Incredible as it might seem, just as a state of
emergency has been declared in California and surrounding states
from raging wildfires threatening millions of households, the
matter
did not even register a word in the opening televised debate
this week between the top 10 Republican presidential contenders.
The two-hour TV showcase featuring Republican
front-runner Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz,
among others, contained plenty of
reactionary, incendiary views – with real estate magnate
Trump sparking controversy for derogatory comments about
“his right” to call women “fat pigs” and for the
building of a border wall to keep out illegal migrants from
Mexico.
However, on the pressing matter of wildfires
consuming large tracts of California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon
and upstate Washington, the Republican contenders had nothing to
say. This is because the Republican Party, in its increasing
lurch to rightwing politics, is in denial of the bigger issue of
climate change. Despite the fact that the vast majority of
scientists in the US believe climate change is dangerously
underway and is driving the phenomenal surge in wildfires
ripping across the drought-prone western states.
On the same day that the Republicans were
about to hold their TV debate, California State Governor Jerry
Brown made an
earnest appeal. Speaking at the scene of the state’s biggest
blaze north of San Francisco, Brown put it to Trump and the
other Republican candidates:
“California’s burning… what the hell are you going to do
about?”
If the silence from the TV debate aired later
that evening is anything to go by, the answer would seem to be a
resounding “nothing”.
In past utterances, Trump has
dismissed concerns about climate change as “bullshit.”
He has also
opined that the matter is merely a conspiracy dreamt up by
China to undermine American economic prowess. “The concept
of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to
make US manufacturing non-competitive,” said Trump.
As for Jeb Bush and other leading Republicans
Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, they also have denied that
there is any man-made connection to climate change.
The Republican denial is at sharp odds with
the United Nations Inter-governmental Panel of Scientists and
other world leaders, such as Pope Francis who recently
reiterated the UN view that global warming is posing an
existential threat to humanity. Asked about the Pope’s
intervention, Jeb Bush
retorted that the Pontiff should
“stay out of politics”.
The US-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)
also
concurs that global warming is driving deleterious climate
change, ranging from disastrous flooding in some parts alongside
prolonged droughts in other regions. The American scientific
community is adamant that man-made global warming is fueling the
increasing spread of wildfires across the western states of the
US.
“The effects of global warming on temperature,
precipitation levels, and soil moisture are turning many of our
forests into kindling during wildfire season,” says the USC.
That warning is manifesting most dramatically
in California, where at least 23 “mega-fires” – each
covering areas over 100,000 acres – have been raging for the
past three weeks. Already, some 13,000 people have been ordered
to evacuate. Up to five million homes are at risk from the
southern end of the state around the giant metropolis of Los
Angeles up to the northern cities of San Francisco and the state
capital Sacramento.
California is the
most populous
state in the whole of the US with some 39 million residents.
Home to Hollywood and hi-tech Silicon Valley, the “Golden State”
is also the driving engine of the US economy, representing about
13 percent of the country’s total gross domestic product (GDP).
If California were an independent country, it would be ranked
the 8th largest economy in the world, with a GDP of $2.2
trillion, ahead of Italy, India, Russia, Canada and Australia,
according to World Bank figures.
Throughout its modern history, California has
been battling with periodic droughts. One of the worst recorded
occurred in the early 1960s. There was even a period called the
California Water Wars in the early 1900s when Los Angeles
city planners engaged in armed conflict with farmers in
surrounding valleys.
However, the
scientific data shows that the Golden State has over the
decades succumbed to ever-increasing periods of drought. The
US-based Union of Concerned Scientists cite a range of data that
shows, decade-on-decade, rainfall is in sharp decline alongside
stepwise increases in seasonal temperatures. Each new drought
period – the latest one in its fourth consecutive year – is
becoming ever more intense.
And it’s not just in California. The same
chronic pattern of rising temperatures and prolonged drought is
recorded across 10
other states. Consequently, the western US is experiencing
more destructive wildfires with each passing year. Large tracts
of farmland are being abandoned to parched fallow fields owing
to crippling water shortages. In California’s famous and once
fertile Central Valley, for example, farming is no longer
viable.
The burning issue affecting the western US – a
third of the country’s entire territory – is not just a threat
to farms and national treasures like Yosemite National Park and
the forests of the Rockies; the underlying water crisis can be
seen as a real threat to the US economy and its urban
civilization for millions of people.
This is not unprecedented. Only 85 years ago,
during the 1930s, millions of Americans were displaced from the
panhandle states of Oklahoma and Texas due to the drought known
as the
Dust Bowl era. Many of those migrants would later end up in
California to start new lives in the state’s fruit and vegetable
growing areas. Who is to say that another climate-induced
calamity is not haunting California now and its neighboring
states?
Meanwhile, the Republican troupe of
presidential candidates remain ostrich-like in their views on
climate change.
It is no coincidence that Republican
contenders are being bankrolled by billionaire businessmen like
Charles Koch and coal magnate Charles Cline, whose commercial
interests are threatened by any environmental legislation to
curb global warming. Cline has
reportedly donated over $1 million to Jeb Bush’s campaign
funds, which may be why Bush has taken to panning the latest
Clean Power Plan to cut emissions from coal-fired power stations
unveiled this week by President Obama.
The climate-change debate – or rather lack of
it – is only one of several policy disconnects for Republican
politicians as they chase support from the extreme rightwing
electorate. As well as racist, anti-immigrant chauvinism and
reactionary views on gender equality, the Republicans seem to be
trying to outdo each other on who can be most gung-ho in foreign
policy towards Russia, China and Iran. To a man, they all want
to kill the international nuclear accord with Iran in order to
appease Israel and Saudi Arabia, even though such a retrograde
move might end up inflaming all-out war in the Middle East.
But perhaps nowhere is the Republican “new
normal” of disconnect more apparent than on the issue of
climate change. The American national house is literally on
fire, and yet these guys are busy twiddling their thumbs and
boorishly demanding the right to call women “fat pigs”.