Conejo Valley Democrat

In an October 12 speech to the Western Conservative Political Action Conference, California State Senator Tom McClintock mounted a persuasive, and yet poorly informed attack against Al Gore, conservation, and the most widely accepted scientific theory of global warming.

This is fortunate: McClintock’s comments have assured his well-deserved fate of political irrelevance and ignominy.

McClintock repeated well-worn Republican jokes about personal jets and Gore’s electricity bill. He mentioned several laughably out-of-date theories about the causes of recent climate change. He even proudly admits that his knowledge about climate change has its most profound roots in his grade school musings.

If Tony Strickland, the Republican running for McClintock’s hotly contested District 19 seat, adopts these backward views, any Democrat running for the seat will receive a boost in popularity.

The entire text of McClintock’s speech was posted on his blog, Citizens for the California Republic.

What is discouraging is that so many loyal Republicans–petulant at the world’s recognition of Gore’s contribution to the fight against man-made climate change–are susceptible to the the alluring but factually erroneous arguments advanced by McClintock.

Contrary to what he asserts, McClintock’s arguments are advanced by only a slim minority of scientists, but they are enormously popular among Republicans.

This position is damaging to the Republican party and will cause it to lose votes in California and nationally.

Democrats, if we can brand ourselves as the party of responsible environmentalism, stand to gain enormously from such Republican foolishness.

I urge all Conejo Valley residents concerned about global warming to attend the Democratic Club of the Conejo Valley’s meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 14, at the Goebel Senior Center in Thousand Oaks.

Speakers will include Perrin Pellegrin, Sustainability Manager at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Gayle Kaufman of the City of Thousand Oaks.

The night’s topic will be sustainability and how to be environmentally responsible.

The Goebel Senior Center is located at 1385 E. Janss Road. Click here for a map.

All those interested in countering McClintock’s failures of logic should do two things: (1) educate yourself about the facts of climate change and (2) post rebuttals to McClintock’s blog by visiting his post here.

Below appears my hastily dashed-off response to McClintock, which I posted on Saturday night:

Senator McClintock’s attack of Al Gore is crude and impolite.

His attack of global warming, although beguilingly laced with half-baked science, is incorrect. I quote the “Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change,” published one year ago by Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of the Government Economic Service for the United Kingdom: “The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response.”

Furthermore, McClintock’s argument that limited man-made global warming is overly burdensome on the economy can be discarded, as Stern indicates:

“The world does not need to choose between averting climate change and promoting growth and development. Changes in energy technologies and in the structure of economies have created opportunities to decouple growth from greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth.”

Shame on you, Senator McClintock, for your seemingly sagacious dissembling. I hope you will change your opinion on global warming and the feasibility of fighting it.

Elected officials should be advocating the best science, not placing obstacles in the way of the best science.