Morano, one of the most skilled political operatives of the age -- he "broke the story" that became the Swiftboat attack on John Kerry -- plays rough: he regularly publishes the email addresses of those he pillories, for instance, so his readers can pile on the abuse. But he plays smart, too. He's a favorite of Fox News and of Rush Limbaugh, and he and his colleagues have used those platforms to make it anathema for any Republican politician to publicly express a belief in the reality of climate change.
Take Newt Gingrich, for instance. Only four years ago he was willing to sit on a love seat with Nancy Pelosi and film a commercial for a campaign headed by Al Gore. In it he explained that he agreed with the California Congresswoman and then-Speaker of the House that the time had come for action on climate. This fall, hounded by Morano, he was forced to recant again and again. His dalliance with the truth about carbon dioxide hurt him more among the Republican faithful than any other single "failing." Even Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts actually took some action on global warming, has now been reduced to claiming that scientists may tell us "in fifty years" if we have anything to fear.
In other words, a small cadre of fervent climate-change deniers took control of the Republican party on the issue. This, in turn, has meant control of Congress, and since the president can't sign a treaty by himself, it's effectively meant stifling any significant international progress on global warming. Put another way, the various right wing billionaires and energy companies who have bankrolled this stuff have gotten their money's worth many times over.
One reason the denialists' campaign has been so successful, of course, is that they've also managed to intimidate the other side. There aren't many senators who rise with the passion or frequency of James Inhofe but to warn of the dangers of ignoring what's really happening on our embattled planet.
It's a striking barometer of intimidation that Barack Obama, who has a clear enough understanding of climate change and its dangers, has barely mentioned the subject for four years. He did show a little leg to his liberal base in Rolling Stone earlier this spring by hinting that climate change could become a campaign issue. Last week, however, he passed on his best chance to make good on that promise when he gave a long speech on energy at an Iowa wind turbine factory without even mentioning global warming. Because the GOP has been so unreasonable, the President clearly feels he can take the environmental vote by staying silent, which means the odds that he'll do anything dramatic in the next four years grow steadily smaller.
On the brighter side, not everyone has been intimidated. In fact, a spirited counter-movement has arisen in recent years. The very same weekend that Heartland tried to put the Unabomber's face on global warming, 350.org conducted thousands of rallies around the globe to show who climate change really affects. In a year of mobilization, we also managed to block -- at least temporarily -- the Keystone pipeline that would have brought the dirtiest of dirty energy, tar-sands oil, from the Canadian province of Alberta to the Gulf Coast. In the meantime, our Canadian allies are fighting hard to block a similar pipeline that would bring those tar sands to the Pacific for export.
Similarly, in just the last few weeks, hundreds of thousands have signed on to demand an end to fossil-fuel subsidies. And new polling data already show more Americans worried about our changing climate, because they've noticed the freakish weather of the last few years and drawn the obvious conclusion.
But damn, it's a hard fight, up against a ton of money and a ton of inertia. Eventually, climate denial will "lose," because physics and chemistry are not intimidated even by Lord Monckton. But timing is everything -- if he and his ilk, a crew of certified planet wreckers, delay action past the point where it can do much good, they'll be able to claim one of the epic victories in political history -- one that will last for geological epochs.
Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, founder of the global climate campaign 350.org, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.
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Copyright 2012 Bill McKibben
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