Political Climate Change

By Bill Maher

According to a new report from the World Bank, climate change is on track to push about 100 million people into “extreme poverty” by 2030, thanks to agricultural disruption and the spread of disease. Yay, carbon!

With crop yields deteriorating and warmer temperatures putting as many as 150 million additional people at risk for malaria, the US and other developed nations have agreed to ramp up expenditures on emission reductions to $100 billion per year by 2020. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development reported that, in 2014, $62 billion was directed to developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia as they bear the brunt of the crisis.  

This will, obviously, be a big topic at this week’s UN climate summit in Paris. And a topic back home will continue to be the Republicans who still deny, obscure, and demagogue the issue. What’s so weird is that Republican leaders no longer even represent their own party – an August survey shows that 54 percent of self-described conservative Republicans believe the climate is changing and man has something to do with it (still, 41 percent don’t, and that’s a scary large amount of balls-out ignorance right there). So with the exception of religious wackos and oil barons, even the political climate is changing. At this point it’s the Koch brothers vs. the world. 

Which brings up an interesting thought experiment: Imagine if the Koch brothers and the oil lobby and the political operatives who do their bidding are right about climate change, and the entire civilized world - everybody who’s not the American energy sector or in its pockets, basically every other educated person on the planet - is wrong.

That would be a colossally amazing coincidence right there. “Improbable” doesn’t even begin to describe it.