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.
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!”
