Where’s Your Climate Plan, Mr. McConnell?

For those wondering if it was still possible for the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, to raise his cynicism game, Tuesday’s show vote on the Green New Deal supplied a resounding “yes.”

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Lewis Scott

Of all the pressing business Mr. McConnell could be tackling, he devoted precious floor time to the resolution introduced last month by the Democrats Ed Markey, the junior senator from Massachusetts, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a House freshman from New York. A grand reimagining of America’s environmental and economic landscape, the Green New Deal is not a policy proposal. It is a statement of values — a nonbinding resolution that even its champions do not expect to become law. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has called it “a vision document.”

Which is precisely why Mr. McConnell couldn’t resist it.

The Senate majority leader, like so much of his party, has zero interest in climate change — or rather, he has no interest in pursuing policies to address what many regard as the defining crisis of our time. Mr. McConnell is, however, passionate about making life politically awkward for the opposition. With their base voters fired up about climate change, dozens of Democratic lawmakers have embraced the Green New Deal, including at least half a dozen 2020 presidential contenders. Even so, the resolution’s sweeping ambitions — built around a huge infrastructure investment and a shift to carbon-free energy — strike more than a few Democrats, especially moderates, as unrealistic and politically perilous.

Read the opinion piece from The New York Times by Michelle Cottle - “Where’s Your Climate Plan, Mr. McConnell?”

'War' on liveable climate could result in real conflicts

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ome see climate change as so divisive that a rise in conflicts will coincide with the unfolding of climate and so weather related difficulties.

US Senator, Mitch McConnell
declares war on 'livable climate'.

The behaviour of U.S. Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is taking extraordinary measures to block the most modest efforts aimed at preventing catastrophic climate change, seems certain to disaffect many people and ignite conflicts.

ClimateProgress reports, “He has begun an “aggressive campaign to block” EPA’s carbon pollution standards “in statehouses and courtrooms across the country, arenas far beyond Mr. McConnell’s official reach and authority.”

The story - “McConnell Declares War On A Livable Climate, Aims To Stop National And Global Action” – says “Tragically, while his efforts can’t save the coal industry, which is “dead man walking,” as Deutsche Bank has explained, McConnell can certainly make it much harder for Americans to save ourselves from Dust-Bowlification and the loss of our coastal cities.”