Headlining

If I worked the copy desk at the Washington Post, I might have headlined this article: "Republicans duck challenge, imperil future of planet," but...[channeling Donald Rumsfeld] I guess we drink our morning coffee with the newspaper we have? Yes.

The article, by contrast to its headline, is quite good. The breakdown of it is that a narrow minority of voters consider climate change their number one issue, plenty--including surprising demographics like moderate Republican women--see it as a top-five issue, and plenty more don't care at all. That's what makes addressing it such a complicated political dance. It's not the highest-intensity issue out there, but the steps required to address it are pretty significant.

There are conservatives in my own family (can you believe it?!) who have some odd thoughts about this--who tend to deride liberals and people from poor countries for their insidious plan to just let America shoulder all the costs of global warming. In the past this has turned into an argument about environmental justice, etc. etc. But the more important point, I think, is that, whatever you think about citizens of the third world, all liberal Americans would prefer to live in a world in which global warming didn't exist. Not just because that would alleviate a lot of peoples' suffering (a good thing!) but because then their political party wouldn't have to trouble itself with confronting it--an issue that, while of pressing concern, isn't the sort of thing one would ever want to invent for political reasons.