inconceivable! red states accept climate change mitigation money

Es­ti­mated reading time is 2 min­utes.

TRUMP PREPARING FOR CLI­MATE CHANGE! Ac­tu­ally, the head­line for the ar­ticle by Zoya Teirstein for Grist (Jan­uary 27, 2020) reads, “The Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion is helping nine states pre­pare for cli­mate change.” Ei­ther way, I know that many of you are thinking that word that Vizinni kept using in all the wrong places, “In­con­ceiv­able!” Teirstein states: “Any cli­mate sci­en­tist will tell you that the nat­ural dis­as­ters of the past few years pale in com­par­ison to the cli­mate change-fueled weather events coming down the pike.” She continued:

“If state leg­is­la­tors were savvy, they would have taken steps years ago to pro­tect their cit­i­zens from what’s ahead. The problem is, some of those hurricane-magnet states also happen to be gov­erned by cli­mate deniers.

In 2018, Con­gress de­vised a plan to help disaster-ravaged states ac­tu­ally pre­pare for ex­treme weather for a change, and Pres­i­dent Trump signed off on it. It’s the first time na­tional leg­is­la­tion has de­signed block grants to help states pre­pare for fu­ture dis­as­ters, rather than just clean up damage from ones that have al­ready occurred.”

$16,000,000,000 of fed­eral funding will soon be re­leased to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Is­lands and nine main­land states. Of course—of course—there is a hook to this:

“The states that got the most money to pre­pare for cli­mate change all went for Trump in 2016 and are all under at least par­tial Re­pub­lican con­trol. There’s a reason why a bunch of Re­pub­lican tri­fecta states ac­cepted cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion money without a fuss: none of them had to ac­tu­ally ac­knowl­edge cli­mate change to ac­cess the funds.

It might seem like al­lowing states to side­step cli­mate change is just an­other way the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is un­der­mining sci­ence, but HUD’s re­luc­tance to compel states to ex­plic­itly say they’re preparing for rising tem­per­a­tures might ac­tu­ally be a good thing.”

And your re­sponse to that might just be an ex­clam­a­tory “In­con­ceiv­able!” And you may say to your­self, “How could it pos­sibly be a good thing?” 

Be­cause in most red states ac­knowl­edging cli­mate change as the cul­prit for damage to that state is a po­lit­ical light­ning rod. In other words, ac­knowl­edging global cli­mate change is like ac­knowl­edging evo­lu­tion, equal rights for women, or that tax cuts for the rich don’t create jobs!

All in­con­ceiv­able to cer­tain mindsets.

To read this piece in its en­tirety, click HERE.

 

PrincessBride Vizinni Buttercup wine 1500 crop

FEA­TURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page is a scene from the 1987 movie The Princess Bride. The cap­tive is the beau­tiful and ab­surdly named But­tercup, beau­ti­fully re­al­ized on­screen by the beau­tiful Robin Wright. The scal­lywag with the blade to her throat is the evil no­goodnik Vizinni, even more beau­ti­fully re­al­ized for cin­e­matic his­tory by the then all but un­known (to most movie-goers) Wal­lace Shawn. Throughout the movie, as Vizinni makes off with the kid­napped But­tercup, his plans are over­turned by a mys­te­rious masked res­cuer. At each down­turn, Vizinni ex­claims, “In­con­ceiv­able!”

 

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