I shouldn't feel like I'm nutpicking when I talk about the views of the Republican frontrunner of the week. Nonetheless, I do. That's because it's Rick Santorum. Here's his take on environmentalism (via TPM):
When you have a worldview that elevates the Earth above man and says that we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the Earth; by things that frankly are just not scientifically proven, for example, the politicization of the whole global warming debate — this is all an attempt to, you know, to centralize power and to give more power to the government,” Santorum said.
The "no scientific proof stuff" is standard fare for the climate-change-denier wing of the Republican party. But Santorum mixes this "I'm not convinced by the science" perspective with Biblical imperatives about who rules what (answer: man rules the earth). Who rules what, however, is a political question. So isn't Santorum politicizing the global warming debate by invoking the claims of a religious subgroup?
Aren't the Catholics politicizing the contraception debate by invoking the claims of a religious subgroup?
Either Santorum is again revealing the limited content of his limited mind or he's pandering to a particular subset of the Republican base. Either way….
Were I a Republican I would take a different approach, which I think is shared by many climate scientists: it no longer matters whether you believe that climate change is a man-made phenomenon, caused by sunspots, or is a manifestation of God's will that man be free to destroy the Earth by virtue of his dominion over all things animal, vegetable and mineral, because we're past the tipping point. If the climate scientists are correct, all we can really do now is prepare for the inevitably hotter earth of the future, and the consequences of the melting polar ice caps, and that's where we should focus our energies.