"We don't produce enough to actually harm the ozone because THE TREES BREATHE IT ALL. Hello? Have you been paying attention in Biology class?? Plus, there's no actual evidence in the first place. It's just cherry-picked info from bad sources, and there is NO real threat concerning our Co2 releases. Please, check your sources again, and again, and again, until it's CONFIRMED."
As idiotic as that comment sounds, unfortunately, it is endemic of a larger problem on the American Right- denialism.
Look, I have no problem with healthy skepticism. Science and innovation are driven by a healthy dose of skepticism. But these people are not skeptics! They're deniers! Skeptics keep an open mind and look at all the available data and evidence; deniers are never satisfied, no matter how much evidence you put in front of them.
Whoever said that just because you acknowledge a problem, the solutions are predetermined, and you can't change it?
Saying that anthropogenic global warming exists does not mean, as some right-wingers love to frame the argument, that one is blaming capitalism or the free market for all the world's ills. They are simply saying that, given the evidence, we humans kind of have fucked up the environment. And we do have some responsibility, at least for our species' health and safety, to do something about it. The global warming deniers, for whatever reason, seem to assume that if they admit that there is anthropogenic global warming, instead of it being 100% "natural", they'll somehow legitimize policies they disagree with. But that's absurd.
We have to move on from bitching about how it's "not real" and start trying to figure out a sensible solution, if the effects will in fact be even 1/5th or 1/10th as bad as the catastrophists predict. I'm sorry, denier conservatives, but the debate is over. It ended a long time ago when scientists around the world found the evidence, evidence that has been obtained over the last 20-30 years! You can go around denying it in your think-tanks and political interest groups all you want, but that doesn't mean we don't have a problem. You people remind me of an alcoholic who won't go to rehab or admit he has a problem: "I can get off beer if I want to. I'm just not ready yet."
The far-right will never concede the facts and at least try to formulate a comprehensive policy to fight global warming. They even oppose cap-and-trade, for god sakes! The CBO has said that, even with some of the potential job losses over the next 5 or 10 years as a result of the Waxman-Markey bill, because of all the refunds, deductions and tax credits in the bill (among other things), we'd actually have a net gain. And Factcheck.org did a recent article on cap-and-trade as well and found that all those groups that claim it will "screw everything up" in our economy were basing their predictions on worst-case scenarios, which are certainly not likely to happen. I mean, cap-and-trade is a market-based program! A vast array of economists agree that if we should use any approach to regulate properly, this is probably the most efficient. Experts agree the world over that the SO2 cap-and-trade program in the 90s worked pretty damn well. So why not for CO2? Sure, the current bill may not be perfect, but cap-and-trade will not be the apocalypse!
I can assure Americans that cap-and-trade will not raise our energy costs by two or three grand a year. That is pure propaganda. Besides, isn't the program designed so that corporations that can afford to innovate and reduce emissions will do so and then sell their credits to less-wealthy businesses that can't afford it, in order to reduce the regulatory burden? Do conservatives forget about this part, or are they willingly ignoring it?
