Politics of Climate Change

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By Stanford Erickson

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It is important to make a distinction between the science of climate change and the politics of climate change.

????? I assume man-made pollution affects the earth. But the extent ?pollution has on the climate of the earth is disputable. Brilliant scientists are on both sides of this question. My greater concern is with the politics of how man-made pollution affects the United States and its relationship with other nations in the world.

????? What do I mean by the politics of climate change?

?????? Back in the late 1970s when I was covering business as a reporter, a banker with a San Francisco bank informed me his bank, and other financial institutions in San Francisco, were providing major funds to the Sierra Club to “Save San Francisco Bay.”? He knew that I knew such financial institutions did not become successful by being overly altruistic. The banker explained that a major New York City headquartered bank had purchased Leslie Mountain about twelve miles south of San Francisco. The banker said this East Coast bank planned to use this mountain to build a financial center south of San Francisco to compete with the downtown financial center of San Francisco by filling in the wetlands of the Bay with the mountain.

?????? I checked out the information and found that the mountain had been recently purchased by “a New York City holding company.”? The story I wrote made major headlines. Prior to writing the story, I attempted to get a response from the New York City bank but was told it did not respond to “rumors.”? What I do know is that the Sierra Club campaign to “Save the Bay” was successful and no competing financial center was built twelve miles south of San Francisco.

??? ??Let me relate another true story of ?“environmental politics.”

????? When I was working in Washington, DC in the late 1980s, a nuclear utility construction company contacted me and said it was interested in hiring me.? The salary suggested doubled my current salary. The company flew me to its headquarters and informed me that it would like to hire me to lead a campaign against actress Jane Fonda, who then was actively involved in a campaign opposed to nuclear energy.?

??????? I suggested taking on that campaign would be difficult since most media people tended to support stopping development of nuclear energy in the United States. I was not one of them since nuclear energy was and is cleaner than the coal used by many utility companies. Over the next five hours the company’s executives documented how major oil companies in the United States and abroad were helping finance Jane Fonda’s anti-nuclear protest. I did not take the job.

???? Often those involved in environmental politics subscribe to maxim “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

?????? It would appear many if not most in media support the premise that man-made pollution is creating drastic changes in the world’s climate. President Obama ?and President Biden are the dominant political leader in the world’s campaign to reduce pollutants generated by industrial growth. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders support slowing down industrial growth that spews pollutants that allegedly are drastically harmful to the earth’s environment.

??????? But there also is the politics of climate change. Major industrial countries? are aware that the Democrat Party’s efforts to reign in industrial production has two additional benefits. One, it helps enjoin the United States into a “World Order” in which a United Nations dictates which countries are allowed industrial growth. Secondly, since Russia, China, and India have consistently not abided by environmental agreements they readily wish to impose on the United States, such agreements help their economies compete with the economy of the United States.

??? The enemies of our enemies are not our friends.

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