This will be a really short diary as it is bringing attention to an article I just read over at TPM. My first reaction: Holy Crap! My second reaction: I am not surprised in the slightest. There is a silver lining in the story though.
Montana State Rep. Joe Reed (R) believes climate change is real, and it is spectacular.Read introduced House Bill 549 into the Montana legislature, which, if passed, would declare climate change "beneficial to the welfare and business climate of Montana." This, the bill says, would allow the state to manage its natural resources appropriately, and ensure the state's economic development.
This is the problem we are facing. I have never seen a politician actually say out right that global warming was a good thing (doesn't mean it hasn't happened, I just haven't seen it yet), but I have heard rumblings of people talking about the advantages of global warming. Greater trade relations through the Arctic with Asia as the ice melts. Longer growing seasons in the northern states. Increased rainfall in the Gobi desert turning vast stretches of previously unusable land into farmable property.
Surely there will be some opportunities that will present themselves as the climate changes. But they are at the cost of the structure of our current economy. Sure it will help Montana, but how do you think Florida feels about it? This is the classic 'I got mine' mentality.
There is a silver lining to this story. The first step in any bad news is rejection. The next step is bargaining, or in this case "it's not so bad". We are starting to get past the denial stage. The real challenge is going to be less and less the conservative denial attitude, and more the general conservative attitude where they don't care about anyone but themselves. They don't care about what happens in Florida, and especially not in California, as long as it benefits them.
The real problem is the places that are major offenders (like the coal mining states) will have minimal changes that your average person will be able to point at and attribute to global climate change. So they will let the rest of us hang while they reap the benefits.
With that I leave you with my all time favorite quote, from the all time funniest tv-show, King of the Hill:
Dale Gribble: I tell you what it is. It's your quote un-quote pollution control. I heard on talk radio you don't even need 'em. It's just the latest nazi government plot. Open your eyes, man, they're trying to control Global Warming. Get it Global. That's U.N. Commissars code for telling us what the temperature is gonna be in our outdoors. Let it warm up I say. See what Butchros Butchros Ghali Ghali thinks of that. We'll grow oranges in Alaska.Hank Hill: Dale you giblet head, we live in Texas. It's already 110 in the summer, and if it gets one degree hotter I'm gonna kick your ass!