Part of what makes the climate debate so difficult to engage is the diversity of motives. Wide-ranging proposals to stop climate change usually have several motives, and not all of them are related to climate. Some proposals — such as the Green New Deal — are so sweeping and socialistic that one can reasonably wonder if climate is even the principal motive.
Take, for example, the risk of increased coastal flooding. Very few climate-policy proposals address the problem at all. In the recent CNN climate town hall, only Julian Castro, Andrew Yang, and Amy Klobuchar mentioned it, and then only in passing. In a seven-hour town hall, leading Democrats spent a grand total of about 45 seconds discussing what is perhaps the most immediate tangible danger from climate change.
Actually, it’s worse. Exactly one law has been passed that deals with coastal flooding, but it was neutered as quickly as Congress could find a group of special interests to sell out to. The Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 would have allowed FEMA to adjust flood-insurance rates based on more frequent severe flooding. Flood-insurance premiums would rise to reflect any increased risk of climate change, thereby dissuading people from living where the potential harm from climate change is greatest.
But coastal-property owners quickly made their weight felt, and Congress quickly passed the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2013. The new law froze flood insurance rates, keeping in place outrageous federal subsidies for coastal property development. In the Senate, only two Democrats and 20 Republicans voted against it. Senators Klobuchar, Sanders, Warren, and Booker all voted for it. So where climate change poses the most immediate threat to life and property, many Republicans and almost all Democrats voted to increase the potential losses as much as possible. (By contrast, virtually the only federal program that would help coastal communities protect against rising sea levels is a pre-disaster mitigation incentive in the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018, which is focused on natural disasters and emergencies and hardly even mentions climate change.)
And yet these same Democrats, who can’t fix a single flood-insurance program to protect real people against climate change, routinely promise to restructure our entire economy in order to reduce the risks of climate change.
1 comment:
Demonrats are primarily motivated by two things..........their own overwhelming personal greed and hate for our country.
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