GOP Platform: “Liberty” Will Protect the Environment

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/torek/3734439357/sizes/m/in/photostream/">kirainet</a>/Flickr


The GOP platform for 2012 is now official, and it includes its fair share of right-wing talking points on energy and environment. That includes deriding the Obama administration’s policies and espousing the kind of drill-everywhere, EPA-be-damned ideas that the GOP has become known for in recent years.

On fracking:

The current President has done nothing to disavow the scare campaign against hydraulic fracturing…We will respect the States’ proven ability to regulate the use of hydraulic fracturing, continue development of oil and gas resources in places like the Bakken formation and Marcellus Shale, and review the environmental laws that often thwart new energy exploration and production.

Meanwhile, fracking is virtually unregulated at the federal level, and state laws have massive gaps that leave many communities at risk.

On climate change:

Finally, the strategy subordinates our national security interests to environmental, energy, and international health issues, and elevates “climate change” to the level of a “severe threat” equivalent to foreign aggression. The word “climate,” in fact, appears in the current President’s strategy more often than Al Qaeda, nuclear proliferation, radical Islam, or weapons of mass destruction.

Actually, the words “climate change” don’t even appear in the energy and environment sub-section of the platform. You have to dig way down deep in a subhead called “A Failed National Security Strategy” to find them anywhere at all.

The EPA:

The most powerful environmental policy is liberty, the central organizing principle of the American Republic and its people. Liberty alone fosters scientific inquiry, technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and information exchange. Liberty must remain the core energy behind America’s environmental improvement.

There’s tons of other hilarious stuff in there, like “private ownership has been our best guarantee of conscientious stewardship,” and “[t]here is no place in regulatory agencies for activist regulators.” Read the whole thing here.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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