Republican debate: What they said (and didn't say) about climate - eviltoast

After reading out some statistics from the deadly Hawaii wildfires, they played a clip from a member of the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth activist organisation, who said climate was the number one issue for young people.

Asked to raise their hand if they thought mankind was to blame, not one went up. And only one candidate said climate change was real in the short discussion that followed.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said it was childish to ask for a show of hands and instead laid into Joe Biden for the president’s response to Hawaii.

  • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    [the following was judiciously paraphrased]

    Earnest young Republican activist: “So a lot of my classmates at college say the Republican party doesn’t care about climate change, I know that’s a lot of fake news, but could you tell them that you’re taking this issue seriously?”

    DeSantis: “This is a woke media trap! Fox news is part of the woke media!”

    [Unintelligible yelling]

    Ramaswamy: “Environmental regulations are smothering our economy like a wet blanket, which incidentally is also what I’m secretly hoping increased humidity in the global climate does to all you fucking rubes in the next 20 years while I chill out in my bunker and totally don’t get backstabbed by my body guards.”

    [More unintelligible yelling]

    Christie: “Vivek Ramaswamy is brown and has a funny last name, just like Barack Obama!”

    [Even more unintelligible yelling]

    [Unclear]: “You’re being paid off!” [Different voice, still unclear who]: “No you’re being paid off!”

    Earnest young Republican activist [internally, off camera]: “♪ Hello darkness my old friend ♪”

    • ShakeThatYam@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Christie said that because Vivek literally quoted Obama’s line about being a skinny kid with a funny name.

      • girlfreddy@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        Who the hell in their right mind would vote for the king of the Bridgegate debacle?

        I mean Christie shouldn’t be anywhere near a GOP candidate debate.

        • jscummy@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          To be fair, Christie’s done a great job of antagonizing the other candidates when they say or do stupid shit. I wouldn’t vote for him either, but I appreciate that he’s dragging the rest of the field down with him

        • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          He is shit. But he has a really quick wit and is quick to pounce on any candidate who does not have their shit together. He essentially killed Rubio’s campaign in 2016.

      • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        So I do still believe Christie was doing a racism there and should be called out for it (like, anybody who talks about their last name is Barack Obama now? Just taking that piece of rhetoric off the table puts non-white and second generation immigrant candidates at a big disadvantage), but I just discovered that one of the extra psychopathic Republican lawmakers apparently made this same argument last night and now I feel dirty, so I’m just gonna say fuck everyone on that debate stage, edit in a joke a Ramaswamy’s expense to make it more clear that I think he’s a piece of shit too and call it a day

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Asked to raise their hand if they thought mankind was to blame, not one went up. And only one candidate said climate change was real in the short discussion that followed.

    For fuck’s sake, have they been outside recently? Like at all?

    • Chocrates@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Right? “it’s the hottest its ever been” is the refrain of this summer. Pretty sure it will be the coolest summer in recent memory soon enough.
      We are fucked. We got fucked by our politicians 30 years ago, the fuckers today are fucking the Zoomer’s grandchildren. If any can afford to have kids.

        • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Actually 127 years ago. Svante Arrhenius published a paper indicating that creating so much CO2 could potentially alter the Earth’s surface temperature to such a degree that it may affect life.

          That was in 1896 about 130 years after the start of the industrial revolution. So by that point we had a pretty significant amount of CO2 in the air already.

          Human beings have been dumping CO2 into the atmosphere hard for the last quarter of a millennia. I usually bring this up because people need to understand, even if we stop today 100%, we’ve got at least five centuries of a problem on our hands. Because it’s going to take at least twice as long to clean things up as it did making the mess.

          And that should help people understand how difficult a problem we have because we need a solution that can work for us for 500 years at least. I mean we’re doing nothing right now which is just making the problem worse, but solutions aren’t ever going to be a one and done thing. Just swapping over to solar or just driving EVs aren’t going to cut it. It’s a good start but we must reinvent all of human society on this planet for the next half millennia to actually solve the problem. That is the actual task that lies before humanity. There has never been a more complex challenge put before mankind ever in the history of all existence for Homo Sapiens.

