File:They are going to take your Hamburgers away etc.jpg: Difference between revisions

Kate Aranoff / There may be no issue that lends itself better to a “which side are you on”-style politics than the climate crisis.

In an image posted to the Congressional Western Caucus's Facebook page, Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, holds a hamburger while making a statement during the Western Caucus's press conference on the Green New Deal bill at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 27, 2018., Congressional Western Caucus.

For years, the terms of the debate about climate change in the United States have been clear. One side — flush with fossil fuel cash — cast doubt on whether the problem existed at all, spreading disinformation and calling global warming an elaborate hoax to bring about socialism. For the most part, they were Republicans. On the other side were those who believed the science and usually rallied around some call for climate action, however vague. The conversation around the Green New Deal has brought those sides together, as politicians on both sides of the aisle scramble to cobble together a third way.

That Republicans being paid by the fossil fuel industry have come out against a plan for the United States to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 is hardly surprising. That they’re being joined by prominent Democrats in casting doubt on the idea is a signal for how old tribalisms around climate change are starting to radically shift.

“The Anti-Green New Deal Coalition,” a new report from the Public Accountability Initiative, or PAI, attempts to map these evolving allegiances.

Unsurprisingly, a common bipartisan thread in Green New Deal opposition is fossil fuel donations. Raking in 81 percent of all oil and gas donations since 1990, today’s GOP “operates as a de facto wing of the fossil fuel industry,” the report’s authors write. The exclusively white, male, and Republican leadership of the Congressional Western Caucus is a prime example. In the last election cycle, it accepted $837,480 from political action committees linked to the energy and natural resources industry, a fraction of the $4.3 million that same group has taken in from fossil fuel PACs over the course of its career. On Wednesday, the caucus hosted a “policy forum” on the Green New Deal — a “Green Pipe Dream,” as they call it — flanked by a who’s who of the country’s most prominent climate deniers, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell to ClimateDepot founder Marc Morano. Ceremoniously, Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, ate a hamburger.

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Money_in_Politics

Another tactics is to misinform.... to mock with exaggeration as in 'flooding the zone', where a strategy is to set the terms of a debate with a coordinated release of talking points. The examples of this are numerous but one of the recent cases included the Affordable Care Act, where the costs and failures of the U.S. health system are set aside while opponents of the ACA broadcast, press conference, media release, spokesperson by spokesperson talk of "death panels".

The campaign of misinformation 'succeeded' in that the polling numbers indicated that core target audiences picked up the refrain and carried it as a banner, while the health care crisis facts were ignored.

In March 2019, money in politics talking points are back, exaggerations and deceptions abound, gotcha politics in the daily news cycle, as opponents of climate action attempt to set the framework of debate (e.g., no planes, no cars, no cows, no hamburgers, however absurd and even comical these claims are, the core, target audiences pick up the refrain...)