Sen. Whitehouse Slams GOP's Generational Fraud on Climate Change

Climate-fueled superstorm Sandy caused $14 million in damage to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's home state of Rhode Island, and apparently it's left him fed up with Congressional deniers of scientific reality.

"Our nation’s best and brightest minds accept the evidence of climate change, and are urging us to act," Whitehouse fumed on the Senate floor today. "Yet still for some in this body, the deniers carry the day."

Then Whitehouse lit into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY):

When it’s the deficit, he's urged us “to make sure that we have the same kind of country for our children and our grandchildren that our parents left for us.” He’s even talked about, and I quote, “the Europeanization of America,” and as a result of that Europeanization of America “our children and grandchildren could no longer expect to have the same opportunities that we’ve had.”

On virtually every traditional anti-Obama Republican Tea Party bugbear – Medicare, Obamacare, the stimulus, the deficit – even this Europeanization of America – out come the children and grandchildren. Let’s assume they are sincere; let’s assume they have a sincere concern for what is left for our children and grandchildren.

So, when it comes to big corporate polluters of today leaving our children and grandchildren a damaged and more dangerous world, where then is the concern for those children and grandchildren? To have children and grandchildren pay for the care of their grandparents through Medicare and Social Security is a sin and an outrage. To force on them the untold costs and consequences of the harms done by today’s corporate polluters? For that, the future generations’ interests receive nothing from the Republicans but stony silence, or phony and calculated denial.

But the cost will be on them; and the shame will be on us.

McConnell's concern for our children's bottom line stops at his own - both the polluting oil & gas and coal mining industries give 90% of their political contributions to Republicans, both at all-time highs back to the start of OpenSecrets.org records in 1990. Overall, the energy and natural resource drilling/mining industry gives 80% of contributions to Republicans, also an all-time high.

Wondering how to rebut common climate denier talking points? Check out this great guide from ClimateProgress.org.

This is How You Fight Back Against GOP Attacks on Clean Air

You don't need to have a Ph.D. to talk about why we need clean air and climate action. You don't need to have a mastery of facts & figures.

In fact, you're your own target audience. You need to be able to talk about it in a way that people who don't know facts & figures either can understand. Don't worry about framing the issue or dazzling with statistics - tell a story.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) had the quote of the year back in January, summing up the fight against polluter-funded GOP attacks on the Clean Air Act: "There is a case to be made that, in the contest between corporate profits and children's lungs, someone should be standing up for children's lungs."

Last week on the Senate floor, Sen. Whitehouse expanded on the case with a series of simple yet vivid examples:


If you don't have time to watch the clip, check out the full transcript at ClimateProgress.org.

Why Is Protecting The Clean Air Act So Critical?

If someone asks you why it's so important to fight Republican efforts to roll back the Clean Air Act, repeat this quote from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI):‎

"There is a case to be made that, in the contest between corporate profits and children's lungs, someone should be standing up for children's lungs."

In a related story in today's Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein details how Republicans are combining nonsensical job-killing rhetoric with people-killing policies.

Photo via Flickr's iDanSimpson