Beshpin, I thought your comment was bizarre, but I re-read Mike's post.  I wish I could find a less inflammatory term than Mike did for the people involved, but  hyper-partisan, deluded, wannabe conservatives and Exxon/Koch stooges are probably not much less inflammatory.  Can you offer us a term for people who would rather let the rich have their way than make carefully thought out /well informed decisions affecting the well-being of most Americans as well as most of the rest of the world?

Mike, your basically saying you think the the US is bad for "pushing global warming under the carpet".  In other words: USA bad.

Less than 24 hours before you started this thread, you started a thread in which you stated that the US was going ahead with provisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  In other words USA good.

Which is it?

How much crdibility are we to give you now?

Beshpin, thank you for your well-worded reply.  As an environmentalist, I am inherently conservative.  Everything we do, every service we provide comes with a cost to the environment, and, usually, to human relationships.  As you seem to indicate, many politicians in the US and Canada who hold up the conservative banner support decisions that are anything but conservative.  Supporting the Bush tax cuts diverts money from 99% of the population to 1% of the population, reducing their capacity to obtain the goods and services they need, and increasing the alienation of most of the super-wealthy from the well-being of their fellow citizens.

Now a truly conservative American government would trash ABM and other high-tech military expenditures that do little for peace or for security of the American people.

Well the Republicans are certainly right wing (something they cling to proudly) and denying something as obvious as global climate change is extremely loony. Unfortunately the term undeniably fits.

 alta... this is not about "good"/"bad"... i don't have a binary mind like that.

What ditching the select committee does is send a "we don't want to know" message... and that, in my view is extremely dangerous (in terms of international relations, not just as concern about the survival of the planet). It is and ideologically-based denial to the extent of irrationality. It is irrational because it needlessly inflicts self-harm.... even a spurpower can't treat a global issue as a locally irrelevant non-event.

What the U.S.... President Obama... is doing is setting some standards that, despite having said Canada would keep in step with U.S. actions on climate change initiatives, are being rejected out of hand by our government, which seems to be aligning itself with the freak show extremes of American republicanism on this and a few other issues.

You're comparing an insult based on someone's chosen behaviour, to an insult based on someone's biological reality.

There're not really the same thing, Beshpin.

jon71

I might be wrong, and if I am I apolgize upfront, but it seems to me that Besh is Alberta based, oil sands supporting, and therefore not exactly a friend of climate change concerned people.

IT

Russ

Beshpin

Climate IS changing, people are either getting drowned out or dried out.  Scientists point to man as the cause.

If man is the cause, shouldn't we do something about it?

BTW, I hear Canada has scored 54 out of 57 on the do something about climate change list.  Great going, Harp old bean.

IT

Russ

The news just gets better and better..........

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101205/sc_afp/scienceclimatewarmingforestsfire_20101205185800

IT

Russ