The Great Fear Among American Conservatives
Posted: 10/31/2012 10:03 am
Former executive director and chairman, Sierra Club
A veteran leader in the environmental movement, Carl Pope is the former executive director and chairman of the Sierra Club. Mr. Pope is co-author -- along with Paul Rauber -- of Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress, which the New York Review of Books called "a splendidly fierce book."
Two weeks ago David Brooks wrote an op-ed fable entitled "A Sad Green story" in which he argued that after a golden spring in 2003 Democrats -- notably Al Gore -- had poisoned the bi-partisan opportunity for action on climate change, and that a saga of "overreach, misjudgments and disappointment" had unraveled the hopes of that moment. The piece has been widely, savagely excoriated for blame-shifting -- those who selfishly resisted action on climate are pardoned, while those who struggled to overcome this resistance are found wanting.
But there is a deeper problem than Brooks' treatment of 2003-2012. As a conservative Republican who deplores the takeover of his party and his movement by hostility to knowledge and addiction to "heresy trials", an overwrought hyper-individualism and its suspicion of ideas, Brooks is unforgivably reluctant to trace the connections between the degradation of the Republican party he deplores and fossil fuel resistance to action on climate.
To read the entire article go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/climate-change-republicans_b_2026169.html
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