In debates over the Keystone XL pipeline last week a majority of U.S. senators rejected two measures admitting a human connection to climate change.
On Thursday, the Republican majority held sway in denying an amendment by Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, an independent, to acknowledge the devastation caused by climate change and that humans have a hand in it.
West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, a Democrat, also fell short in getting fellow legislators to recognize global warming in his request to support research on technologies that would capture carbon emissions from fossil fuels.
2014 was the hottest year on record for Earth.
It’s not a fluke, folks.
The decade between 2000 and 2010 was the hottest our planet has ever witnessed.
One of the biggest culprits is coal-powered energy plants whose emissions trap heat in the atmosphere contributing to global warming and overall pollution.
KANSAS SENATORS Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts have never recognized climate change and its devastating effects on Earth. Both senators are geared to overturn the signature agreement between the United States and China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
Their focus is jobs and how fossil fuel industries keep a secure workforce.
It doesn’t have to be an either/or.
The United States could create an abundance of new jobs in developing renewable energy technologies, such as with solar and wind.
Surely, that’s a win-win.
Our elected officials would have an easier time seeing it that way except for the unfortunate fact they are beholden to the oil and gas industry. In the last election cycle alone the industries contributed almost $350,000 to the campaign of Sen. Roberts. For Moran, Koch Industries contributed more than $42,000. And Rep. Lynn Jenkins received almost $149,000 from oil and gas industry representatives in her most recent campaign.
For the 2016 elections, billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch have budgeted $900 million for the candidacies of those who will support the best interests of their family business, energy giant Koch Industries.
This isn’t to say these officials can’t turn a new leaf.
All are doting parents and grandparents who care very much about their futures, including the air they breathe. But maybe not as much as their next election.
UNTIL CAMPAIGN finance is reformed our elected officials will be increasingly beholden to special interests and issues such as global warming will get short shrift.
Meanwhile, the American public must work to impress upon their representatives the importance of supporting initiatives that reduce greenhouse gases for the preservation of the Earth’s climate.
If not for ourselves, for future generations and the world at large.
— Susan Lynn
