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Can we have some?

24 Mar 2021 | News Roundup

NBC reports cheerfully that “Green groups launch $10 million ad campaign pressuring Biden, Congress to spend huge on climate”. If we skeptics had $10 million total, let alone $10 million to blow on one PR campaign in cahoots with their political buddies, NBC would write a withering exposé of big oil money. According to the story “A coalition of environmental groups backed by Democratic governors is launching a $10 million-plus ad campaign pressuring the Biden administration and Congress to spend trillions on climate change and clean energy as Washington gears up for its next fight over President Joe Biden’s infrastructure and jobs plan.” So Democrats are running ads urging Democrats to act? Why don’t they just act since they all seem to agree that action is needed and even what it is?

What have the intrepid reporters to say about politicians helping fund a lobbying campaign, if in fact they are? Nothing, of course. Money in politics is only bad under certain conditions, known as conservatism.

To give credit where due, NBC does concede that “Some job losses, such as those in coal mining or oil pipelines, are unavoidable if the U.S. is to achieve Biden’s goal of zeroing out U.S. emissions economywide by 2050.” And that “Still bruised from the last major climate push in Congress, the failed cap-and-trade attempt in 2009, Democrats and climate groups fear a potential repeat this year — particularly if support is siphoned off because of renewed concerns about job losses in the transition away from fossil fuels.” Acknowledging that fossil fuels bring real benefits and thus that abandoning them would have real costs is the beginning of wisdom here about appropriate trade-offs, though there is still much to be done on the subject of exactly how much harm a small increase in temperature would really cause even if one happens because of man-made GHGs from fossil fuels.

One last weird thing. Nobody else seems to have heard of this “Great America Build” campaign. But then, $10 million is just peanuts to grassroots green outfits struggling to cope with the flood of oil money to skeptics, right? Right? Do you hear us, oil companies? Flood of money. Send it to us here.

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