Amy Coney Barrett on Global Warming—an Existential Threat for Humanity

October 19, 2020 | revcom.us

 

Senator Kamala Harris asked Amy Coney Barrett, “Do you believe that climate change is happening and threatening the air we breathe and the water we drink?” In response, Barrett complained that Harris was trying “to elicit an opinion from me that is on a very contentious matter of public debate and I will not do that. I will not express a view on a matter of public policy, especially one that is politically controversial.”

Greta Thunberg, a leader in the movement around climate change (or global warming), responded appropriately and mockingly in a tweet: “To be fair, I don’t have any ‘views on climate change’ either. Just like I don’t have any ‘views’ on gravity, the fact that the earth is round, photosynthesis nor evolution... But understanding and knowing their existence really makes life in the 21st century so much easier.”

Global warming is real, and “it is happening,” as has been proven beyond reasonable doubt. It is not a matter of “public policy” or “contentious matter of public debate.” It is a matter of science and of reality.

Climate change is not “a contentious question” among scientists or among vast sections of people here and around the world that are scientifically and reality based or feeling the effects from rising temperatures, sea levels, and extreme weather events. But it is contentious among anti-science Christian fascists like Barrett, or those who skew reality in the service of a worldview that it is completely OK to plunder the planet and people for the sake of profit. This will likely translate into giving the “all clear” to initiatives to strip away environmental regulations, open pristine forest land to plunder, and to ratchet up the U.S. “carbon footprint” at a time when the world is sliding over the brink into climate catastrophe.

Amy Barrett’s answers—or evasive non-answers—both gloss over and reveal a worldview that is existentially threatening for humanity, given the U.S.’s dominant position in the world and atop the capitalist-imperialist system, not only in actual carbon emissions that cause global warming but in setting terms and policy for the rest of the world.