Wednesday, June 22, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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The charge of radicalism is the default response by many Republicans to any substantive climate action. Regarding Biden administration climate policies, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently claimed, “Democrats say your financial pain is the necessary cost to make America more to the liking of the radical environmental left.”
But George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, who calls climate change the single biggest risk to the global economy, is not a part of the radical environmental left.
Nor are members of Freddie Mac’s Economic and Housing Research group, which reported: “(R)ising sea levels and spreading flood plains ... appear likely to destroy billions of dollars in property and to displace millions of people. The economic losses and social disruption may happen gradually, but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.”
And consider that a 2020 report by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission concludes: “A world wracked by frequent and devastating shocks from climate change cannot sustain the fundamental conditions supporting our financial system.”
The economy is a subset of nature, and politicians must work to protect it. We depend on the natural world not only for a suitable climate but also for clean water, pollination, fisheries, timber production, soil conservation, flood control and more.
What’s radical is that, as climate scientist Bill Collins said, “We’re running an uncontrolled experiment on the only home we have.”
