The Perilous Consequences of Climate Change Denialism

Peter Daou's got a must-read post [TW for reference to sexual violence at the link] rounding up some of the recent sobering assessments of climate change and how denialism about climate change is akin to birtherism—but with more deadly consequences.

Daou also makes a good observation about the politics of climate change, and how the Democrats' unwillingness to challenge denialism head-on is allowing it to proliferate:

What's demoralizing about the entire climate debate is that President Obama and Democratic leaders have squandered a great opportunity to expose the Tea Party's dubious underpinnings. Anti-environmentalism is the GOP's Achilles' heel, since it has no basis in rationality and imperils humanity's future.

...Democrats should hammer the GOP on the environment, pounding them on their irresponsibility, accusing them of endangering our children. The Gulf spill should have been a turning point, a powerful revival of the environmental movement. Instead, the White House worked with BP to bury the story, believing it would be a drag on Democrats' electoral prospects. The Gulf calamity wasn't something to run away from but something to use as an example of the recklessness of the right's embrace of ignorance.

In this reverberating silence, we witness the endgame of selling out the Democratic Party to the same corporate interests of which the Republican Party has long been a wholly-owned subsidiary: There is no one left to argue that policy changes and cultural shifts should follow in the wake of a catastrophic environmental disaster, because no one wants to hurt the fee-fees of the unethical but deep-pocketed megacorp that caused it.

Anyway, go read the whole post here.