Hill conservatives reject all 3 climate strategies and embrace Rush Limbaugh — what does that radicalism mean for Obama, progressives, and humanity?

From Climate Progress:

Although surprisingly little-remarked on, the big story of the year so far — at least from the perspective of the fate of America and all humankind — is the hardening of the conservative movement against every possible strategy for dealing with global warming.

For instance, I don’t think the Obama administration has grasped the implications of the sheer impossibility that it could ever get 67 votes for a climate treaty in the Senate (see NYT article here suggesting they will pursue such a treaty “in a robust way” and my post, “Obama can’t get a global climate treaty ratified, so what should he do instead?“).

Is Obama setting himself up to fail, making Rush Limbaugh’s dream come true?

If you want to tackle global warming, if you want to avert the unimaginable misery of 5.5° to 7°C warming and 850 ppm for the next 100 billion people who walk the planet this millennium, you have only three strategies:

1. Put a serious price on carbon
2. Spend a gazillion dollars on clean technology development and deployment
3. Mandate the use of efficient, cleaner technology.

[And yes, for 450 ppm or lower, you need all three.]

Now even “moderate” conservatives like McCain and Gregg have always opposed even the mildest of mandates — requirements that utilities get a fraction of their power from renewable energy (see “The greenwasher from Arizona has a record as dirty as the denier from Oklahoma” and “Is a possible 60th Senate seat worth a not-very-green GOP Commerce Secretary?“). Mandates for renewables and more fuel-efficient cars, of course, can’t do much more than stem the rise of emissions, so they are just a piece of the puzzle.

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Hill conservatives reject all 3 climate strategies and embrace Rush Limbaugh — what does that radicalism mean for Obama, progressives, and humanity?

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