This summer I’ve come to you from Paris (oui, oui), Maine (wicked good), the Jersey Shore (family side, not crazy side), and my own backyard. But today, I bring you the week’s EcoRight highlights from the most exotic location yet, my sick bed, from which I’m battling a summer cold that would make winter proud. Send soup and the title of your favorite movie to watch when sick.
This week’s must read: Let voters make their own choice on the environment (The Times Picayune) Bob Marshall suggests in his modest proposal: “Have the secretaries of the EPA and the Interior Department elected by national referendum, rather than appointed by a president…These cabinet-level positions were created by Congress, so Congress can change how they are filled.”
The three percent: According to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, only three percent of voters said they had “a lot” of confidence in the U.S. Congress when it comes to acting on climate change. Sixty-one percent of poll respondents said they believe climate change is making natural disasters more frequent and powerful, while 22 percent said the opposite and 17 percent had no opinion.
Jester-in-chief: In the week President Donald Trump unveiled his alternative to the Clean Power Plan, a proposal called ACE, or Affordable Clean Energy, he took to coal country in West Virginia to laud “indestructible” coal. “We love clean, beautiful West Virginia coal. We love it. And you know that’s indestructible stuff. In times of war, in times of conflict, you can blow up those windmills. They fall down real quick. You can blow up those pipelines. They go like this and you’re not going to fix them too fast. You can do a lot of things to those solar panels. But you know what you can’t hurt? Coal.” (New York Times) While also insisting “the coal industry is back” (it’s not) and calling West Virginia “one of the most successful G.D.P. states in our union” (it ranks 47th out of 50 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis) Trump’s lies earned him this week’s jester and this tweet from Bob Inglis.
A great nation doesn’t just make stuff up. We have respect for the facts. #ecoRight https://t.co/Af4idD5LBy
Bob Inglis (@bobinglis) August 22, 2018
Related, an editorial in the Charleston Gazette-Mail asks, If renewable energy catches up faster than expected, is West Virginia ready to benefit? “Which state leaders are wooing and wowing renewable-energy companies, or better yet, making it easier for West Virginians to learn those trades and set up shop? Those sound like good jobs, with a future.”
EcoRight wave: Remember the op-ed published In the Charlotte Observer recently by our North Carolinian spokesperson Jacob Abel? His message reached across the country to the state of Colorado, where this Letter to the Editor ran in The Journal. “I am inspired by the youth in the conservative party. They seem to have some things figured out better than us old fogies. Well at least SOME things! They understand that the climate is changing; warming temperatures are causing havoc, and recognize that their generation will have to pay for and suffer the consequences of inaction,” writes Edward Atkinson of Durango, Colorado. “Kudos to Abel and all our youth for recognizing we need policy change from our representatives to change the current trajectory. I hope Sen. Cory Gardner and Rep. Scott Tipton are listening.” (We do too.)
Whataboutism: Our tweet of the week captures the message republicEn.org has been preaching. As Amy Harder writes for Axios:
For many conservatives, climate change isn’t about the science. It’s about the policies that would address it, which often entail bigger government rolesand that doesn’t fit into conservative orthodoxy. https://t.co/vwg8uBCh1q pic.twitter.com/9czvLWUEtw
Amy Harder (@AmyAHarder) August 20, 2018
Read her full analysis here.
That’s it for your roving EcoRight news aggregator. Thanks for your tips, feedback, and support. Happy weekending.