          • Kage520@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Disagree. They said we could not possibly sustain the growth of human civilization due to how much food we could produce, but then we had the industrial revolution and we could make more food. That was not imaginable before, but it’s life now.

            Of course, that leads to where we are. We now have to invent a way to use green energy to essentially make carbon dense something and put it back into the ground. It’s a monumental task, sure, but I have a feeling humanity could figure it out quickly if we would just TAKE THE DAMN ISSUE SERIOUSLY.

            I mean really. We made a vaccine in record time when the whole world was scared of something. Let’s get scared again and all work together on this.

            • Adalast@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Don’t worry, we can count on some conservative “expert” spouting about how if we do effective atmospheric carbon capture that we will kill all the plants and end the world. I know because I have already had people try to make that argument with me. It was all I could do not to solve a single source of carbon emissions in that moment. So dumb.

        • Chocrates@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I just meant that the carbon from ~30 years ago is what is affecting us today. Like others have said we have been theorizing that carbon can cause climate change since a bit into the industrial revolution. Not sure when we “knew” it was real though.

    • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Jokes on you, I’m not literally on fire at this exact moment, which proves conclusively that climate change is a leftist plot, and that the south will rise again!

      Checkmate, Science!

    • Aimhere@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      As long as they can go from their taxpayer-funded air-conditioned offices, to their taxpayer-funded air-conditioned limos, to their taxpayer-funded air-conditioned mansions, they’re good.

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I have some dumbass on IG thinking there is no climate change and the only reason the data says there is is because they measure at airports where there are a lot of tarmacs. It’s such a dumb argument that I have no idea how to respond.

      • TurtleJoe@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I guess they’re doing all those antarctic sea ice readings at airports, and that the water temperatures off the coast of Florida were actually taken at airports, and all of Texas must be one large airport.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I hear you, but I think it’s important to distinguish between climate and weather. Especially if we actually want to make a credible argument for climate action and help people understand the situation.

      The heat waves we’re seeing right now are horrible and a result of inaction over long periods of time. They will also contribute to the overall climate change discussion, but it is weather. The current weather will show up in the climate data as we move forward, but let’s make sure we use the correct terminology.

  • Rusticus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This exchange is why they want to raise the voting age to 25.

    Hopefully, those in their youth will not forget what this Republican Party has done to address climate change. Never forget and never vote Republican.

    • hh93@lemm.ee
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      That’s not how conservatives work sadly.

      Merkel ruled Germany for 16 years but 1 year after her party was out of power they started campaigns about how broken the bureaucracy is and how bad the electricity-grid is without the atomic power which they decided to quit or complain about the government making changes to what heating is allowed in houses in order to be on track with the climate targets (which is a very steep climb since they didn’t do anything)

      And people eat it up and vote for them again or go even more extreme because that kind of thing makes people lose faith in the process all together.

      • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Conservatives in government: Do nothing. Conservatives in opposition: The government does nothing, vote for us!

    • LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Billionaire giga-donors. They don’t give a fuck about stupid voters. “Find me 11,800 votes” speakers for itself how much they care about elections and voters.

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They are cowards and what would Ron pudding fingers do for Hawaii? Why don’t he look to Florida for damages he caused.

  • Veraticus@lib.lgbt
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    1 year ago

    Lol, I hope Young Americans for Freedom were listening and have the courage to vote in accordance with their beliefs.

  • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If I wanted to listen to fascists pontificate and compete on who hates their scapegoats the most, I’d move to Alabama.

  • dezmd@lemmy.worldM
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    1 year ago

    “The Climate Change Hoax.”

    Nothing but a clown show. Guantanamo Ron still managed to have the most punchable face.