantis' reaction indicates is the further need for the fascist party to double down in the face of its own ignorance. The category 4 hurricane Idalia is a direct result of their policies. The US is the largest CO2 polluter in the world. Pollution causes greater heat to be trapped in the atmosphere. A warmer ocean causes more water to be evaporated which leads to larger hurricanes. This isn't rocket science, its the water cycle you learned in elementary school. But in order to accept that, you'd have to accept that CO2 emissions are man made and if that were the case it might be irresponsible not to do something about it. Therein lies the GOPs answer; their donors cannot be blamed for the destruction of hurricane Idalia, the Maui wildfires, and all of the heat related hospitalizations and deaths that have occurred this summer.
This need to politicize the denial of reality has culminated into the Republican Project 2025 plan. The Heritage Foundation a right wing thinktank funded by the oil company Koch Industries which has been prepared for the next Republican president to follow to the word. Their climate plan can be broken down into 5 steps.
Dismantling the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill passed by the Democrats which has helped curve some of the pressures of inflation on the average working class American. The bill also offers $370 billion for wind, solar, nuclear, green hydrogen, and electric vehicle technology with large new investments taking place in Republican run states.
Shutting down the Department of Energy loan of $400 million to help any emerging new green technologies.
Strike climate change as an issue of discussion on the National Security Council which rightly views the effects of climate change as a threat to national security. The US military has acknowledged that the resources used for fighting climate related disasters domestically is drawing resources that could be used in foreign military bases. It has also acknowledged that America's energy grids are not built to sustain rapidly changing weather conditions and will likely result in massive shutdowns and degradation of vital infrastructure at home.
Opening up drilling in the Arctic wilderness and promising legal protection to oil companies that kill birds and destroy wildlife during oil and gas extraction.
Reverse the 2009 scientific finding from the Environmental Protection Agency which states carbon dioxide emissions are a danger to public health.
The fifth point is the most sinister of all in its targeting of the uneducated and gullible. They want to prevent people from even knowing something is wrong. They want to be the arbiters of reality so that they can keep the money coming in. They also do not want to acknowledge the danger to national security that climate change poses and the Pentagon has explicitly stated. One definition of genocide in the Geneva Convention is "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." The Republicans want an American genocide.
