JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

To deny climate change amounts to committing political suicide. When asked about climate change, Romney gave a shockingly ignorant answer: “I don’t know what’s causing climate change.” Paul Ryan won’t even acknowledge the scientific evidence or the weather extremes brought on by climate change.

I suppose Romney could have got away with that answer in the early 1990s, but a politician loses all credibility if s/he denies climate change these days. Global warming is caused by man-made pollution which is creating life threatening weather extreme conditions that we’re currently facing. In fact, if Romney and Ryan had checked, they’d learn that the major oil industry execs have admitted that global warming is real and that it’s caused from man-made pollution. True they don’t want to part with fossil fuels and they’re desperate to keep drilling for the last few drops left on the planet, but they at least admit it. Here is a statement posted at Shell’s website:

“CO2 emissions must be reduced to avoid serious climate change. We were one of the first energy companies to acknowledge the threat of climate change; to call for action by governments, our industry and energy users; and to take action ourselves.”

Furthermore, Romney-Ryan are going against mainstream media reports: ABC, CBS and NBC have all explained the dire consequences of climate change and they have made it clear to viewers that the cause of global warming is from man-made pollution that has created a “greenhouse effect”. Temperatures are at record highs, droughts are so severe that our corn crops, an essential food source, have withered to dust, the Mississippi is drying up, the glaciers and Greenland ice are melting at a terrifyingly rapid rate beyond scientific predictions, extreme flooding has cost tax payers billions of dollars from the damage, wildfires have consumed entire forests and communities in the western states because of the hot, dry extreme weather conditions that have been referred to as “epic” and it’s getting worse every year.

What Romney-Ryan stupidly missed is that climate change is no longer an environmental crisis: this is a BUSINESS crisis of epic proportions. These two so-called business men just lost the business community voters from Wall St investors to Texas ranching who all know that climate change is not only the biggest threat to life, it’s the biggest threat to the stability of our economy. July was the hottest month on record in the United States, followed by 3,100 temperature breaking records. James Hansen, NASA’s top climatologist solidly identifies climate change as the cause for recent drought, heat waves, and wildfires.

Romney and Ryan are campaigning solely for the oil and coal industries. What about the billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs that are drying up with the droughts on account of climate change? Ranchers can no longer raise cattle. The agriculture-farming and the food industries are losing billions of dollars due to droughts and the loss of fruit and vegetable crops, the fishing industry is losing billions of dollars, tourism is losing billions of dollars, real estate is losing billions of dollars—it all adds up to a radically unstable economy that will grow increasingly worse under Romney-Ryan because they deny climate change. Romney has committed political suicide by announcing that he strictly supports the polluting industries at the expense of all other businesses in America.

Although President Obama made decisions that also benefit the oil industry at the expense of our environment such as drilling off the pristine Arctic coast, he at least acknowledges the threat of climate change, and above all else, he’s provided subsidies for wind and solar, tax refunds, which are making a huge difference insofar as producing clean energy for millions of Americans. Wind and solar companies have put thousands of people back to work.

By contrast, Romney wants to continue providing the increasingly unpopular subsidies for the oil industry at the cost of billions of tax dollars for a polluting industry that is making a trillion dollars a year in profits combined. In other words, the Romney energy plan is to eliminate all subsidies for wind and solar and give billions of tax dollars, tax incentives and refunds to the oil and coal industries. Romney calls that “an equal playing field for energy companies.”

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Romney keeps bashing President Obama regarding the solar company, Solyndra, but he chooses to ignore the fact that there are hundreds of successful solar companies that are booming across the country. Furthermore, perhaps Solyndra mismanaged funding, but are they responsible for what oil companies have done to our economy and environment from massive oil spills? BP’s oil spill literally turned the entire Gulf of Mexico into a dead zone with toxic oil and dispersants; that ocean will never be the same, and it is costing businesses a loss of billions of dollars in the tourist and fishing industries, how does Solyndra compare to BP’s deadly oil spill, environmentally and economically speaking?

Once again, Romney committed political suicide by happily standing in front of oil wells and coal mines and at the same time bashing a solar company. The message is clear: No Clean Energy under Romney-Ryan, if they get their way. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he announced to voters in Iowa that he will end all subsidies for wind energy companies in a state where wind power has become a huge provider of energy and jobs. You can’t help asking if Romney wants to deliberately lose this election—talk about stupid!?

The following summation explains how Romney and Ryan want to destroy renewable, clean energy companies and their jobs:

“The American Wind Energy Association, the lobbying arm of the wind industry, announced recently that the wind sector's 50GW (gigawatts) of capacity is enough to power nearly 13 million American homes, or as many as in Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, Virginia, Alabama, and Connecticut combined.

In addition, the number of new operational wind projects across the US is enough to supplant "44 coal-fired power stations or 11 nuclear power plants", will result in emission reductions that would equate to taking 14 million cars off the road, and -- because wind energy demands almost no water use -- conserves 30 billion gallons of water a year compared to thermal electric power generation.

The 'Production Tax Credit' was created under the George H.W. Bush administration and has been extended by each president since. President Obama included the most recent extension of the provision when he signed the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and, as the Washington Post notes specifically "extended the wind credit through 2012 to allow wind energy producers to collect 10 years’ worth of credits up front as a form of stimulus."

But Republican candidate Mitt Romney has vowed to end the subsidy once and the GOP House and Senate leadership have vowed to do the same.

Romney’s campaign has said it would allow the credit to end in order to “create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits,” the Des Moines Register reported.

“At a moment when home-grown energy, renewable energy, is creating new jobs in Colorado and Iowa, my opponent wants to end tax credits for wind energy producers,” Obama told supporters in Pueblo, Colorado.”

Eliminating tax subsidies for clean energy and denying global warming will finish Romney and Ryan off. Who wants to vote for the Romney-Ryan plan to dramatically expand oil and gas drilling, gut the EPA, and kill government loans for clean energy at the tax payers’ expense when businesses are losing billions of dollars from climate change disasters?

We can’t afford to return to the dark ages. Iowa represents the entire country concerning solutions to the climate change crisis:

As reported at Desmoineregister.com: “The lines are now drawn on a political hot button: a lucrative tax break for wind energy.

Mitt Romney is against it, President Barack Obama favors it — opposing stances that could have political and economic implications in Iowa, which has more wind energy jobs than any other state in the nation.

The wind production tax credit is big deal because it bolsters the market for more turbines and towers.”

In short, Romney is against all renewable clean energy businesses; he wants to increase tax subsidies for oil and coal, eliminate tax subsidies for wind and solar and he calls that plan “an equal playing field for energy companies.” He wants to increase pollution and C02 emissions as we confront climate change weather catastrophes at epic proportions. Obama, by contrast, provides tax incentives to promote renewable energy, and those policies are working to provide far more jobs than oil and coal, and most importantly, wind and solar are sustainable, clean, safe energy for millions of Americans that will help us to reduce global warming conditions.

As for new discoveries in solar energy, check this exciting news: concentrated solar cells could be powering cities soon:
In 2011 new solar cell technologies from Solar Junction, a company based in San Jose, California, stored a record 43.5 percent of the energy it captured from the sun. The cells are 1.2 percent more efficient than anything on record, and up to three times as efficient as the off-the-shelf variety.

I suppose Romney-Ryan would like to stop this extraordinary progress and the jobs it will produce in its tracks too and then call that “an equal playing field” for the oil and coal industries.

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Jacqueline Marcus taught ethics and political philosophy for twenty years at Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, California. Her book of poems, Close to the Shore, was published by Michigan State University Press. She is the editor of www.ForPoetry.com